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 Little Birds, Big Hopes
After several years of planning, Madrid will finally serve up its newest entrée in the city’s tapas bar of international cultural events with the first edition of Filma Madrid, otherwise known as the Madrid International Film Festival, from March 28 through April 5. You may be one of those cineastes who feels the world hardly needs another film festival; there’s already more than 500 worldwide, catering to every manner of major and not-so-major features, shorts and videos. ....
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 Fathers and Sons
Some weeks ago, way back in 2007, I said I’d deliver the second part of my column on the folks behind the extraordinary The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which since has snagged two Golden Globes (best foreign language film, best direction). Alas, that story seemed to have fallen down a mystery rabbit hole located somewhere in the nether regions of my computer desktop. I’m now happy to report that I have dived down after it (sans diving bell, thankfully) and have retrieved the ....
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 Berlinale Unbound
Next week Border Crossings goes to the 58th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb. 7-17), better known as the Berlinale, to check out the films, parties, news, gossip… and that crashing sound of the dollar falling against the Euro. How bad is it? Well, let’s just say I’ll be hitting as many sponsored buffets and dinner parties as possible. I’ll tote along a tripod and Handycam to capture the festivities with a crew of one (yours truly), or maybe an unpaid ....
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 The Unknown Man Behind “The Unknown Woman”
Anyone who thinks the hugely popular and sentimental Cinema Paradiso is typical of Giuseppe Tornatore’s cinematic style – or at least typical of the way we’d like him to shoot movies -- only has to watch the first few minutes of his most recent feature, The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta), to realize that one of Italy’s best-known directors has become something of an unknown man. Here, Tornatore has gone way beyond the populist realm of Paradiso’s first-blush love, ....
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 PUPAE LOVE: Meeting the Makers of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
Ask Julian Schnabel what drove him to make his current feature The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, and this is what he offers:“I wanted this film to be a tool, like his book, a self-help device that can help you handle your own death. That’s why I did it.”As explanations for movies go, this has to rank as one of the least sanguine in film history. A primer for the bitter end? Definitely not the kind of quote you’d stick on a ....
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