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Now in its 9th year, The Global Peace Film Festival showcases international films with subjects ranging from the human condition to sustainability and the environment. The Central Florida-based film festival takes place in Orlando and Winter Park, Florida from September 21st to 26th, 2010.
From July 30 to August 19, 2010, Manhattanites and Angelinos can catch theatrical screenings of 22 nonfiction films (including five shorts) during the International Documentary Association's DocuWeeks Theatrical Documentary Showcase.
You can catch IDA's showcase in New York City at the IFC Center (323 Sixth Av. at W. Third St.) and at the ArcLight Hollywood (6360 W. Sunset Boulevard) in Los Angeles. All of the films are in the running for a 2011 Academy Award.
One of them is Waste Land, a loving portrait of garbage. Rot and refuse are not the sort of thing you ordinarily equate with beauty, but then there's nothing ordinary about Brazilian artist Vik Muniz or his photographic work celebrating the art of recycling. The documentary by Lucy Walker follows Muniz from Brooklyn to Brazil's largest trash heap to photograph its gleaners.
For the 67th time, the island of Lido in Venice, Italy will become awash with cinema life when the Venice International Film Festival rises September 1 to 11, 2010. And once again, Hollywood creatures are expected to flood the seven-mile sandbar that hosts the world's oldest film festival.
Quentin Tarantino is helming the jury that will confer the prestigious Golden Lion. Among the 23 contenders for this year's top kudo is Darren Aronofksy's psychological thriller Black Swan. Tagged as the opening night film, it stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as ballerinas who are themselves thrust in a competition, in this case for marquee roles in a production of Swan Lake. Aronofsky's The Wrestler won the 2008 Golden Lion.
Russellmania was never as widespread as “Beatlemania,” but director Ken Russell wouldn’t care. The “bad boy” of British film-making began in the '60s with a series of artist biographies about the likes of composer Frederick Delius that only hinted at where his feature-film career would go when he exploded onto the international scene with Women in Love.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Russellmania! is not a complete retrospective of Russell’s films — it only collects nine of his major productions from 1969 - 1977, when he was arguably at his peak, both in prolific-ness and quality—but Russell’s '80s and '90s output is pretty much diminishing returns anyway, so why not stop here? (Actually, the series should stop before the overwrought 1977 biopic Valentino, in which a fatally miscast Rudolf Nureyev is outclassed by Michelle Phillips, of all people, who looks like she’s about to devour him in their unintentionally funny nude scene.)