Author: Bijan Tehrani

The UCLA Film and Television Archive returns the golden age of Spanish language cinema back to Main Street. The Getty Center’s second iteration of the arts initiative “Pacific Standard Time” spotlights the Latin American creative space in Los Angeles, titled “Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.” UCLA’s Film and Television Archive teamed up with the Getty to create a lineup of approximately 40 Spanish-language films hailing from different Spanish-speaking countries including Mexico, Argentina and Cuba for the exhibition. The archive restored and rediscovered around 40 Spanish language films, some considered lost or irrelevant, from the golden age of films – the 1930s…

From the opening moments, it’s clear the title character is not a typical female in this patriarchal society: she’s dirt-bike racing. But as the understated domestic drama unfurls, it becomes obvious even a woman this strong is no match for the web of rules around her behavior in Tehran. She works hard at her husband’s pizza joint, but when tragedy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rBAWEbtJFA strikes, she struggles to run it alone. This is, after all, a country where a woman delivering pizza on her motorcycle at night is a shock. While not as tightly or artfully wrought as an Asghar Farhadi film, Azar…

Rolling off its international premiere at Toronto Film Festival, Peter Schønau Fog’s drama “You Disappear” has been chosen to represent Denmark in the Foreign Language Oscar category. Based on Christian Jungersen’s bestselling novel and penned by Fog, “You Disappear” centers on a woman who is married to a successful headmaster suffering from a brain tumor. The film is a “story about the challenges we face as neuroscience forces us to rethink what we are as human beings,” said TrustNordisk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_gGEaDeL8E “You Disappear” was selected over Henrik Ruben Genz’ “Word of God” and Fenar Ahmad’s “Darkland.” “You Disappear” was well received…

Today is the birthday of one of the greatest actress of all times Sophia Loren! For many she is a just a beautiful woman and actress, but looking through her acting career you recognize her as an amazing artist. her performance as Cesira in Vittorio De Sica’s masterpiece, Two Women; Loren’s performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1962 and made her the first artist to win an Oscar for a foreign-language film. https://youtu.be/Cr6trPCGRe0 She holds the record for having earned six David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress: Two Women; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; Marriage Italian…

Loving Vincent is a unique and beautiful animated film about the Life and art of Vincent van Gogh. We had the opportunity to have a video interview with Co-director of the film Dorota Kobiela. https://vimeo.com/234551496 LOVING VINCENT is the world’s first fully painted feature film. Written & directed by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman, produced by Poland’s BreakThru Films & UK’s Trademark Films. The film brings the paintings of Vincent van Gogh to life to tell his remarkable story. Every one of the 65,000 frames of the film is an oil-painting hand-painted by 125 professional oil-painters who travelled from all across the…

Rahman Oladigbolu, based in Boston, U.S., is a writer and filmmaker best known in the continent for winning the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) 2015, for Best Film by An African Living Abroad with his debut In America. His second feature, Theory Conflict, was nominated for the 2016 edition of AMAA. He recently secured the approval to adapt Chimamanda Adichie’s poem ‘A Private Experience’ into a movie. The script is ready and Oladigbolu will soon hit location, funds permitting. He spoke with FLORENCE UTOR about the project, his experience as an African filmmaker living in the U.S. What have you…

Victory’s House conveys a known fact, new nations are rarely born in peace… India, 1947: Lord Mountbatten (Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville) is dispatched, along with his wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson), to New Delhi to oversee the country’s transition from British rule to independence. Taking his place in the resplendent mansion known as the Viceroy’s House, Mountbatten arrives hopeful for a peaceful transference of power. But ending centuries of colonial rule in a country divided by deep religious and cultural differences proves no easy undertaking, setting off a seismic struggle that threatens to tear India apart. With sumptuous period detail, director Gurinder…

At Cinema Without Borders we had the opportunity of interviewing VALÉRIE MÜLLER and famed French dancer/choreographer ANGELIN PRELJOCAJ, directors of the Polina in a phone interview and create a video from the audio of the interview and footage from the film. https://vimeo.com/231979649 Rigorously trained from an early age by a perfectionist instructor, Polina (played by Anastasia Shevtsova, a professional dancer who has performed with Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre) is a promising classical ballet dancer. She is just about to join the prestigious Bolshoi Ballet when she discovers contemporary dance, a revelation that throws everything into question on a profound level. Diverting…

San Francisco: Parviz Shafa, the legendary Iranian film historian and film critic passed away at the age 79. He is known for his extensive research on cinema and work of directors like Hitchcock. He wrote numerous books and articles all through his life that have been admired and been very popular in Iran.   He belonged to a generation that made Iran the second country after France to honor filmmakers as authors. His articles on Hitchcock are among the best written resources about this master of filmmaking. Parviz Shafa was also a professor at the University of Tehran. ;

Cinema Without Borders announced Jury members and nominees for 2017 Bridging The Borders Award for the Best Polish Short Film at the Polish Film Festival Los Angeles Twelve short films from Poland have been nominated for the 2017 Award: A LONG TIME AGO IN SILESIA (Dawno temu na Slasku) by Tomasz Protokowicz, ADAPTATION by BArtosz Kruhlik, FRAGMNET by Miroslaw MAczur, HOT AND COLD (Cieplo-zimno) by Marta Prus’ MICE AND RATS (Myszy i szczury) by Kacper Anuszewski, MY PRETTY PONY by Maciej Barczewski , ON THE ROAD (Na drodze) by Bartosz Nowacki , ROMANTIK by Mateusz RAkowicz, SUMMER (Lato) by Martyna…