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Film Festivals
Hugo Santiago presents Invasion at the 49th New York Film Festival
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 07 August 2012 01:47
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Invasion
directed by Hugo Santiago
starring Olga Zubarry, Lautaro Murúa and Juan Carlos Paz
Originally released in 1969, the Argentinean film, Invasión, was presented at the 49th New York Film Festival on October 5, 2011. An extraordinary, very rarely screened fantastical, metaphysical thriller, it was written by two literary titans, the late Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. The 73-year-old director Hugo Santiago's mise-en-scene is a brilliant engagement with its enigmatic screenplay, with startling location shooting and mesmerizing black-and-white photography, here presented in a stunning restored print.
Invasion takes place in Buenos Aires, where a clandestine group of friends, businessmen, and charged youth have joined forces to fight off an invasion of their city by unknown forces -- men in tan suits. The story is enigmatic — this mysterious invasion by forces that seem to allude to the shadowy right-wing forces that have influenced Argentinean politics for decades. Borges was himself persecuted by the Peron regime.
The resistance to these invaders is similarly metaphoric — do they represent some remnant of an aristocracy that opposes the corruption of modern tyranny? or are they the emblem of populist aspirations? The narrative proceeds as an intricate series of episodes of move and counter-move between the opposing forces with the topography of Buenos Aires deployed as a quasi-subterranean, expressionist landscape.
And as a highlight of the Film Festival, Santiago made appearance at a Q&A after the film where he entertained the audience with several intriguing anecdotes. He recounted that after Bioy Casares left for Europe, he worked with Borges every day on the script for a year.
Now a grand old man of the Argentinean avant-garde, Santiago also said that even though Borges was nearly blind when he saw the film, he was still able to identify a couple of elements in the final work that weren't present in the original screenplay.
In response to a question about his approach to sound design in this film, Santiago emphasized the structured musicality of the aural landscape he created for Invasión.
So both screening and talk afterwards made this Invasion maybe less enigmatic but certainly most engaging.
To learn more go to: http://www.filmlinc.com
Invasion
October 5, 2012
49th New York Film Festival
Walter Reade Theatre
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023
"Dragon" Highlights New York Asian Film Festival
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 07 August 2012 00:56
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Dragon/Wu Xiadirected by Peter Chan
starring Kara Hui, Wu Jiang and Takeshi Kaneshiro
Running from June 29th to July 15th, the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival presents Dragon, Chinese director Peter Chan's latest feature. Chan's work has been praised by the most penetrating surveyor of this national cinema, the preëminent scholar David Bordwell.
King of the intellectual blockbuster, Chan has made a swoony musical, Perhaps Love, a tragic Jet Li vehicle, The Warlords, and his patriotic historical epic, Bodyguards & Assassins. Now he makes his first straight ahead martial arts movie.
To judge by the filmmaker's latest opus, Chan is an accomplished metteur-en-scène with a gift for orchestrating animated martial-arts display — here he is immeasurably aided by the extraordinary action choreography of star Donnie Yen, a master with few peers in the genre.
Chan tells the tale of a sinful martial arts expert who wants to start a new tranquil life, only to be hunted by a determined detective and his former master. As a storyteller, Chan is certainly very skilled but ultimately this film falters in not fully overcoming the limitations of a melodramatic script while over-indulging in expository montages.
As an actor, Yen is impressive here but his co-star, matinee idol Takeshiro Kaneshiro, gives one of the finest performances in an already illustrious career.
To be released by The Weinstein Company, this elegantly photographed film was screened in a very handsome, high-definition digital format.
Yen will be making an appearance in New York for this premiere screening. For a schedule of NYAFF films and showings, go to: http://filmlinc.com
The 10th Annual New York Asian Film Festival
June 29 – July 15, 2012
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theatre
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023
French Classic "We Won't Grow Old Together" Comes to NYC 40 Years Later
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 24 June 2012 11:48
- Written by Laura Blum
We Won't Grow Old Together
directed by Maurice Pialat
starring Jean Yanne, Marlène Jobert
We Won't Grow Old Together is the title -- and plot -- of Maurice Pialat's second feature, which premiered stateside at the 1972 New York Film Festival. Forty years later, it's high time to give this stormy romantic drama a commercial engagement on this side of the Atlantic.
Time so high that the Festival's keeper, Film Society of Lincoln Center, is doing so June 22 - 28, 2012 as part of a year-long retrospective of NYFF’s first 49 years to salute its 50th edition.
Winners of the 7th Annual South East European Festival Revealed
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 10 May 2012 23:22
- Written by Joanne Choi
Celebration for closing night of the 7th Annual South East European Festival (SEE Fest 2012 which ran from May 3-May 7 2012) took place Monday night, May 7th, at UCLA’s Bridges Theater in Los Angeles with the screening of the Turkish epic FUTURE LASTS FOREVER, an exploration of the parallel pasts and Anatolian elegies directed by Ozcan Alper, which also won Bridging the Borders award for best feature film of the festival. DO NOT FORGET ME INSTANBUL, a collection of seven stories by seven directors under artistic direction of Turkey's auteur Huseyin Karabey also received an award from Cinema Without Borders accordingly.
2012 Award Winners:
- Best Debut Feature: FAITH, LOVE AND WHISKEY by Kristina Nikolova (Bulgaria, 2011)
- Best Documentary: CIGARETTES AND SONGS by Marek Sulik and Jana Kovalcikova (Slovakia, 2010)
- Honorary Mention: GABRIEL by Vlatka Vorkapic (Croatia, 2011)
- Best Short (Fiction): THE VISIT by Miha Mazzini (Slovenia, 2010), and COLD SHOWER by Orsy Nagypal (Hungary, 2011)
- Best Documentary Short: MURDER REVISITED by Milan Miletic (Germany, 2010)
- Cinematography Jury's Feature: DO NOT FORGET ME ISTANBUL by: Aida Begic, Eric Nazarian, Hany Abu-Assad, Josefina Markarian, Omar Shargawi, Stefan Arsenijevic, Stergios Niziris (Turkey, 2011)
- Best Cinematography (Documentary): PERSEVERANCE...SPIRIT...BREATH by Momir Matovic (Montenegro, 2011)
- Audience Award: HELLO! HOW ARE YOU? directed by Alexandru Maftei (Romania, 2011)
Juries and awards of the 7th South East European Film Festival included:
Bridging the Borders Award, with jurors Bijan Tehrani, editor-in-chief, Cinema Without Borders; Kevin Cassidy, international news editor, The Hollywood Reporter; and Fareed C. Majari, director of the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.
Best Documentary Award, with jurors Margit Kleinman, director, Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades; Arnold Schwartzman, Oscar-winning filmmaker and designer; Valentina Ganeva, film editor;
Best Debut Feature Award, with jurors Ana Maria Bahiana, author and film critic; Matthew Mishory, filmmaker; and Zeljko Marasovich, film composer;
Best Short Film, Best Short Documentary Awards, with jurors Prince Gomolvilas, playwright; Jelena Mrdja, actress; Marsha Goodman, EMMY-winning casting director; and Jelena Erceg, visual effects artist.
Best Cinematography Award, feature and documentary film, with jurors Boris Schaarschmidt, cinematographer; Michael Pessah, cinematographer; Nicholas Fahey, cinematographer; and Hans Diernberger, visual artist.
About South East European Festival:
South East European Film Festival educates about and promotes cultural diversity of South East Europe through its annual presentations of films from this region and year-round screenings and programs. SEE FEST organizes conferences and retrospectives, serves as the cultural hub and resource for scholars and filmmakers, and creates opportunities for cultural exchange between Southern California and South East Europe.
For further details about the festival visit: http://www.seefilmla.org
