Fests and events, 12/10.

"Pressure Cooker was perhaps my favorite film at this year's Woodstock Film Festival," writes Reeler ST VanAirsdale. "The documentary will be presented at IFC Center as part of the Stranger Than Fiction series' ongoing Winter Specials. And 'special' is about right: Directors Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker spent a school year observing no-nonsense culinary arts instructor Wilma Stephenson and her class at Philadelphia's Frankford High, following the funny, sublime interweaving of their kitchen educations with the challenges of growing up in South Philly."

"The 'other' Canada, French-speaking province Québec, suffers no inferiority complex when it comes to filmmaking," writes Dennis Harvey at SF360. "Québec Film Week, which starts tonight, offers five days and eight features at the Opera Plaza that encompass the best of recent Québecoix moviemaking—plus one archival flick generally considered the entire nation's greatest feature ever."

"Gianni Amelio has been tapped to replace Nanni Moretti as topper of the Turin Film Festival in a move that consolidates the status of the small but prominent indie event." Nick Vivarelli reports for Variety.

"Regional film festivals that lack broad name recognition or established Hollywood ties are slogging through the global financial crisis, adapting in ways large and small as donations dwindle and corporate sponsorships dry up," reports Eric Tucker for the AP. "Some are shortening their events, planning screenings in libraries and community centers instead of renting out theaters and showing DVDs instead of actual film print to save on shipping costs. And some have not survived: the Jackson Hole Film Festival folded this fall after failing to raise enough money to continue operating."

Bank of America Cinema takes the alphabet meme to a new level. The Chicago Reader's JR Jones explains.

"The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow (GCCC) is presenting its first offsite project with a giant video installation on the top of Moscow's Mosenergo building opposite the Kremlin. The installation, Moscow on the Move, is running for 24 hours a day until 22 December 2008.... Featured artists include AES+F, Artavazd Peleshan, Doug Aitken, Fischli & Weiss, Douglas Gordon, Chris Marker, Alexander Kluge, Sarah Morris, Pipilotti Rist, Cao Fei, Yang FuDong, Philippe Parreno and Agnes Varda."

"The coming of sound to the cinema was both a curse and a blessing," writes Ronald Bergan in the Guardian. "Many of the first talkies were dialogue-dominated play adaptations, with stilted acting and a stationary camera and microphone. Rouben Mamoulian, one of the most inventive of Hollywood directors, made sound a blessing." The Mamoulian season runs throughout December at BFI Southbank.

"The five African films screened at the 32nd Cairo International Film Festival, which finished last Friday, brought African cinema to Egyptian audiences and gave a glimpse of the often magical mix of drama and comedy, documentary and fiction, for which African cinema has become famous." Gamal Nkrumah reports in Al-Ahram Weekly.

Online browsing tip. The Guardian samples The Godfather Family Album: "An exhibition of Steve Schapiro's images from the book will be on show at Hamiltons Gallery, 13 Carlos Place, London W1, from February 25."

Posted by dwhudson at December 10, 2008 12:38 PM