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Film Festivals
Maverick is the Word at Cinequest
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Wednesday, 02 March 2011 03:51
- Written by L E Shannon
The Cinequest Film Festival is running March 1-13, 2011 in San Jose, California - the heart of Silicon Valley.
The Opening Night film is John Turturro's acclaimed Italian music documentary Passione, a spectacular and beautiful love poem to the city of Naples—a city of music, of culture and most of all, its extraordinary people. Passione combines archival footage with musical numbers of all kinds, including such masters as Sergio Bruni, Massimo Ranieri and Renata Carasonni and contemporary artists like the M’Barka Ben Taleb and James Senese.
Turturro is also this year's recipient of Cinequest's coveted Maverick Spirit Award, which "recognizes visionaries who truly capture the essence of the Maverick by entertaining and inspiring audiences through evocative means."
The Closing Night film is Sean McNamara's highly anticipated inspiring true story Soul Surfer, the story of Bethany Hamilton, who fought to return to surfing after losing an arm in a shark attack at age 13. With AnnaSophia Robb, Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt, Carrie Underwood (in her feature film debut).
Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2011
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 01 March 2011 05:00
- Written by James Van Maanen
Rendez-vous with French Cinema runs March 2 - 13, 2011 at four venues: Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, the IFC Center, Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek, and on opening night at Manhattan’s fabled Paris Theater.
Here it comes again: one of cinema’s prime times of the year, when Francophiles gather to partake of some of the best French films of the last twelve-or-so months. This year's roster shapes up certainly as good as those of past years. Which says quite a lot.
As some of these films will be opening commercially in the weeks and months to come (e.g., Nannerl, Mozart's Sister), for now I will simply give you enough information, I hope, to intrigue you into looking further -- or, in a few cases, not.
Cultish Cinema Stalks Manhattan for Month of March
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 22 February 2011 18:24
- Written by Brad Balfour
![Director Jason Eisener and Hobo Lead Rutger Hauer [Photo by Brad Balfour]](/images/stories/2011/02/jason-eisener_rutger-hauer.jpg "Director Jason Eisener and Hobo Lead Rutger Hauer [Photo by Brad Balfour]")
I'm not sure what's in the water, or maybe it has to do with solar flares or lunar cycles, but it seems this Spring is bringing out the weird in a lot of film programmers.
Only a week or so ago, a series of strange and wonderful films celebrating various insane artists seen in the pages of multi-media creator Robert Williams' alternative arts magazine Juxtapoz were on view at the Museum of Modern Art. And the man himself made a rare appearance in New York discussing his life and work.
Wild East - Soviet Action Films
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Saturday, 12 February 2011 04:52
- Written by L E Shannon
The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents Wild East: The Best of Soviet Action Films running 
February 11-17, 2011 at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater in New York City.
With the eastern steppes of the USSR serving for the Great Plains of the US, Soviet Easterns took metaphors from the American Western to dramatize the Civil War in Central Asia in the 1920s and 30s against Islamic Turkic basmachi rebels. Parallels abound as gunfighters, bounty hunters, traveling settlers and the spread of the railroad across the vast wilderness are used to turn the “decadent” American genre on its head.
While most of the films were made between 1969 and 1988, two were from the 1950's and one from 1936.
