Since its debut in 2014, the Baltimore International Black Film Festival has positioned itself as a minority showcase, highlighting the work of filmmakers who are shining a light on people and experiences too often ignored in mainstream moviemaking. “We hope to use this festival as a way to have a dialogue … that will bring us closer together,” says Ken Moore, founder and director of the festival, which will be showing films Wednesday through Oct. 8 at the Charles Theatre”, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture and the Murphy Fine Arts Center at Morgan…
Author: World Cinema Reports' Editors
The time of the year is upon us where we Vancouverites get to lose ourselves in a whole sea of cinema at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF). This is the festival’s 35th year, and, while the line-up isn’t as huge in scale as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) which wrapped earlier this month, VIFF certainly has some main attractions as well as some hidden gems looking for that word of mouth. The Killing Of A Sacred Deer Two years ago VIFF 2015 hosted Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, an absurdly deadpan comedy riot starring Colin Farrell and Rachel…
“Cosmopolitan” is the word Woodstock Film Festival Executive Director Meira Blaustein is using to describe the 18th outing of the annual event set to run from October 11 through 15th in Kingston, Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Saugerties and Woodstock, its center. She listed Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom among the nations from which filmmakers would be arriving to attend. There’s to be a special ten work tribute to recent works of Dutch cinema, four world premieres, five North American premieres, one US premiere, 20 East Coast premieres and nine New York premieres, as well as spotlight focuses…
Tahmineh Milani, acclaimed Iranian film director and screenwriter, is working on a screenplay adaption of a fictional book on teens entitled ‘The Percipient population of Planet Ourac’. Written by Fariba Kalhor, author of children and young adults’ books, it is a story about a planet in the vicinity of Earth of almost the same size. The planet’s residents, who can become invisible via some magic gas emanating from a tree, are smart and live in a developed and industrialized environment. One of them is Adapa who orders a telescope to help him accomplish his mission. Through the telescope he sees…
VENICE: FNE spoke to Lithuanian director Andrius Lekavicius about why he chose VR for his new project Bloody Sunday / Kruvinasis Sekmadienis about the bloodshed around the TV Tower in January 1991. This year virtual reality even had its own island in the Venice laguna. https://youtu.be/9qRLARbHRwQ Source: Film New Europe
If fall means scary movies to you, don’t worry: We have a whole section on those too. But if you’d rather read subtitles than shriek at jump scares, this season’s schedule of film festivals should give you more independent and world cinema than you could possibly digest. Enjoy it while it lasts; 900 screenings of A Christmas Story are right around the corner. Manhattan Short Film Festival Monday, Oct. 2; Enzian Theater, enzian.org; $11 This one-day festival is actually the final round of the Manhattan Short Film Festival. Rather than relying on a jury to decide the winners, the festival sends its picks…
One of the last major film festivals of the season, the New York Film Festival, kicks off its two-week-plus run on September 28—bringing many of year’s festival favorites to the city, while world-premiering a couple of bigger titles. Though less of an awards campaign stop than Telluride or Toronto, what happens at N.Y.F.F. can still help clarify the Oscars field. Let’s take a look at where things stand as Lincoln Center gets ready to take focus. In years past, N.Y.F.F. has held world premieres for at least three big titles over the course of the festival. Movies like 20th Century…
Over the past 35 years and more than a dozen feature films, Aki Kaurismäki has maintained, along with cinematographer Timo Salminen, a distinctive aesthetic that uses high-contrast lighting, close-ups, and stoic faces to achieve a deadpan style perched somewhere between the sardonic and the severe. The Other Side of Hope upholds that standard, and follows on the heels of Le Havre, the writer-director’s 2011 film about a young Gabonian refugee on the run in the titular port city, with the tale of Khaled (Sherwan Haji), a Syrian refugee seeking asylum in Finland. Kaurismäki has spoken of this film as being…
The animation community in Iran’s capital city, Tehran, came together last week for Tehran Cartoon Sessions, a unique artist-driven event that took place over three evenings on September 17-19. Organized by Hoorakhsh Studios and the art space Darbast Platform, the event offered six case studies of Iranian-produced animation projects: three professional films and three student films. The directors and crews of each project were invited to present their production process to a wide-ranging audience that included other industry pros, students, and animation fans. The goal of the non-profit event is to encourage an exchange of information about animation production techniques in Iran…
Few people have had an as varied career as Matthew Vaughn. Having started as a producer, Vaughn has gone on to direct numerous well-received films, including British crime thriller Layer Cake, fantasy adventure Stardust, controversial black comedy Kick-Ass, superhero blockbuster X-Men: First Class, and — of course — Kingsman: The Secret Service. However, one thing Vaughn has never tackled is a sequel — until now. Kingsman: The Golden Circle marks Vaughn’s first time returning to a franchise as director (he acted as producer on Kick-Ass 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past). So what drew him back to this project…