Shorts, 6/5.

What was I just saying about festival season? Today sees the opening of Newfest 2003, the 15th New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (Ed Halter does the rundown in the Voice) and on the 10th, Outfest opens in LA (Brian Brooks does the honors in indieWIRE).

Peter Hames, author of The Czechoslovak New Wave and editor of Dark Alchemy: The Films of Jan Svankmajer, recently attended the 16th Finále Festival of Czech Film, an event that blends new work with films from "Czech cinema's most turbulent decade," the 60s. As his report appears at Kinoeye, that page itself becomes a mini-portal to a national cinema pretty darn rich for such a relatively small country.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, still running in NYC, through June 12. David Lipfert synopsizes at Offoffoff.

Davey D passes along a report on Paul D. Miller's (aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid) remix of DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Miller has jotted down a few notes on the project at his site.

For Filmmaker, Jeremiah Kipp interviews AJ Schnack, director of Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, the two Johns being, of course, Linnell ("the introspective one") and Flansburgh ("the showy one"), which is to say, They Might Be Giants.

Turning to anime, ADV will be releasing Volume 1 of the new series directed by Katsuihiko Nishijima, Najica Blitz Tactics, in August. Which wouldn't exactly be news if there weren't also a Pantyriffic Collector's Edition being simultaneously released for nearly twice the price. Why so expensive? Well, besides the artsy box, it'll also come with, that's right, panties.

The official site for The Animatrix is running interviews with directors Mahiro Maeda and Shinichiro Watanabe and producer Mike Arias. Speaking of the Matrix yet again, at Alternet, Annalee Newitz asks, "When was the last time you saw a special-effects blockbuster with hot, sweaty sex in it? Especially multiracial, multipartner, out-of-wedlock sex that didn't spell doom for its practitioners?" For all of Reloaded's problems, there is that.

Online viewing tip. In the wake of the Bunny brouhaha, it's good to remember that Vincent Gallo has a body of work that stretches back several years. You won't see much evidence of that at his own site, but there are more than a few clips to look at and listen to at the Vincent Gallo Appreciation Page. Interesting stuff, though none of it has me particularly hot to see The Brown Bunny.

One more for early risers in the States. The Open Cultures conference in Vienna, all about "free flows of information and the politics of the commons," is being streamed live. Today's session is already underway and will wrap up at around 8 pm CET, making that 2 pm on the east coast, 11 am on the west. Tomorrow's session runs from 12 noon to 8 pm CET, meaning if, say, you're on the east coast and really interested, you'd start viewing at around 6 am.



Posted by dwhudson at June 5, 2003 9:36 AM