Author: CWB News Department

This year’s Luis Buñuel Retrospective will commence and conclude at the Volksbühne with two special presentations focusing on Buñuel’s famous directorial debut: his silent film Un chien andalou (France 1929) is to be screened four times, and each time it will be accompanied live by different works of contemporary music. On February 9, 2008, Un chien andalou will be shown alongside another masterpiece of surrealistic film, Jean Epstein’s La chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher, France 1928), on which Buñuel worked as assistant director. Both films will be presented in restored versions and accompanied…

January 2, 2008 (New York, NY) – Film Movement (www.filmmovement.com), announced that ADAM’S APPLES, a black comedy from Denmark & Burkina Faso/French Drama, DREAMS OF DUST will be available on DVD beginning Tuesday, January 8, 2008.The DVD will be available at Film Movement (www.filmmovement.com), and also through major retailers such as Blockbuster, Amazon, Netflix and at Passion River Films (www.passionriver.com).Adam’s Apple is the story of Ivan is an insanely optimistic preacher who takes in convicts to help around the remote, rural church he ministers to. His current charges are a psychotic Saudi immigrant addicted to robbing gas stations and an…

Legendary 20 time Emmy winner Phil Donahue comes to Palm Springs Int’l Film Festival with his National Board of Review Award Winner for Best Doc 2007 and Best Doc Audience Winner (Toronto/Hamptons Fests) Body of War; New Korean master Lee Chang-Dong brings his Cannes Best Actress winning feature Secret Sunshine (official Oscar entry from Korea); young Serbian Srdjan Golubovic directs suspenseful neo-film noir The Trap (official Oscar entry from Serbia); Milcho Manchevski, previous Oscar nominee for Before the Rain, unveils his supernatural, sexy, revealing work in Shadows (official Oscar entry from Macedonia).Body Of WarDirected by Ellen Spiro & Phil Donahue…

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 movie marquis to drive up box office. But then, who really…

Tehran Times – The Iranian film “10+4” by Mania Akbari shared the Best Director Award with the Argentinean film “XXY” by Lucia Puenzo at the 12th International Film Festival of Kerala which was held from December 7 until 14 in India. 10+4 features the character Mania, a woman suffering from cancer, and depicts how the illness ultimately affects her life. The film’s psychological theme is the discovery of hope even at times of utter despair. Celebrated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was amongst the members of the gala’s jury. The films competed in several sections entitled Competition (restricted to films produced…

The German director and producer Peter Sehr will be jury president of the award “Dialogue en perspective” at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival. In 2008, the independent jury prize will be awarded for the fifth time to a film in the Berlinale section Perspektive Deutsches Kino. It will also be the fifth year of the partnership between the Berlin International Film Festival and the francophone TV channel TV5MONDE, which is awarding the prize in co-operation with the German-French Youth Office (FGYO). One special feature of the award is that the jury will consist of seven German and French film…

Before the outdoor screening of Nassiri’s ambitious 12-minute film, “Love Sees No Color” Wednesday night in Century City, CWB’s James Ulmer had a chance to speak with Cher, whose own Cher Charitable Foundation donates funds to various charities and causes. She shared her reactions to the film and, most revealingly, about the current American political scene and presidential contenders. James also talked to Nassiri at the same event. (Nassiri’s interview follows Cher’s interview)James: How did you come to meet Nassiri? Cher: I met him because of Adam. Adam runs my foundation and Adam had seen the film and thought that…

Known as one of Russia’s most intellectual and spiritual filmmaikers, Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov was born in 1951 in the Siberian village of Podorvikha. He graduated from the History Department of Gorky University in 1974 and, in the same year, entered the Russian State Institute of Cinematography. There he befriended Andrei Tarkovsky, whose feature film Mirror deeply influenced him. While at the Moscow Film School Sokurov made his first full length feature, The Lonely Voice of Men, in 1978.While the Soviet regime banned most of Sokurov’s early works, he produced many documentaries during his early years, including an interview with the…

No doubt Hollywood writers would love to write themselves out of a bad scene – the current strike – but their foreign counterparts are determined to write themselves into the drama by demonstrating today (Wednesday, Nov. 28) for an international day of solidarity with the Writers Guild. Sponsored by the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds, which represents over 20,000 screenwriters in unions worldwide, the marches will rally writers demonstrating in Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Sydney, Auckland, Montreal, and Berlin. And there’ll be a rally at NBC Studios in Burbank, too.It’s great that the writers overseas are taking the cause of…

Will Russian filmmaker and opera director Alexander Sokurov follow in the footsteps of Bruce Beresford, Billy Friedkin and Garry Marshall to direct opera in Los Angeles? While on a rare visit to Los Angeles for a special screening of his newest film “Alexandra” (which competed at this year’s Cannes festival), the visionary filmmaker, best known to American audiences for his one-take 2002 feature “Russian Ark,” told Cinema Without Borders he’d “love to direct an opera here” but has yet to be approached with an offer. He was responding to rumors in the music community that he might indeed be on…