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Rotterdam @ BAM Brings Best of Fest to Brooklyn
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Monday, 22 February 2010 20:27
- Written by Laura Blum
Rap music and urban renewal aren't the only things Brooklyn, New York, and the Dutch city of Rotterdam have in common. Both advance a version of the Rotterdam film festival.
On March 3-9, 2010, a month after curtains closed at the 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 27—February 7), the Brooklyn Academy of Music rolls out Rotterdam @ BAM. The stateside series reprises 14 features and shorts from IFFR’s Tiger Award competition sponsored by the Dutch public television network VPRO.
For Florence Almozini, program director of BAMcinématek, the week-long showcase is a chance to tap into the "bold artistic vision" of IFFR, which launches emerging independent and experimental work, including art exhibitions and live performances. One of the largest film festivals in the world, IFFR is notched among Europe's finest — Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno.
Nearly all of the films at BAM will receive their New York premieres, with some also debuting in the US and North America.
The opening-night selection is the US premiere of Alamar, marking documentary filmmaker Pedro González-Rubio's first plunge into the narrative feature depths. Also shot (largely underwater) by González-Rubio, the film probes the relationship between a father and son vacationing off the coast of Mexico before the latter moves to Rome to live with his mother.
Following the premiere, an invitation-only affair, will be a reception for filmmakers, festival organizers and industry professionals. Civilians can catch Alamar on March 4 at BAM and subsequently in theaters.
Anocha Suwichakornpong's Mundane History brings a bit of Thailand to Brooklyn. Continuing the father-son motif, this philosophical and political musing takes on the unsteady relationship between an elusive man and his invalid kid, inviting into the breach a new caretaker and a post-rock Asian soundtrack.
Cold Water of the Sea (Aqua fría de mar), by Costa Rican filmmaker Paz Fábrega, is another Tiger Award-winner having its U.S. premiere at BAM. Like Alamar, it finds its Latino protagonists on holiday by the sea, only this time the lens trails a young woman grappling with her confined life through the prism of a runaway girl. The film has its North American premiere on March 6.
Rotterdam @ BAM braves the first partnership between a European festival and an American film house. Yet it's hardly BAMcinématek’s maiden collaboration; the successes of "Sundance Institute at BAM" and "Directors’ Fortnight at 40" provided inspiration.
The transatlantic series encompasses industry screenings and events, reaching out beyond the usual BAMcinématek crowd to target distributors, sales agents and other film professionals.
Narrowed from IFFR's 250 feature films and 450 shorts, the lineup takes to heart the Renaissance-era adage, "We cannot all do everything." Can it be any coincidence that this wisdom was authored by Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam?
Rotterdam @ BAM feature films:
Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio, Mexico)
Autumn Adagio (Tsuki Inoue, Japan)
C'est déjà l'été (Martijn Maria Smits, The Netherlands/Belgium)
Cold Water of the Sea (Paz Fábrega
Let Each One Go Where He May (Ben Russell, U.S./Suriname)
Mama (Yelena & Nikolay Renard, Russia)
Miyoko (Tsubota Yoshifumi, Japan)
Mundane History (Anocha Suwichakornpong, Thailand)
My Daughter (Charlotte Lay Kuen Lim, Malaysia)
R (Michael Noer & Tobias Lindholm, Denmark)
Street Days (Levan Koguashvili, Georgia)
Sun Spots (Yang Heng, Hong Kong/China)
The Temptation of St. Tony (Veiko Õunpuu, Estonia/Sweden/Finland)
La vie au Ranch (Sophie Letourneur, France)
BAM Rose Cinemas
Peter Jay Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.636.4100
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1948
SoHo International Film Festival Boosts the 'Hood
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Wednesday, 17 February 2010 22:11
- Written by Laura Blum
First came TriBeca. Then the Lower East Side Film Festival cropped up. And next, Nolita. It was just a ma
tter time before SoHo would get its own cinema groove on.
The SoHo International Film Festival has its inaugural run (February 18-21, 2010) in New York's artsy downtown, south — needless to say — of Houston Street.
The city's newest display of neighborhood boosterism pays tribute to digital filmmaking through a lineup of 32 shorts and features. Yet beyond their whizzy technology, films that passed the admissions test of co-founders Jorge Ballos, Noli Parumog and Luis Pedron did so on their storytelling merits, per Pedron.
A highlight of the Festival is Filipino Film Night, presented on Saturday, February 20. Titles include Gil Portes' crime thriller Pitik Bulag, followed by a Q&A with actor and former basketball star Marco Alcaraz, and Walang Hanggang Paalam, by Ellen Ramos and Paolo Villaluna, with actor/producer Jacky Woo and star Lovi Poe in tow.
Crime dramas are well represented at SIFFNYC, while comedies get shorter shrift. One nod to humor is a mockumentary by veteran director Todd M. Jones called Throws of Passion. An attitudinal colleague of The Office, it uses found footage to memorialize a defunct sports cable championship.
The Festival's three other feature-length documentaries include Autism: Made in the USA, from celebrity nutritionist Gary Null, and Jeremy Taylor's tough expose of Burmese life under military dictatorship, Burma: An Indictment -- which screens Friday, Feb. 19, 2010, at 4:30 pm.
Filmmakers and talent ranging from Franky G to Gary Null and Australian TV star Peter Astridge will be on hand for other screenings and events, notably an after-party sponsored by G Productions. Panels, workshops and parties shore up the four-day program, which is expected to attract local industry insiders and film enthusiasts.
SIFFNYC goes out with a virtual bang via the world premiere of Rolfe Kanefsky’s neo-noir, One in the Gun.
For more info go to: www.siffnyc.com
Soho International Film Festival NYC 2010
394 Broadway, 4th floor
New York, NY 10013
Glasgow Film Festival Hits Growth Spurt
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Wednesday, 17 February 2010 06:35
- Written by Laura Blum
Watch out, Edinburgh: Since debuting in 2005, the Glasgow Film Festival has shot up 
as the UK's number-three film event, luring 28,000 viewers last year and growing faster than its cinema siblings.
Glasgow has taken to the Festival like Craig Ferguson has taken to late night.
Year six kicks off on February 18, 2010, with a gala screening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's MicMacs, and wraps 10 days later with the world premiere of the Glasgow-filmed chiller Legacy. In between, 200 films, tributes, panels and parties will unfold in some two dozen venues around the Scottish city.
The brainchild of the Glasgow Film Theatre, GFF was created as a "best of fest," skimming the Cannes, Sundance and other festival cream for this pre-theatrical run — or any run at all. As opposed to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, whose "international" moniker suggests more of a focus on industry and discovery, films and filmmakers come to Glasgow for its cinephilic audiences, per GFF co-director Allison Gardner.
With little more than $300,000 to play with, Glasgow has a fifth of Edinburgh's kitty. And that's not counting EIFF's half-century lead to catch up to. Jigging its way to ticket-holders' hearts, the Glaswegian upstart has swung such buzzy venues as a roving caravan and vintage abattoir.
Programming and stars are two other grooves in GFF's repertoire. James Earl Jones is taking out a moment from his London stage performance for a "conversation with," and Emma Thompson joins Richard Jobson in discussing The Journey, a short film about human trafficking he directed and which she executive-produced. From Time to Time summons Oscar laureate Julian Fellows for a Q&A on adapting Lucy M. Boston's family novel for the screen.
Other celebrities in Glasgow include Scotsman Kevin MacDonald, whose Touching the Void and The Last King of Scotland will come under dissection in his "Director's Cut" talk; and the cast and crew of Gregory's Girl. Directed and written by the Oscar-winning Bill Forsyth, Scotland's most successful film is slated for a 30th-anniversary reunion. Though Scottish actor Tilda Swinton won't be in attendance, her star vehicle, I Am Love, counts among the 50 or so UK premieres on the lineup.
Drawn from 800 world submissions, Festival fare cleaves into 15 strands, from youth and music to a retrospective of films starring Cary Grant and a tribute to Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. A favorite strand, "FrightFest," is a weekend of shivers courtesy of England's biggest horror fantasy film festival. Tim Sullivan's 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams is but one of its over-the-top and under-the-radar titles.
Scotland's audience-friendliest festival has yet to give Edinburgh cause for concern. Yet, with "ambassador" Gerard Butler now drumming up business for the Glasgow Film Office, and with the GFF on a roll, industry wags are taking new notice of Scotland's capital of commerce, finance — and cinema?
Glasgow Film Festival
Feb 18 - 28, 2010
12 Rose Street
Glasgow
G3 6RB Scotland
+44 (0)141 332 6535
www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk
The South-by-Southwest Conference and Festival
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 16 February 2010 22:49
- Written by Eric Lurio
Austin is unlike the rest of Texas. For one thing, one of its mottoes is: "Keep Austin Weird” which is something the rest of the conservative state would never embrace. 
Another thing that make it unique for the state, is that it encourages drinking, and the fact that it’s the home of hundreds of bars (The Live Music Capital of the World) is right there on the city’s official stationary. Weird art and weird culture are what make the Texas capitol tick, and one of the ways this is celebrated is the South-by-Southwest Conference and Festival (SxSW), which is held every March.
The concept goes back to 1986, when somebody in the city government noticed that once one of the local bands got the least bit famous, they’d go off to Nashville or Los Angeles and often never come back, so it was decided to have an annual convention for country music and rock musicians. The event was an immediate hit, and the three days of music and debauchery have been become one of the key events of the year -- not just in Austin but worldwide.
Not content with just musicians, the SxSW people decided to add film on the agenda in 1994, and now the SxSW Film Festival is the biggest film festival in the South. But then again, everything’s supposed to be big in Texas. Last year, they screened 250 films, including 54 world premieres.
In 2007, the SxSW Interactive conference -- which is mostly about videogames and such -- was added to this. Each section is autonomous, and one ticket doesn’t get you into everywhere, that is if you don’t have the bucks.
Platinum (everything) and Gold (two out of three) tickets are expensive, and if you only are participating in one section, you can get tickets for individual performances and films. Plus there is a trade show, which is open to all three groups.
When not going to films, playing video games or listening to bands, there are panels and parties, which, unlike everywhere else, are the core of the event, rather than a sideshow. This is especially true of the annual block party, where those with passes can get free food and drink, or at least that’s what I heard.
A number of the films being shown this year have already debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, including the Duplass Bros.' Cyrus and Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways, both of which are quite good, but not great. As to the rest, I haven’t seen them and can’t really comment.
This is going to be my first SxSW, and never having been to Austin, I don’t really know what to expect.
What I do know, is that the Film and Interactive sections of the event take place from March 12th to the 20th this year (2010) and that most of the events for these are at the Convention Center (500 E Cesar Chavez St.). How to get to the movie theaters and whether or not there are press screenings is still a bit of a mystery.
The SxSW website isn’t all that informative on mass transit, and I don’t know when the bus system shuts down for the night. The interactive stuff is mostly during the day the films are mostly at night.
So if the bus system works at night, the whole thing might be as good as advertised.
South-by-Southwest Conference and Festival (SxSW)
March 12 - 20, 2010
The Austin Convention Center
500 E Cesar Chavez St.
Austin, TX
