Fests and events, 8/21.

Cinema Purgatorio announces dates and times for NYC screenings of the Flaming Lips' Christmas on Mars. In general, they're taking place during the second half of September.

Chicagoist Rob Christopher previews Facets' 40 Years After: Filming the '68 Revolution week-long series beginning tomorrow. Good city for it, too.

"Developed to give filmmakers an opportunity to qualify for Oscar consideration by providing the theatrical platform necessary to be considered for an Academy Award nomination, DocuWeek opens Friday and continues through Aug 28 at the ArcLight theaters in Hollywood and Sherman Oaks," writes Susan King in the Los Angeles Times. "25 films featured in previous DocuWeek programming have gone on to garner Oscar nominations, with six winning the Academy Award, including Alex Gibney's 2007 film, Taxi to the Dark Side." And she previews highlights of this year's edition.

"For The Circuit's first anniversary, we asked film festival vet Christian Gaines to ruminate on the State of Fests. In a two-part series, he looks at the unifying factor that makes them important and the different agendas that complicate them."

Ed Gonzalez on the New York Korean Film Festival, running tomorrow through August 31: "A Korean film festival without the belligerent aesthetics and sketchy moral plans of Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook is practically a badge of honor; one without the plaintive romanticism of Hong Sang-soo and sly genre deconstructions of Bong Joon-ho is like a winter without snow."

Also in the Voice, Jim Ridley previews BAM's Tribute to Richard Widmark (Monday through Wednesday).

"New York City's Film Forum will be screening both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II during a special three week engagement beginning September 12," notes Christopher Campbell at Cinematical. "And yes, it's a big deal."

Brian Brooks sends a dispatch from Sarajevo into indieWIRE: "There was a mix of both well-estabished and emerging folks, including local director Aida Begic, whose debut feature, Snow opened the 14th Sarajevo Film Festival over the weekend with great fanfare. Also joining the discussion [lon naturalism vs artifice in film] was fellow local Danis Tanovic, whose 2001 feature No Man's Land won the Oscar for best foreign-language film, Man on Wire director James Marsh, Stranded director Gonzalo Arijon (Chile), Jar City director Baltasar Kormakur and Israeli-German director, Lior Shamriz (Japan Japan)."

With the Democratic National Convention less than a week away now, Peter Nellhaus has been running a series he calls "Cinematic Denver," while Anne Thompson notes that plenty of doc-makers are heading to the city that, as Kirk Johnson reports in the New York Times, "is hoping to declare its emerging artistic identity to the world next week." More on the docs from Mark Rabinowitz.

Variety's Nick Vivarelli reports on the first round of titles announced for this year's Rome Film Festival. October 22 through 31. Also: "The Pusan festival unveiled a slimmed-down, more Asian-centric selection for the 11th running of its Pusan Promotion Plan project market," reports Han Sunhee. October 2 through 10.

David Cox, back in London from Locarno, quite liked Kirill Serebrennikov's Yuri's Day, "a masterly treatment of the Moscow glitterati's hankering for the Russian soul that they've left behind in their country's primitive, frozen backwoods," but is otherwise rattled by "the more numerous specimens of Euro-arthouse endeavour that were grotesquely, unbelievably bad. No, actually a good bit worse than that."

Posted by dwhudson at August 21, 2008 5:43 AM