Fests and events, 11/6.

"In all of his dazzling work, [Robert] Breer sends you tumbling head over heels along trajectories of meaning, as images and ideas take shape and then evaporate, offering in the end nothing less than a philosophy of being in constant flux," writes Holly Willis. The series Moving Figures: The Animated World of Robert Breer is split into three parts, with Breer attending each screening: REDCAT (Nov 10), UCLA (Nov 15) and the Los Angeles Filmforum (Nov 16).

Also in the LA Weekly, Lance Goldenberg on The Labyrinthine Worlds of Alain Robbe-Grillet, running through December 15.

At indieWIRE, Kim Adelman talks with award-winning animator Don Hertzfeldt about his ongoing national tour.

Vue Weekly picks out the highlights of the Global Visions Film Festival, opening tonight in Edmonton and running through Sunday.

Mike Everleth has the lineup for "the one-night only short film screening series Los Angeles as a Character, which will take place Saturday Nov 15 at 8:00 pm at the Echo Park Film Center."

The Wild Child opens tomorrow for a week-long run at Film Forum. "Taking The 400 Blows to another level, François Truffaut's 1970 feature considers a child who is literally wild, with the filmmaker himself starring as an 18th-century country scientist molding his charge in civilization's image," writes Nicolas Rapold in the Voice. "[K]eep in mind, he dedicated the film to his most frequent actor-collaborator, Jean-Pierre Léaud, whom Truffaut taught the language of cinema," adds Nick McCarthy in the L Magazine. Related: Noah Forrest at Movie City News: "I actually physically ache when I think about how we never got to witness how advancing age would have affected his filmmaking style and the subjects he chose."

In the Auteurs' Notebook, Glenn Kenny looks back over "21 Years with Asia Argento." A bit more from Benjamin Strong in the Voice. BAM's series, Asia Argento: Sexy, Scary and Often Naked, runs through Sunday.

"The 2008 American Film Market started yesterday," notes Kristin Thompson. "Like the film festivals at Cannes, Toronto, and, increasingly, Berlin, the AFM is one of the major places where independent and foreign-language films get sold. Distributors from all over the world come to sell their products and to buy the films that they will release at home. It seems a good occasion to look at what effect the folding-in of New Line Cinema into a unit within Warner Bros early this year has had on the international independent film market."

"Robert Sarnoff was as surprised as anyone when the Queens International Film Festival - yes, there is one, opening its sixth annual series at a hotel near La Guardia Airport on Thursday - chose him as a featured filmmaker." Anne Barnard talks with him for the New York Times.

"Are we finally detecting the first gurglings of an overdue Israeli New Wave?" asks Michael Atkinson in the Phoenix. "It's hard to tell just yet, but in any case this year's Boston Jewish Film Festival catalogue is rich and surprising." Through November 16.

"Founded by Carole Zabar (yes, that Zabar) with Israeli Arab filmmaker Mohammad Bakri, the uneven grab bag of films (mostly documentaries made by Israeli Jews) that is the Other Israel Film Festival adds up to a study in the ambivalence of rural communities condemned to perpetually divided loyalties," writes Ella Taylor. Through November 13.

Also in the Voice, Nicolas Rapold: "A few days ahead of the release of Danny Boyle's Mumbai-set Slumdog Millionaire, the eighth annual [Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival] arrives with a grab bag of US premieres." Through Sunday.

"On Monday, November 10, Rooftop Films returns to the halls of Chelsea market for a free screening of 10 amazing independent animated films chosen from Rooftop Films' 2008 Summer Series and our library of shorts."

A few nights on the Museum of the Moving Image's calendar: Mira Nair and Suketu Mehta in person tomorrow; Jerry Lewis in conversation with Peter Bogdanovich on November 22; and an evening with Dennis Hopper on December 4.

Michael Hawley previews November for San Franciscans: "With seven significant festivals tripping over each other in mid-month and some truly great rep and art house programs on the way, there'll be no choice but to take a deep breath and soldier on."

Also at the Evening Class, Michael Guillén has extensive notes on Munich Film Museum director Stefan Drössler's lecture on Lola Montès.

"On the basis of The Song of the Scarlet Flower (1938)..., I'm guessing that we should all pay close attention to the Teuvo Tulio retrospective, at BAM every Monday in November," writes Dan Sallit. "At the same time as the Tulio retro, there's a series of historic Finnish films screening over the next few weeks at Scandinavia House."

In the Los Angeles Times, Susan King rounds up local goings on.

Another local roundup: The Philadelphia City Paper, where you'll also find Kathryn Lipman on Christmas on Mars.

"Two of the biggest tragedies of recent history, the Afghan war and the Balkan war, are at the heart of the two films that won top honours at the Rome International Film Festival," reports Cineuropa. The Golden Marc'Aurelio Award goes to Siddiq Barmak's Opium War, "an excellent film with surreal and ironic overtones..., while audiences, voting through an electronic system at the end of screenings, chose Résolution 819 by Italy's Giacomo Battiato."

The Global Lens film series premieres tonight on Link TV.

Online browsing tip. "With a season of his plays at the Tron in Glasgow and a retrospective of movies at the BFI Southbank in London, Tennessee Williams is hotter than ever." A photo gallery at the Guardian.

Online viewing tip. "Curing the Vampire is a group of interview films, commissioned by Tate Intermedia in Great Britain, with very real, vital people who combat 'vampiristic irresponsibility' on an international level," writes Glen Helfand, describing Lynn Hershman Leeson's new project for SF360. "The subjects work in science, music, culture, technology, and media activism and include Gilberto Gil, Tropicália musician and Brazil's Minister for Culture [and this is the interview that's online]; human rights activist and writer Elena Poniatowska; Dr Elizabeth Blackburn, credited with having identified 'the aging gene'; and Lawrence Lessig, the mastermind behind Creative Commons.... Presented in four short episodes, released on the Tate Modern's website, the group presents a quartet of vampire-busters, their targets being the energy drain of evil corporate and corrupt governmental agencies—or what the director terms 'Greed and selfishness carried to extremes.'" Also taking part: Tilda Swinton.

Posted by dwhudson at November 6, 2008 3:00 PM