Fests and events, 4/11.

"For a Better America: The New Deal on Film, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of Roosevelt's economic recovery legislation, will be presented in three segments at Columbia College on April 16," writes the Chicago Reader's JR Jones. "[T]he most rewarding segment is the third one, which focuses on documentary maker Pare Lorentz and his brief, controversial tenure as head of the national film service, from 1938 to 1940."

In the Guardian, Leo Benedictus talks with Mike Figgis about Soho Composites, his show of photographs at the Photographers' Gallery in London. Through Sunday.

Michael Tully has lots of pix from the Sarasota Film Festival, which rolls on through Sunday.

Goings on in Pittsburgh? Andy Horbal's got you covered: The Duchess of Langeais at the Manor Theatre, the Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival and the Russian Film Symposium 2008, "The Ideological Cult: Russian Cinema Under Putin."

Reeler ST VanAirsdale has the lineup for this year's Sundance at BAM program running May 28 through June 8.

Duel of the Cool: Belmondo vs Mastroianni, April 29 through May 14 at Northwest Film Forum.

"The Banff Mountain Film Festival made its decidedly unglamorous third appearance in Austin last weekend, giving Austin's outdoorsy crowd its fill of BASE jumping, paragliding, snow skiing and other extreme sports." Pamela LeBlanc reports at the Austin Movie Blog.

"A Necessary Death is sustained by a provocative premise: a filmed suicide," writes Rumsey Taylor at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, still catching up with SXSW (and a helluva lot farther than I am on that). "The question of ethics notwithstanding, it is possible, even meritable, for the film to function solely as exploitation. But it doesn't - it's standoffish exploitation at best." But Nights and Weekends is "at times bold, intimate, unfunny, and discomforting, but it is never anything less than sincere."

Philip Roth's 75th Birthday Tribute at Columbia University will probably have already taken place by the time you read this; but Vulture's version of how it might have gone is still fun. Silly, but fun.

Posted by dwhudson at April 11, 2008 1:11 PM