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India Express is reporting that the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI), slated to begin its annual International Film Festival on March 6th, will present Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura with its International Life Time Achievement award. The award , the first of its kind to be handed out by the festival, will be presented on March 13th, as the festival commences. Additionally, Saura, who holds directing credits in over forty films, will have eight of his films screened throughout the festival. In its tenth year of existence, The MAMI International Film Festival will screen over 100 films from 40…

CWB’s International Editor James Ulmer recently returned from the 58th Berlin International Film Festival, where he filed his exclusive series of Berlinale Unbound columns and on-the-scene videos. Missed the original reports? Click here to view James’ complete column and video coverage of Berlinale 2008, from The Rolling Stones’ arrival to a movie from Absurdistan. Belinale Reports was partly sponsored by Atlantic Travel (Travel ATT) Berlinale Unbound, Market Animals Part 1 (Watch Video) BERLIN, Feb. 13 — Angela Hawkins calls it like she sees it, and on a good day she sees the European Film Market as the rough equivalent of…

Cinema Without Borders hosts a SSG Screening Series on Sunday, February 24th, 12:30 PM at the Fine Arts Theater in Los Angeles. This screening is dedicated to the Best films from the 2007 Palm Springs ShortFest International Festival and Film Market. Here are the seven highlights of Palm Springs International ShortFest that provide some distinctly different perspectives on our world:THE BEST OF SHORTFESTTHE NEXT MOVE Finland, Director: Laura Neuvonen, 13 min.When a young couple moves into their first home, the wife gets a little carried away with the decorating.IT SNOWS IN MARRAKECH Switzerland, Director: Hicham Alhayat, 15 min.A dutiful son…

It is 1987 as communism is coming to an end in Romania, two girls Otilia and Gabita are college students and roommates in Bucharest. Gabita is pregnant and has decided to have an illegal abortion. After Gabita decides to contact Mr. Bebe, who performs abortions, Otilia and Gabita meet him in a hotel where he will perform the abortion. Unfortunately they don’t have enough money to pay for his services, so instead his asks to be paid with sexual favors, this is a decision that both girls will have to make and in the end come to terms with the…

BERLIN, Feb. 11 — It’s hard to resist the tickle of a good movie title, no matter how the movie itself stacks up. Such was my take on Absurdistan, a comedy screening at the Berlinale’s European Film Market which, absurdly enough, I didn’t manage to see despite the lure of its logline: Two childhood sweethearts in a village in Central Asia find their first night of love threatened when the local women go on a sex strike after the men refuse to attend to the town’s water shortage. Think Lysistrata comes to Borat-ville. “The women say no sex until you…

BERLIN, Feb. 10 — You would think all the cheers and stomping and paparazzi pandering at yesterday’s Berlinale press conference was for Daniel Day Lewis or another export from Hollywood, but in fact it was for Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. With a fan club that clearly extends beyond Indian shores, Khan was in town to promote his mega-budget musical Om Shanti Om, directed by top Bollywood choreographer Farah Khan and billed as the most expensive Indian production ever made. It’s a candy-colored, adrenolin-injected and gloriously over-the-top tribute to the memory of 1970s Bollywood sari musicals, starring Khan as wannabe…

She may be relatively unknown in America, but Maria Schrader can excite the paparazzi in Berlin. When we cornered her at the party for the film company X in Berlin, people couldn’t stop dropping by to talk about her new film released in Germany last November, Liebesleben (Love Life), which she wrote and directed and which unspools is here at the Berlinale as part of the German Cinema section. Filmed in Israel, Liebesleben is the story of a “forbidden love,” as Schrader puts it, and continues her with the themes of her other movies as one of Germany’s leading actresses,…

Santa Barbara – February 4 – Angelina Jolie took home the Outstanding Performance of the Year award last Saturday at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) for her role as the wife of the murdered film journalist Daniel Pearl in the film A Mighty Heart. Clint Eastwood presented the award at a packed Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara.Released in 2006, A Mighty Heart tells the story of Mariane Pearl and her journey in coming to terms with the death of her husband, who was researching a Wall Street Journal story on the shoe bomber Richard Reid when he was…

How does a Palestinian woman in Israel survive an abusive husband? When Khitam’s Arab Israeli husband divorces her and gains custody of her six children, she suddenly finds herself fighting two heart-breaking battles: against the Islamic Sharia court to get her children back, and against the state of Israel, which considers her an illegal resident and denies her protection that could literally save her life. Khitam’s only legal recourse is to appeal to the Sharia court because there are no secular divorce courts in Israel, but the Muslim court repeatedly shuts her out from custody hearings. 3 TIMES DIVORCED is…

The Berlinale Special is a part of the Festival’s official programme and presents recent works by contemporary filmmakers whose films the Berlinale would like to honor. This blend of remembrance, information and experiment will screen at two main venues: the Filmpalast on Kurfürstendamm and the International on the Karl-Marx-Allee. This year’s Berlinale Special will present twelve films, including Gegenschuss – Aufbruch der Filmemacher (Reverse Angle – Rebellion of the Filmmakers), which is showing at the Zoopalast as the highlight of a special Berlinale series (see press release: Dec. 17, 2007). Several more films screening for special tributes will complete the…