Weekend fests and events.

The Chicago Latino Film Festival is off and running through April 16; the Chicago Reader offers its recommendations - and an overview of the local edition of the United Artists 90th Anniversary Film Festival.

"[S]trangely, one of the most compelling figures in Iranian cinema has remained largely unrecognised in the UK," writes Sheila Whitaker in the New Statesman. "Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, the subject of a season at the BFI Southbank this month, has been one of Iran's most successful directors for 20 years, artfully combining an ability to do well at the box office with a determination to critique the status quo in her homeland. She follows in a fine tradition of female Iranian directors, beginning with the pioneering Forugh Farrokhzad and running through to Samira Makhmalbaf." April 11 through 30.

Dreams With Sharp Teeth, Erik Nelson's lively portrait of Harlan Ellison, will be previewed at the Walter Reade on Tuesday before it opens at Film Forum in June. Both Nelson and Ellison will be there; for now, Bruce Bennett talks with Nelson for the New York Sun, where S James Snyder previews the New York African Film Festival, "kicking things off Wednesday with a screening of the new Charles Burnett film, Namibia: The Struggle for Independence." Through May 26.

Doug Cummings is going to have to miss out on Heinz Emigholz: Photography and Beyond, a week-long series starting on Sunday, but he's got his hands on some DVDs and previews several of the highlights.

LA's New Beverly Cinema has "got a great filmmaker to hold court for two weeks, diagramming and dissecting his influences, his personal tastes and the idiosyncratic, cynical humor that is so much a part of what he brings to every movie he makes," writes Dennis Cozzalio. "Starting Saturday night with a midnight screening of the director's 1978 Jaws rip-off/parody entitled Piranha, the New Beverly will give over two weeks to Joe Dante and his Dante's Inferno film festival."

For the SpoutBlog, Karina Longworth previews the Sarasota Film Festival. David Lowery's glad Merrily, Merrily will be screening there. Through April 13.

"The Ciné Lumière's dozen-film season offers a good opportunity to reassess - and celebrate - the style, impact and character of the multi-faceted Italian screen actor, Marcello Mastroianni," writes Wally Hammond for Time Out. Tomorrow through April 24 in London.

David Bordwell? He's still in Hong Kong.

"The Sonoma Valley Film Festival, which runs April 9 - 13, has gone to great lengths to enfold the event in its surrounding," writes Eve O'Neill at SF360. "Complimentary food tastings prepared with fresh, regional ingredients will be offered before every single screening."

Charlie Olsky files a dispatch to indieWIRE: "The 65,000 well-healed islanders welcomed the 11th Bermuda International Film Festival, currently underway, with their annual show of polite enthusiasm. Residents hopped on their scooters to travel from the quaint town of Hamilton to the quainter town of St George, past the well-groomed grounds of the Princess Hotel where Queen Victoria's daughter Louise once stayed, arriving at the unassuming Southside Theater in time to see the 9:15 screening of Martin Gero's Young People Fucking."

Also, Eric Kohn reports from AFI Dallas: "The city's motto, 'Live Large. Think Big,' fits the bloated program, a sprawling lineup that plays like the greatest hits of the festival circuit."

"The Evening Class sent Sergio de la Mora to the Guadalajara Film Festival this year and our man-in-the-know has returned with his first report."

Kim Voynar's report from the Ann Arbor Film Festival for Cinematical has lots of pix.

"Though the country might sometimes disappear geographically, the inaugural Iris Prize Festival put Wales very visibly on the world map of LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender) cinema and scores of film-makers from across the globe managed to find their way to Cardiff, despite European cartographers' occasional uncertainty about the existence of Wales," writes Ryan Prout for Film International. The next edition runs October 2 through 8.

Rumsey Taylor at Not Coming to a Theater Near You on another SXSW film: "Natural Causes is more of an abstract than it is a narrative. It is clear in establishing an essential tone for each scene, and sometimes this tone will carry throughout several of them. But the actions that produce these tones - the infatuation, the vulnerability, the disappointment, or the contentedness - remain unknown. It's more concerned with effect than it is cause, despite the title."

"For some music lovers of a certain generation, one single album introduced an entire world of noncommercial music legends, from Tom Waits to the Replacements to Sun Ra: Stay Awake, producer Hal Willner's 1988 reimagining of classic Disney songs," writes Jada Yuan in New York's Vulture. "Wednesday night at St Ann's Warehouse, Willner staged a reinterpretation of Stay Awake with a mostly new crew of performers, all of whom admitted offstage of being terrified of Disney movies while growing up." Among the performers: David Byrne, Steve Buscemi, Beth Orton and Suzanne Vega.

Posted by dwhudson at April 5, 2008 11:19 AM