AFI FEST, the longest-running international film festival in Los Angeles, returns to Hollywood Nov. 6–13. Hubbed at the TLC Chinese Theatres, The Dolby Theatre and The Egyptian Theatre, this year’s fest offers a cherry-picked selection of the best in international films, indies and up-and-coming filmmakers. Free tickets for their slate of seventy-three features and 45 shorts are available at afi.com/afifest/freetickets.aspx. Priority and Reserved Seating Available with Patron Packages and Cinepass Express Passes ($650-$5,000) available at afi.com/afifest/passes.aspx. Thursday’s Opening Gala – J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year”, starring Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain and Albert Brooks, looks at the 1981 crime wave…
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.
Jan Komasa, and his team, have taken six hours of original newsreel footage from the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, shot by volunteer cameraman from the Polish Home Army’s Bureau of Information and Propaganda and created a masterful journey through time. A project by the Warsaw Uprising Museum, the docudrama, edited, colorized and set to a score by Bartosz Chajdecki,is a startling look at 63 days of the Polish Resistance’s attempt to liberate Warsaw from the Nazis. The Bureau of Information and Propaganda (BIP) created newsreels and sent Polish ex-pats in London news of the Polish government. They also documented actions…
The 20th Annual Recent Spanish Cinema returns to the American Cinematheque ‘s Egyptian Theatre, October 16-19.Since 1994, the Recent Spanish Cinema Series has been presenting the most outstanding current Spanish films. The series is a Seventh Art showcase of Spain’s top cinema personalities, who have contributed significantly to putting “Made in Spain” productions in the vanguard of international filmmaking.Talents like Carmen Maura, Álex de la Iglesia, Bigas Luna, Fernando Trueba, Vicente Aranda, Javier Fesser, and Fernando León de Aranoa, among others, have attended this event and left their personal stamp on the Recent Spanish Cinema Series. Each year, more celebrities…
McCraney’s startling trilogy “The Brother/Sister Plays’, a poetic gumbo of African American tropes, susurrate idioms and Yoruba storytelling, makes a bid to seat McCraney in the chair left vacant when August Wilson died, as the pre-eminent playwright addressing African American life, as well as the gift that African American Idiom has given to American English. “The Brothers Size”, the middle play of the Trilogy premiered simultaneously in New York at the Public Theatre, in association with the Foundry Theatre, and in London at the Young Vic, where it was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement at an Affiliated…
The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is presenting a five film series at LACMA in conjunction with LACMA’s ongoing weekly Tuesday Matinee seriesTyrone Edmund Power, Jr. was born on May 5. From 1930s to the 1950s Power appeared in dozens of films, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads. His better-known films include “The Mark of Zorro”, “Blood and Sand”, “The Black Swan”, “Prince of Foxes”, “Witness For The Prosecution”, “The Black Rose”, and “Captain from Castile”.Though largely a matinee idol known for his striking looks, Power starred in films from a number of genres, from drama to…
The Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival (LABRFF) Kicks Off its 7th Edition presenting “The Great Victory” the feature film debut of Brazilian Director Stefano Capuzzi Lapietra The Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival (LABRFF 2014), presented by the LA FILM SCHOOL, will host the USA premiere of “The Great Victory” from Director Stefano Capuzzi Lapietra as the festival’s Opening Night Gala on September 14th at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.“Forever Nevermore” from Director Emerson Muzeli will close the festival on September 19th. LABRFF will take place at the historic Linwood Dunn Theater, The Regent Theater Westwood, and the Main Theater…
Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (“Quinceanera”) make the most of a small budget in their fascinating “The Last Of Robin Hood”. Their Technicolor-bright film is varnished in Hollywood glamor of the 50’s, and indeed, in its reluctance to titillate, it feels more like a period film tip-toing around a scandalous topic. That is part of its charm.DP Michael Simmonds (“The Lunchbox”) production designer Jade Healy (“Happythankyoumoreplease”), art director (“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, “Flight”) and Costume designer Karyn Wagner (“The Majestic”) do the period proud. (There’s even a wonderful split screen phone call sequence.)In this era, with of “College Girls…
Cinecon , the venerable classic film festival, and the oldest movie fan based festival extant, celebrates its 50th anniversary Aug 28- Sept 1 at the historic Egyptian Theatre.The festival has long been shepherded by noted author, film historian Bob Birchard, currently the editor, AFI Catalog & Academic Network | American Film Institute. In recent years noted motion picture and television archivist and collector Stan Taffel, another conducts some of the lively celebrity interviews. The Cinecom committee consists of Sharon Arndt, Stella Grace, Sue Guldin, Danny Schwartz, Maureen C. Solomon, Tegan Summer and Robert Uher.This is the first year Marvin Paige…
There are enough ideas in Ari Folman’s brilliant “The Congress” to fuel two films.The film is based in part on Polish Sci-Fi author StanisÅ‚aw Lems “The Futurological Congress”. In Lem’s 1971 book Ijon Tichy, attending said Congress at the HIlton Hotel in Costa Rica, survives a riot. The government slips psychotropic drugs into the water supply to suppress the riot, Tichy, and other survivors, wander through the sewers in a satiric psychedelic fever dream, believing he’s awakened in a future world where life has been overtaken by hallucinations. Folman’s key team from “Waltz With Bashir”, artistic director David Polonsky and…
The show, curated by Laura Whitcomb, J. Cheryl Bookout and Amanda Quinn Olivar presents a dialogue between the renowned collection of portraits of Joan Quinn, by such luminaries as Jean-Michel Basquait, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha, Frank Gehry, Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe, and Joan Quinn’s half-century documentation of the same artists.‘Joan Quinn Captured’ (exhibit and curated events, panels and film screenings) is the first officially curated exhibition at the reopened, newly restored elegant Brand Library and Art Center. The exhibit is on view June 28th through August 1th, 2014, with event every Thursday afternoon and evening throughout July. Collectors like…