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26th Annual Olympia Film Festival
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Monday, 12 October 2009 15:28
- Written by Lynne Shannon
The curtains part yet again as the 26th Annual Olympia Film Festival hosts several concert-worthy guests, including Dame Darcy and Death By Doll and a very special visit from Steven Se
verin of the famed Siouxsie and the Banshees in his only Northwest performance with his original score for the classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Running from November 6th to the 14th, 2009, the fest has been able to increase its capacity with the generous support--in the form of a $5,000 grant--from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, to create stronger relationships between filmmakers and the Olympia community.
Several Northwest premieres are spotlit on the Capitol’s mighty big screen, including the adorable story of Etienne!, as a man takes his terminally ill pet hamster on a bicycle trip up the California coast; the British crime comedy Down Terrace featuring cast members from the UK original The Office; and the ‘lost’ feature Shut Yer Dirty Little Mouth starring Glenn Shadix of Beetlejuice and Heathers.
Contemporary documentary cinema shakes the house with Henry Rollins biting hard on American waste-ism in H for Hunger; Jennifer Maas unveiling ‘60s and ‘70s Seattle soul musicians wit
h Wheedle’s Groove, and the colorful creation Sissyboy, based on the legendary Portland performance troupe, who are gearing up for their first-time-ever reunion at the Capitol Theater. Of special note for Olympians is Simone Bitton’s somber documentary, Rachel, an investigative report into the untimely passing of peace activist Rachel Corrie.
Cinema classics both lost and revered are here with a 60th Anniversary fully restored presentation of Orson Welles in The Third Man, and the opening night Gala event featuring Saturday Night Live’s Tom Schiller honoring the 25th Anniversary of his film directing debut, the long-lost classic Nothing Lasts Forever starring Bill Murray, Imogene Coca and Eddie Fisher.
More unreleased-on-DVD gems include the daring Barry Gifford novel and screenplay, Perdita Durango, directed by Alex de la Iglesia, featuring James Gandolfini, Rosie Perez and Academy Aw
ard–winner Javier Bardem; Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi starring in the 1932 classic Island of Lost Souls; two celebrations of Lewis Carroll, with Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer’s Alice, and the 1933 Paramount production of Alice in Wonderland featuring Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, and W.C. Fields; and Paul Newman’s bold translation of Ken Kesey’s tale of Oregon loggers in Sometimes a Great Notion. And of course, there’s All Freakin’ Night 2009!
Fans of challenging cinema will enjoy the special 3-D presentation of Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein in 3-D presented by star Udo Kier, nor our ultrarare screening of Ken Russell’s confrontational classic, The Devils, the longest-known print in the world.
www.olympiafilmfestival.org
26th Annual Olympia Film Festival
the Capitol Theater
Olympia, Washington
November 6th to 14th, 2009
The Film Festival on Contemporary Art--Artecinema
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Saturday, 10 October 2009 14:59
- Written by fftraveler staff
The 14th Artecinema, an international festival of films on contemporary art, takes place in Naples, Italy, 15-18 October, 2009 at the 1400-seat Augusteo Theatre in the very center of the city. 
Curated by Laura Trisorio, Artecinema has been held annually since 1996. The festival is well known on the international level for its high cultural and educational values. It is realised in collaboration with various public institutions as well as private sponsors.
The festival is divided into three sections – Art and Around it, Architecture and Photography - and presents documentary films on the most interesting artists, architects and photographers on the contemporary art scene. Twenty-two selected films will be shown and a series of meetings and discussions with film directors, artists and producers will be held during the intervals.
To be held with the aim of approaching the principles of the Forum of Cultures 2013, this year's event will host several films which specifically deal with the Forum's theme of sustainable development. The issues of cultural identity, nomadism, emigration and contamination – as envisaged by artists such as Cindy Sherman, Kimsooja, Doris Salcedo, William Kentridge and Alfredo Jaar - are crucial for the future in terms of "sustainable" cultural growth as are of fundamental importance the questions of the environment and eco-compatible architecture – so ably presented by Nader Khalili in Designing with Nature
Scheduled for this year's edition are documentary films on the artists: Jőrg Immendorff, Anish Kapoor, Cindy Sherman, Sam Francis, Tony Cragg, Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, Kimsooja, Kiki Smith, Marina Abramovic, Nancy Spero, Ghada Amer, Swoon, Spencer Tunick, Felice Varini, Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, and on the architects: Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid and Steven Holl. Additionally, in keeping with the Forum of the Cultures 2009 theme of "Sustainable Development", films regarding the most interesting recent bio-architectural works have been scheduled.
In the Photography Section, the movie Visual Acoustic: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, will be presented in tribute to the one of the most important architectural photographers as well as a documentary on Neapolitan photographer Mimmo Jodice.
Furthermore, in European pre-view will be presented Compassion: William Kentridge, Carrie Mae Weems, Doris Salcedo from Art: 21 series of television station PBS.
There is great anticipation for the film Chew the Fat directed by Rirkrit Tiravanija - a conversation between the artists: Andrea Zittel, Angela Bulloch, Carsten Hoeller, Douglas Gordon, Elizabeth Peyton, Jorge Pardo, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe and Tobias Rehberger.
A full-length version of Chew the Fat will be shown in theatre foyer in an installation created by Rirkrit Tiravanija which was previously presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Simultaneous interpretation into Italian will be provided films presented in the original language.
A definitive programme is available at www.artecinema.com.
Artecinema
Studio Trisorio
Piazzetta Augusteo,
Naples, Italy
Phone: +39 081 414306
Fax: +39 081 414306
Contact: Laura Trisorio
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.artecinema.com
October 15-16-17-18, 2009
from 500 pm till 1200 pm
Chat D’œuvres: The First New York Cat Art Film Festival
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Monday, 05 October 2009 11:51
- Written by fftraveler staff
Gathered together for the first New York Cat Art Film Festival: Chat D’œuvres is a selection of films/videos 
made by artists from Europe and the United States that feature the feline species. The friends at Anthology Film Archives, great cat lovers, are still mourning the passing of their own Maxi, quite a super-star there, so you can see her again in one of her best screen performances, in a film by no less than Jonas Mekas, founder of Anthology, on October 23rd and 24th, 2009.
To explain the title of the festival: Chat D’œuvres is a pun in French, whereby ‘Chef-d’œuvre’, or ‘masterpiece’, is turned into a Chat (cat), since many cats have been the subjects of artists’ œuvres.
Buffalo International Film Festival 2009
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Saturday, 26 September 2009 19:52
- Written by fftraveler staff
More than 16 films will be screened at The Buffalo International Film Festival 2009 (BIFF) which runs from October 9-27, 2009. Most of the screenings will be at the at the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, Market Street. All will be introduced by a guest involved with the film's production.
A special highlight of the Festival is Charlie Chaplin: The Lost Scenes Found, the North American premiere of lost footage from City Lights, screening at Kleinhan's Music Hall, 370 Pennsylvania Street.
Two reels of outtakes from Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece--which accidentally escaped destruction--will screen for the first time in North America on the opening Night of The Buffalo International Film Festival 2009. Dr. Frank Scheide, lecturer on film at University of Alabama and "discoverer" of the outtakes, introduced the screening.
The outtakes, housed at the British Film Institute in London, were shown through the courtesy of the Douris Company. The screening of the prints will be followed by a one-hour, illustrated presentation by Dr. Scheide on Chaplin's history in the UK ,which included location footage of the areas of Lambeth where Chaplin grew up.
Several years ago, Scheide ran across two particular rolls of outtakes from City Lights which survived only by accident when film archivist Raymond Rohauer was required to turn over footage in his collection that was subsequently burned. Thankfully, this footage escaped destruction.
The first reel of the roughly 20 minutes of material never before screened in the United States shows Chaplin working on the "cigar gag" for the night club scene in City Lights where, ultimately, Charlie tosses a lit cigar onto a chair just as an overdressed lady sits down, right on top of the cigar.
A second reel has a nearly complete sequence where Charlie crosses a two lane highway and, trapped in the middle, lights up a cigar. When a street sweeper played by Albert Austin parks a manure-filled bucket just behind Charlie, the tramp thinks there is something seriously wrong with his cigar!
Other classic screenings in the Festival include the 239-minute version of Erich von Stroheim's masterpiece Greed with restorer Rick Schmidlin, Lon Chaney in London After Midnight, and the Director’s Cut of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. 
Also presented is a recreation of a classic Saturday Matinee featuring It Came From Outer Space, in anaglyph 3D, introduced by an exclusive video interview with Ray Bradbury. With accompanying shorts, the screening will be at the North Park Theater on Hertel Avenue.
Other screenings include:
Proud, a film about the only African-American crew to take a Navy warship into combat in World War II. It stars Ossie Davis and Stephen Rea and was directed by Mary Pat Kelly, who will introduce the film. Also present will be Lorenzo Defau (who was played by Davis), the last crew member of the USS Mason.
Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, a documentary about the creator of The Spirit, by director Andrew Cooke, who will present the film.
The North American premiere of A Pearl in the Forest, a feature film from Mongolia introduced by the filmmakers and performers in the film.
In addition, director-producer Charles Band will present Doctor Mordrid, a 35mm studio archive print of the rarely seen 1992 horrer-fantasy gem he directed with his father, Albert Band, starring Jeffrey Combs.
The Festival will wrap with a press conference on the 3rd Annual World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, at the Historic Market Arcade Office Building. The day was founded by UNESCO in 2007 out of concern that much of the world's 20th century audiovisual heritage is now lost, and much more is slipping beyond recovery because of neglect, natural decay and technological obsolescence. October 27 was designated the annual commemoration date to call attention to the fragile state of old movies, recordings, photographs and other arts.
Through their film festival, Buffalo, New York became the the first city in the world to declare this important international cultural event. Each year BIFF issues a special poster which is distributed all over the world.
The Buffalo International Film Festival highlights the past and present work of individuals who are/were born, raised, educated, or in the Western New York Region and who have contributed in one or another way to world motion picture history.
The festival is particularly interested in highlighting the work of lesser known individuals or diverse cultural, ethnic, and educational origins and their impact upon the international community.
For further Info contact 212-214-0513 or www.BuffaloFilmFestival.com
The Buffalo International Film Festival 2009 (BIFF)
October 9-27, 200
Various location
