Fests and events, 6/15.

Jason Gray passes along news that the Moscow International Film Festival will present a lifetime achievement award to Takeshi Kitano. June 19 through 28.

On Friday, June 20, Northwest Film Forum will present two fundraising screenings of John Helde's Made in China to benefit the victims of the May 12 earthquake in the Sichuan province.

Tatsuya Nakadai, notes Terrence Rafferty, is probably best known in the US as "Hidetora, the 80-something feudal patriarch of the Ichimonji clan in Akira Kurosawa's Ran," which is "one of two dozen Nakadai movies Film Forum will be screening from Friday to July 17; for three weeks after that it will show, for the first time in many years, Masaki Kobayashi's three-part, nine-and-a-half-hour World War II epic The Human Condition (1959 - 61), in which Mr Nakadai, playing a leftist intellectual conscripted into the Japanese Army in Manchuria, soldiers his way through one of the most physically and emotionally grueling roles any actor has ever had to endure."

Also in the New York Times: Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space is "the first museum exhibition devoted to this Belgium-born, Paris-based director and presents five projects — two films and three multichannel video installations — dating from 1995 to 2007," notes Ken Johnson in the New York Times. "Ms Akerman demands a lot of her viewers. At least three hours are needed to take in the exhibition fully, and the time does not fly by. With their excruciatingly long, mostly silent scenes and minimalist storytelling, her films can feel like exercises in deprivation. On the whole, it is worth the effort." Through July 6.

As the David Lean centenary retrospective rolls on at BFI Southbank in London, an accompanying exhibition shows original sketches by production designer John Box for Nostromo, the adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel Lean was working on when he died in 1991. In the Independent, Chris Evans tells a story "involving four different scriptwriters and some of the most celebrated names in cinematic history, including Steven Spielberg, Alec Guinness, Marlon Brando and Peter O'Toole.... Now 20 years on, the trials and tribulations of the film have come to light in scripts, notes and correspondence between the different parties involved, which have been donated by the David Lean Foundation to the British Film Institute."

The Chicago Reader previews the Chicago African Diaspora Film Festival, running through Thursday.

"[I]n ways both profound and ridiculous, Wanted is the ideal film to open the LAFF," writes Chris Lee in the Los Angeles Times, a co-sponsor of the Los Angeles Film Festival. "[T]hanks to the flashy counterprogramming step of including popcorn movies and big-budget studio fare like the closing-night selection Hellboy II: The Golden Army (a comic book adaptation from Oscar-nominated writer-director Guillermo del Toro) and Wanted, the 10-day festival's stature has grown in recent years. And so has attendance, which is up almost threefold." Director of programming Rachel Rosen: "The festival has to be right for the city it's in. We're a film fest in LA in the summer. To pretend that we're not seems ridiculous." June 19 through 29.

Eric Kohn's been snapping pix at CineVegas; Karina Longworth files a diary entry at the SpoutBlog.

At the Evening Class: Matthew Kennedy's introduction to the double feature (Blonde Crazy and Night Nurse) kicking off the Pacific Film Archive series, Joan Blondell: The Fizz on the Soda.

"When word was announced last October that Frameline's Artistic Director Michael Lumpkin was relinquishing his position to pursue personal goals, after 28 years involvement, and 22 years as Executive Director, Frameline Board President Linda Harrison released a statement detailing Lumpkin's numerous and impressive accomplishments during the course of his tenure." Michael Guillén has a good long talk with him about an eventful couple of decades.

Meanwhile, in the San Francisco Chronicle, David Wiegand presents recommendations for the first four days of this year's edition. June 19 through 29.

For Cineuropa, Camillo de Marco reports on a change of leadership for RomeFilmFest.

Online viewing tips. Cahiers du cinéma talks with filmmakers at Cannes.

Posted by dwhudson at June 15, 2008 6:12 AM