“Zarafa” is a charming French flat animation, co-directed by animator Jean-Christophe Lie (supervising animator “The Triplettes”) and Rémi Bezançon (director of the whimsical” Ma vie en l’air” and “A Happy Event, “The First Day of the Rest of Your Life”).It is distributed in the US by GKIDS (Guerrilla Kids International Distribution Syndicate) the New York City based distributers and organizers of the New York International Children’s Film Festival. “Zarafa” was nominated in the Outstanding Achievement, Directing in an Animated Feature Production category at the 40th annual Annie awards competing against another Gkids film ” The Rabbi’s Cat” which was also…
Author: Robin Menken
Robin Menken
Robin Menken Robin Menken lives in Los Angeles. She was the Artistic Director of the Second City Workshops, taught at UC Berkeley, USC, Barcelona\'s Ateneu and the Esalin Institute. She was Roberto Rossellini\'s assistant, and worked with Yevgeny Vevteshenku, Glauber Rocha and Eugene Ionesco. She sold numerous screenplays and wrote the OBIE winning The FTA SHow (touring with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and Ben Vereen.) She was a programming consultant and Special Events co-ordinator for numerous film festivals, including the SF, Rio, Havana and N.Y Film Festivals. Her first news outlet was the historic East Village Other.
Women Filmmakers Mediatheque, the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC) and the American Cinematheque, in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, NewFilmmakers Los Angeles, New York Women In Film & Television, MNN El Barrio Firehouse Community Media Center, Women Make Movies, Miami Beach Cinematheque, and Coral Gables Art Cinema, will showcase a selection of short, documentary and feature films directed by Cuban women. The Showcase includes presentations at USC School of Cinematic Arts, Brooks Institute and Miami International University of Art & Design. The Cuban women participating in the U.S. Showcase represent the island’s…
Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux’s quirky “The Rabbi’s Cat”, based on volumes of Sfar’s ‘bandes dessinées’ received two nominations at the 40th Annie Awards (Best Animated Feature and Outstanding Achievement, Directing in an Animated Feature Production.) Set in 1920’s Algeria, the author-driven flat animation owes its adult material and multicultural cool to Sfar’s love for the Fleischer Studio’s pre-code Betty Boop, Out Of The Inkwell-Koko The Clown etc..)A title sequence of cursive silhouettes recalls Fritz Freleng’s Pink Panther title sequences. animation. “The Rabbi’s Cat”, a colorful brew of Colonialism, biblical debate, magical realism and adventure, won the Annecy Crystal for…
“Tristana”, recently digitally restored by the Cohen Film Collection, is a subdued Bunuel masterpiece of his later period. The austere film, with its muted palette, looks marvelous on the big screen.The film, which closed the New York Film Festival in 1970, is Bunuel’s most quintessential Spanish film. Sharing Freudian fetish concerns with “El” and “Viridiana”, the almost realist character study abandons the fetid, baroque atmosphere of those two films, to explore the issues of power and powerlessness in male-female relations.Bunuel, who body of work contains the most anarchic and virulent critique of society in cinema, tamps down his frisky Surrealist…
Werner Herzog, known for his idiosyncratic filmography and self-fashioned cult of bravery, has burnished another filmmaker’s footage in “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga” as he did in “Grizzly Man” (based on the footage of Timothy Treadwell, who died while filming the bears he loved.)He reshaped ethnographic footage from Russian videographer Dmitry Yasyukov’s four documentaries about Russian fur trappers in the vast wilderness of the Siberian Taiga.Herzog’s Bavarian accented singsong narration is buoyed by a score by Klaus Badelt. “They live off the land and are self reliant, truly free,” Herzog explains in admiration as he romances the life…
As part of the 21st Annual Pan African Film Festival, leading thinkers and tastemakers will discuss Slavery and Emancipation in films and the state of Black entertainment at the PAFF Film Institute’s three-day lyceum series, featuring intensive workshops on acting, producing, directing, writing, distribution and marketing. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and Hollywood found the perfect stories to resonate with critics and the moviegoers, alike. The film “Lincoln” leads the pack in Oscar nominations with 12, and “Django Unchained” is up for five. Two different movies. Two different approaches, yet, slavery serves as the backdrop…
The 21st Annual Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) the largest and most prestigious international Black film festival in the country returns to the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. PAFF 2013, which runs from Thursday, February 7 through Monday, February 18 at the 15-screen Rave multiplex, is expected to draw more than 35,000 people from across the globe to the heart of the Crenshaw District. Festivities include a red carpet opening night gala with the actors, events for children and seniors, as well as musical performances, poetry and performance art, workshops and panels. In addition, thousands of Los Angeles students and their…
Jean Rouch is simply one of the most significant filmmakers of the 20th century, his approaches influencing innumerable films after him. Filmforum joins with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, REDCAT, and French Film & TV Office–Consulate General of France in Los Angeles to present this major retrospective of his work, the first in Los Angeles in many years, if ever. But even this ten-evening series leaves out many of the over 100 films he made. Many of the films have been brought from France for the series. Tonight we not only feature on of his late shorts, but we…
Fredrik Stanton’s “Uprising” documents the Egyptian revolution. Interviews with the chief organizers (including four Nobel Peace Prize nominees) mixed with archival footage and amazing hand held, cell phone and video footage shot in the streets bring the chaos of history alive. The film’s premiered at Egypt’s Alexandria Film Festival, November 2012. Books by Gene Sharp, the world’s foremost expert on non-violent revolution, influenced Egyptian organizers. The central message preached by Sharp is that “the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern. If the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will…
When Day Breaks, directed by Goran Paskaljevic is the Serbian Oscar submission that won Cinema Without Borders’ Special Jury Award at Palm Springs International Film Festival 2013. The Special Jury Award winner received a certificate for an upcoming Method Acting Intensive provided by The Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute in West Hollywood, CA—valued at $2000..In When Day Breaks a retired music professor, Misha Brankov receives a letter requesting him to contact the Jewish Museum in Belgrade. There he learns that during an excavation at the city’s Old Fairgrounds, previously the site of an infamous concentration camp where some 48,000…