In 1999, Film historian Streible, and several other interdisciplinary faculty members of the University of South Carolina, under the aegis of the Film Studies Program, initiated a symposium on orphan films that drew together archivists, film historians, artists, curators, and other to discuss and screen works within a rigorous scholarly context. This first edition, and the symposia which followed spurred an international orphan film movement among archivists, curators and preservationist, gaining visibility for many categories of neglected cinema, including newsreels, silent films, experimental works, home movies, independent fiction and documentary films, political commercials, amateur footage, advertising, educational and industrial films,…
Author: 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.
The American Cinematheque screens the newly restored lost 60’s film “Summer Children”, photographed in a 1960s European-style by Academy Award® winning cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC. at the Egyptian Theatre on Tuesday, May 10 at 7:30 PM. Q and A with Vilmos Zsigmond, Asc –Cinematographer, Jack Robinette, Executive producer, Edie Robinette-Petrachi, Restoration Producer will follow. Zsigmind won an Oscar for his work on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and a Bafta for the exquisite “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”.After principle photography, the orphan film languished without financing for distribution and publicity. The archived print was moved repeatedly when the original studio…
On Wednesday, March 23, 2011, the Costume Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Gilt Groupe previewed Zeitgeist Films’ award-winning documentary, “Bill Cunningham New York” at a special screening and reception in Los Angeles. The film opened on March 15 to record box office numbers at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre and moved this week to the Laemmle Sunset 5. March 23rd’s evening event was sponsored by Gilt Groupe, an innovative online luxury-shopping site (www.gilt.com/lacma).Event attendees included Costume Council members, invited guests, and fashion and film industry luminaries – many bedecked in outfits worthy of inclusion in photog…
4th Annual Los Aangeles Brazilian Film festival (LABRFF) returns to The Landmark theatres. Presented by EMBRATUR, LABRFF is one of the major Brazilian film festivals in the US. Festival’s Director of Programming Meire Fernanbys said “The lineup of the film festival reflects not only the diversity of the Brazilian cinema now a days but is also an opportunity to show that the films and filmmakers were pushing the boundaries of cinema, experimenting with style, form and content.” Caio Sóh’s “Soulbound” (Teus Olhos Meus) opens the festival on Wednesday, April 27. Gill (Emílio Dantas) a 20-year old musician. Raised by his…
The 27th edition of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) returns to Los Angeles April 28 – May 7. LAAPFF is Southern California’s largest Asian Film Showcase. This year’s edition will present 180 Films from over 20 Countries, including World Premieres, International features and documentaries, Sneak Previews, a James Wong Howe Retrospective, the C3 Digital Conference and a selection of documentaries and narratives Focusing on the Voices of Asian Americans and Asian peoples from around the world. This year, 32 feature films and 148 shorts will be showcased throughout the 10-day fest. The opening gala “Fast Five”, an…
Like Guillaume Canet’s “Tell No One,” first time feature director Giuseppe Capotondi’s “The Double Hour” successfully uses a refined Euro art-house restraint to revive noir and psychological thriller tropes. Capotondi, a Vanity Fair photog and director of music-videos for Natalie Imbruglia, and Spice Girls Emma Bunton and Melanie C (Chisolm), claims he was inspired by ’70s Italian giallo (giallo all’italiana,) but his modern style, though erotic, avoids the splashier slasher elements of his idols Mario Bava and Dario Argento.Leads Ksenia Rappoport and Filippo Timi won Best Actor Volpi Cups at the 2009 Venice Film Festival.The title refers to the moment…
On Thursday, April 21, 8 p.m the Academy Of Motion PIcture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) presents an onstage conversation with Pat O’Neill, followed by the premiere of a newly preserved print of “Water and Power” (1989) from the Academy Film Archive.Since the 60’s, O’Neill, one of Los Angeles’s master avant-garde filmmakers, consistently developed new techniques for his personal films, while also working in commercial movie production. His self-invented experimental optical effects (floating mattes, optical printing, intricate compositing and montage techniques) offer lyrical narratives of ghostly-layered image (as in his Hollywood themed masterpiece “The Decay Of Fiction.”)As O’Neill moved into digital…
Over the past two decades, Belgian cinema, whether from Flanders or from the Walloon (French speaking part of the country), has gained prominence in the international filmmaking arena. It’s richly diverse films consistently garner critical praise and worldwide anticipation. From the unsettling, urgently relevant “Man Bites Dog” (which rocked the Cannes Film Festival in 1992) and the quirky and vibrant tale of identity mix-up in “Toto The Hero”, to the monumental saga of “Daens”, or the Oscar nominated “Everybody Famous”, the outstanding thrillers “Memory Of A Killer” and Dossier K”, and the string of critically-lauded dramatic works by the brilliant…
Aaron Schock’s award-winning documentary “Circo” is a simple thing of beauty. Tyro director Schock’s mission ” to reverse the direction of the documentary lens that has typically looked at Mexico only from the border up and singularly through the subject of immigration.” succeeded wildly. He traveled the back roads of Mexico, researching a film about corn farmers, but a visit to a small traveling circus in the state of Nayarit changed his plans. Schock gracefully integrates himself into the daily workings of this tiny isolated clan.The Ponce’s drive into town and raise their blue Big Top, signaling to the local…
Los Angeles experimental filmmaker Timoleon Wilkins won the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s prestigious Stan Brakhage Film at Wit’s End Award for his 16mm film “Drifter “(2010). Founded in 1963, The Ann Arbor Film Festival is North America’s longest running independent and experimental film festival. Over the years it premiered the work of Kenneth Anger, Agnes Varda, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Gus Van Sant, Barbara Hammer, Lawrence Kasdan, Devo and George Lucas, to name just a few. Historically, the festival has been the premiere international platform for experimental films since the demise in 1974 of Jacques Ledoux’s “Le Festival international du…