Fests and events, 2/22.

Previewing the Harvard Film Archive's series The Lives of Others: Selected Films of Helmut Käutner (through February 27), Michael Atkinson is "awakened to a master's œuvre I hadn't known existed. I'll say it for the record: Helmut Käutner, as an eloquent narrative stylist, is the peer of his contemporaries William Wyler, Frank Borzage, Michael Powell and Vincente Minnelli. Maybe even - dare I say? - Ophuls and Rossellini. Maybe."

Also in the Boston Phoenix, Peter Keough: "Maybe it's a stretch, but I'd call German director Michael Hofmann's three features, which are screening in a retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, a kind of Mundane, as opposed to Divine, Comedy."

Neil Morris and Zack Smith preview this weekend's Nevermore Film Festival for the Independent Weekly.

Brecht, Kino Fist, London, Sunday. k-punk has the flyer. Owen Hatherley has a somewhat related online viewing tip or two.

SXSW (March 9 through 17) has announced that Park Chan-wook's I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK will close the festival (Park was "overwhelmed" by his experience in Berlin this year, by the way). SXSW's press releases notes that Cyborg "joins a list of newly added feature films on the lineup, including DJ Caruso's upcoming Paramount Pictures release Disturbia":

Other new additions to the schedule include: Eric Chaikin's documentary A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar, Kris Carr's documentary Crazy Sexy Cancer and Shannon O'Rourke's documentary Maybe Baby. Meanwhile, in the previously announced "Retrospectives" section of the film festival, SXSW has announced a special Music Documentaries Retrospective to feature: Ron Mann's Imagine the Sound (1981), DA Pennebaker's Monterey Pop (1968), and Bruce Weber's Let's Get Lost (1988). Plus, SXSW will screen a remastered print of Eagle Pennell's 1979 classic The Whole Shootin' Match.

Marc Savlov in the Austin Chronicle: "Ways to Spend Your Time and Money in the Next Couple of Weeks."

Recent reviews from the Film Comment Selects series (through February 27):

• Acquarello: "Kiyoshi Kurosawa's brooding, atmospheric, surreal, and sufficiently creepy, but woefully underformed and uncharacteristically messy horror film, Retribution unfolds with the formulaic familiarity of a haphazardly (and irregularly) sutured career retrospective digest." More from Daniel Kasman.

• Towards the end of Kevin B Lee's piece at the House Next Door: "As much as I've tried to make a case for the logic behind the film's more puzzling elements, after one viewing I am not fully persuaded that Colossal Youth's many fragments cohere into a masterful whole."

In the Nashville Scene, Jim Ridley offers a pretty robust preview of the Nashville Film Festival (April 19 through 26).

Today's real Berlinale link: Criterion's Peter Becker snaps four cashews into tiny pieces to make them last over three hours. Yes, he did the marathon screening: "Berlin Alexanderplatz is one film, not a series of episodes strung together. There is no better way to see the film than all in one shot.... It might seem crazy to go out of your way for a fifteen-hour movie, but we went all the way to Berlin, and, I have to say, it was totally with the trip."

Posted by dwhudson at February 22, 2007 2:05 PM