Fests and events, 2/7.

"I'm in the midst of my preparations for the grueling week of pleasure that begins tomorrow," posts D Strauss at the EXBERLINER's new Berliner Blog.

For more anxious Berlinale previewing, turn to David Gordon Smith at Spiegel Online. And Cinematical's Erik Davis presents "my attempt at a video blog."

Meantime, the taz is reporting that those attending Market screenings of Li Yu's Ping Guo (Lost in Beijing) will definitely see the version untouched by Chinese censors (heads up, Andrew and Aaron), while the version to be shown in Competition... we just don't know yet.

And another festival opens tomorrow, and actually runs longer: The 9th annual San Francisco Independent Film Festival, through February 20. In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Cheryl Eddy handpicks three titles to preview, Mojave Phone Booth, Cutting Edge and Dante's Inferno, while Kimberly Chun and Matt Sussman highlight three more, Green Mind, Metal Bat, S&Man and Unholy Women.

More from Max Goldberg at SF360, where he appreciates the fest as "a welcome antidote in its unrepentant eclecticism. Grotesque neighbors feasting on their own sores, the discourse of black barber shops, Japanese garage rock, Bukowski barflies, frisky fundamentalists, a revived Shaw Brothers freak-out ('in stunning Thunderball Fist-O-Scope,' whatever that means), and we've only started."

Anticipating SXSW: David Lowery and AJ Schnack.

At Bad Lit, Mike previews the Miami Underground Film Festival (March 8 through 12).

"This Friday, the National Film Theatre will mark the 40th anniversary of [Joe] Meek's death with an evening of rarely-seen Meek-related films, including the musical Live It Up and 1991 Arena documentary Arena: The Strange Story of Joe Meek," notes Alexis Petridis in the Guardian. Why note the anniversary? Meek "was the first British independent producer and founded the first British indie label, Triumph. He recorded the first concept album, the deeply odd 1960s 'outer space music fantasy,' I Hear a New World. With the Tornados he made both the first US No 1 by a British pop act, 'Telstar,' and the first explicitly gay pop track released in Britain, 1966's 'Do You Come Here Often?'"

Charlotte Cripps in the Independent: "f you've ever wanted to witness two giant 3-D lions fighting in Botswana's Kalahari desert as seven banks of speakers reverberate to their roars, then head to the BFI Imax, which is screening Tim Liversedge's wildlife epic Lions 3D: Roar of the Kalahari."

Ed Halter in the Voice: "Rotterdam has gained a well-deserved rep as Europe's anti-Sundance: an international potluck, typically low on American indies and studio fare, high on the visionary, auteurist, and outré."

"And there were six Malaysian features in Rotterdam," notes Dennis Lim at indieWIRE, "an impressive number for a country that was a non-entity on the festival circuit just a few years ago."

Posted by dwhudson at February 7, 2007 3:50 PM