Fests and events, 9/27.

George Maciunas, 1953 - 1978: Charts, Diagrams, Films, Documents and Atlases: at the Maya Stendhal Gallery in New York through October 28. Related online viewing tip. Jonas Mekas's Zefiro Torna: Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas.

The work of Harun Farocki is the focus of an exhibition at Index, the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, through November 5.

Recent New York Film Festival previews:

• Leo Goldsmith at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "What Apichatpong [Weerasethakul] offers with his new film, Syndromes and a Century, often seems like an exotic, more polished, and higher budget version of Michael Snow's Wavelength, albeit with multiple locations and characters, and an even less dramatic plot."

• Ed Gonzalez in Slant: "Bamako doesn't correct the injustices committed by The Constant Gardener, reversing them by flaunting an all-brain-no-heart attitude."

• Nick Schager: Insiang "channels its Sirk/Fassbinder melodrama through the filter of neorealism, its story's heightened emotions kept at a simmer by an aesthetic at once verité-blunt and yet shrewdly, meticulously composed."

• Also, Keith Uhlich on Gardens in Autumn: "Figures that on the day I publish an article on The House Next Door stating my preference to rarely, if ever, walk out of a movie, I go and do exactly that."

• But Uhlich stayed for another, and for THND: "Buñuel tears the gates of perception asunder; de Oliveira, at least in Belle toujours, keeps us decidedly earthbound. This might be part of the point: to show, essentially, how the characters' unhinged fantasy lives have been tempered by age, with all the resultant hemming and hawing about lost youth that, placed within a slightly different framework, might well be entitled Trip to Bountiful."

• Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog on Marie Antoinette: "here's no way around it - it just looks so good."

And from the Fantastic Fest, wrapping tomorrow, at Twitch, Peter Martin offers quick takes on Roman, The Woods, Wilderness and Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell.

Posted by dwhudson at September 27, 2006 11:45 AM