Fests and events, 9/23.

"For 12 days Almost Cinema 07 at the Vooruit Arts Centre, in Ghent, celebrates the variety of contemporary art that can rightfully be called cinema-esque - if not cinematic. A preview from William Hanley at Rhizome. October 9 through 20.

"I can't think of a recent NYC retrospective with a higher concentration of great cinema than this one." Dan Sallitt recommends Arnaud Desplechin in Focus, presented at the Museum of the Moving Image with Cahiers du cinéma from October 6 through 14.

"The movie has its historical significance as the first great popular success of the freer-form style of filmmaking that came to be identified with the French New Wave, but if you go to Film Forum in Manhattan, where, starting Wednesday, a nice fresh print of The 400 Blows will be showing, you probably won't get the unpleasant sensation of having wandered into an old argument between spluttering, red-faced cinéastes," writes Terrence Rafferty in the New York Times. "Although a certain polemical ardor may have helped stoke Mr Truffaut's creative fires while he was making his debut film (he was very French), the smoke from those life-and-death aesthetic debates has long since cleared. What remains is a lyrical and surprisingly tough-minded little picture about a 12-year-old troublemaker named Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), as seen by a sympathetic and slightly more seasoned troublemaker named François Truffaut."

"The Artists Television Access center in San Francisco is hosting their 2nd annual blowout festival next month, Oct 10 - 12, showcasing 26 short works by a variety of underground and independent filmmakers," notes Mike Everleth at Bad Lit.

"As the Madcat Women's International Film Festival heads into its final stretch this coming week in San Francisco, SF360.org felt it was important to catch up with its chief curator, Ariella Ben-Dov," writes Susan Gerhard.

Acquarello: "Notes on the Panel Discussion on Turkish Cinema with Zeki Demirkubuz." Also: "Block-C is a flawed, yet seminal film in Demirkubuz's body of work - a complex character study that provides the psychological and visceral paradigm for his subsequent films."

"German Currents: New Films From Germany, which opens Friday at the American Cinematheque's Aero Theatre, offers six recent features and one documentary from some of the country's established and new voices," writes Susan King in the Los Angeles Times. Runs all weekend.

Posted by dwhudson at September 23, 2007 9:36 AM