Fests and events, 4/20.

"More than any other American film festival it operates from the premise that the movies wouldn't be the movies without some Barnum & Bailey razzle-dazzle and Hollywood tinsel." In the New York Times, Stephen Holden previews the Tribeca Film Festival, opening Wednesday and dominating New York through May 6.

ST VanAirsdale talks with author, NYU prof and Telegraph film critic Sukhdev Sandhu about the South Asian Underground Film Festival, which he's organized and which runs through Sunday - and with Anna Paquin, who stars in Blue State, set to premiere at Tribeca.

Also at the Reeler: Christopher Campbell listens to Slavoj Zizek introduce Duck Soup.

Film-Makers' Cooperative Third Annual Benefit Concert: Monday evening in New York.

Hamburg's Thalia Theater sees the world premiere of a stage adaptation of From the Life of the Marionettes, "my only German film," as Ingmar Bergman calls it.

The Chicago Palestine Film Festival opens today and runs through Thursday; the Chicago Reader previews the highlights. Also, reviews from the ongoing Chicago Latino Film Festival (through Wednesday), Earth Day (Sunday) in Chicago and Version 07 (through May 6).

"It has to be acknowledged that the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is not terribly exciting," writes Annie Wagner at the Stranger. "But recently Three Dollar Bill Cinema, which produces SLGFF, has been programming brief, carefully considered series at Northwest Film Forum in which every film is worth seeing."

Bryan Hendrickson rounds up more Seattle-area goings on for the Siffblog.

Great to Be Nominated honors "the film from each awards year that received the most nominations without winning best picture," notes Susan King in the Los Angeles Times. On Monday, the Academy's screening of Star Wars features "a post-movie discussion with [George] Lucas as well as editor Richard Chew, visual effects wizards John Dykstra, Richard Edlund and Robert Blalack and art director Leslie Dilley."

The Miami Beach Film Society's Francis Ford Coppola series in May will feature screenings of his forthcoming Youth Without Youth and a new documentary, CODA: Thirty Years Later, which is described as more than just a making-of-YWY. That'll screen on May 23, followed by a Q&A with Coppola. Rene Rodriguez had more at the Miami Herald's Reeling.

The Philadelphia Film Festival wrapped on Wednesday and Scott Weinberg's been reviewing up a storm at Cinematical: Unholy Women, Taxidermia, The Kovak Box, Dead Daughters, Cages, American Fork, Wicked Flowers, Exiled, The Living and the Dead and End of the Line.

Kerem Bayraktaroglu wraps the Istanbul International Film Festival at indieWIRE. The top award went to the Norwegian festival darling, Reprise.

Posted by dwhudson at April 20, 2007 2:47 PM