Fests and events, 9/25.

Millais, an exhibition of work by Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais opens at the Tate Britain tomorrow (through January 13).

"Many of the paintings do have that 'freeze-frame' quality: like stills taken from an imaginary film that Millais is shooting in his head," blogs the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "I have to say, however, Ophelia is the most cinematic painting, conceived in pin-sharp deep focus. This picture really does shock me. And I have only just realised quite why I am so fascinated by it."

"One of the basic elements of the moving image is the light source and a current exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Project, Transform, Erase takes this simple element as its theme," writes Caitlin Jones at Rhizome. Through Sunday.

Michael Hawley picks eight titles to feature in his preview of the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (Friday through October 10) at the Evening Class: What Would Jesus Buy?, Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa, American Scary, Cowboys & Communists, Orange Winter, Manufacturing Dissent, Hell on Wheels and Luchando.

At Bad Lit, Mike Everleth has the lineup for the Coney Island Film Festival, running Friday through Sunday.

"The 400 Blows still resonates through Truffaut's isolation of essential details, which stand out with the focus of unblemished memory: that ancient, gouged, chalk-coated classroom that's seen a thousand wiseasses sent to its corner; the horror of impending discipline as a teacher's called into the hallway; the tactile, gasping chill from the milk that Antoine quaffs from a stolen bottle during a night on the street," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. "It is the nature of the film for those who love it to recognize themselves in it, and so it never fully recedes into history." At Film Forum from tomorrow through October 9.

Acquarello is turning in more reviews from the just-wrapped series, Mental Minefields: The Dark Tales of Zeki Demirkubuz.

Jason Morehead looks back on the Cornerstone Festival.

Posted by dwhudson at September 25, 2007 1:35 PM