Fests and events, 2/20.

"In the autumn of 1996, the newly installed Taliban decreed that moving pictures were heretical and had to be destroyed. This was obviously very bad news for Afghan Film, the Kabul-based organisation that both promoted Afghan cinema and housed the Asian republic's entire film and TV archive. One hundred and eighteen of its 120 employees fled; the two who remained, lab technician Khwaja Ahmadshah and a colleague, resolved to risk their lives in defence of cinema." In the Guardian, Erlend Clouston tells their story and previews the Reel Afghanistan festival starting tomorrow in Edinburgh.

"Terence Davies is coming to town. For anyone who loves the cinema, this is news of paramount importance - and MGM-level musical magnitude." In anticipation of Closely Watched Films: Terence Davies (through February 27 at the Pacific Film Archive), the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Johnny Ray Huston places a call to the director.

In the SF Weekly, Jennifer Maerz presents "he Let's Get Killed guide to getting your Noise Pop rock 'n' roll film fix." February 26 through March 2.

From the Film Comment Selects series, running through February 28:

• Daniel Kasman reviews Inside, the highlight of which is evidently Béatrice Dalle, Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export, "all influences, no inspiration," and: "[W]hile the contents and progression of [Nanouk] Leopold's Wolfsbergen seem nothing particularly worthy of attention, it is in its cast—exemplary in their ambiguousness; there are almost no caricatures here—and most especially in the direction of the film that the scenario gains its weight, its solemnity, its emotion."

• Acquarello on Luis Estrada's A Wonderful World, "a dense, darkly comic, and provocative, if mean-spirited sardonic fairytale on the politics of poverty, charity, globalization, and social reform."

• For Gleb Sidorkin, writing in the Tisch Film Review, Andrei Zvyagintsev's The Banishment is "an incredibly beautiful strip of celluloid and contains some of the best acting by children of any film in recent memory."

Paddy Johnson catches the Oscar-nominated animated shorts for the Reeler: "Considering the range of animation technique - puppets to broadcast design to painted animation - it's hardly surprising that the first question I had exiting the theater was why anyone would attempt to determine 'the best' animated short when the skill sets and results are so entirely different."

At SF360, Eve O'Neill files another entry in her SF Indiefest diary.

For Vince Keenan, it's still two films a day at Noir City Northwest.

Posted by dwhudson at February 20, 2008 8:31 AM