Fests and events, 11/28.

"The 59th Berlin International Film Festival will open on February 5, 2009 with the world premiere of the British-German co-prodution The International. Directed by Tom Tykwer (Perfume, Run, Lola Run) and featuring a star-studded cast, the action thriller traces the criminal business transactions that finance war and terror."

Meantime, Berliners are invited to take a trip Around the World in 14 Films. Through December 6.

"Under the auspices of the Harvard Film Archive and the Goethe-Institute Boston, Stefan Drössler, director of the Munich Film Museum, is bringing Orson Welles the Unknown to the HFA," notes AS Hamrah. "The line-up includes three of Welles's least-available features and two evenings of fragments from unfinished works and rare programs he made for TV." Tomorrow through Monday.

Also in the Boston Phoenix, Michael Atkinson previews Dream Catcher: The Films of Karen Shakhnazarov, "whose career stretches back to the 70s but who only now, in the Putin years, is being recognized as one of Russia's signature voices." Wednesday through Saturday.

"Stan Brakhage's approximation of what it's like to see as a child, drawn from years of footage of his own children, is nothing as crude as a literal re-enactment of a child's point of view, but something much more vivid and disturbing," writes Kevin Lee. Scenes from Under Childhood screens tomorrow evening at Anthology Film Archives.

"The London African Film Festival in December provides a rare opportunity to see a series of old pictures from South Africa," writes Gillian Slovo in the New Statesman. "The films offer a wild, occasionally hilarious, and often infuriating reminder of the myths and realities of the old South Africa. This is film noir territory, appropriately captured in black and white: double-breasted, broad-hatted gangsters and drunken intellectuals sit in illegal shebeens; Dolly and the Inkspots, that ubiquitous 1950s band, with their white canes and top hats, croon endlessly in low dives." Tomorrow through December 7.

"On Saturday, Dec. 6 at 8:00 p.m. in New York City, the Film-makers' Cooperative will be holding their annual end-of-year benefit screening of new work in their catalog," notes Mike Everleth. "Films, food and wine will be on hand. The event will take place at the Millennium Film Workshop."

In the Guardian, Nick Bradshaw looks back on the highlights of Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Posted by dwhudson at November 28, 2008 4:03 PM