Weekend fests and events.

"My films rest - I won't say eventually but rather fundamentally - on memory, because it is through memory that we orient our actions, thoughts and feelings," Manoel de Oliveira tells Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly. The Talking Pictures of Manoel de Oliveira runs through tomorrow.

"Geoffrey Smith's The English Surgeon, which debuted last year at the Sheffield DocFest, took the top international prize at Hot Docs in Toronto on Friday night, winning the award for Best International Feature," notes AJ Schnack. "Tamar Yarom's To See If I'm Smiling, which previously has received awards at IDFA and Sarasota, received the Special Jury Prize." And AJ's got the full list of award-winners.

Related: Bob Turnbull on Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home and Monika Baryzel at Cinematical on Letter to Anna: The Story of Journalist Politkovskaya's Death and The Demons of Eden.

Todd Brown's still sending reviews into Twitch from Udine.

From Hollywood Bitchslap's Peter Sobczynski at Ebertfest: Entries 2, 3 and 4. More from Kim Voynar at Cinematical.

Rob Nelson has more Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival previews: Disconnected, Pond Hockey and Dean and Me: Roadshow of an American Primary. The fest runs through May 4.

Mike Everleth has the lineup for this year's PDX Film Festival. Wednesday through May 4 in Portland.

At Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin has a sneak peek "at a show opening at New York's Adam Baumgold Gallery on May 1 - Alphaville, by Scott Teplin, features meticulously rendered pen and ink and watercolor drawings inspired in part by Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film (which happens to be my favorite movie, ever, period)."

"Few things say serious art like a darkened gallery and multiple video screens, which makes Marian Goodman one of the most serious galleries in town," writes Roberta Smith in the New York Times. "In side-by-side solo shows through Wednesday, it is screening new work by two prominent artists in the cinematic medium, Chantal Akerman and Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Their combined efforts add up to more than the sum of their parts: a lesson in big budgets, ambition and making sense."

Nick Davis and Nathaniel R arrive in Indianapolis, where the festival carries on through May 3.

"At a time when most rep houses seem to be in hot water, Los Angeles' New Beverly packed 'em in [Tuesday] night for the finale of Dante's Inferno, two weeks of forgotten classics guest programmed by Joe Dante," writes Peter Debruge. "While many of the director's picks were obscure, none could compete with The Movie Orgy, a marathon 4½-hour clip show Dante first assembled in 1968 with Jon Davison, then put on ice for nearly four decades.... Over the years, the project has earned a borderline apocryphal reputation, called by some the 'Rosetta Stone' of Dante's career - a glimpse deep into the filmmaker's id - and it's a testament to the city's cult film scene that so many stayed for the entire show."

"The Movie Orgy isn't really a movie," writes Dennis Cozzalio. "It's more like a hallucinatory party for the certifiably movie mad. What began in 1968 as a lark instigated by two creative movie fans (Dante and his close friend, future producer Jon Davison) soon became an event, an explosion of movie geek love that morphed into a small cult phenomenon... Dante and Davison boldly and proudly mash up the sophisticated and the sophomoric. Their slice-and-dice aesthetic is hardly random though; the narrative lines of those sci-fi movies that provide what there is of the Orgy's spine are routinely violated by the intercutting of TV commercials, patches of industrial and sex education films and political speeches (1968 being the point of origin here, Nixon gets kicked around plenty)."

Nashville Film Festival announces its awards. On a related note, Joe Leydon: "Since I'm much too humble to report on how wonderful I was Tuesday evening while doing an on-stage Q&A with the great Patricia Neal when she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Nashville Film Festival... well, I'll just link to this scintillating report on the evening's festivities."

In the Telegraph, Sukhdev Sandhu previews All Power to the Imagination! 1968 and Its Legacies - and lists his "top ten films which encapsulate the spirit of May '68."

"It's a milestone year for the San Francisco Black Film Festival," notes Walter Addiego in the Chronicle. "Starting as a one-day event, this cultural celebration is about to mark its 10th year, running June 4 - 8 and 11 - 15."

And current entries on ongoing festivals have been updated recently: Boston, San Francisco and Tribeca.

Posted by dwhudson at April 26, 2008 3:48 PM