Fests and events, 12/5.

I'll let E Steven Fried explain at the Siffblog why he's in a rather unique position to be talking with Esther Robinson about her documentary, A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory. It's an awfully fun explanation. At any rate, Walk screens at Seattle's Northwest Film Forum from Friday through Wednesday. What's more, Danny Williams's Factory films will be screened with live accompaniment on Friday and Sunday. If you've seen Walk, with its clips from these films, you won't need me to convince you to be there.

"Only when Robinson uncovers lost footage produced by her uncle does Williams's character take shape as a genuine artistic talent stifled by his need to piggyback on Warhol's celebrity," asserts Andrea Rosen in the L Magazine, where Nicolas Rapold looks ahead to the opening of Half Moon at New York's ImaginAsian: "The fanciful new film from Bahman Ghobadi (Turtles Can Fly) feels like a half-remembered folk tale coming into focus with sudden fantastical epiphanies."

"This weekend, Whitechapel Art Gallery, in London's East End, celebrates the work of the multi award-winning documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis," notes Warren Howard in the Independent. "As entertaining as they are informative, Curtis's films reveal a rare instinct for the importance of fleeting moments of history, and offer a compelling insight into the dreams and delusions of society. Through mosaics of archive footage and interviews, he pieces together a vision of the present woven from fragments of the past."

At the Reeler, Miriam Bale previews The Cinema of Max Ophüls. At BAM through December 18.

Writing in the Guardian, Agnès Poirier does not approve of "the new sexed-up Turin film festival.... Is [Nanni] Moretti serving the festival or is the festival serving Moretti? The Italian press appears to love this new cult of personality, lapping up the great man's every word, but cinema seems to be the real victim here."

And Woo Ming Jin, whose Elephant and the Sea won the Special Jury Award in Turin, has filed an entry on the experience at Swifty.

Ben Goldsmith reports on last weekend's Screenscapes conference.

Posted by dwhudson at December 5, 2007 3:35 PM