“Zatoichi,” winner of the Silver Lion Award at the 60th Venice Film Festival and the People’s Choice Audience Award at the 28th Toronto International Film Festival, will be the opening film at the 6th Makati Cinemanila International Film Festival, which runs from July 1 to 12 at the Greenbelt Cinemas.“Zatoichi” (2003), a revival of the cult series that hit Japan in the early 60s, is writer/director/actor Takeshi Kitano’s first venture into period drama. Aside from winning in Venice ...

Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund Spring Selection 2004 supports 39 film projectsIn the Spring 2004 Selection Round, the Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) grants a total of Euro 525,000 (USD 642,000) to thirty-nine non-Western film-makers. Among the films receiving distribution grants are Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll's WHISKY (a former CineMart Project) and IFFR 2004 Competition discovery DAYS OF SANTIAGO. VISITING UNCLE IDRIZ, the opening film of the Sarajevo...

Inaugural Dubai International Film Festival aims to build cultural bridgesCultural understanding and international harmony will be the themes of the inaugural Dubai International Film Festival, Dubai Media City’s newly launched film festival scheduled for December 2004 6-11, 2004.To be held under the patronage of His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defence Minister, the festival will showcase a wide selection of contemporary and classic glo...

On Saturday the 29th the competition arena of Nantes’ 3 Continents was haunted by the cinematic ghosts of Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn (Bu San) and by the torturing spectres of a dramatic political past in Pakistani Sabiha Sumar’s Silent Waters (Kamosh Pani). Tsai’s sixth feature, winner of the Fipresci award in Venice, pays homage to cinema and to the magic experience of viewing films in movie theatres. Taking an old theatre bound to permanently shut its doors as his actual prot...