THE CONGRESS -- FINAL VERSION
by ALEX DE LEON
<filmfestivals.com>
Summary: Amazing! Will have special reverberations for Veteran Acid trippers
Nota bene
This is an email review:
Dear Milgro, just saw an incredible half animation film at the Budapest Israeli film week that I need to tell a film savvy person like yourself, about -- while it is still fresh in my mind. Name of Film "...
PEACE AFTER MARRIAGE,
I saw this tonight and was blown away --totally unexpected fantastic film!
European title, "Only in New York"
Directed and starring Ghazi Albuliwi
Ghazi Albuliwi New York comedian director of Palestinian background
A sexually frustrated Palestinian-American, Arafat, still living with his traditional Muslim parents at age thirty and addicted to porno joins a Sex Addicts Anonymous therapy group and is befriended by a guy w...
Budapest Israeli Film Week,
by Alex Deleon
BETHLEHEM,
An Israeli Agent and His teenage Palestinian Informant
Bethlehem (hebrew: בית לחם) is a 2013 Israeli drama directed by first time helmer Yuval Adler. It was screened at the Venice Days section of the 2013 Venice Film Festival where it won the top prize.
Bethlehem takes place during the Al-Aqsa second Intifada around 2004 and tells the story of the complex relationship between an Israeli Secret Service of...
"Yossi and Jagger", 2002, military based drama and same sex love story. Dir. Eytan Fox, with Ohad Knoller (Yossi)and Yehuda Levi (Jagger) RT. 67 minutes
Nobody can accuse the Israeli cinema of a lack of diversity.
If the yesterday's opening film dealt with the uniquely Israel topic of Talmudic research, the second film of the week takes up the more universal topic of erotic love between men -- but set at a frontline military outpost where machoism in the fa...
by Alex Deleon
What amounts to a mini-festival of Israeli films is being presented at the venerable old PUSKIN MOZI (Pushkin Art Cinema) in Budapest. under the sponsorship of the Israeli Embassy here. Not the very latest films but rather an overview of some of the outstanding Israeli film landmarks of the past two decades.
Opening film: "FOOTNOTES" 2012 (Hearat Shulayim)
A tale of father and son as Talmudic rivals. Director, Joseph Cedar. 103 minutes. Stars, Lior ...
AFP – French singing legend Charles Aznavour, one of the 20th century’s most prolific songwriters who remains active at 92, was honored Thursday with a Hollywood star presented by California’s Armenians.
Aznavour, often dubbed France’s Frank Sinatra, said he was “deeply moved” by the recognition.
The star is not on Hollywood Boulevard’s main Walk of Fame but was dedicated by the Armenian community on a nearby stretch of sidewalk.
...
RUSSIAN JEWS (Russkie Evrei) is an Historical Document compiled and directed by Sergei Nurmamed and narrated by Dmitriy Altschuler-Kurchati. Ukrainian premier, 2016, RT 86'
Part of the Overflow crowd at Molodist screening of "Russian Jews"
Russian narrator Dmitriy Altschuler-Kurchati, fields questions after screening at Kinoteatr Kiev
Because the Jews have had such an impact on Ukrainian history -- both positive and negative, ...
With Mirlan Abdykalkov, director of the magnificent Kygyz film SYTAK. (Heavenly Nomadic)
...
Amazing -- very first night in Kiev, at festival opening ceremony, I met Victor Yushchenko, former President of Ukraine! ~ 2005 -- 2010
Not bad for openers
...
MOLODIST 46, KIEV Int'l Film Festival KIFF
By Alex Deleon-Pevney
The Scythian Deer is the Ukrainian equivalent of Hollywood's Oscar.
The purpose of the festival is to promote young professional cinema, hence the name "Molodist", which is Ukrainian for Youth.
The forty sixth edition of the Kyiv (Formerly Kiev) international film festival Molodist KIFF opened officially on Friday night, October 22 with an invitational VIP gatherin...
in Memoriam by Alex Deleon
I Must say that I was a little shocked to hear the news last night on Kossuth Radio, Budapest, of the passing of Andrzej Wajda, the Polish cinema maestro. Not that it is surprising when a man of ninety finally cashes in his chips, but Wajda who just delivered his 47th feature film this year, "Afterimage" ('Powidoki', released in September 2016) was the kind of director you kind of expected to keep truckin' until a hundred.
H...
REVIEW by ALEX DELEON
Sponsored by the Indian Embassy the 2016 Budapest Indian Film Week offers a savvy selection of recent and not so recent landmarks of the Bollywood cinema. One film per night for seven straight nights, all films with new Hungarian subtitles
The second film of the series was "Dum Laga Ke Haisha" which means something like "Give it all You've got!" ~ a major hit of 2015 both in India and in overseas NRI communities although it has no really big ...
by ALEX DELEON, <filmfestivals.com>
Clint Eastwood's latest offering "SULLY" has been doing slam-bang box-office business in the USA since it is a well done Near Disaster film, and in a dark year of police shootings, other shootings, train crashes, and an upcoming election featuring candidates both of whom are likely to bring the entire nation to the brink of disaster, provides a ray of hope and something to feel good about --namely, the saving of 155 p...
"Operation Chromite" Directed by Lee Jae-Han. Viewed in Koreatown, Los Angeles,
Starring Liam Neeson as General Douglas MacArthur and Jung-Jae Lee as the leader of a nearly suicidal undercover mission behind North Korean lines at the peak of the Korean War.
Operation Chromite --(original Korean title, 인천상륙작전; 仁川上陸作戰;Incheon Sangnyuk Jae-jeon) is a 2016 South Korean war drama blockbuster directed by "John H."...
By Alex Deleon
I caught TRUMBO yesterday on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to L.A. and found it so fascinating that I watched it three times in a row on this 12 hour global traverse -- and it just got better with each viewing.
Somehow this major Hollywood film about Hollywood fell through the cracks in 2015 and didn't get the recognition it deserves.
To the average film goer the name Dalton Trumbo may not ring many bells but to those interested in Hollywood history and engag&e...
The restored films of Venezia Classici will be an enticing sidebar at Venice 2016 alone worth a trip to the LIdo this year.
Alex Deleone <filmfestivals.com>
director Roberto Andò to chair the Jury composed of cinema students
restored films and documentaries in world premiere screenings
Italian director Roberto Andò (The Confessions, Long Live Freedom, The Prince’s Manuscript) will chair the Jury of Cinema History Students whi...
by Alex Deleon
British actress Jacqueline Bissett, 72, was the special guest this year at the 13th Golden Apricot film festival in Yerevan and three of her early films were screened.
Viewed here as part of the Jacqueline Bissett tribute, "Murder on the Orient Express" (Sidney Lumet, 1974) is so bad it looks like a dress rehearsal for a film that never got made. If the Agatha Christie novel had suspense and snappy dialogue Lumet's film has neither. No susp...
13th YEREVAN GOLDEN APRICOT FILM FESTIVAL GAIFF
By Alex Deleon
The thirteenth edition of the Yerevan Golden Apricot Film Festival (GAIFF) concluded officially on Saturday July 17 with a gala awards ceremony in the massive Moskva Kinotheater on Charles Aznavour Plaza and a screening of "The Unknown Girl", the latest offering from, the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, of Belgium.
Major Awards
International Feature competitio...
YEREVAN Film Festival 2016
My arrival here in Yerevan for the Film Festival coincided with the events in Nice which have sent the world into shock when a Franco-Arab truck driver plowed into the crowd celebrating Bastille day on the beachfront promenade in the Riviera city.
This news, almost immediately followed by the news of a coup attempt by the army in Turkey has dominated the Tv waves ever since. Initial body count, 84 people killed in Nice, 180 or more killed in Turkey. Hundr...
ODD that the back-to-back obituaries in all the Italian papers yesterday were Elie Wiesel and Michael Cimino, the auteur of "Deerhunter" ... Followed by the débâcle of "Gates of Hell" that brought both his career and that of the studio United Artists down to bankruptcy and ignominous ruin.
(Check it out in the Inkwire )--- I vaguely remember seeing "Heaven's Gate" when it came out and not thinking much of it except for the appearance in an A...
CINEMA RITROVATO A BOLOGNA
News background
By Deleon-Pevner
Against the background of this fabulous week of cinema rediscoveries in Bologna, the following major NEWS Items:
The big news, of course, BREXIT, the spectacular British exit from the E.U. overshadows all other current news stories.
The Passing of the famous Italian star with the English name, Bud Spencer, big news in all Italian papers. No news elsewhere
Islamic attack in Dacca, Bangladesh -- seven italians among ...
JONES ON TRUFFAUT ON HITCHCOCK
Another Marvelous Documentary in a Tent in the North Woods ~~ By Alex Deleon <film festivals.com>
The Greatest Story Hitchcock Ever Told
HITCHCOCK/Truffaut; Document, UK. 2015. director Kent Jones. 78 minutes. Viewed on Saturday afternoon in the little tent. Chilly with mosquitoes biting. Makes you want to read and devour the book ASAP. Fantastic film. Great shots of Hitchcock film p...
Kaisa's Enchanted Forest" (Kuun Metsän Kaisa) Opens Midnight Sun Festival in far north Finland with a Magical Mystery Tour through Lappish folklore
Alex Deleon <filmfestivals.com
"Kaisa's Enchanted Forest" 2016, Finnish Biographical documentary, consisting of crisp b/w archival footage mixed with contemporary color footage and magical special effects. RT 84 minutes that seem eternal in th...
By Alex Deleon
The Midnight Sun Film Festival w (known in Finland as Sodankylän elokuvajuhlat) as founded in 1986 by Finnish filmmakers, e.g. the Kaurismäki brothers, and the Municipality of Sodankylä. The village of Sodankylä is located in the heart of Finnish Lapland, some 120 kilometers above the Arctic Circle, where the sun doesn´t set at all in the summertime. The Lappish nature and the nightless night provide the Midnight Sun Film Festival a setting no other fe...
By Alex Deleon, <filmfestivals.com>
25 films so far ... Not counting. Shorts!
Bergamo, Wed. day 5: Five films. Three Jancsos. one dismal Anna Karina, and one magnificent doc on Soviet Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya.
9:30 Jancsó, Magyar Rapszódia. Part I of Trilogy. 1978, RT. 103'
Parabola Liturgica surrealista, rievoca eventi della secondo decennio del XX secolo.Transformo spirituale di istvan Zsadani. Inspirata alla figura storico di Endre B...
