Shorts, 5/30.

"It is a heady concept to be seized at gunpoint, and it's compounded when you feel responsible for the Nigerians who have trusted you - the ones in your notes and on your footage." Sandy Cioffi was in the Niger Delta filming Sweet Crude (trailer), a doc-in-progress about "the systematic theft of vast oil riches from under the feet of a population now living in abject poverty and environmental decimation," when the crew was detained by the military. "Once they Googled the film title and my name, we were held because the old-guard military in Nigeria does not want this story told. They were open about this. Had I been filming only militants in masks with guns - an image that supports the narrative the Nigerian government wants disseminated - I believe my crew and I would have walked."

An online viewing tip of sorts. In the Independent, Geoffrey Macnab has the trailers for Bernd Eichinger and Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex, "one of a growing number of terrorist-themed features and documentaries currently being made" (and with an all-star German cast), and for discusses Steven Soderbergh's Che. Other films warranting mention in the piece include Olivier Assayas's planned "action film" on Carlos the Jackal and Colombian director Victor Gaviria's Black Blood: The Hour of the Traitors, "based on a true story about a young Farc leader betrayed by his own family."

"It is impossible to hear the call for a conversation about race without thinking about Barack Obama's 'A More Perfect Union' speech," writes Chuck Tryon. "It is in this context that I viewed Katrina Browne's important new documentary, Traces of the Trade, which will be airing on the PBS series, P.O.V. on Tuesday, June 24. In Traces of the Trade, Browne makes use of her own physical and psychological journey to map out the history of the slave trade in North America and its continued implications in the present moment."

Andy Rector posts Charles Burnett's "Inner City Blues."

"In Marin Karmitz's 1972 Coup pour Coup (Blow for Blow), a film about a group of women mounting a successful strike at a textiles factory, the nature of work is clear: there is exploitation (long hours, sexual harassment, physical exertion and foremen and women whose job it is to prevent you from slacking off), there is a site (the factory itself, which becomes a fortress complete with ad hoc crèche, kitchen and sleeping quarters during the strike) and there is an enemy (the boss himself, who is later held hostage in his office and forbidden to use the toilet, as the women themselves had been)." infinite thØught: "The final scene, a freeze-frame of the workers united in struggle accompanied by a voice-over extolling the virtues of continued resistance, is formally paralleled by the last scene in Schrader's Blue Collar six years later, although the horizon of victory has now shrivelled to a bleak and relentless recognition of the divisive power of the bosses: 'They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place.'"

"As if being Nobel Prize winner, vice-president, snookered-by-history presidential candidate, environmental scold, and Oscar-winning filmmaker weren't enough to flesh out his résumé, Al Gore is about to add another job title: opera librettist," notes Vulture's Justin Davidson. "La Scala, Milan's legendary but troubled opera house, has commissioned an opera based on An Inconvenient Truth, Gore's movingly righteous PowerPoint presentation about global warming." John Hooper's report for the Guardian and others make it clear that this is an "inspired by," not a "written by" sort of arrangement.

"In a lot of ways, one can really understand the lifestyle choice of the American hobo," writes Mike Everleth. "However, while trying to glamorize this carefree life, documentarian Alison Murray - who rode the rails herself for several months for [Train on the Brain] - really ends up de-glamorizing it."

In the Telegraph, Sheila Johnston talks with both Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) and Errol Morris (Standard Operating Procedure).

Ray Pride passes along news that Aki Kaurismäki has become Finland's youngest "Academician of Art."

"While Italian cinema is marked by various aesthetic shifts and experiments, its thematic preoccupations have remained, for the most part, consistent," writes Ricky D'Ambrose in the Tisch Film Review. "One can think of the nation's cinema as a collection of 'movements,' distinct in their manipulation of cinematic devices and techniques, given unification by a stock set of interests: the family, religion, labor, and class conflict."

Focusing on Nerdcore for Life more than Nerdcore Rising, Marcus O'Dair presents a guide to the scene.

Also in the Guardian:

• Ryan Gilbey meets Ben Affleck; in the Telegraph, Sheryl Garratt meets Casey Affleck. Gone Baby Gone, you see, is opening in the UK.

• Geoffrey McNab catches up with Bertil Guve, "10 years old when Ingmar Bergman recruited him to star in Fanny and Alexander."

• David Thomson on Ang Lee.

The Foot Fist Way is "an itsy-bitsy, ultra-indie, super-silly comedy packing huge laughs and unexpected heart," writes Nathan Lee in the New York Times. More from Keith Phipps (AV Club), S James Snyder (New York Sun), Armond White (New York Press), Patrick Walsh (Cinematical) and Robert Wilonsky (Voice).

Adam Ross's interviewee of the week: Chris Poggiali.

Online viewing tip. "I'd like to thank the folks at IFC Center for allowing me to interview theater patrons both before and after one of their midnight screenings of El Topo that took place in April." Kevin Lee; notes.

Online viewing tips, round 1, via Movie City News. The trailer for the Coen brothers' Burn Before Reading (with an all-star American cast) and the teaser for Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

Online viewing tips, round 2. Karina Longworth's guide to Fred Astaire mashups.

Posted by dwhudson at May 30, 2008 8:48 AM