The Portuguese already had their earthquake and somehow managed to survive and rebuild most of Lisbon since 1755. Although there was a little tremor during the week (about two-and-a-half on the Svetoslav Richter scale, or however it is called when measuring how much the earth moved for you), the otherwise sunny city of Setubal, one of Portugal's most important port-resorts and home of the poet Bocage,manages to mount the 27th edition of the international film festival Festroia surmounting ma...
Suddenly, everything's coming up doc-fests. Munich's has just ended (a well-run event organised in the famous Film Museum and other gemuetlich venues around the Bavarian capital since 1991), Sheffield's has just announced the complete programme for its event which moves dates from autumn to next month, and the now stand-alone Edinburgh International Film Festival, with its new team and slenderer budget, returns to its post-war orgins with a strong focus on the documentary for its 65th...
Probably the most successful of the still-sustained 'national' film festivals that flourish, with greater and lesser degrees of success in London and around the British Isles (dare I still call them that without fear of political uncorrectness?) is Kinoteka, which celebrated its 9th edition from 24th March to 13th April, 2011.(Since the German Film Weeks are now but a fond memory, this Polish filmic-extravaganza now surely takes the crown, in the face of all kinds of film 'festivals' that vie...
When you are summoned to a hospital club, you might be more than a little apprehensive.But an invitation to a screening at The Hospital Club, a sumptuous private members art-hot-house nestling between Drury Lane and Covent Garden ,in the heart of London ,is a rather more appetising prospect, and means you are to be treated to a screening of a film, and not subjected to a medical investigation. Thusly , on the evening of Monday 21st March 2011, the pleasure was magnified when the film in ...
It has become something of a truism that the biggest stars -in whatever field- are the nicest, most easy-going people to meet.The dozens of film legends I have had the privilege and pleasure of meeting, professionally or socially,have all displayed a generosity of spirit, and a curiosity, that seemed to be commensurate with their commitment to their craft, and passion for the art of cinema, as well as its industry, whether their careers were spent before or behind the camera, or -as seems inc...
Who does not remember the past is condemned to repeat it.In events around Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK,we think we have seen every grim aspect of the persecutions visited upon the Jewish people in the middle of the last century,(although the day itself-27th January-is increasingly being designated a commemoration of genocide in general and not exclusively of the horrors instigated by the Nazis)-yet in a marvellously uplifting screening held (on 25th January 2011) at the recently revamped...
On London's famous Piccadilly street the Royal Academy has been receiving some very mixed notices for its latest block-busting exhibition Modern British Sculpture, filling the Main Galleries (until 7 April 2011). But this palace of the arts in the heart of London houses a number of historic institutions within its wings, and in the premises of the Geological Society a new Architecture Programme has just been launched with ten panels and lectures running until 21st May 2011.Critic's Choice brin...
Ah, si le Barbican m'était conte...
I could tell some amusing tales of when London's answer to the Centre Pompidou finally opened in the heart of the historic City of London. Largely funded by and for that quaint enclave of Roman and medieval London which a few decades ago was home only to bankers, financiers and insurance companies, and where no one could be found de cinq a sept and certainly never on Sundays, the Barbican rose with its labyrinthine walkways, and (then)futuristic m...
London's equivalent to Hollywood's Academy is called-for short- BAFTA and it occupies luxurious premises on the historic Piccadilly street (not to be confused with the nearby Piccadilly Circus, which has nothing to do with P.T.Barnum) in the heart of the British capital. For many years it was considered a rather staid place and organisation, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, but in recent years after some interior revamping and probably thanks to some lively new personnel on the...
With a reputation as being Scandinavia's largest festival devoted to fantasy films, the 16th Fantastisk Filmfestival (23 September to 2 October,2010) in Lund, a lovely University city in the south of Sweden, was a notable success, and a memorable discovery for myself, as a first-footing member of the International Jury alongside my colleague from London, the noted Gothophile Kim Newman and the lively Finno-Swedish critic Andrea Reuter.The historic venue- a sort of Swedish Oxford that appare...
As the autumn nights lengthen, and the Academy starts to screen its possible nominations, different kinds of film academies begin to put on their end-of-term shows that often may mark the beginning of some careers.The first of the invitations to view the latest student film harvest that came my way was from the London Film Academy, which is housed in an Old Church in Fulham Broadway, in a central London suburb.In early November the LFA organised two showcases of their latest short films, one o...
Well, the weather held and so did the quality of the films as the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival wound up, rather than down ,towards its 59th Awards Ceremony.Audiences seemed to increase in number and enthusiasm during these unusually balmy November days and the nightly drinks receptions for lucky invitees saw sparkling German wines and beer pouring as if there was no tomorrow well into tomorrow, with on one occasion-well past 2am local time-most of the Festival Direction ...
Arriving at any festival on the 13th of the month does not augur well, though my journey from home to Heathrow Terminal 4 had been surprisingly smooth, if long before Dawn's dusky fingers had opened the strike-free ticket offices of any of the Underground stations circling London's Regent Park. Both my Air France flights, via Paris to Frankfurt, had departed and landed on time (though we should draw a veil over the Economy Class croissants of uncertain age and provena...
Into each life some volcano ash must fall....and that is why, dear disinterested readers, you did not bump into me on the Croisette last month but may have seen me on the Ginza as the rains fell on Cannes. We have a lot of catching up to do since L annee derniere a Carlsbad ....via many European Smiles at the last Mlada Boleslav Festival of Smiches, as the Czechs so charmingly call it when humour illuminates the human face,then across to merry Moravia for the Znojmo Festival of Media and Gastr...
Such a dizzying round of festivals and festivalettes in Bradford, London, lucky Lecce,Cluj, vibrant Valencia and now, in the very Heart of Europe and the original Bohemia, at the loveliest and liveliest of them all, Karlovy Vary, must I to to you - dear readers, cineastes, cynics and cinephiles- long disappointed by the otherwise delayed flow of my postcards from these varied filmic feasts - now imminently describe. Whatever dross may be depressing you in multiplex or illegal download, patient...
You might expect James Bond's London town-house to be securely guarded, so it took a flurry of e-mails and some guest-list confusion with the doorman to be ushered into the elegant home of Eon Productions, at the Hyde Park Corner end of Piccadilly, for the Launch of the 15th Bradford International Film Festival (on Thursday 26th February 2009).
What, you may ask, is the connection between an annual celebration of cinema in a Northern metropolis and the world's longest-running and most lu...
If the sparkle - and gastronomic opulence- of its Launch at a lively cocktail party (on Thursday 19th February 2009) in the cavernous but congenial bar-cum-restaurant Baltic (just across Blackfriars Bridge, beloved of mafiosi murderers, on the south side of the Thames) is a fair indication, KINOTEKA should prove to be a most successful and memorable celebration of Polish cinema and cuture in this so-called Polska!Year.
As Britain is temporary home to some two million Poles, apart f...
London premiere of "Stingers", digital shorts fostered by Northern Film and Media (20/1/09) There was no sign of Cleo but de cinq a sept seems now to have become the time when regional film agencies visit their latest wares on the movers and shakers of the metropolitan media milieu. I was glad to have attended the showcase presented by Newcastle-based Northern Film and Media of some of the latest digital shorts from their 'Stingers' scheme, co-funded by the UK Film Council, in the sud...
Although the Competition was finely tuned with new films by Atom Egoyan, from Hungary and around the globe,it is just one of several parallel programmes vieing for attention in Gent: Festival Previews (including a pre-festival curtain-raiser of Woody Allen's latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona),culled from other festivals but with Belgian distibution imported some international glamour, such as Woody Harrelson(with Transiberia) and Walter Salles(introducing Linha de Passe);World Cinema (with...
Any autumn, the rendez-vous now most congenial for cineaste and cinephile just has to be Gent, the lovely Belgian medieval metropolis where the 35th International Film Festival of Flanders was celebrated in splendid style from 7th to 18th October, 2008. With gastronomic delights to rival those of Brussels (and not just chocs, chips and beers), Gent has the bustle and efficiency of the Flemish (think Swiss, with a sense of humour). In the centuries before Shakespeare was scripting,Gent was larg...
For his "coming of age", the European Film Award- formerly known as Felix- has come for the first time to Scandinavia, to the lovely and lively -but horribly expensive- fairy tale capital of Denmark, home of the world's oldest, continuous monarchy - representatives of which will royally grace the 21st EFA Ceremony on- perhaps aptly enough- St Nicholas's Day (or December 6th for humbug-free non-believers and infidels, though I must chose my words carefully in multi-culti København)...
If Clara was one musical highpoint in Mannheim this year, another was certainly Carlos Saura's latest revue-film Fados, which like his earlier Flamenco and Tango, explores urban melodies, presenting- with some luminous photography by Eduardo Serra-the place of fado in the life of Lisbon, looking for its African and Brazilian roots and providing 90 sensuous minutes filled with infinite affection and regret.The film received its German premiere, out of competition, and like Iberia seems to...
The second Gala Opening of the 57th Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival took place on 7th November 2008, in the mother-ship, so to say.Even more crowds massed for the premiere of Helma Sanders-Brahms's (surely some relation) elegant menage `a trois Clara (original title Geliebte Clara), an opulent opus on the turbulent amours 'twixt the troubled Schumanns (energetically brought to life by Martina Gedeck and French star Pascal Greggory) and their younger protege Johannes Brahms (an intrigui...
"April is the cruelest month" wrote T.S.Eliot when having to choose between invitations to fests in Istanbul, Nyon and elsewhere- then for FIPRESCI members it became September when the Fall season started to invigorate itself with Venice, Toronto, San Sebastian, Hamburg vying with each other for films and attention, and more recently October became the new September with London and Roma and Sitges and Gent clashing wildly and who gives a damn about Chicago...?
Now November is...
Just when you thought it was safe to cruise the canals in search of cinematic treats for younger viewers ,CINEKIDS- one of the largest international events showcasing productions made for, by ,and with children-decided to celebrate its 20th Edition by uprooting the annual extravaganza from the heart of Amsterdam and relocate most of its activities in a revamped old gas factory,the Westergasfabriek, from 14-2I October, 2007. But the Dutch have a flair for making something new and practical ...
