Anurag Basu’s enchanting love story “Barfi” has been selected as India’s official Oscar submission. Released by Disney India, “Barfi” captures the feel good quality of the Golden Age of Disney films of the 60’s and 70’s.Basu portrays an endearing love triangle between a deaf-mute young man, an autistic runaway and a dutiful daughter using all the charm of Silent comedies. His youthful stars captivate. Ranbir Kapoor gives director Anurag Basu the sort of lanky graceful knock about performance that Belmondo gave de Broca in their spirited collaborations .Ranbir is the grandson of his namesake, the legendary Raj Kapoor (his full…
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.
French writer-director Lorraine Levy’s “The Other Son” aptly uses a trope of classical theatre, two babies switched at birth, to dig at the tragic ironies of the Arab-Jewish problem.The familiar plot device appears in Restoration and Elizabethan comedies, Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and even Mark Twain’s “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson.” American soaps “The Young and the Restless”, “One Life To Live ” and “Desperate Housewives” have all used the trope. The French title “Le fils de L’autre” (the son of another) is a far better title. In March of 2011, Ahmed Masoud, a British writer and playwright born in…
The Arab Film Festival (AFF) is multi city festival dedicated to to enhancing public understanding of Arab culture and to providing alternative representations of Arabs that contradict the stereotypical images frequently encountered in the American mass media. The Arab Film Festival screens films from and about the Arab World that provide realistic perspectives on Arab people, culture, art, history and politics. The West Coast festival plays in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose, San Diego and Los Angeles. For information about the entire five city slate go to http://www.arabfilmfestival.org A highlight of the San Francisco edition is the screening of Mohamed…
Susan Morgan Cooper’s “Mulberry Child” is a study of a multi generational family fractured by the Cultural Revolution, based on Jian Ping’s book of the same name. Jian Ping was a small child when the Cultural Revolution first inspired her peasant parents, even going so far as urging the two young revolutionaries to choose a mate from a government list of like-minded believers. Her parents, mother Gu Wenxiu, a school administrator, and father Hou Kai, both ardent communists, were first smiled on and promoted by the revolution, then caught in an endless cycle of investigation, self criticism, public denunciation (at…
In celebration of the 60th Anniversary of Cinerama, The Cinerama Dome presents the most complete Cinerama festival of the last 50 years. From September 28 through October 3, all five of the 1950’s Cinerama travelogues, (“This Is Cinerama”, “Cinerama Holiday” (1955), “Seven Wonders of the World” (1956), “Search for Paradise” (1957), “South Seas Adventure”(1958) plus “Windjammer “(1958) which was filmed in the rival CineMiracle process, Cinerama’s Russian Adventure” (1966), “How The West Was Won” (1962) and Cinerama oddities including a 3-strip Renault automobile commercial which played with “How The West Was Won” in France, will be screened as they were…
The sublime 16mm films of Los Angeles experimentalist Timoleon Wilkins trace their roots to the romantic and diaristic traditions of the American avant-garde. Making a virtue of working on the edge of celluloid history, he is among a handful of cinematographers still using reversal film. His sumptuous Kodachrome and Ektachrome images resonate with an ecstatic love of color and contrast, relentlessly uncovering beauty amid the untenable realities of modern life across the Americas. Wilkins’ magnum opus “Drifter” (1996-2010)-winner of the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s prestigious Stan Brakhage Film at Wit’s End Award-is “the ballad of a lone wanderer, an atmospheric…
While I enjoyed “Persepolis” with reservations (I preferred the flat black & white graphic style of the book to the modeled colored animation) I am gaga over Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s follow up film, the magical realist live-action romance “Chicken With Plums”. Nasser-Ali Khan is the greatest violinist of his day. But it wasn’t always so. His teacher, the great Master Musician (Didier Flamand), sends the young musician away because, although he is a great technician, his music is empty. A chance sighting of the glorious Irâne, a clockmaker’s daughter, sets his life on its trajectory. The two young…
Macky Alston’s “Love Free Or Die” (which won the Special Jury Prizewinner Sundance 2012) is an engaging portrait of Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay person to be elected bishop in the high church traditions of Christendom. “Live Free or Die” is New Hampshire’s state motto.Robinson, the author of “In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God” and the focus of the 2007 documentary, “For the Bible Tells Me So.” became the unwilling poster boy in the battle for LGBT people to receive full acceptance in the faith. Bishop Robinson envisions the…
OUT OF THE CLEAR BLUE SKY: Danielle Gardner lost her brother Doug, executive managing director of Cantor Fitzgerald and vice-chairman of eSpeed, when the Towers fell during 911. Her film is homage to Doug and all the 91 Cantor Fitzgerald victims and their families.Adopting some of the expressionist bridging techniques of Erroll Morris though with less artistic results (the list of up and coming documentarians who owe Morris a debt is endless) Gardner tells a strong story.Beginning with terrifying first person accounts from Cantor Fitzgerald, survivors, the film becomes a heart wrenching and riveting portrait of a company that literally…
In the now year-long packed schedule of Los Angeles’ film festivals, running the gamut from the large Internationals festivals (AFI and LAFF) to the frequent boutique film festivals showcasing national cinemas, one festival, CINECON, offers a truly unique film fan experience. Film fans, archivists, researchers and stellar silent film accompanists from around the world will gather in Hollywood, California, to attend the 48th annual Cinecon Classic Film Festival this Labor Day Weekend, Aug. 30 through Sept. 3, 2112.Cinecon’s club-like atmosphere welcomes like-minded film enthusiasts of all stripes. Film historians, preservationists, film distributors and interested industry professionals join collectors and film…