Fests and events, 7/11.

"The Czech Surrealist film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divů, 1970) is a film that, once seen, cannot be forgotten," writes Andrea Feldman at Warped Reality. "Greater still is Lubos Fiser's exquisite score, which has finally been restored to print by the lovely people at Finders Keepers." What's more, "Greg Weeks, an ardent fan of Fiser's score, has nevertheless been inspired to create one of his own.... The Valerie Project has already performed the score as an accompaniment to the film in London (as part of Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown fest), in NYC (at Jonas Mekas's Anthology Film Archives), and in Philly (where many of the musicians reside). More shows are planned for the fall (including one at the Museum of Modern Art in NY), and the fall should also see the official release of the score in its entirety on CD." And Andrea's got samples of both the original and new scores.

Anthology Film Archives is also celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Living Theatre with a doc and a meta-doc; that and more in J Hoberman's roundup of NYC goings on for the Voice.

"The Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is back and stronger than ever." Opens tomorrow and runs through July 24, and the Philadelphia Weekly previews several titles screening during the first week.

Also opening tomorrow: "A massive cross-section survey of what's current and courant in French filmmaking as of early this year, the 2007 Boston French Film Festival adheres to a mainstream through-line — the menu bops between feel-good indies and full-on commercial fare, with a few seasoned auteur numbers thrown in like rosemary twigs," writes Michael Atkinson in the Boston Phoenix. "Which is to say, few risks are taken, mush-minded Hollywoodized entries already slated for stateside release proliferate, and a sense of homogeneity is inescapable." Through July 29.

Just opened at the BAM/PFA in Berkeley and running through August 30: Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker, an exhibition and film series.

Miguel Amado draws Rhizome readers' attention to Particulate, a show in Eugene, Oregon of videos created for "MP4 micro players (iPods, etc) hung in single row on all the walls of the gallery."

"Viewfinder provocatively suggests that we see photographically and that contemporary artists assimilate the camera's mechanics as they compose technically and conceptually complex work." At the Henry Art Gallery from Saturday through December 30.

From Noir City Northwest, Vince Keenan sends word of two noirs written by Roy Huggins: I Love Trouble and Pushover.

San Francisco Frozen Film Festival opens tomorrow and runs through Sunday; Cheryl Eddy has a brief preview in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

"To mark Bastille Day, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will screen Abel Gance's legendary 1927 epic Napoléon, which has rarely been shown publicly since its 1981 restoration by film historian Kevin Brownlow, complete with tinted sequences, and presented by Francis Ford Coppola with a score composed by Coppola's late father, Carmine, that is as glorious as the silent classic is itself," writes Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times. "Napoléon is history as an action-filled pageant, filled with as many cliffhanging flourishes as a serial, relieved from time to time with scenes of intimacy and humor. Gance was as natural and energetic a storyteller in the silent screen medium as Cecil B DeMille - and could stage an orgy with similar zest. His visual flair remains awesome and richly varied. He staged complex battle scenes with ease yet could create images as richly textured as those of Josef von Sternberg."

The lineup for BRITDOC 07 is in place. July 25 through 27.

Also set: the schedule for Dead Channels, a festival of fantastic film running from August 9 through 16 in San Francisco.

Speaking of which: "One of the things that comes up from time to time when doing festival programming here in North America is the lack of a local equivalent to the European Federation of Fantastic Film Festivals, an organization that pools the resources of several festivals to help operate the festivals efficiently, give them a collective pull with distributors that they may lack individually and give film makers a central organization that can help them navigate the submission process to get their films seen," writes Todd at Twitch. "Well, it's lacking no more, with Fantasia, the Fantastic Fest and San Francisco's Dead Channels banding together to launch the North American Fantastic Festival Alliance."

"Goldfinger is one of seven iconic British films selected as part of a groundbreaking partnership between the UK Film Council and BBC2 to celebrate the classics of the big screen as part of the Summer of British Film season running from late July to September," reports Rebecca Smithers in the Guardian. For the Independent, Geoffrey Macnab reviews the selections while Sight & Sound editor Nick James offers a few alternatives.

Considering Marlon Brando on the occasion of the ongoing season at BFI Southbank, Michael Wood, writing in the London Review of Books, works his way toward Last Tango in Paris: "'Vous êtes américain?' she asks when they meet, but we already know the answer. He is not only American, and not only Paul, the bereaved character in the film seeking to find a renewal of life in [Maria] Schneider's youth and weirdly submissive attraction to him. He is Marlon Brando, a man who has made a career out of not saying what he wants, perhaps even not knowing what he wants, and getting it all the same. Bertolucci, like the great cineaste he is, made a hymn to old movies, and to an old movie star, before they were even that old."

And BFI Southbank has scheduled a Laurence Olivier season for August 2 through 27. "Marking the centenary of Olivier's birth, the season celebrates the actor's "staggering achievements" in a screen career that spanned six decades. All of which sounds positively splendid if you buy the line about him being our best ever practitioner of the thespianic arts and rather less splendid if you don't," writes the Guardian's Xan Brooks. "My own personal suspicion is that the screen was not his natural surface."

Variety's Anne Thompson has news of more additions to the Toronto lineup.

The cinetrix returns from the Harvard Film Archive's Independents Week: New American Independent Cinema 2007 with reviews of Mike Gibisser's debut feature, Finally, Lillian and Dan, Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs and Aaron Katz's Quiet City.

With pix and impressions, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson say, "Arrivederci Ritrovato."

Mark Rabinowitz wraps Karlovy Vary for indieWIRE. Related: "A father and his 14-year-old son travel from contemporary rural Bosnia to the Croatian capital for a film audition in director Ognjen Svilicic's Armin," writes Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "Going the exact opposite route of the riotous bombast of Sarajevo-born filmmaker Emir Kusturica, Svilicic (Oprosti za kung fu/Sorry for Kung Fu) films his drama as an intimate two-hander that mainly plays out between father and son. The film's contents may not be revolutionary enough to travel far and wide, but its sweet nature and good humour will certainly seduce some. It won the main prize in the East of the West Competition at the recent Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and was also screened at this year's Berlinale."

With reviews of Opera Jawa, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone and Syndromes and a Century, Richard Phillips again picks up WSWS's overview of the Sydney Film Festival. Also: "Some documentaries from China, Israel and Australia."

Online viewing tip. Douglas Gordon: Between Darkness and Light. Works 1989 - 2007, a video introduction to the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg through August 12.

Posted by dwhudson at July 11, 2007 2:23 PM