2012 PALM SPRINGS FILM FESTIVAL

There’s no better time of year to be in Palm Springs than early January. The air is rejuvenating, the desert landscape alluring, and amidst all the easy living, PS kicks annually kicks off film festival season.  Now in its 23rd year, the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) prides itself on appealing to both the first-time moviegoer and the seasoned connoisseur. For the former, there were easily digestible films like Lasse Halstrom’s Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, which opened the Festival, and the Tilda Swinton-starrer We Need To Talk About Kevin; for the latter, the 276-minute Taiwanese film, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale. For those looking to kill an entire weekend watching one documentary, the festival obliged with Mark Cousins’s 15-hour epic, The Story Of Film: An Odyssey.

In the last couple of years, the Festival has pared down the number of foreign film Oscar submissions. According to Festival director Darryl Macdonald, “It was becoming clear that some of these films weren’t measuring up to the quality of programming we wanted to present.” Altogether, 188 films from 73 countries ran during the 10-day Festival, including 40 of the 63 foreign language Oscar entries. Macdonald declared that “The balance of programming was stronger than ever.” With more than 130,000 filmgoers and 220 filmmakers (writers, directors, and actors) in attendance, the PSIFF remains a movie lover’s paradise.

Given its proximity to L.A., the Golden Globe Awards, and Sundance, the Festival has never been shy about courting Hollywood glamour, with the Convention Center hosting its annual Black Tie Awards Gala honoring notable films, stars, and directors from the previous year’s films. This year, the star wattage was hotter than usual, with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Michelle Williams, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, and the ensemble cast from Young Adult, among others, walking the red carpet.  For some, the excitement proved too much: a 65 year-old man collapsed and died while watching the red carpet festivities. Inside, the sight of Brangelina turned the normally blasé PS crowd into giggly autograph hounds; they besieged the couple’s table with cameras … Read the rest

2011 ZURICH FILM FESTIVAL

A few years back, the Zurich Film Festival burst onto the map, but for all the wrong reasons. In 2009, Roman Polanski, en route to the festival to receive a lifetime achievement award, was apprehended shortly after landing on Swiss soil. He was never extradited to the United States to stand trial for his mid ’70s sexual escapades with the then underaged Samatha Geimer in Jack Nicholson’s Hollywood Hills home, and now he’s free, having returned for the seventh edition of Zurich’s increasingly important film festival. He screened his “film memoir,” which I simply loathed for its canned, staged quality, its lack of genuine insight into the man and his times. Made by ex-Polanski producer Andrew Braunsberg, Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir had its “secret” world premiere at the Zurich Film Festival. Hot off the heels of Polanski’s lukewarm Yesmina Reza adaptation Carnage, it is the lesser of these decidedly less than stellar Polanski related productions, but enough with that, I’ve already said enough about it on these pages.

Boasting a record number of significant premieres “within the German-speaking realm” of hot international titles in Cannes, Toronto and Venice, Zurich featured both narrative and doc competitions for international and German-language films, although the size of those sections was dwarfed by its rampant Gala premieres and Special Screenings, which make up a more than sizable chunk of the programming. Is that smart? I’m not sure.

A preponderance of Galas seems to lessen the impact of those events, making them less noteworthy and eye catching, while limiting how much attention the competition films get. Sure, they get some big stars to show up (There’s Laurence Fishburne! Look, Sean Penn) and there were some interesting performances in some mostly flawed films by major filmmakers (Woody Harrelson in Oren Moverman’s somewhat unfocused, fascinating Rampart, Rachel Weisz in Terence Davies’ moody, but unfulfilling The Deep Blue Sea, everyone involved in the minor Cronenberg that was A Dangerous Method, all of which made their way to Zurich after finding splashy premieres elsewhere) and a few genuinely … Read the rest

PAIRING FILMS AT IDFA 2011

The Jack the Ripper weather that blanketed part of the 24th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam this year seemed poetically apropos. Rushing from P&I screenings, to public showings, to private viewing booths I often felt like I was lost in a heavy fog of docs. In addition I took great advantage of the many behind-the-scenes and inside-scoop events — most free to the public — that gives this biggest doc fest in Europe its accessible community vibe. I watched a Talk Show with tabloid-deep Nick Broomfield discussing his Sarah Palin: You Betcha! over a live Internet feed. I attended in person a much more fascinating Meet the Makers with Steve James (ironically, the very same morning I learned that The Interrupters — which I’d predicted would nab this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary — shamefully got booted from the Oscar shortlist), who was being honored with a retrospective on top of presenting his own Top 10 compilation. I caught another Talk Show at the Escape Club with Joe Berlinger — who announced that it was the first time out of the country for his accompanying invitee and longtime Paradise Lost series subject, the recently freed Jason Baldwin. (Berlinger and Baldwin were followed by guest Vikram Gandhi, whose Kumaré was my top pick at DOC NYC.)

I also stopped by the young and vibrant Flemish Arts Centre De Brakke Grond to check out Exhibition: Expanding Documentary 2011. Although I wasn’t able to take a virtual walk through Brussels courtesy of CREW, a Belgium-based collective of artists and scientists, I did manage to engage with Condition One, Danfung Dennis and Patrick Chauvel’s DocLab Competition entry. Their immersive project allows the viewer to take a choose-your-own-field-of-vision adventure through confrontations in Libya, New Orleans, Thailand or NYC (specifically the Occupy Wall Street protest) via headphones and an iPad suspended from the ceiling.

Later on I hit another Talk Show jam-packed with globally diverse guests, including the director of a love letter to Holland’s most famous music venue (Paradiso, An Amsterdam Stage Affair); the creator of a very personal Doc U … Read the rest

HAWAII AWARD WINNERS AND A STANDOUT WORK

The Hawaii International Film Festival fittingly wrapped up its 31^st edition last week with Alexander Payne’s Hawaii-set-and-shot comedy/drama The Descendants, with a gracious Payne in town for the screening (no George Clooney, alas, though a life-sized Clooney cardboard cut-out was certainly a massive hit in the lobby). “Wine always tastes the best in the region it was grown and made,” noted Payne to an appreciative audience. “I hope that this film plays best in Hawaii.”

Judging from audience response, Payne got his wish; the film (to be released nationally November 15) won the festival’s Audience Award for Narrative Feature, with many viewers praising its respectful take on author Kaui Hart Hemming’s source novel, as well as its catchy all-Hawaiian soundtrack. Taking the Audience Award for Documentary Feature was Aloha Buddha, Bill Ferehawk and Dylan Robertson’s fascinating look at the complicated history and unique present of Japanese Buddhism in Hawaii, while the Audience Award for Best Short went to Mitsuyo Miyazaki’s slick Tsuyako, involving a love affair between two women in post-war Japan.

Earlier that week, in the restored 19^th-century glamour of the Hawaii’s Governor’s Mansion, festival staff, guests, and press gathered for the announcement of the jury awards. Prashant Bhargava’s Patang (The Kite), a tale of family secrets revealed and denied during the extraordinary kite festival of Ahmedabad, India, took the “Halekulani Golden Orchid Award” for Narrative Feature; its vibrant Super-8 footage of the festival and its organic feel for the city itself turned what could have been a familiar melodrama into a rich exploration of place and spectacle.

Earning the award for Documentary Feature was Adam Pesce’s Splinters (pictured above), deceptively clad as a surfing film about the sport’s rise in Papua New Guineau but more pointedly an engrossing, endlessly surprising examination of social hierarchies, clan rivalries, and economic and cultural change within the region. In recent years a wave of sports films set in unusual locations have appeared at festivals—Skateistan, about skaters in Kabul, for instance, or God Went Surfing With the … Read the rest

PREVIEWING DOC NYC

Since I’ve never attended the Toronto International Film Festival, or the long-running doc series Stranger Than Fiction, I was shamefully late to discover the curatorial wizard behind-the-curtain by the name of Thom Powers. But ever since Powers’s programming became, for me, the highlight of this year’s Miami International Film Festival he’s been firmly on my cine-radar. So when I noticed he’d be returning as artistic director of DOC NYC (which runs Nov. 2-10) I thought, “Oh, no.” I didn’t have time to cover DOC NYC right before I flew to Amsterdam to tackle the mother of all nonfiction fests IDFA! (DOC NYC’s close proximity to IDFA and also CPH:DOX is the worst thing one can say about it.) I couldn’t squeeze in its 100-plus events, panel discussions, 52 features and 40 shorts. I didn’t have the hours to spare for the opening night gala screening of Into The Abyss with Werner Herzog in person (nor for guests Charlotte Rampling, Jonathan Demme, Barbara Kopple, D.A. Pennebaker, etc.). I didn’t have the time, but I did have the addiction. And Thom Powers is the nonfiction world’s dealer with the best docs.

And while I was ultimately able to catch a great number of DOC NYC’s engaging selections, from Nelson George and Diane Paragas’s Brooklyn Boheme, which uses famous talking heads – including Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Rosie Perez and Branford Marsalis – to make the case for Brooklyn’s Fort Greene section being the closest thing the late 20th century had to the Harlem Renaissance; to Gwenaëlle Gobé’s This Space Available (inspired by the director’s father’s book, Emotional Branding – author Marc Gobé also serves as co-producer), which delves into the controversy surrounding the “visual pollution” caused by billboards and other forms of out-of-control advertising; to Jon Shenk’s TIFF-hit The Island President, which follows the Obama-charismatic President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives as he fights to save his country before climate change turns it into a 21st century Atlantis, only a handful of films stuck with me for days afterwards. But interestingly, I found my reaction had less to do with … Read the rest

TO PITCH OR NOT TO PITCH: THAT IS NOT A QUESTION AT THE AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL

The writer of Con Air and the writer of The Fighter walk into a bar and take a seat next to an aspiring writer with no credits, no agent, no manager and no connections. The aspiring writer strikes up a conversation. This is neither the set up for a cruel joke nor a channel surfing induced fever dream – it’s just one of the many scenes I witnessed at the Austin Film Festival & Conference, one of the few festivals dedicated to celebrating the screenwriter both fledgling and legendary.

In addition to its film competition, Austin holds a contest for unproduced writers, inviting the writers of the top 5% of entered scripts to attend the conference and its five days of networking sessions, events and panels. A few panels and networking sessions are limited to semi-finalists and above (around the top 0.6% of all entries). When I found out in September that my script Judgey had made it into the semi-finals for comedy, I wasn’t quite sure what that meant (that’s me pictured above).

It wasn’t that I had submitted blindly; it was just that Austin’s promises of career-making opportunities seemed overblown. Sure, Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, The Empire Strikes Back) may be giving a speech, but it’s not like he’ll be hanging around at the party afterwards. A guy like that would be at the super secret elite VIP party, not the party for the struggling riff raff. Except there are no super secret elite Austin parties, and Lawrence Kasdan was not only with the riff raff, he was chatting with them. Even more surprising, he seemed to be enjoying it.

It may be worth a trip to Austin to meet one of the most legendary writers in Hollywood, but for most of us with scripts, it wasn’t why we were there. We were there to work, and by work, I don’t mean write. I have spent my whole life learning how to craft stories - I studied film studies in college, produced documentaries for television in New York and perhaps most importantly, watched a crapload of movies. But while watching a … Read the rest

THE SANTA FE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL

Back when I fled Colorado for NYC it was the rebellious thing for an artist to do. Now two decades later it’s the opposite as young bohemians across the nation are radically giving the finger to both coasts, forcing the arts culture to come to them. Case in point, the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, which was originally launched just three years ago as a Slamdance-style antidote to the more established Santa Fe Film Festival, and is made up of folks who want to play in their own backyard – and spruce it up locally. This year the two festivals’ dates unfortunately overlapped – with The (smaller) Man opening with Michel Hazanavicius’s Cannes buzz-generating The Artist and bringing in Emilio Estevez and his dad for a screening of Estvez’s The Way, while the sprawling SFIFF chose to present Billy Wilder’s Albuquerque-set classic Ace in the Hole at the New Mexico History Museum, and hosted Kirby Dick (along with a special screening of Dick’s bar-none best work Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist).

And while I’ve spent the past year covering a slew of film festivals, from the internationally acclaimed to the virtually unheard of, SFIFF’s gung-ho executive director and co-founder, Jacques Paisner, with his magician’s ability to conjure something from nothing, impressed me more than any other programmer I’ve encountered. After authoring a book called Albuquerque Blues and having his feature-length, New Mexico neo-noir – the appropriately titled Rejection, made for under three grand – rejected from film festivals, he and his producer/actor David Moore decided to start their own film fest with the funds Moore won in a poker game. The two’s obsession with film is matched only by their love of community and passion for backbreaking work. (Literally – as Moore was a constant presence at this year’s festival, despite having only been recently released from rehab after being hit by an Amtrak train last December!) And because of this, they’ve been able to convince an entire town to come onboard to make their dream come true. Indeed, this is the … Read the rest

SAMPLING THE IMAGINE SCIENCE FILM FESTIVAL

When I was in second grade, I was the kid who brought the boa-constrictor home over Christmas break. I had a chicken leg in a jar of phemaldehyde in my room. I excitedly cleaned out the very deep cut my sister got stepping on glass in the ocean. My Netflix cue has on it every BBC show on how the brain works. My mother was a science teacher. My sister is a pilot for NOAA. I always wanted to be a surgeon — if it didn’t involve so many years of school; Creative Improvised Surgery! I think I’d be good at it.

So, when I heard about the Imagine Science Film Festival, founded by Alexis Gambis in 2008, it was a no-brainer (sorry) that I would attend. On Friday the 14th, I head to opening night at The Museum of The Moving Image. They are screening Mister Nobody, starring Jared Leto and Diane Lane, directed by Jaco Van Dormael. It is the story of the last mortal alive after all other humans are “telemorized.” The dictionary tells me that a telomere is the segment of DNA that occurs at the ends of chromosomes. The film grapples with concepts ranging from string theory to the big bang theory to parallel universes. The Museum of The Moving Image is newly renovated and if you haven’t been there, you owe yourself a trip.

On Saturday I was scheduled to go to the Anthology Film Archives to see a collection of shorts under the title,
“Avant-Garde Science.” I love the Anthology for very different reasons than I love The Museum of Moving Images. Where the latter is clean and fresh and new and bright, the former is filled with nostalgia and feels like home. My plans are thwarted by a minor crises and I am sad to miss this night.

On Tuesday I head to Williamsburg to Cine Club, to attend “Mexican Film Night” (films about science, that hail from Mexico). The films are introduced by Juan Carlos Lopez, the editor of Nature Medicine, who endears himself to me by saying when … Read the rest

THE ARIZONA UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2011

It’s surprising that the Arizona Underground Film Festival is only in its fourth year since it’s got the vision and confidence of fests that have been around a lot longer. The brainchild of founder/director David Pike, who handles acquisitions for locally based BrinkDVD, AZUFF seems to have a strong sense of film camaraderie and community on its side. (Indeed, stepping out of the hot Tucson sun and into the downtown art-house The Screening Room – one of the venues of the Arizona International Film Festival, which I covered back in April – to pick up my press pass, I was greeted by none other than Giulio Scalinger, founder/director of the 20-year-old AIFF, who runs the cozy theater and was busy setting up the concession stand.)

In addition to an unwavering passion for non-mainstream fare Pike also has a strong sensibility and an unapologetic appreciation for behind-the-lens risk-taking. “It’s really our need to play edgy independent filmmaking that drives AZUFF every year – to showcase these filmmakers. What has started from a small, three-day festival has turned into a nine-day fest playing some of the best films from around the world. And we are looking to grow bigger beyond that as the festival grows too,” Pike enthused as we sat at the airy, artisan coffee bar Sparkroot down the street from festival headquarters. “We would love eventually to tour with AZUFF. We have thought about it, and it’s something that will be on the table in the future,” he added.

Discussing AZUFF post-fest I admitted that my own tastes didn’t always align with his. Pike’s favorite selection this year, Australian director Emma Varker’s short Hansel and Gretel, is a binge-and-barf tale it would seem only John Waters, narrator of Susan Marks’s frustratingly by-the-book doc Of Dolls and Murder, about Frances Glessner Lee’s The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, could love. Nevertheless, I can certainly respect his fearless and diverse programming. I expressed my surprise that so many of the films chosen were directed by women, and wondered if Pike purposely strove for gender equality. “We look for great … Read the rest

THE 33RD PIA FILM FESTIVAL

The 33^rd edition of the PIA festival wrapped on Friday, September 30. A week and an half in the rather dowdy National Film Theatre saw a slew of hipsters, film students, pedants, critics and film fans making their annual pilgrimage to check out the newest of the new – with hopes of discovering the newest and best of the Japanese film scene. PIA has played host to the first-time efforts of such folks as enfant terrible Sono Shion as well as the more gentle international festival favorite, Naomi Kawase. Recently they’ve been nurturing the career of whipsmart indie wunderkind, Yuya Ishii. This year’s festival opened with the Japanese premiere of his newest feature, Mitsuko Delivers. Like the best of Ishii’s work Mitsuko Delivers delivers a smart social satire couched in situation comedy. Riisa Naka handily plays a very pregnant Mitsuko, who embarks not only on controlling her own life, but nearly every one else’s around her, too.

PIA is divided into its Competition section, this year showcasing 17 films – shorts and feature length – and a few small, but well conceived sidebars. This year, there was the “Temptation of Black and White,” a odd, but fun celebration of the monochrome with screenings of Bela Tarr’s monumental Satantango and silents by Naruse and Lubitsch. With live piano accompaniment by silent film specialist Mie Yanashita, a double bill of Naruse’s last silent film, the near perfect Street Without End and Ernst Lubitsch’s delightful 1926 So This is Paris, was an eye-opener. Naruse’s early masterpiece, though a bit more somber than anything by Lubitsch shares similar modernist film stylings. And when Naruse’s characters go to a screening of The Smiling Lieutenant, it becomes obvious.

The opening week continued with a series of “Cinema Lessons” featured the likes of Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Tokyo Sonata) and Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo) commenting on some of their favorite films. Kurosawa took on Shinji Aoyama’s 1999 Shady Grove while Tsukamoto, literally flying in from his screening of Kotoko in Toronto, gave his two bits, including a very credible imitation of Toshiro … Read the rest