Weekend fests and events.

"Once in a while, history shuffles the deck of reputation and deals out a hand that revises the outcome of the game entirely," writes B Ruby Rich at SF360. "And if ever a filmmaker deserved a new deal, it's the late great Emile de Antonio, whose documentary legacy has been unjustly overshadowed by current genre approaches. As an SFMOMA retrospective [opening today] makes clear, de Antonio's documentaries are a different species entirely from the kind of celebrity-driven, headline (or animal) chasing theatricals now in favor. De Antonio favored argument, instead, along with logic, research, and intelligence; and he trusted his audience to think the right thing."

"Look for the through-line connecting the four feature films of South Korean writer-director Lee Chang-Dong and you will find that they are all stories of the clash between conformity and individualism in a culture that craves the former at the expense of the latter," writes the LA Weekly's Scott Foundas. Just one more evening left in Los Angeles County Museum of Art's mini-series, a screening of Secret Sunshine.

"This year's Dance on Camera Festival documents modern dance in Montreal, looks at choreography in pop music videos and uses film to extend the boundaries of human movement - all lively but not that unusual for the festival, now 36," writes Jennifer Dunning in the New York Times. "But there is one oddity: 'The Choreographic Moves of Jacques Tati,' which focuses on that great French comic actor and director and his first feature, Jour de Fête." Eric Kohn in the New York Press: "Significantly trimmer at 79 minutes and more linear than his later works, it nonetheless illustrates the remarkable seeds of his invention."

"Wenders once remarked that rock'n'roll saved his life. He also said that the Americans had colonised the German subconscious," writes Radio On director Chris Petit in an excellent overview of the retrospective at BFI Southbank, the first part of which runs through the end of the month. "For years he made a point of being at home nowhere, which was easy enough to understand after being raised in postwar West Germany, under military occupation, stuck between the silence of German guilt and an American popular culture dedicated to surface and lack of interiority."

"From the beginning to the end, the real is what matters in Béla Tarr's early films: the realities of family life, the realities of a friendship, the realities of work, the realities of socialism," writes Charles Mudede in the Stranger. "The most important thing that Tarr's early movies have contributed to cinema is the art of the long conversation." Elliptic and Unbridled: The Early Films of Béla Tarr runs at Seattle's Northwest Film Forum from Tuesday through January 30.

On Saturday, January 12, Screen International's Mike Goodridge will be hosting a roundtable discussion with the directors of all films nominated for Golden Globes in the Foreign Language category. Co-presented by the American Cinematheque and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the seminar at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles is free. Meanwhile, the Aero Theatre will screen the films from January 9 through 12. As a reminder, those directors and their films are: Marc Forster (The Kite Runner), Ang Lee (Lust, Caution), Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Marjene Satrapi and Vincent Payronnaud (Persepolis) and Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).

With Sundance still nearly two weeks away, indieWIRE is already revving up by interviewing directors who'll have films in Park City.

Variety's Michael Jones has the names of the Tiger Awards jurors for this year's edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, running January 23 through February 3.

The 21st Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Festival for Short and Experimental Film and Media Art, takes place January 17 through 20.

The Berlinale (February 7 through 17) has got more details on its Luis Buñuel retrospective and on screenings of four recently restored silent films: Carl Theodor Dreyer's Die Gezeichneten (Love One Another, 1921), Robert Reinert's Nerven (Nerves, 1919), Willi Wolf's Schatten der Weltstadt (Shadows of the City, 1925) and Harry O Hoyt's Belle of Broadway (1926).

"Sean Penn, American actor and director, is named President of the Jury of the 61st Festival de Cannes, due to take place from May 14 - 25, 2008."

No Borders, No Limits: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema is running at the Japan Society in New York through May 2 and, at the House Next Door, John Lichman gets in touch with Mark Schilling, whose book serves as a companion to the series.

Posted by dwhudson at January 5, 2008 7:32 AM