Fests and events, 11/2.

There's more to a good film festival than films, Ronald Bergan reminds us, and relates experiences such as seeing the Northern Lights in Reykjavik and listening to Viva, Kenneth Anger and Peter Whitehead reminisce about the 60s in Vienna.

Global Visions Film Festival opens tonight in Edmonton and runs through Saturday. For the Vue Weekly, Carolyn Nikodym talks with Milena Kaneva, director of the opening film, Total Denial.

Michael Atkinson for the Phoenix: "The 'being Jewish' wrestled with in the [Boston Jewish Film Festival, through November 12] knows nothing from Jewish gangsters or Jewish superheroes or Jewish vampires - it's all about the sensible-shoes-on-the-ground grit and warmth of global life as it is now and has been in the last century. Which is to say, history experienced not by rulers but by citizens, something Jews know the way field mice know predator birds."

Blogging for the London Times, Rob Forsythe and Kira-Anne Pelican pick their favorites from what all the London Film Festival has had to offer.

Michael Guillén: "This coming Saturday, November 4th at 8 pm I'm anticipating Oddball Film's presentation "Myth and Music: Sita Sings the Blues," a screening of Nina Paley's mythic, animated work-in-progress opus plus animated gems. Sita Sings the Blues is a unique combination of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, the 1920s torch vocals of the great Annette Hanshaw, and classically informed and inventive, eye-popping animation."

"How fitting that the Sao Paulo International Film Festival, or the 'Mostra' (short for Mostra Internacional de Cinema), celebrated its landmark 30th year as Brazilians went to the polls to elect their next president," writes Michael Gibbons at indieWIRE.

In a longish survey for WSWS, David Walsh looks back at the political docs that screened in Vancouver.

For the Los Angeles Times, Susan King previews tonight's Centennial Tribute to Otto Preminger, hosted by Peter Bogdanovich (more from David Thomson), and this weekend's Fabulous Versailles series.

Darcy Paquet looks back to Pusan at Koreanfilm.org, where Adam Hartzell writes, "Perhaps it's because So-yeon took the same trip I did to attend the 11th edition of PIFF, from Seoul to Busan via the bullet train, and even stopped in at the same perfume/cologne store I did that ennabled me to relate so well with Sung Ji-hae's debut film, Before the Summer Passes Away. Or perhaps it's because I've had recent conversations with friends about desiring that person who, in all intense intents and purposes, is wrong for you."

Posted by dwhudson at November 2, 2006 1:14 PM