Strong European Showing At 2008 Tribeca Film Festival Awards

By Sandy Mandelberger

Following a packed 10-day marathon of film screenings, industry events, seminar panels and chic parties, the Tribeca Film Festival ended this past weekend with the announcement of the winners of the juried awards in several categories. The World Competition winners were chosen from 12 narrative and 12 documentary features from 18 countries. Two awards were also given to honor New York films, which were chosen from seven narrative and nine documentary features. Awards were also given for the best narrative, best documentary and student visionary films in the Shorts competition.

European films figured strongly in the winners circle. The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature was given to LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Lat den rätte komma in) by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson. Novelist John Ajvide Linquit adapted his best-seller to tell the beautifully touching tale of the first romance of 12-year-old Oskar and the girl next door, Eli….who also happens to be a vampire. The jury commented that the film was exceptional “for its mesmerizing exploration of loneliness and alienation through a masterful reexamination of the vampire myth.” Director Tomas Alfredson receives a cash prize of $25,000 plus the art award "Maternal Nocture: Clearing Storm” created by Stephen Hannock. The film has a North American distribution in place, with Magnet Releasing, the specialty arm of Magnolia Pictures.

Winner of the Best New Narrative Filmmaker prize is Turkish director Huseyin Karabey for the film MY MARLON AND BRANDO. The film, a co-production with The Netherlands and the UK, is a cross-cultural love story between a Turkish actress living in Istanbul and a Kurdish actor living in Iraq. The story is set on the eve of the American invasion and spins a unique take on the “Romeo And Juliet” legend with contemporary references. The jury praised the film for “its skillful blending of documentary style with a classic love story.” The film had its world premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival. The director receives a cash prize of $25,000, sponsored by American Express, and the art award “Bonfire,” created by Ross Bleckner.

Best Actor honors were shared by Thomas Turgose and Piotr Jagiello, the teenage protagonists of the UK drama SOMERS TOWN, directed by Shane Meadows. Turgose plays a lad from the British Midlands who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Jagiello, who plays a Polish refugee living with his construction worker father in a working class neighborhood of London. The jury was impressed with the twin actors’ “extraordinary and exhilarating rendering fo a friendship found”. The prize, sponsored by Delta Air Lines, gives each winner a business elite ticket voucher for anywhere Delta travels.


Eileen Walsh, a haunting Irish actress, won Best Actress honors for “her exquisite rendering of a lonely wife aching to be seen and heard” in director Declan Recks’ EDEN. The film takes a frank look at the slow disintegration of a marriage during the week a couple celebrates their 10th anniversary. Adapted from Eugene O’Brien’s award-winning play, the film’s use of closeups and intimate editing only enhances its emotional impact. The actress receives two business elite ticket vouchers for anywhere Delta travels.

Winning a $25,000 cash prize as Best New Documentary Filmmaker is Spanish director Carlos Carcas for the film OLD MAN BEBO. The film, which had its world premiere at the Malaga Film Festival in Spain, tells the story of Bebo Valedes, the greatest living Cuban musician who was one of the inventors of the mambo, who turns 90 this year. The joyful portrait film mixes archival footage with contemporary interviews and performance segments to offer a celebration of the man and his music. Director Carlos Carcas receives $25,000 cash, sponsored by American Express, and the art award “Maquette for Primary Compass,” created by Don Gummer.

The sole non-European filmmaker in the winners circle is American director Gini Reticker for her moving documentary film PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL. Winning the Best Documentary Feature prize for “its moving portrait of the women of Liberia, who show us how community, motherly love and perseverance can change the fate of a society.” The film, which had its world premiere at the Festival, wins for director Gini Reticker a cash award of $25,000 and the art award “Liza Minnelli,” created by Timothy White.

The Tribeca Film Festival has long demonstrated its support for local film talents. When it began, it hosted a separate “Made In New York” competition category. That has since been dropped, but the Festival still makes a point of honoring New York filmmaking talents through its New York Loves Film Award. This year’s documentary winners was ZONED IN, a documentary by Daniela Zanzotto that traces the remarkable journey of a Bronx high schooler to an Ivy League university, with trenchant comments on the role of race and class in the American education system. Director Zanzotto receives a cash prize of $5000, sponsored by New York State Governor's Office for Motion Picture and Television Development, and the art award “Table Odeon,” created by Donna Ferrato.

Winner of the Best New York Feature was THE CALLER, directed by Richard Ledes. Acting veterans Frank Langella and Elliot Gould star, respectively, as an energy business executive, who is assisted by a private investigator in his effort to expose his corporation's corrupt practices. The jury hailed the film’s “superb use of its New York locations – from the sleek mid-town high-rises to the desolate Brooklyn Bridge piers – to create a chilling and finally stirring suspense movie; an unusual thriller whose mysterious plot finally exposes the mysteries of the heart.” The filmmakers receive a cash award of $5,000, sponsored by The City of New York Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, and the art award “Nude on Guitar” created by Ralph Gibson. Prize winning short films included BEST BOY (Steph Green), MANDATORY SERVICE (Jessica Habie) and ELEPHANT GARDEN (Jessica Habie).

The Cadillac Award was given to the documentary WAR CHILD, directed by C. Karim Chrobog. The American film, which had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, was voted on by Festival audiences. WAR CHILD tells the story of hip-hop artist Emmanuel Jal, a veteran of the 20-year civil war in southern Sudan . First-time filmmaker Chrobog follows Jal as he returns to Sudan for the first time in 18 years to reunite with his family, including the father who summoned him to war and then abandoned him. Now in his 20s, Jal is using his music to raise awareness about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan and the plight of child soldiers throughout the world. The director receives a cash prize of $25,000 and the art award “Peripheral Drift Illusion” created by Ryan McGinness.

The Festival, in presenting over 120 films from 40 countries around the world, gave its loyal audiences the chance to check the pulse of world cinema and to be introduced to the amazing stories of both real and fictional people from many different cultures. It is often said that New York is the center of the world (perhaps an overinflated statement) but for the past 10 days, the world was certainly on display in all its glory and complications for New York audiences to savor, absorb and learn from. Aside from all the glitz and the industry buzz, that could ultimately be the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival’s most important legacy.

Moves08 Festival of Movement on Screen

Specialist festivals of screen based dance and movement are hard to come by, and can often struggle to attract non-specialist audiences. Moves, however, has managed to carve out a distinctive niche for itself within the circuit in a relatively short time frame by straddling a matrix of convergence points. Inclusive billing as a festival of movement on screen has allowed director Pascale Moyes to combine content from an eclectic field of moving image sub-genres, including short film, animation, screendance and digital arts practice. Now in its fourth year, and its second as stand-alone event, the festival has proliferated rapidly, enlarging its geographical spread beyond its Manchester base to encompass locations throughout the North West, and expanding its range of screening options beyond the traditional, indoor, sit-down models to include podcasts; installations and a public screen touring programme.

The festival also has a strong ‘hands-on’ component, this year hosting a week-long filmmaking lab and new media workshop, with a three day conference dovetailing with the festival theme of the interaction of sound and image. Links were also formalised with the Clermont -Ferrand Short Film Festival, presenting a programme of work including Laurent Achard’s award-winning Fear, Little Hunter (2004). Here, a distanced camera position, fixed throughout on an exterior view of a house and adjoining garden, presents a minimum of visual information, concerning the movements of a young boy, a dog, and a woman we assume to be his mother, while ambient sound is manipulated to represent the characters’ emotional experience, building and breaking with disquieting force. In addition, the work of contemporary British-based artists was strongly represented, with the focus of a discussion forum, curated by South East Dance, shifting between Rachel Davies’ large-scale interweaving of image, music and personal testimony in The Assembly (2007); Simon Ellis’ experimentation with a two-second time-frame in work created for iPod viewing, and Andy Wood’s improvisatory-based camera practice. Elsewhere, Claudia Kappenberg’s graphically striking Moebius installation was projected as a triptych, viewable from a Manchester street corner, and former DJ Alex Reuben remixed a compilation from his often music-inspired back catalogue, with shorter works, including the elegantly minimal Que Pasa (2001), interspersed with excerpts from his road movie Routes (2007).

Moves08 succeeded in pulling off a tricky combination, providing a programme of screenings and events relevant to a range of special interest groups, while offering across the board access to an imaginatively forward-looking platform of cross-genre work.



Moves08 Festival of Movement on Screen
22nd - 26th April
RNCM, Manchester; Duke’s, Lancaster and big screen touring programme throughout the north of England


Chirstinn Whyte recently completed a PhD at Middlesex University, researching choreographic practice for screen. http://www.shiftwork.org.uk

WALLFLOWER PRESS LAUNCHES NEW PUBLICATIONS AT TRIBECA FF

By Sandy Mandelberger

One of the fab parties this week at the Tribeca Film Festival was the Tuesday evening bash at BAR 13, hosted by Wallflower Press, the largest publisher of film books and magazines in the United Kingdom. Yoram Allon, Editorial Director and Publisher, was in Gotham with his wife Nicky Allon and editor Ian Haydn Smith as part of the company’s North American launch of the INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE, the authoritative Yearbook of International Cinema, and FILM AND FESTIVALS MAGAZINE, a quarterly publication covering the world of film festivals.

Wallflower Press arranged with the Tribeca Film Festival to distribute close to 1000 copies of the INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE to Festival Industry Delegates as part of their “welcome bags” (which mainly consisted of thin brochures and gimmicky trinkets). WALLFLOWER PRESS also distributed the April edition of FILM AND FESTIVALS MAGAZINE, which contains a preview article on the TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, as well as wrap and preview coverage of festivals in the first half of 2008 and various feature stories on films, festivals and how-to information for independent filmmakers.

“The Tribeca Film Festival is a perfect venue for us to reach both American and international industry professionals, filmmakers and media”, said Allon said during the packed-to-the-rafters soiree. “Since taking over the publication of the INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE from Variety, our goal is to make it the definitive resource on world cinema. FILM AND FESTIVALS is poised to become a significant media presence with the coverage of international film festivals, world cinema and the personalities who make up our business.”

The Tuesday night fete, held in the James Bond-like Upper Lounge at BAR 13 and on the roof deck was co-hosted by International Media Resources, a New York-based public relations, marketing and editorial services company, and Columbia University Press, the trade publisher and distributor that represents Wallflower Press titles in North America. “This was a great opportunity to meet and greet Tribeca attendees and the New York film and media community”, Allon added. “We see this presence in New York as the first step in a year-long campaign to let both the North American industry and film buffs know about the books that we publish and the new media initiatives that we are launching.”

Wallflower Press is a London-based independent publishing house specializing in cinema and the moving image. The company publishes over 30 new titles each year and has recently moved into the magazine business with FILM AND FESTIVALS MAGAZINE and other publications. The company will be soon announcing various new media content creation and distribution initiatives for the coming year. For more information, consult the company website: www.wallflowerpress.co.uk

The INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE, first published in 1963, is the world’s most authoritative and trusted yearbook of world cinema. The 2008 edition is a 450-page resource that covers the cinema output of over 100 countries. Special features in this double edition include: coverage of five ‘Directors of the Year’ (Fatih Akin, Suzanne Bier, Guillermo del Toro, Paul Greengrass and Jia Zhangke), a detailed country focus on Germany, industry analysis on documentary and the growth of DVD production and a comprehensive listing and description of all major international and smaller local film festivals from all over the world. This may have been Wallflower Press’ first clinch with the Tribeca Film Festival, but positive buzz surrounding the publications and the fab party makes it pretty certain it is not the last. Stay tuned.

ENCOUNTERS WITH BRITISH CINEMA AT TRIBECA FF

By Sandy Mandelberger, North American Editor

One of the great pleasures of attending a film festival is the serendipity that often occurs when one sees one film after another, finding thematic connections or differences between them that delight the soul and stimulate the mind. I had just such an occurrence the other day, seeing two British films back to back. It just happened that the films were screening after one another, but it made me realize how much I love and appreciate both the high and the low in British cinema.

I’ve been a fan of films from the British Isles since I first discovered the beauteous renderings of David Lean and the “kitchen sink” dramas of the angry young men of the 1950s and 1960s. The two films I saw represented both this high (proper Brits behaving badly) and low (working class blokes trying to make their way in the world). I must also confess a weakness for British films that are set in the waning days of the British Empire in India. I find the subject, the drama, the comment on class warfare, utterly involving.

The first film on that cloudy Sunday is a worthy addition to that sub-genre. BEFORE THE RAINS, directed by Indian director Santosh Sivan (THE TERRORIST) presents a a sumptuous story of love, betrayal and loyalty in the lush jungles of southern India in the late 1930s, when the Indian independence movement led by Ghandi was beginning to take force. In this beautifully shot film, an English spice baron, played with appropriate class privilege mixed with angst by Linus Roche, is the very model of an English ex-patriot, with a wife and young son in tow. But Linus has a secret….a love affair he has been conducting with his female servant. When the local community becomes aware of the married servant’s disgrace, the hunt is on to find the man who has violated her. Roche’s chief aid, a young Indian who sees himself as more British than Indian, conceals the secret and then is implicated. His loyalties are tested until the very last frame. The impossibly handsome Indian actor Rahul Bose gives a startling performance as a man torn between modernism and tradition, a metaphor for his entire country. The film, a US-UK co-production presented by Merchant-Ivory Films (the trendsetters in high end British cinema) will next month in the US via specialty distributor Roadside Attractions.

Truly on the other end of the scale, yet also about the clash of cultures, is SOMERS TOWN, the latest film from UK filmmaker Shane Meadows (THIS IS ENGLAND). In this charming dramedy, the relationship between two boys represents the melting-pot of the new England., Tomo is a lad from the Midlands who comes to London to find a better life. Marek is a Polish immigrant who lives with his construction worker father. Each, in his own way, is escaping a past of poverty and dislocation, looking to their new surroundings to offer them both economic and spiritual sustenance. That they are both walled off from the riches of the modern “British dream” is part of what unites the unlikely duo. In the same vein as the films of Ken Loach, England is both the land of ambitious dreams and bitter disappointments.

The Brits are well represented in the Tribeca Film Festival program. Mike Figgis, one of the few British directors who also has found success in Hollywood (LEAVING LAS VEGAS), is presenting the World Premiere of LOVE LIVE LONG, a film set in Istanbul during the famous high-speed race known as the Gumball Rally. With this setting as backdrop, Figgis has crafted a raw and intimate fillm that epxoses the affects of an unexpected sexual encounter and the high stakes of the race on two strangers. Figgis also was one of several directors to be featured in Tribeca Talks, a series of conversations with leading filmmakers. On Monday at the Directors Guild Theater, Figgis talked about straddling the two worlds of Hollywood and independent cinema, where he is considered something of a film maverick. He is one of the few major directors to have worked in the digital format, bringing eloquence and beauty to TIMECODE (2000), with multiple screens and recurring imagery. He is one of the founding patrons of the online film community Shooting People and crated a stablilizer for digital cameras known as the “Fig Rig”. A world-class director, writer and composer, Mike Figgis’ work is in constant evolution and his digital works challenges the way we experience film stories.

Other important British films screening this week: BOY A, the celebrated debut of director John Crowley, centers on a former juvenile offender who is released from prison after 14 years. The film follows hs reentry into society with the help of his counselor. Newcomer Andrew Garfield was nominated for a BAFTA Award for his stunning performance as the hesitant 24 year old who must catch up with his peers while keeping his past a secret. In THE COTTAGE, director Paul Andrew Williams spins a nifty kidnapping plot that goes horribly awry. The director, known for his previous film LONDON TO BRIGHTON, here offers a gory horror-comedy about two brothers and their potty-mouthed hostage who stumble into the wrong farmhouse.

Britain has a long tradition of documentaries and three new ones are premiering at Tribeca. BAGHDAD HIGH by Ivan O’Mahoney and Laura Winter, centers on four high schoolers (a Kurd, a Christian, a Shiite and a Sunni) who are given cameras to document their last year in high school in war-torn Baghdad. The film offers a rare first-hand account of what it’s like to grow up where sectarian violence rages right outside the classroom window. In Nathan Rissman’s I AM BECAUSE WE ARE, superstar performer Madonna (who also wrote and co-produced) turns the lens on the tragic stories of millions of Malawi children offered by AIDS. The films offers both a call to action and a revelatory personal journey that is a testament to survival, change and hope. And in MAN ON WIRE, one of the hits at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, director James Marsh chronicles the 1974 incident when New York gasped as French daredevil Phillippe Petit walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. This stunning portrait of an artist of reckless daring and impish charm is also a chronicle of the once might World Trade Center towers, which now hold another place in history as the beginning of the current tensions between the West and the East.

New from moves08

Night Practice combines the structure of meticulous training with simple magicalwonder.The seven dancers from Coventry’s Kombat Breakers hang out on a floodlit football pitch at night. There is no coach to be seen and the film explores the undirected energy that comes from being able to do whatever you want. Shot on a pitch in the middle of the night in Coventry, Night Practice combines the structure of meticulous training with simple magical wonder.

Screenings: 26 April 2008, 18:00, RNCM Manchester & Dukes Lancaster

More information: http://www.movementonscreen.org.uk/dayschedule08.asp?selected=1&prog=76573&day=5

CINEMA FRANCAIS AT THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

By Sandy Mandelberger


New York City has had a love affair with French film for more than 75 years. From the silent film era to today’s Gallic gems, French films are consistently the highest audience attractions and the non-English cinema most represented in the Big Apple. The Tribeca Film Festival, which began its first day of screenings today, adds to this “Francophile” tendency with the premiere of several films a la francais.

Five dramatic features dot the Festival’s various film strands. In the World Narrative Feature Competition, there is the enigmatic 57,000 Kilometers Between Us by debut director Delphine Kreuter. In this provocative yet charming take on digital communication, the follows a teen caught between her stepdad (who records the family's supposedly perfect life online), her real father (now a transsexual), and the refuge of her online life as she searches for meaningful connections. The film, which has been a modest box office hit in its native France, is produced by Les Films du Poisson and is up for a prize in the Tribeca Film Festival competition.

Two French films are being showcased in Feature Narrative non-competitive section. The most celebrated is The Secret of The Grain, the surprise winner for Best Film and Best Director at this year’s Cesar Awards (the French Oscar). Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, the film is a remarkable depiction of a family of North African immigrants in a decaying port town in southern France. The film features a terrific ensemble cast who become as endearing as members of one’s own family. The film also won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival and it young actress Hafsia Herzi has been singled out for her performance, winning a Cesar, Lumiere and Marcello Mastroianni Prize for her performance. Despite huge acclaim, the film was only recently been picked up for US distribution by IFC Films, which plans a very short theatrical release for the film later this summer.

Charly is a new coming-of-age drama from director Isild Le Besco. The film tells the tale of two teenagers, 14-year-old Nicolas, a young man tramping towards the sea, and Charly, a tough girl who takes him into her mobile home, where an unusual domestic arrangement evolves. The film, produced by television network Arte, had its world premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and makes its North American premiere at Tribeca later this week.

In the Encounter section of the Festival, a strand devoted to more experimental work, the documentary film Everywhere At Once is a definite stand-out. This poetic exercise brings together renowned photographer Peter Lindbergh, experimental filmmaker Holly Fisher and actress Jeanne Moreau, to weave a tapestry of images shaping one woman's deepest sense of selfhood. The film has its World Premiere at the Festival on Sunday.

The Tribeca Film Festival has become a major showcase for the short form, introducing audiences to the first works of wonderfully gifted film artists. Three short films will be shown: 20,000 Phantoms by Jean-Gabriel Periot, an expressionistic documentary on the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; The Milky Way, a short family drama by Luc Moullet; The Second Life Of The Sugar Bowl, an eye-opening domestic tale by Didier Canaux; and Supply And Demand, a satire on the life of a medical examiner, directed by Frédéric Farrucci.

And we’ve saved the best for last…..the Festival will offer a rare screening of a restored “lost” silent classic, Two Timid Souls (1929) from farceur René Clair. The restored film, which was the highlight of last fall’s Pordenone Silent Film Festival, is a near-forgotten gem which displays all the elegance, wit, and visual inventiveness that are hallmarks of its director. The film was restored by the Cinémathèque Française and will feature the world premiere of a new musical score played at the screenings by the New York University Chamber Orchestra. A true movie and music event to be savored…..

Lift Off For 7th Tribeca Film Festival

By Sandy Mandelberger

On the same day that the Cannes Film Festival announced its official program, the Tribeca Film Festival lifts off this evening in its most ambitious to date. The Festival, which is presenting its seventh edition, has become a major New York cultural event and has increasingly flexed its muscles as an industry destination as well.

Modeling itself on such long-standing events as Cannes, Venice and Toronto, the Tribeca Film Festival has avoided the “boutique” approach of such established New York festival events as the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films, in creating a “five ring circus” atmosphere, loaded with World and US Premieres, public events and chic industry parties. Definitely more populist than its uptown festival colleagues, the Festival offers a mix of esoteric cinema from around the world with more popular genres (specifically, family and sports films) and a series of free and outdoor events meant to appeal to average filmgoers, rather than just the arthouse elite.

That strategy has succeeded in attracting major financial sponsors, including American Express, Apple, Cadillac and Delta Airlines, making it one of the best endowed financially of the North American film confabs. Perhaps it was this multi-million dollar commitment of funding, along with criticism of previous high ticket prices, that motivated the Festival to lower its ticket price to $15 for evening and weekend screenings and $8 for daytime screenings. With Americans, and New Yorkers, counting their pennies these days, cash outlays for exorbitant “Festival passes” could be hurting. But audiences have definitely embraced the event and record attendance is expected again this year.

One of the ironies of the development of the Festival is that it began as almost a kind of “public service” event, designed to reinvigorate the neighborhood of TriBeCa (that’s triangle below Canal Street for you yokels) after the attacks of 9/11. Local residents, including Robert de Niro and producer Jane Rosenthal, created the Festival as a way of bringing people and income to businesses hard hit after the 2001 attacks. However, these days, the Tribeca Film Festival is no longer exclusively a downtown event. The Festival is centering its Hospitality Lounge and Press Center in Greenwich Village, with film theaters across Manhattan now participating in the ambitious program. Of course, this opens up the event to all Manhattanites, who are remarkably provincial in their way about not venturing outside their core neighborhoods. In effect, the Festival has now become a multi-site, neighborhood-diverse event with only tenuous connections to its original downtown roots.

It has also become a destination for distributors, sales agents, festival programmers and other media professionals. Since the Festival now boasts an impressive array of World and International Premieres, those looking for the next “big thing” either from the American independent world or the international film scene swarm to the event. While quality is sometimes compromised for premiere status, the Festival definitely does deliver a strong program for all kinds of tastes and a proving ground for how the films will play to a sophisticated, urban audience. Coming just a few weeks before the Cannes extravaganza, the Festival offers sales agents and distributors the start of a discussion that could very easily end up on the Croisette in a few weeks with a signed contract.

But industry talk aside, the Tribeca Film Festival is mainly a public event, designed to showcase new and interesting filmmakers, as well as throw show Hollywood dazzle to the masses. New York and its film aficionados definitely deserved a gargantuan smorgasbord of an event, instead of an elegant (and even snobby) wine tasting. In that sense, the Festival is very much like the city that it celebrates: oversized, diverse, multi-ethnic, maddening and even a little chaotic. So, log on to the Festival’s website: http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/ and jump into the pool at the deep end.

RETURNING TO ROMANIAN ROOTS

By Sandy Mandelberger, North American Editor

In the world of cinema, there is always a “new wave” occurring in a country or region or even genre. No question, in 2007/2008, that new wave is centered in the country of Romania, which has flexed its muscles on the international stage with a series of lauded films. At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, the Romanian abortion drama 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS by Cristian Mingui was the surprise winner of the Palme d’Or, the Festival’s highest honor. Another Romanian film 12:08 OF BUCHAREST by Corneliu Porumboiu also won a prize at Cannes and has since become an international arthouse cult favorite. Earlier in the year, the naturalistic THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU by Cristi Puiu showed on many film critics “top ten” lists.

For those who think that this Romanian renaissance is some kind of new phenomenon, the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York (which sponsors both the New York Film Festival in the Fall and the recently concluded New Directors/New Films series) is presenting a survey of Romanian cinema of the 1960s through the 1980s, a dark period before the fall of the Ceausescu dictatorship, when Romania was one of the most closed societies in the world. For “Shining Through A Long, Dark Night: Romanian Cinema, Then And Now”, which runs from April 16 to 27 at the Walter Reade Theater, the series presents 18 films, most of which have never been seen in North America before.

Probably the best known film in the series is FOREST OF THE HANGED, directed by Liviu Ciulei, who won the Best Director Prize at Cannes in 1965. Set during World War I, as the Romanian and Austro-Hungarian armies battle for control of Transylvania, the film tells the story of a young Romanian lieutenant who becomes a conscientious objector in the midst of battle. The film mixes epic-scale battle scenes with bold surrealistic touches in a stunningly shot panorama of black and white Cinemascope.

Also from 1965, when Eastern European was experiencing cultural thaws in neighboring Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well, is the non-linear narrative SUNDAY AT SIX by debut director Lucian Pintilie. The film, set in the late 1940s, when the Communist Party was consolidating its power, presents an unlikely romance between two Communist revolutionaries who find their mutual affection at odds with their party orthodoxy. This clash between the personal and the institution is one of the themes explored in many of these films, which were financed and controlled by the state film machine.

Films from the 1980s, including Iosif Demian’s A GIRL IN TEARS (1980), which uses both professional and non-professional actors to retrace an unsolved murder of a young woman and Dan Pita’s THE CONTEST (1982), which mixes harsh realism with allegory, use cinematic symbols of discontent or unease to offer a “between the lines” criticism of the Communist regime and the passive acceptance of totalitarianism that marked this generation of Romanian citizens.

The newest film in the series is THE PAPER WILL BE BLUE (2006) from director Radu Muntean. This is the one major Romanian New Wave film that has yet to land an American distribution deal. The film takes place during the final hours of the Romanian Revolution in 1989, when the dictator Ceausescu and his wife were unceremoniously shot in full public view. An idealistic private in the national militia decides to desert his patrol in order to join the anti-government forces that have taken control of the national television station. A kind of surrealism takes over, where nobody is quite sure who is on what side and whether they are shooting at the right people. This mix of dark humor and bloody chaos has many parallels beyond Romania, and could, with a change of environment and language, be a portrait of Baghdad in our own times.

The main protagonists of the so-called Romanian New Wave have made it clear that this designation is simply an invention of the media and a simplistic way for film critics to categorize a new crop of films. But there is no doubt that the Romanians, who have had to suppress their behavior for decades under the Nazis and then under the Communist regime, are letting their freak fly, and taking international cinema into exciting, if uncharted waters. It promises to be an exciting ride.

For more information on this and other Film Society of Lincoln Center programs, log on to: http://www.filmlinc.com/

MOVES08 SCREENINGS AND FORUMS

special events including the Dance For Camera Nights at moves08

www.movementonscreen.org.uk/dayschedule08.asp?selected=1&event=76565&day=3

Screenings start from tomorrow at the RNCM off Oxford Road (Manchester). Films will be playing every day at 6.30pm and 8pm, including some extra-screeningsover the week-end.

www.movementonscreen.org.uk/dayschedule08.asp?day=5

48th Zlín International Film Festival for Children and Youth

In its 48th edition, the Zlín International Film Festival for Children and Youth brings a number of novelties. The major one rests with moving to brand new screening venues located in the Golden Apple Cinema – a multiplex and a shopping precinct located in the very centre of Zlín. The precinct’s name refers to the original name of Zlín as well as to the new look of the spectator price (inspired by an apple slice), designed by Daniel Piršč.

The festival itself now has eight days. Its constant growth is well represented in the rising number of participants and films. For this year, organizers expect more than 400 films and around 60,000 spectators to turn up. They are going to witness the launching of a new section focused more on university students who have comprised larger and larger share of festival spectators ever since Zlín became a vibrant university town. In the previous years, only films for youth were able to catch the more mature part of festival goers. Now, everybody interested in controversial topics, themes of boundary crossing and transition between youth and adulthood will certainly find their favourites in the new section of Night Horizons.

For more information visit www.zlinfest.cz/index.php