Author: CWB News Department

UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema at Hammer Museum is featuring 3 films by Parviz Sayyad this month. The festival presents:Dead End on Sunday, April 22nd at 7 pm Samad Becomes an Artist on Friday, April 27th at 7:30 pmCheckpoint on Saturday, April 28th at 7:30 pm The 3 films show very different aspects of Iranian society both pre and post the Islamic Revolution and have universal messages very relevant to all of us today regardless of cultural background.There will be an engaging Question & Answer session with Parviz Sayyad after each film. Come let’s support this legend of the Iranian…

An indie film renaissance is emerging, and filmmakers like Alex Stapleton are pioneering it. Stapleton is the director of “Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel,” a docu-tribute to Roger Corman, the B-movie master who launched the careers of so many A-Listers. (See review of “Corman’s World”)Stapleton’s own filmmaking reflects the Corman legacy—the die-hard, do-it-yourself, guerilla approach. She threw herself into the work with no directing experience, technical training, or initial funding. Living off her savings and going deep into credit card debt, she managed to pull off an extraordinary feat of indie filmmaking. I met with Alex to talk…

In April and May the Austin Film Society is holding a 7- week long retrospective of films from the South East European Film Festival (SEEFest) of Los Angeles. The program is part of ESSENTIAL CINEMA series, the brainchild of Austin Film Society’s legendary director of programming, and one of Society’s founding members, Chale Nafus. SEEFest’s artistic director and curator of the retrospective, Vera Mijojlic, will attend the May 15th and May 22nd screenings, at the famed Alamo Drafthouse Theatre on South Lamar. This is the first presentation of films from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Albania, and Romania in…

“The Salt of Life,” Gianni Di Gregorio’s follow-up to the sleeper hit “Mid-August Lunch,” is about a man caught between the sensual and the inevitable. Again, Di Gregorio plays an alternate version of himself, this time an aging retiree stuck in a limbo between the desires and pleasures of his former youth and the doddering idleness of old age. Gianni is a man of epicurean tastes. He is captivated by the lovely women who pop out at him from every corner of his life—his mother’s buxom caretaker, his young flirtatious neighbor, and a seemingly endless parade of pedestrian beauties. Gianni…

Italian Culturel Institute of Los Angeles will hold an screnning of [S]COMPARSE, a documentary by Antonio Tibaldi on Thursday, April 5 at Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1023 Hilgard Avenue Los Angeles CA. Screening will be followed by Q&A with the film director. [S]COMPARSE On a small, isolated island between Sicily and Africa, a film crew lands to shoot a large-scale feature film, Terraferma by Emanuele Crialese. The filmmaker and his entourage settle on the island providing employment to the locals, but disrupting their bucolic daily rhythm. A large group of Africans are brought to the island from Sicily, to work…

Thursday, April 5 the University of Redlands is hosting the screening of the award winning documentary “Fordson: Faith, Fasting and Football.” This is a powerful documentary about a predominately Arab-American Muslim high school football team in Detroit. The documentary was directed by Rashid Ghazi, a University of Redlands graduate who will attend the screen and be available after to answer audience questions. The event is free, and starts at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel.

Over the past two decades, Belgian cinema has risen to prominence in the international filmmaking arena, boasting richly diverse films that consistently garner critical praise and worldwide anticipation. From the unsettling but still urgently relevant MAN BITES DOG to the quirky and vibrant tale of identity mix-up in TOTO THE HERO, the monumental saga DAENS and the Oscar nominated films EVERYBODY FAMOUS, BULLHEAD and A CAT IN PARIS, and the string of critically-lauded dramatic works by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (with the recently acclaimed THE KID WITH A BIKE), the Belgian film industry Has proven its dexterity in tone and…

FILTER Magazine and Roadside Attractions have teamed up to present a new pre-festival highlight — an inaugural free movie screening for music fans arriving to the desert on Thursday, April 12. Partnering with Roadside Attractions, FILTER Magazine will present the West Coast premiere screening of David Mackenzie’s new film TONIGHT YOU’RE MINE in Palm Desert. The film was shot entirely on location at Scotland’s famous T in the Park music festival. TONIGHT YOU’RE MINE follows indie music star Adam (Luke Treadaway — ATTACK THE BLOCK, CLASH OF THE TITANS) and feisty punk-rock girl band leader Morello (Natalia Tena — “Games…

March 18, 2012 – This year, the Farhang Lifetime Achievement Award was posthumously presented to two individuals: the acclaimed scholar, publisher, and researcher, Iraj Afshar, in recognition of a lifetime of dedication to Persian language bibliography and unmatched supporting role in the development of Iranian studies around the world; and to Dr. Hossein Ziai, the professor of Islamic and Iranian Studies and the director of Iranian Studies at UCLA, for his extraordinary contributions to the advancement of Iranian studies through scholarly research, writing and teaching. The 2012 Farhang Heritage Award was presented to Dr. Abbas Milani for his distinguished record…

Columbia College Chicago honored top alumni working with their Semester in LA program on March1 at the Beverly Hilton. Two alumni were awarded as “Speaker of the Year” in recognition of their contributions as guest educators for the Semester in LA Program and successes in the entertainment industry. Additionally, one Columbia College Semester in LA student was awarded “Student of the Year,” who graduated summa cum laude from Columbia in 2011. For further information on Columbia College Chicago, visit www.colum.edu