CANNES PALME D’OR WINNER TO OPEN NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

By Sandy Mandelberger

The winner of this year’s Cannes Film Festival’s most prestigious award, the Palme d’Or, will open the 46^th edition of the New York Film Festival (NYFF), one of the most important film showcases in North America.

The Class (Entres Les Murs), a gritty but very human story of the dysfunctional French education system, won the top prize at Cannes for its director Laurent Cantet. Three of Cantet's four features have played in programs at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which presents NYFF, including Human Resources at the 2000 New Directors/New Films series, Time Out at the 2001 New York Film Festival and Heading South at the annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema program at the Walter Reade Theater, the Society’s flagship cinema.

The Class is is the fourth Palme d'Or film to open the fest, following Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (2000), Mike Leigh’s Secrets And Lies (1996) and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). The Class, about high school teachers and students at an interracial inner city school, marked the first time that a French film had taken the Palme d’Or honor since 1987’s Under The Sun of Satan.

Arthouse powerhouse Sony Pictures Classics, a “classics division” of Sony Pictures, picked up the rights to the film after Cannes. The Class has been praised for its neo-documentary feel and the intensity of the acting and script. Although it snagged Cannes’ top honor, the film was not immediately picked up at the Festival, but took many weeks for a deal to be secured with Sony Pictures Classics (at far less than the Cannes asking price). “The film is great and deserve to be seen”, one veteran American distributor shared with me. “But it is a tough film to market to an audience…..the key will be how to interest American audiences in a tough film that is not a classic French love story.”

The New York Film Festival has also announced two special showcases to run parallel to the main programming event. In The Realm of Nashima will feature an exhaustive survey of the work of one of Japan’s most controversial directors. Views from the Avant Garde, an ambitious program that checks the pulse of contemporary video and media arts, will offer a 30^th anniversary presentation of French director Guy Debord’s underground classic We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire. The New York Film Festival opens on September 26 and runs until October 12. For more information on the Festival and other Film Society programs, log on to their website: www.filmlinc.com

Asia House presents the first "Asia House Festival of Asian Film

Asia House launches the inaugural "Asia House Festival of Asian Film" in
August. Dedicated to Asian film, it will premiere films from Singapore,
South Korea, Iran, Indonesia and China. Organised and hosted by Asia
House in partnership with Curzon Cinemas, "The Asia House Festival of
Asian Film" celebrates the best in Asian cinema, showcasing films that
have been critically acclaimed at recent film festivals and providing
the first and possibly only opportunity to see these films in the UK. 


The Festival runs from 22 - 28 August at the Renoir Cinema, London. The
programme features some of the finest recent films from Asia. The
Opening Night film, 881, is the spectacular number 1 Singapore hit
musical of 2007 directed by Royston Tan. Seven Days is a Korean thriller
starring Yunjin Kim, star of TV's global hit, Lost. Night Bus from Iran
is a suspenseful anti-war film set during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and
was winner of the 2007 Grand Jury Prize at the Asia Pacific Screen
Awards. The Photograph from Indonesia premiered at the Pusan Film
Festival and comes from a new generation of Indonesian film-makers
exploring social issues affecting their society. After the global
success of Chinese epics such as House of Flying Daggers, our Closing
Night film, Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon, is the latest
historical blockbuster starring Andy Lau, Sammo Hung and Maggie Q.


Asia House is the leading UK pan-Asian organisation working to prepare
the people, corporations and institutions of the UK for a future in
which Asia will be the dominant player. Curzon Cinemas is the leading
cinema group presenting the best in independent and alternative cinema.


http://www.asiahouse.org 

FINDING SLOVENIAN CINEMA ON THE INTERNATIONAL FILM MAP

By Sandy Mandelberger

What most American do not know about the country of Slovenia could easily fill the mileage that separates the two countries. Well, with the idea that film can be an informative and illuminating guide to other cultures, New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Slovenian Film Fund will be presenting a program of classic and contemporary Slovenian films from July 16 to 22. So ladies and gents, it’s time to brush up on your Slovene savvy.

Let’s start with some basics: Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia is a country in southern Central Europe bordering Italy to the west, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north. The capital of Slovenia is Ljubljana. At various points in Slovenia's history, the country has been part of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Republic of Venice, the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia following World War I and the Socialist Republic of Slovenia after 1945, before gaining full independence in 1991. Slovenia is the only former communist state to be at the same time a member of the European Union, the Eurozone, the Council of Europe and NATO. Through its long and often troubled history, the Slovene people have retained their own distinct cultural identity.

In terms of film, Slovene cinema has a more than century-long tradition with such notable historical film auteurs as Karol Grossmann, Janko Ravnik, Ferdo Delak, France Štiglic, Mirko Grobler, Igor Pretnar, France Kosmač, Jože Pogačnik, Matjaž Klopčič, Jane Kavčič, Jože Gale, Boštjan Hladnik and Karpo Godina. In the past decade and a half, since becoming its one sovereign nation, there has been a generation of film artists who have been referred to as the “renaissance of Slovenian cinema”, including such contemporary film directors Janez Burger, Jan Cvitkovič, Damjan Kozole, Janez Lapajne and Maja Weiss. In all, there have been over 150 Slovene feature films, plus a few hundred documentaries and short films, currently producing between four and six feature films each year.

Film genres have been a mix of domestic comedies, social realist dramas and poetic meditations. As with many films produced in the post World War II era, Slovenian films were often more warmly embraced outside the country than inside it. A case in point is the 1957 film Valley of Peace, for which African-American John Kitzmiller received the Best Actor prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. The same new openness that characterized films from Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s were evidenced in Slovenia as well, with such international hits as Dance in the Rain and Paper Planes. The post-Communist period was rocky, but the creation of the Slovenian Film Fund in 1994 has been essential in fostering new talents and promoting Slovenian cinema internationally at film festivals, film markets and other events.

Bringing the Slovene sensibility to New York film audiences, At the Crossroads: Slovenian Cinema will showcase more than a dozen classic and contemporary films that chart Slovenian cinema’s continued evolution as a distinct member of the world cinema club. Screenings will be held at the Walter Reade Theater, the flagship for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, with director Marko Nabersnik and author/film scholar Joseph Valencic on hand to introduce screenings throughout the series.

Classic films to savor in the series include: Dance In The Rain (1961, Bostjan Hladnik), a modernist classic about a painter who looks back at his thwarted personal and artistic choices; Paper Planes (1967, Matjaz Klopcic), one of the films that defined the 1960s aesthetic of quietly observed characters and modern sexual relationships between a photographer and a ballet dancer; Raft of the Medusa (1980, Karpo Godina), a surrealistic-tinged debut by cinematographer Godina about two young school teachers who encounter an avant-garde troupe of artists; Valley of Peace (1956, France Stiglic), a World War II-set film about a downed American flyer who is rescued by a group of Slovenian children, which won African-American actor John Kitzmiller a Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival; and Vesna (1953, Frantisek Cap), a gentle college comedy that remains one of the best loved of all Slovenian film.

More contemporary Slovenian cinema ripe for discovery include: Beneath Her Window (2003, Metod Pevec), an offbeat romantic comedy about a dance instructor who becomes involved with a married man; Guardian of the Frontier (2002, Maja Weiss), a feminist tale about a trio of student on summer break that screened at the 2003 New Directors/New Films series; Idle Running (1999, Janez Burger), a quirky low-budget tale of a slacker student and his friends and romances, which screened at New Directors/New Films in 2000; Outsider (1996, Andrej Kosak), the local box office hit about a young man’s growing involvement with a local contingent of punk rockers; Rooster’s Breakfast (2007, Marko Nabersnik), a contemporary box office hit that skillfully mixes coming-of-age, thriller and musical genres; Spare Parts (2003, Damjan Kozole), a searing look at the human trafficking between the new and old Europe; Sweet Dreams (2001, Saso Podgorsek), an adaptation of a popular local bestseller about a young boy’s cultural clash with modernity in 1970s Yugoslavia; and When I Close My Eyes (1993, Franci Slak), a unsettling psychological thriller of family secrets and betrayal that develops into a devastating portrait of a society ruled by suspicion and power games.

For more information on the films in the series, log on to the Film Society’s website: http://www.filmlinc.com/. Once you have experienced the rare screenings of these films from a culture so far and yet so close, you will be able to find Slovenia on the international film map……

First Look At the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

By Sandy Mandelberger

Although it does not start for almost two more months, the first press releases from the Toronto International Film Festival (http://www.tiff08.ca/) are already stirring up anticipation for what has become one of the top film festival events in the world. Overlapping with the closing days of the Venice Film Festival and immediately following the boutique Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, the Canadian juggernaut is viewed by many industry insiders as the official start of the fall film season and the first chapter in what has become an extended “awards season”.

The independent and international film industries, which have been battered these past few months with downbeat economic realities and troubling closures of several major American and European distribution companies, are looking to Toronto to provide a ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy forecast. Whether Toronto can provide that shot of adrenaline that the industry desperately needs is still unclear, but the first announcements of films to screen at the prestigious showcase are already generating considerable industry buzz and speculation.

Two highly anticipated European films were announced a few days ago in the first of several programming announcements that will be sequentially released over the next month. Good, a UK/German co-production by Brazilian director Vicente Amorim, will have its world premiere at the event. Viggo Mortensen stars as John Halder, a literature professor in the 1930s who writes a novel advocating compassionate euthanasia. His interest in “mercy killing” is quite personal….he has a neurotic wife, two demanding children and a mother suffering from senile dementia. When the book is unexpectedly enlisted by powerful political figures in support of government propaganda, Halder encounters a troubling moral dilemma with personal consequences. The film, director Amorim’s follow up to his 2003 The Middle Of The World, also stars Jason Isaacs, Jodie Whittaker, Mark Strong and Gemma Jones. It was produced by London-based production company Good Films and German shingle Miromar Entertainment. For more information and to view a trailer, visit the film’s official website: http://www.goodthefilm.com/

Toronto serves as the North American festival premiere for the celebrated Italian film Il Divo, directed by Paolo Sorrentino. The Italian/French co-production won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film is a biopic of the controversial Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti, who was elected to the office seven times over a 40 year political career. In many ways, he held the fate of Italy in his hands for over half a century until the disconcerting accusations of involvement with the Mafia caused his political downfall. The film has been praised as an insightful, intensely political film that delves into the hidden character of one of the most powerful figures in the history of Italian politics. The film was produced by Rome-based Indigo Films in collaboration with Studio Canal and arte France Cinéma. The project received subsidy support from Il Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Centre National de la Cinématographie, Eurimages and the Film Commission Torino-Piemonte. For more information and to view a trailer of the film, visit the official film website at http://www.luckyred.it/ildivo

Other films already announced for the event include: Disgrace, an Australian/South African drama directed by Steve Jacobs and starring John Malkovich; Miracle at St. Anna, a world premiere presentation by iconic American director Spike Lee; Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, an American indie film set in New York’s rock-n-roll scene directed by Peter Sollett; and the Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker by American director Kathryn Bigelow, with an all-star cast that Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, David Morse, Jeremy Renner and Christian Camargo.

The Festival previously announced that it will open with the World Premiere of Passchendaele, written, directed and produced by celebrated Canadian filmmaker Paul Gross. The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival runs September 4 to 13, 2008.