As reported by Variety, Montreal-based distribution company Evokative Films has acquired Canadian rights to Pierre Laffargue’s French action film Black. The film stars French rapper MC Jean Gab’1, who Twitch readers might recognize from his small role in Pierre Morel’s Banliueue 13 (District 13), and Carole Karemera. Jean Gab’1 plays the titular Senegalese bank-robber (born and raised in France) who plans on going straight after a botched heist. His cousin interrupts his brief retirement with a call from Dakar, where a briefcase full of diamonds presents a new opportunity.
One might ask what differentiates this film from the pack? The trailer, which is currently being re-cut for the Canadian market, gives a hint. The French and Senegalese locales, the witchcraft, the Afro-beat music, the European heavies and the overall vibe invokes the black action films of the 70s but with a modern international vibe. Evokative Films is the first international distributor to purchase rights for Black, and the United States rights are still up for grabs. Who will be next? Stay tuned to Twitch.
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Really just to be able to type Chuck Norris’ name was reason enough to bring up the news of a trailer for the sugary pop of Love Fight, a film that looks to make your eyes water as that sugar goodness invades your taste buds.
Kevin over at NipponCinema started it :::pointing accusing finger::: and is hosting the trailer for what appears to be your usual teen love story, but with boxing and kicking gags to boot! I’ll let his description play it out for you.
The movie is based on a novel by Eri Makino called “Seibo Shojo”. Izuru Narushima (Midnight Eagle) directed and Takao Osawa (also Midnight Eagle) served the dual role of supporting actor and producer. The story involves a boy named Minoru (Kento Hayashi) who’s always been a bit of a weakling. Throughout his childhood his spunky female friend Aki (Kie Kitano) watched out for him and protected him from bullies. One day he meets Osawa’s character who trains him how to box. Then when he finally gets stronger than Aki she decides to take up boxing herself, which obviously drives him crazy. Predictably, the mutual boxing obsession brings up all sorts of strong new emotions between them.
With the full line-up for the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival officially announced, I can finally begin to effectively obsess. And with 312 films from 64 countries screening at TIFF08, including 249 feature-length films, 76 per cent of which are world, international or North American premieres, and 61 of which are feature directorial debuts … well, needless to say, there’s a lot to obsess about.
Never let it be said, however, that I am not methodical in my obsessions. I begin with a preliminary review of the Contemporary World Cinema sidebar, with special thanks to Bay Area filmbud Carole Rutherford whose raids on IMdb and Wikipedia got me motivated. I also shout out to my Evening Class cohort Michael Hawley, the Twitch and Row Three teams, Dave Hudson at The Greencine Daily, Darren Hughes at 1st Thursday, the crew around Girish Shambu’s water cooler, and Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE for their welcome recommendations. This will be a slightly amoebic entry that gains mass as recommendations pour in. That being said, recommendations welcome!
Off the cuff—being an avid supporter of Spanish cinema—I’m intrigued by José Luis Cuerda’s Blind Sunflowers (Los Girasoles ciegos), primarily because it features one of my favorite Spanish actresses and spooky Simón from The Orphanage (Maribel Verdú, Roger Príncep). Also, I found Juan Carlos Tabío’s Strawberry and Chocolate both sexy and hilarious so I’m primed for more sensuous laughs with Horn of Plenty. And after the visually stunning Bonbon El Perro, I’ll look through any cinematic window with Carlos Sorin.
Having seen both Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart and Chop Shop, I’m keen to his compassionate observations of marginalized lives and anticipate that Goodbye Solo will not disappoint. With a cast that includes Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Rénier and the incomparable Edith Scob, I’m curious what kind of B-movie vibe might be present in Olivier Assayas’s most recent L’Heure d’été (Summer Hours). Impressed with last year’s Jar City, and appreciative of his production credits on The Amazing Truth of Queen Raquela, I’m inclined to check out Baltasar Kormakur’s Brúðguminn (White Night Wedding). As a board member on The Global Film Initiative, I’m steeped in Indonesian auteur Garin Nugroho (Of Love & Eggs, Opera Jawa) and am anxious to follow through with Under the Tree to monitor his strengthening creativity. Upon Anthony Kauffman’s recommendations, I’ve become interested in Two-Legged Horse and Treeless Mountain; the latter especially because Girish Shambu introduced me to So Yong Kim’s In Between Days, which I very much enjoyed.
I could roost fully in the World Cinema selection and will have to make some difficult decisions to sample TIFF08’s multiple sidebars.
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Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s film Johnny Mad Dog , which was produced by Mathieu Kassovitz and Benoit Jaubert, is based on Emmanuel Dongala’s novel of the same name. Dongala’s book presents the intertwining stories of two children from an unidentified West African country: Johnny Mad Dog, a guerrilla soldier and Laokole, a girl who goes on the run after town is raided by Johnny Mad Dog’s militia, the Death Dealers.
Continue Reading "Preview and Trailer for Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s JOHNNY MAD DOG"...
The challenges of independent film distribution are tackled head-on in Jonathan Marlow’s incisive Greencine Daily editorial: “Studios didn’t build their sales model for you.” It’s a fiercely opined, sobering, read and I thought I would supplement Jonathan’s survey of the woeful state of distribution with a piece I’ve written for the current issue of movieScope—"Reinventing the Reel: How the Global Film Initiative is changing the business of independent film"—on the multi-platform distribution model adopted by the Global Film Initiative (on whose board I serve). My thanks to Susan Weeks-Coulter, Santhosh Daniel and Simone Nelson of the Global Film Initiative for their editorial assistance.
Continue Reading "MOVIESCOPE—Vol. 2, Issue 2"...
Ready, get set, go! The wait is over and the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival is fixed to begin. Over the past few weeks I’ve had the chance to preview a handful of festival titles on screener (plus one press screening), and herein offer some thoughts on what I’ve seen.
Out of the bunch, the two films with the biggest pre-festival profiles are undoubtedly Catherine Breillat’s festival opener The Last Mistress (Une vieille maîtresse) and Jia Zheng-ke’s Still Life (Sanxia haoren). Reams have been written about both since their premieres at Cannes 2007 and Venice 2006 respectively. So rather than add to the din, I’ll simply say that both are as excellent as anything else to be found in their directors’ esteemed filmographies. Asia Argento’s feral, spellbinding performance as an obsessed 19th century Spanish courtesan has to be seen to be believed. And Yu Lik-wai’s HD cinematography of the area to be flooded by China’s Three Gorges Dam is as crisp and sumptuous as digital filmmaking gets.
Continue Reading "SFIFF51—Michael Hawley At the Starting Gun!"...
Citing last year’s 50th anniversary festival as a “fantastic benchmark” and “a gateway to a brighter future,” SF Film Society Executive Director Graham Legatt and his programming team revealed this year’s equally impressive line-up at a press conference last week. In a recent Evening Class write-up, I summarized all the special events that had been announced prior to the press conference, to which we can now add the following:
* Errol Morris will receive this year’s Persistence of Vision Award, with an on-stage interview and a screening of his latest work, Standard Operating Procedure.
* The Maurice Kanbar Award for screenwriting will go to Robert Towne, who will be interviewed on stage by Eddie Muller prior to a screening of Shampoo.
* This year’s State of Cinema Address will be given by Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired magazine and former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog.
* Rose McGowen and Jason Lee are to be the recipients of this year’s (2nd annual) Midnight Awards, presented to an actor and actress “entering the prime of their careers.”
That same pre-press conference write-up contained the Cinema by the Bay and Castro Theater roster of films. We now know what the other 80-plus programs worth of narrative and documentary features will be, and it’s quite something—full of movies I’d been hoping the festival would bring our way. I’ve had a week to digest the line-up and now offer this overview of what I personally find exciting about SFIFF51.
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Variety has leaked the line-up for the 19th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. With a nod to the upcoming Oscars, PSIFF’s “Awards Buzz” program will screen 55 of the 63 official submissions to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for foreign-language film. This is my main incentive for attending PSIFF and I welcome any feedback from Twitch readers regarding the “Awards Buzz” selection.
In usual obsessive fashion, I’ve scoured the film review lists for Strictly Film School, Long Pauses, Film Journey, and (of course) my own Twitch teammates and have linked reviews when relevant. I’ve also linked all Wikipedia synopses, which usually include IMdb profiles; but, in those instances where they don’t, I’ve linked in IMdb as well, particularly for their external reviews and user comments. In those instances where The Greencine Daily has crafted a film-specific critical overview, I have linked those in as well.
Continue Reading "PSIFF08—Foreign Language Oscar Submissions"...
Michael Hawley, contributing writer to The Evening Class, offers the Twitch readership anticipatory remarks to the upcoming Palm Springs International Film Festival.
The 19th Palm Springs International Film Festival ("PSIFF") is set to begin in two weeks, and although the full 230-film line-up won’t be announced until December 23, bits and pieces of what we might expect to see from January 3 to 14 have recently been brought to light.
The three International Gala titles announced thus far are Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven, Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort and Danielle Luchetti’s My Brother is an Only Child. Akin’s film will also be the opening the Bay Area’s Berlin & Beyond festival on January 10, leading me to believe that the director himself will soon be California-bound to support the film at both festivals. The Edge of Heaven, for which Akin won a Best Screenplay award at Cannes, is Germany’s official entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
Cedar’s Beaufort, you may recall, became Israel’s Oscar entry after their first choice—Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit—was disqualified for having too much English dialogue. Both films, however, will screen at Palm Springs this year as part of a spotlight series celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary.
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The Global Film Initiative announced today that seven filmmakers have been awarded completion funding for their film projects during the Initiative’s Fall granting-cycle. “This Fall’s grant-recipients represent a diverse spectrum of global filmmaking,” says Santhosh Daniel, Director of Programs. “We’re very impressed by the high quality of projects, and the cultural breadth they represent.”
The 7 projects were selected from a group of 44 applications, from 26 different countries, for their artistic excellence, accomplished storytelling, and cultural perspective on daily life around the world. Funds received from grants are used to subsidize post-production costs, such as laboratory and sound mixing fees, and access to advanced editing systems.
Since its founding in 2002, the Initiative has awarded more than 50 grants to emerging and established filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
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I’d be hard-pressed to outdo Robert Avila’s outstanding SF360 preview of Global Lens 2007. As a member of the GFI board, I am grateful for his accomplished outreach. This year’s dynamic, community-based screening schedule truly achieves GFI’s mission to—as Susan Weeks Coulter describes it—"link local communities through these films and create a cinematic experience that can be shared by everyone.”
Spanning eight neighborhoods and thirteen venues, Global Lens 2007 launched on November 1st and continues through November 16th. The series opened at St. Dominic’s and St. John’s churches (Pacific Heights and Richmond District), and continues with screenings across the city, including the Bayview Opera House (Bayview), Roxie Film Center and El Rio (Mission), San Francisco Art Institute ("SFAI", North Beach), and San Francisco State University ("SFSU").
As part of new and ongoing partnerships with the Initiative, the San Francisco Film Society will also host daytime, educational screenings for high school students at the de Young Museum, and the Mexican Heritage Plaza (San Jose) will screen the entire series, as well as host educational film screenings, during the month of December. “Collaboration, which is reflected in our partnerships, is an extension of our mission to support film communities locally and worldwide,” says Santhosh Daniel, Director of Programs at The Global Film Initiative.
The premiere of Global Lens 2007 marks the second time the Initiative has taken a collaborative approach to its series in the Bay Area. Last year, Global Lens screened in five locations and this year’s expansion reflects the Initiative’s continuing mission to foster the growth of vibrant independent film communities through innovative presentations of Global Lens.
Following is the ongoing Bay Area schedule for Global Lens 2007. As I’ve already specified, I’ll be introducing films at the Roxie Film Center (except for Another Man’s Garden, which will be introduced by Cornelius Moore of California Newsreel).
Continue Reading "2007 GLOBAL LENS—Line-up"...
Tartan Film has finally got around to releasing Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s Invisible Waves in the UK on 19th November, The release is fairly barebones but it includes a making of. The specs of the release are below:
Special Features:
Behind the Scenes Featurette
Original Theatrical Trailer
Film Notes
DTS Digital Surround 5.1
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
English Subtitles
I seem to be on something of a Robert Koehler love fest recently, which I assure you is purely coincidental; but, when a critic of Koehler’s stature champions a small, unknown film like Lee Isaac Chung’s Munyurangabo, it serves to emphasize what I think is best about this medium of film writing. Koehler’s Variety review penned from Cannes motivated me to catch Munyurangabo at its sole Toronto International P&I screening. Koehler proclaims that Munyurangabo is the flat-out “discovery of this year’s Un Certain Regard batch” and “is—by several light years—the finest and truest film yet on the moral and emotional repercussions of the 15-year-old genocide that wracked Rwanda.” I couldn’t agree more.
Cameron Bailey’s TIFF program capsule likewise extols: “In the future, films like Munyurangabo might not seem so startling. But for now, this counts as one of the most audacious achievements of the year.” “Nothing short of a marvel,” Bailey continues, Munyurangabo is “[c]rafted with dramatic precision and deep humanity” and “rises to a stunning plea for reconciliation.”
Munyurangabo practices the same kind of grass root aesthetics that lends Cochochi its organic integrity. Both films escape Western manipulations by putting the script and the camera’s perspective into the hands of its indigenous subjects. Likewise, where Cochochi is strengthened by its usage of the Tarahumara language, Munyurangabo boasts the distinction of being the first film rendered in Kinyarwanda. Ethonography effectively meets the art house in each of these commendable gestures to world cinema. After watching Munyurangabo, I chased down director Lee Isaac Chung and scriptwriter Samuel Anderson who agreed to meet me in the lobby of Sutton Place, from where we found a café up the street where we could talk about their film.
Continue Reading "TIFF Report: MUNYURANGABO—Interview With Director Lee Isaac Chung and Scriptwriter Samuel Anderson"...
A little campy gem here dug up by our very own wooden lad ... apparently much loved Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who has always been a lover of pulp film, cowrote a James Bond spoof titled 0093 somewhere along the line and now the book has been translated to the big screen. The trailer has appeared online and this is goofy, intentionally lo-fi stuff that should be an absolute blast. If only they could’ve gotten Koji Yakusho in the lead ...
** UPDATE **
Oh, look. Auto translators aren’t reliable after all. Having had someone who actually speaks the language take a look at the site in question (thanks Jason!) it turns out that Kurosawa’s involvement is rather overstated. Turns out the reference on the website is to a book on horror film that Kurosawa co-wrote with this film’s director some time back. The actual writer of this picture is Jun’ya Katô who previously penned Meatball MAchine and was involved with the Ten Nights of Dreams omnibus.
Susan Weeks Coulter—knowing how keenly curious I am in the entire filmmaking process; from the word on the page to the frenzy on the wall—invited me to join her and her Global Film Initiative ("GFI") staff for dinner at San Francisco’s Indian Oven to celebrate not only their snappy new MySpace site but the completion of GFI’s Spring granting cycle. After weathering multiple grant proposals, six filmmakers have been awarded completion funding for their film projects. GFI is a not-for-profit film distributor specializing in independent films from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The Initiative awards grants twice each year, to both emerging and established filmmakers. Since The Initiative was founded in 2002, more than 50 grants have been awarded to filmmakers from the developing world.
These film projects have been selected based on their artistic excellence, accomplished storytelling, and cultural perspective on daily life around the world. “GFI’s granting program is at the core of our mission,” says Santhosh Daniel, Director of Programs. “By funding projects from the developing world, we support international filmmaking communities and our mission of cultural exchange through film.” Funds received from grants are used to subsidize post-production costs, such as laboratory and sound mixing fees, and access to advanced editing systems.
It is with great pride that Twitch (via The Evening Class) has been allowed to be the first to announce GFI’s Spring 2007 grant recipients:
Continue Reading "THE GLOBAL FILM INITIATIVE—Awards Granted to Six Promising Projects"...
