Cinema Without Borders announces Lu Chuan’s “City Of Life And Death” as one of the winners of the Bridging the Borders Award, 2011. Cinema Without Borders’s Bridging The Borders Award is awarded to films which foster understanding between different cultures and across international borders. We consider the film one of the most important films of the decade and urge our readers to see it, hopefully on the big screen.Due to ongoing friction between governments in the region, Lu Chuan’s brilliant war film was pulled from various International Film Festivals. This is not the first recent Chinese film about the Rape…
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.
Dance Camera West’s Tenth Anniversary Dance Media Film Festival, recognized as one of the world’s foremost celebrations of dance media, runs June 16-19, 2011. The four-day citywide free festival offers guaranteed seating through a special DCW Membership Pass. For a complete list of films and show times go to www.dancecamerawest.org.Thirty-two screendance shorts and documentaries from ten countries will be screened and a dozen more will be discussed with excerpts shown. Nations represented include Netherlands, Armenia, Spain, U.K., Scotland, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and theUnited States. Screendance is a unique cinematic experience that focuses on the intersection of cinematography and choreography.…
The War Crime trials at Nuremberg set the precedent, introduced a radical principle into international law. It defined the notion of a War Crime, holding individuals (political, military and industrial leaders) responsible for murder and “Crimes against Humanity” in the context or waging an aggressive war. Commissioned by the U.S. War Department, “Nuremberg: Its Lesson For Today was written and directed in 1948 by Stuart Schulberg, a veteran of the John Ford’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Field Photographic Branch/War Crimes Unit, charged, in 1945, with locating Nazi film evidence to be shown in the courtroom at Nuremberg. Stuart’s older brother,…
PXL THIS 20 (The 20th Annual Toy Camera Film Festival) featuring Pixelvision films made with the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camcorder, were screened on May 19, 2011 (8:00 PM) at the Echo Park Film Center. PXL THIS 20 is one of LA’S oldest continuous film festivals.The PXL-2000 is a plastic toy video camera made by Fisher-Price in the 1980s. With it’s fixed focus aspherical lens and lower frame rate it produces low-resolution pixelated black and white images reminiscent of the super 8 images favored by avant garde artists in the 70’s. The PXL-2000 came into it’s own in the avant garde scene…
A week of Film, Video, Animation and Theatre work by students Of UCLA’S School of Theater, Film and Television, presented at UCLA’s James Bridges Theatre, Freud Playhouse and The DGA. Professor Myrl A. Schreibman is the Director of this year’s celebration of Emerging Artist. For more information on the festival, visit www.tft.ucla.edu/festival.The UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television encompasses a rich history of emerging artists for the stage and the screen.Beginning in the 1960’s, UCLA students within the Theater Arts Department could specialize in either Theater or Motion Pictures. Walking around campus fifty years ago, you might have seen…
On Sunday May 22, 2011, 7:30 pm, at the Spielberg Theater at the Egyptian Los Angeles Filmforum presents an amazing selection from around the world of recent animation made for thinking adults, exploring techniques, landscapes, histories, physiology, and the animal kingdom in any number of insightful, beautiful, and amusing ways. Three of the filmmakers, including one who curated the show, will be present to discuss their work. A great way to catch up with the possibilities of animation today! Curated by Eric Leiser. Eric Leiser, Alice Cohen, and Gina Marie Napolitan in person! Los Angeles premieres!”These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us”,…
HMFF, the National traveling festival, showcasing the best of recent Mexican Cinema, arrives in Los Angeles, playing at Hollywood’s historic Ricardo Montalban Theatre May 19th-25th.For the third year, founder-director Samuel Douek celebrates the rich diversity of Mexican film. He has a lot to choose from, as the Mexican Film Industry is enjoying a renaissance, celebrated in film festivals.Mexico, a place like the movies! (¡México está de película!) is the theme of the 2011 edition of HMFF, presenting the contrasting multiple faces and the reality of Mexico, from the landscapes and history to the human experience in terms of class, economic…
I loved the original Trilogy and stopped watching when Lucas continued the franchise. I knew George back in the day, in SF, and was impressed that the shy, experimental film lover Lucas had redefined himself and the movie business through his adept synthesis of the Hero stories of World mythology (Via Joseph Campbell) and a ground breaking approach to merchandizing. I had a vague idea that the Trilogy had spawned generations of hand made fan films (we see tantalizing clips in the film) from home movies with toddler Hans Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Lea, to professional animations, with everything…
The Fifth Annual LA Comedy Fest plays from May 12-22 at the ACME Comedy Theatre in HollywoodI spoke briefly with festival director Lawrin Goulston Salazar. “We had the great honor, in our last festival of having the West Coast premiere screening of this year’s OSCAR winning live action short, “God of Love.” There are many gems in this year’s lineup of 60+ shorts. The features are terrific with several showcasing the Australian sense of fun and laughs. We are thrilled to hold the USA premiere of “The Wedding Party”, the film that opened this year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival. The LA…
Master filmmaker Bill Brand comes to Los Angeles to present work by others during the Orphan Film Symposium West, which Filmforum co-presents on May 13 & 14, and he comes to us on the 15th with his own extraordinary films. All the films explore landscape and the body to express a broad variety of themes including industrial production, medicine, travel and family history. Quiet explorations of exterior spaces that unveil more than is apparent. Brand has been making films for four decades now, and was previously hosted at Filmforum back in the 1980s! Every film except “Coalfields” is a Los…