Author: World Cinema Reports' Editors

As the French film festival reaches its end, Helen Barlow looks at this year’s hits, misses and talking points. 1. Cannes has a new king The king of the festival is surely Spike Lee. With BlacKkKlansman the outspoken filmmaker hit both nails on the head by delivering a film that couldn’t be more timely in its treatment of African American rights and of human rights in general, Lee stresses. The 61-year-old director explains how he had the blessing of the mother of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer, to include footage of her daughter being run down by a man during the white nationalist…

The Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury headed by Bertrand Bonello and including Khalil Joreige, Valeska Grisebach, Alanté Kavaïté and Ariane Labed, has awarded the 2018 Cinéfondation Prizes during a ceremony held in the Buñuel Theatre, followed by the screening of the winning films. The Cinéfondation Selection consisted of 17 student films, chosen out of 2 426 entries coming from 512 film schools around the world. FIRST PRIZE EL VERANO DEL LEÓN ELÉCTRICO (The Summer of the Electric Lion) directed by Diego CÉSPEDES Universidad de Chile – ICEI, Chile JOINT SECOND PRIZE KALENDAR (Calendar) directed by Igor POPLAUHIN Moscow School of…

MUBI announced today its June release slate featuring films and curated series from both emerging talent and acclaimed directors from across the globe. Next month, as part of its Special Discovery series, MUBI opens the doors of Casa Roshell, a tiny cabaret in Mexico City where the boundaries of gender and sexuality are blurred, in Camila José Donoso’s spellbinding documentary. MUBI also pays tribute to the best of British cinema with a selection of the timeless comedies produced by Ealing Studios — films that brightened up post-war Britain with their wit, verve and sensational comic turns from cinema luminaries such…

The Santa Susana Field Lab was the site of one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in U.S. history. Decades later, it hasn’t been cleaned up and over 50 children in Melissa’s area, including her daughter, have been diagnosed with rare forms of cancer. Melissa writes: When my daughter was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, at first I thought it was just incredibly bad luck. But when I started meeting other nearby parents of children with cancers, I wondered: was there something in our neighborhood which was making children sick?” https://youtu.be/fnWvXU8uX_Y Please check Change.org

CANNES, France (AP) — The Cannes Film Festival opening-night premiere of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s “Everybody Knows” coincided almost exactly with President Trump’s announced withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. For Farhadi, the multi-Oscar winner and one of the foremost filmmakers in international cinema, Trump’s declaration colored the celebration with a familiar melancholy. In 2017, he boycotted the Academy Awards where his “The Salesman” won best foreign language film in protest of Trump’s travel ban of seven Muslim-majority nations, including Iran. Farhadi has also been critical of the Iranian regime and chafed at its censorship of artists like himself. On…

IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CITY is the debut feature of filmmaker Tamer El Said. It tells the fictional story of a filmmaker from downtown Cairo played by Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, The Square) as he struggles to capture the soul of a city on edge while facing loss in his own life. Shot in Cairo, Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin during the two years before the outbreak of revolution in Egypt, the film’s multi-layered stories are a visually rich exploration of friendship, loneliness, loss and life in cities shaped by the shadows of war and adversity. Below is…

A number of years ago, the Brazilian writer-director João Moreira Salles discovered amateur footage of a 1966 group tour his mother filmed in China during the inception of the most radical phase of the Cultural Revolution. As Salles describes his mother in the narration for his documentary “In the Intense Now,” she was a “dilettante in search of the beauty of the country.” That she, a 37-year-old art historian, found beauty at this particular time in China testifies to her ability to perceive what was enchanting in the landscape and the faces of the people. But Salles also disparages, albeit…

“Tonight, these students are going to bring us arguments that we wouldn’t otherwise hear,” said professor Andrew Grace the night of April 24 as a sizable crowd gathered outside the Bama Theatre in downtown Tuscaloosa. Grace is the instructor for a year-long UA course called Documenting Justice in which students are guided through the process of conceptualizing and directing a short documentary centered around social justice. One student posed that Documenting Justice is the most important display of the arts at UA. The course was originally the idea of Stephen Black, the founder of Center of Ethics and Social Responsibility…

ASIFA-Hollywood has announced that its Animation Educators Forum will hold its General Membership Meeting on May 5, 2018 at The Animation Guild in Burbank, California from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm PDT. The meeting will feature a full afternoon of discussions and screenings, along with an opportunity to catch up with colleagues. This year’s theme is “Where the Jobs Are: Mapping the Expanding Universe of Animation Employment” Forum’s special focus this year is the ever-expanding universe of animation employment from opportunities in big Hollywood studios to newly hatched positions in online streaming services, virtual reality and other emerging technologies. The…

The seventh annual Montclair Film Festival — so close we can smell the popcorn — includes discussions with actors Rachel Weisz, Jeff Daniels and Ethan Hawke, all moderated by Stephen Colbert; a discussion with actor Nick Offerman moderated by Patrick Wilson; post-screening Q&A’s with actress Claire Danes and director Paul Schrader; and a performance by larger-than-life creative hyphenate Taylor Mac. Many of the films featured this year challenge viewers to consider what they have in common with individuals whose narratives differ, sometimes wildly, from their own. Documentaries include Far from the Tree, an adaptation of the bestselling book by Andrew Solomon about parents…