Author: Bijan Tehrani

Sony’s New SLT Camera, A-58, will appear in major electronic stores early next week. To learn more about SLT cameras and specifically A-58 and how it could help the filmmakers, we interviewed Mark Weir, Senior Manager of Technology for Sony Electronics Digital Imaging. We will follow this interview with a Sony SLT A58 review and soon with a series of reviews using Sony SLT A99. Bijan Tehrani: Please tell us a little bit about the SLT technology and how it is different from the traditional SLR technology. Mark Weir: Traditional SLR technology, at least when it regards the mirror, has…

Sony Pictures Classics has been one of the main players in introduing the world cinema in U.S. Michael Barker* and Tom Bernard are co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics—an autonomous division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in January 1992 (with Marcie Bloom) that distributes, produces and acquires independent films from the United States and around the world. The team has worked with many of the world’s finest independent filmmakers including Woody Allen, Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Altman, Allison Anders, Hector Babenco, Kenneth Branagh, Ingmar Bergman, John Boorman, Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg, Luc Dardenne, Jonathan Demme, Guillermo del Toro, Atom Egoyan, R.W.…

UCLA Film & Television Archive continue its long tradition tracing the unfolding of Iran’s fascinating national cinema. Continually offering compelling new voices and visions, Iranian film responds to a rich storytelling heritage and enters into crucial dialogue with other world cultural and artistic traditions in its unique interplay of social inquiry and formal experimentation. This edition of the UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema offers a panoply of genres and storytelling modes, sampling the contributions of an array of film artists, working in widely varying settings and focused on diverse topics. 2013 Celebration of Iranian Cinema opens April 13 and continues…

A palpable sense of unease hangs over a single city block in the coastal town of Recife, Brazil. Home to prosperous families and the servants who work for them, the area is ruled by an aging patriarch and his sons. When a private security firm is reluctantly brought in to protect the residents from a recent spate of petty crime, it unleashes the fears, anxieties and resentments of a divided society still haunted by its troubled past. Kleber Mendonça Filho, director of Neighboring Sounds, was born in 1968 in Recife, Brazil. He graduated with a degree in journalism and has worked…

In 1980 Stanley Kubrick released his classic horror film, THE SHINING. Over 30 years later, viewers are still struggling to understand its hidden meanings. Loved and hated by equal numbers, the film is considered a genre standard by many loyalists, while other viewers dismiss it as the lazy result of a legendary director working far below his talent level. In between these two poles, however, live the theories of ardent fans who are convinced they have decoded THE SHINING’s secret messages regarding genocide, government conspiracy, and the nightmare that we call history. Ascher’s ROOM 237 fuses fact and fiction through…

Filmistaan happens In Mumbai, where affable Bollywood buff and wanna-be-actor Sunny, who works as an assistant director, fantasizes on becoming a heart-throb star. However, at every audition he is summarily thrown out. Undeterred, he goes with an American crew to remote areas in Rajasthan to work on a documentary. One day an Islamic terrorist group kidnaps him for the American crew-member. Sunny finds himself on enemy border amidst guns and pathani-clad guards, who decide to keep him hostage until they locate their original target. The house In which he is confined belongs to a Pakistani, whose trade stems from pirated…

Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn, directed by Ramin Niami, chronicles the last days of one of the most unique and vibrant blues clubs in the world.For over fifty years, Laura Mae Gross ‘Mama’, an African American woman from Mississippi, brought musicians together, regardless of race, age, or gender, in a place where only the music mattered. The club was originally located on legendary Central Ave, in South Central LA. ‘Mama’ created a place where people such as Johnny Lee Hooker, BB King, Albert King, and others shared the stage with newcomers in an open, creative, and safe environment. The film shows…

Set on the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Gilles Bourdos’ lushly atmospheric drama RENOIR tells the story of celebrated Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in declining health at age 74, and his middle son Jean, who returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. The elder Renoir is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy when a young girl miraculously enters his world. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation. At the same time, Jean also falls under the spell of the free-spirited young Andrée.…

Two times a week, when I go from Santa Monica (where I teach), to the CWB office in Burbank, I have to face the notorious LA traffic—sometimes taking hours to complete the 20 mile trip. It was just a few weeks ago on a rare rainy day in L.A. when I experienced the worse traffic jam of my life. I had just entered the freeway, hoping that in an hour I would be in the office, finishing and posting a video report on an exhibition of Italian hats I was working on; I had promised a few people that this…

Dr. Amir Hooshang Kavoosi, Iranian Film Historian and filmmaker passed away today in a Tehran Hospital. Mr. Kavoosi that had his film education in France, for decades helped to educate thousands of film students that are now well-known filmmakers working in Iran and outside the country. Mr. Kavoosi was also a film critic that fought for years to bring awareness to the audiences against the main stream Iranian Films made before the revolution (most of them copies of cheesy Hollywood and Bollywood films) and used the term “Farsi Films” for them, indicating that the only relationship of these films to…