Weekend fests and events.

"The first North American retrospective of Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella started last week at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and it's one of the year's biggest cultural events," declares Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader, where he offers a primer of sorts.

"If it's time to take the pulse of the Iranian new wave, from a distance, with all sneaky Western prejudices accounted for, and almost two decades after the initiation of Abbas Kiarostami's Koker trilogy, then the prognosis suggests a hardening of the arteries — complaisance, exhaustion, even a touch of Alzheimer's." For the Boston Phoenix, Michael Atkinson previews the Iranian Film Festival (through December 3).

"The retrospective of Rossellini's film and television work that opens on Wednesday at the Museum of Modern Art may not revive the director's reputation, but it's wonderfully welcome nonetheless, an instant, essential event," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. Related: Girish on Europa 51.

"Rivette's films don't so much move as imperceptibly invade," writes Keith Uhlich, introducing Slant's coverage of a series at the Museum of the Moving Image running through December 31. More at the House Next Door and more from Dennis Cozzalio, who comments on what he found there, Frédéric Bonnaud's Senses of Cinema, in which Rivette delivers his quick takes on umpteen films, including this one: "Every time I make a film, from Paris nous appartient (1961) through Jeanne la pucelle (1994), I keep coming back to the shock we all experienced when we first saw Europa 51."

"The relationship between intellectualism and passion is a distinctly Italian concern, and it propels this year's edition of 'New Italian Cinema,' the weeklong showcase of first- and second-time directors presented Nov. 12 - 19 by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura and the San Francisco Film Society," writes Michael Fox ay SF360. More from Michael Guillén: Giorgio Diritti's Il vento fa il suo giro (The Wind Blows Round) and Marco Bellocchio's I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket).

Robert Redford will star on a panel discussing All the President's Men and tells Susan King that he was the one who convinced Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to write their book not from the point of view of the five Watergate burglars but from their own.

The Retrospective at the Berlinale in February: "City Girls. Images of Women in Silent Film."

The LA Weekly's Scott Foundas looks back on the Pusan International Film Festival.

IndieWIRE's Brian Brooks: "[T]his year's AFI is screening over a dozen best foreign-language Oscar contenders, of which four of the group's filmmakers met with journalists at a panel last weekend." Peter Martin's been sending in reviews to Twitch.

Chris Hansen took his The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah to the Virginia Film Festival and caught several movies: 1, 2 and 3.

You've heard it before, but David Thomson will tell you again in the Guardian: there are too many film festivals out there and not enough good films.

Posted by dwhudson at November 11, 2006 2:22 PM