Fests and events, 1/30.

"Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker?, premiering here in Rotterdam, is Barbara Caspar's thoughtful and creative film biography/essay on the late writer, whose formally inventive novels, published from the 70s through the mid-90s, challenged assumptions about gender roles, sexuality, and the literary canon," writes Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay. "Caspar has made a film that captures the essence of both Acker the writer and Acker the person while arguing convincingly for the continuing relevance of her work today."

"[W]hat was particularly noticeable this year was that the feeling of 'place' in each film in Sundance is growing in diversity and richness every year, in parallel with the strength and reputation of its world cinema programming," writes Susan Gerhard at SF360. "To associate Sundance with the cliches of American Indiewood is to miss where the festival is headed: across borders."

"2008 turned out to be the year that Sundance returned to its roots," writes B Ruby Rich in the Guardian. "The best films in the US competitions restored the spirit of the festival's early days: regionally shot films on restricted budgets with new or non-actors, by film-makers more passionate about what they were shooting than where their career was heading."

"Noir City 6, czar of noir Eddie Muller's yearly celebration of not-on-DVD rarities and shadow-dappled classics resurrected from studio vaults, offers plenty of fodder for noir-or-not debate," writes Matt Sussman in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "The programming spans from the critically enshrined (Jules Dassin's 1950 Night and the City) to the relatively unknown (1960's The 3rd Voice) and the not so old (the Coen brothers' 2001 neonoir The Man Who Wasn't There). Perhaps more than past incarnations, Noir City 6 makes a case for film noir as a set of stylistic conventions - or, alternately, for noir as an inspired malaise that permeates a film like stale cigarette smoke - rather than something hard-and-fast that sports a time stamp."

"If the rest of the programming is as good as the first two days then noir lovers are in for a hell of a week," adds Anne M Hockens at the Siffblog.

The latest from the Film Panel Notetaker: Q&A with Cinema 16 vet Jack Goelman following a screening of Paul Cronin's Film As a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel & Cinema 16, part of the ongoing Stranger Than Fiction series at New York's IFC Center.

Posted by dwhudson at January 30, 2008 9:30 AM