Fests and events, 3/19.

"[Barbara] Stanwyck is my favorite movie actress," writes Jim Emerson. "Ever." To back up: "If you are in Chicago the next few weeks, and you feel like taking in a weekend matinee, then you are fortunate indeed because the Music Box Theatre is presenting a centennial celebration of the toughest, sexiest, smartest, snappiest dame ever to sashay across a cinema screen."

The New Directors/ New Films series, presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, runs March 21 through April 1, and Slant's previewed nearly every film on offer already.

"The official website for the 2007 edition of the Philadelphia Film Festival is now online and while I'm just beginning to dig through the program it's obvious that Danger After Dark programmer Travis Crawford has worked his usual magic," writes Todd at Twitch, where Peter Martin picks out highlights from the AFI Dallas lineup (Thursday through April 4).

The Diagonale Austrian Film Festival opens tonight in Graz and runs through March 25. Bénédicte Prot has an overview for Cineuropa.

For the Reeler, Elena Marinaccio previews the Fashion in Film Festival running at the Museum of the Moving Image through March 25.

Also: "Aspen-based filmmaker Wayne Ewing, whose [Hunter S] Thompson documentary Breakfast With Hunter premiered in 2003 (and whose making-of doc chronicling the author's literally explosive funeral, When I Die, debuted in late 2005), assembled another piece in 2006 around footage of Thompson's speeches on [Lisl] Auman's behalf at the Denver Capitol. Free Lisl: Fear and Loathing in Denver, also featuring interviews with a newly freed Auman and contrite observers from the Denver press, has its New York premiere tonight at Barbes as part of the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series." ST VanAirsdale interviews Ewing.

Sujewa Ekanayake is putting together a "DIY Film Festival Project '07."

"With films such as Provoked, Water and Namesake, the Tongues on Fire film festival [through March 31] puts 'Asian women in a deciding position, to feature films that discuss the issues we need to talk about,' says the festival's co-founder and psychotherapist Dr Pushpinder Chowdhary," writes Sara Newman in the Independent. "After visiting the annual Tongues on Fire festival four years ago, Images of Black Women (IBW) film festival directors Sylviane Rano and Betty Sulty-Johnson decided to 'make something for us.' They have been showcasing the work of black women at an annual festival for the past three years, at the Tricycle cinema in Kilburn, north London."

For the Financial Times, James Ferguson tours The Air Is on Fire, open through May 27 in Paris:

[David] Lynch designed the whole exhibition himself. His bigger, more significant paintings hang in the glass-walled, ground-floor space, on steel frames draped in curtains. Down in the basement gallery his early short films are shown in a Lynch-designed mini cinema, next door to which he has built an expressionistic, plywood living room based on one of his tiny sketches. Loudspeakers emit Lynch sound - rumblings and drones composed with his long-time sonic collaborator Alan Splet. There is no curatorial information on the walls. This is a low key Lynchian atmosphere. He is in control.

Daniel Kasman: "Screening Log Aggregate: Abbas Kiarostami." Similarly (but also quite differently, of course), Girish.

Filmfest DC (April 19 through 29) unveils a few highlights of its lineup.

Hal Hartley's Fay Grim will open the Independent Film Festival of Boston (April 25 through 30). This 5th anniversary edition also sees news work from IFFBoston alumni such as Andy Blubaugh, Eric Chaiken, Steve Collins, Don Hertzfeldt, Ted Hope, Matthew Lessner, David Redmon, Josh Safdie, Joe Swanberg and Michael Tully.

In the New York Times, Keith Schneider considers the implications of work by the likes of Noah Kalina, Jonathan Keller and Ahree Lee, all represented in We Are All Photographers Now!, a project on view through May 20. Somewhat related: Robert Hughes in the Guardian on "fast art" vs "slow art," via Matthew Clayfield.

Matt Riviera reviews a batch of new Australian films that screened at the Adelaide Film Festival.

Posted by dwhudson at March 19, 2007 8:55 AM