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Alex Deleon
RIVER TO RIVER, FLORENCE CHITTAGONG vs CHITTAGONG, AND THE WINDS OF CHANGE
by Alex Deleon
Bedabrata Pain (Bengali: বেদব্রত পাইন; born 27 March 1963, West Bengal, India) is a new Indian film director, producer and screenwriter.
Bedabrata Pain is also inventor of the CMOS image sensor.
One of the most interesting things about Chittagong, the film, is that it is the debut feature of a 49 year old dir...
by Alex Deleon for <filmfestivals.com>
Take that you bloody muthe$&£$%*er!
The main Indian features seen this year at Florence, "The Gangs of Wasseypur" and "Chittagong", are Bollywood productions in the sense that both are made in Hindi (rather than one of India's other 21 official languages) with professional Bombay performers and staff, but the content, style, and conception of these films seems t...
by Alex Deleon for<filmfestivals.com>
Amitabh Bachchan accepting the key to the city of Florence as Selvaggia Velo looks on. PHOTO: BY FRANCESCA MANOLINO
The appearance of 70 year old Indian Megastar Amitabh Bachchan at the River to River Festival of Indian Film in Florence gave rise to a feverish outpouring of adulation from local Indians while serving as an unoffical certification for this festival as the foremost showcase of Indian film in the West. In Ind...
by Alex Deleon
LUST (Al Shooq) is an Egyptian film set in Egypt's second city, Alexandria, on the Mediterranean.
However the part of the city we see is no tourist dream -- but a poverty stricken warren of side streets where the central figure, Umm Shooq, a charismatic possessed lady, and her two mod daughters live. When her youngest son falls seriously ill with a kidney condition and needs dialysis treatment --very expensive -- she is forced to beg on the streets to raise the money. When she...
by Alex Deleon for <filmfestivals.com>
The sixteenth edition of the Arab Film Festival (which travels to five cities in California) opened here on Friday, October 19 with a festive reception at the Screen writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. This is an intensive three day event which will screen as many films as can be squeezed into a long weekend. The opening night film was "Man Without a Cell Phone", a debut feature by Palestinian filmmaker Sameh Zoabi who has won various...
by Alex Deleon for <filmfestivals.com>
Bahman Ghobadi
RHINO SEASON is Ghobadi's first film since he fled Iran
The stars of Rhino Season (from left) Behrouz Vossoughi, Monica Bellucci, Bahman Ghobadi, Belcim Bilgin and Arash Labaf
IRANIAN CINEMA BRAIN DRAIN CONTINUES
With Bahman ...
Besides the customary unveiling of new and upcoming talent from far and wide which is the hallmark of this festival, Karlovy 2012 provided such an extensive look at film history that these selections alone could have constituted an entire festival on their own. Among digitally restored new prints of landmark old films were Fellini's "La Strada, 1954, which among other things made burly actor Anthony Quinn into an arthouse icon, and Miloš Forman's "Fireman's Ball" (1967) the...
KVIFF 47, AWARDS AND COMMENTS, A TALE OF FOUR WOMAN
by Alex Deleon
SUSAN SARANDON AT KARLOVY VARY
The 47th Karlovy Vary Film Festival closed shop on Saturday July 7 with the customary gala awards ceremony and a screening of Woody Allen's "To Rome With Love" in the vast 1,500 seat Grand Hall (Velky Zal) of the Thermal Hotel. This was followed by the usual swanky closing reception at the stately Hapsburg era Hotel Pupp (Pronounced "poop&quo...
Helen Mirren and István Szabó (The Door)
by Alex Deleon, for <filmfestivals.com>
Dame Helen Mirren, patently the dominant figure of the first two days, held court on Saturday morning at the first official festival press conference. As Helen Mirrenová she is getting front page coverage in the Czech daily press in the manner of visiting royalty and her gracefully smiling visage adorns the cover of the widely read TVstar weekly with a bold gold lettered caption reading ...
"THE IRAN JOB" screened at the Los Angeles Fesdtival
The Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF, June 14 - 24) is mounted and presented by FilmIndependent, an organization dedicated to the promotion of independent films by new and upcoming filmmakers and talent. The programs are not studded with the names of iconic directors or well known stars but are more oriented toward intruducing the talent of tomorrow. However, as a nod to the main industry the opening film was the latest by Wo...
with a footnote on Woody Allen
by Alex Deleon
for <www.filmfestivals.con>
This year's ninth edition of the Los Angeles Jewish Film festival with the cooperation of the widely read Jewish Journal Weekly was better organized than in previous years and had an unusually strong selection of films. Films are, of course, chosen on the basis of having some connection with Jewishness, director, subject matter, or whatever, and are aimed at a primarily Jewish audience, which can be pretty...
LOS ANGELES JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL OPENS WITH TONY CURTIS DOC AND MAMIE VAN DOREN APPEARANCE
by Alex Deleon for http://www.filmfestivals.com/
The seventh edition of the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival (LAJFF) opened on May 4 at the plush Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills with a feature length documentary on
recently deceased Jewish actor Tony Curtis and a Gala reception at which another legendary youth idol and sex symbol of the fifties, Mamie Van Doren, was the...
Berlin is known above all for its political and social commitment, or what the French Existentialists would call a Festival "Engagé".Esthetic purists sometimes question the Berlin prize decisions on artistic grounds but art is often of secondary importance in this ballparkwhere politics can also have to do with the pecking order in the upper echelons of the international film establishment. Clearly the film with the most obvious socio-political content this year was the Hungarian entry "Csak a ...
With the Fest at Midpoint Two American Iron Ladies have dominated the scene thus far, Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep. For the first four days it was all about Angela, her hard hitting Bosnian genocide film, and her hectic personal life.On Valentines Day, Feb. 14, which comes exactly in the middle of the festival, it was Meryl Streep Day, who arrived to pick up a Berlin Bear Lifetime award and held forth before an enthralled overflow press conference audience. Jolie, 36, and now at the peak of ...
by Alex Deleon
Wed. Feb.9, 2012
The 62nd Berlinale opened this afternoon for early arriving journalists even before the Opening Gala which will be held tonight
with two special press screenings. First up was the rousing Bollywood actioner ¨DON 2, The King Is Back¨ starring The K...
by Alex Deleon
The 62nd Berlinale opened this afternoon for early arriving journalists even before the Opening Gala which will be held tonight
with two special press screenings. First up was the rousing Bollywood actioner ''DON 2, The King Is Back'' starring The King of
Bollywood himself, Shah Rukh Khan, and this was followed by the much anticipated Angela Jolie directed Bosnian War drama,
''Land of Blood and Hone'' (Zemlja Krvi a Mjod), in which the actress does not herself...
The Battle Of Warsaw 1920
Dir: Jerzy Hoffman. Poland. 2011. 115mins
Polish director Jerzy Hoffman (born 1932) has only made 14 films in a 45 year career, but half of them have become landmarks of Polish cinema and he is regarded as one of the outstanding Polish film directors, a sort of Polish Cecile B. DeMille in terms of the grandness of his projects.
His latest opus is called "Bitwa Warszawska, 1920" (The battle of Warsaw,...
For New Polish 3D Blockbuster Screens in LAby Alex Deleon Polish director Jerzy Hoffman (born 1932) has only made 14 films in a 45 year career, but half of them have become landmarks of Polish cinema and he is regarded as one of the outstanding Polish film directors,a sort of Polish Cecile B. DeMille in terms of the grandness of his projects.His latest opus is called "Bitwa Warszawska, 1920" (The battle of Warsaw, 1920) and is another massive epic to rank with his earlier "Fire and Sword" (1999)...
LOOKING BACK ON TOKYO INTL FILM FESTIVAL, 2011 ~THE YEAR OF THE QUAKE ~ by Alex Deleon Not to forget that this was the year of the Great March 11 Earthquake cum nuclear disaster and "Tsunami" Tidal Wave that washed away whole cities up north, the 24th Tokyo Intl Film festival was a somewhat restrained affair with the lingering effect of the disaster in evidence in various forms, toning down the overall climate of festivity. Right outside the entrance to the main towe...
At the midpoint of its nine day run the 24th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) is running smoothly and on schedule in its futuristic setting, much like the local trains.The festival is centered in an ultra modern shopping and tourist complex known as "Roppongi Hills" but there are no hills in evidence, just an incredible array of glass towers, upscale restaurants and classy boutiques in a multi-tiered maze of shopping delights.(Roppongo "Bills" might be more like it, as "Bil" is Japanese ...
by Alex Deleon
The 13th annual Film Noir festival concluded its edgy three week run at the hallowed Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on April 20, with the stomach churning identity theft thriller, "My Name is Julia Ross", (Columbia, 1945) starring Nina Foch in a memorable role as a kidnapped-for-murder blonde in an eerie Gothic mansion on the cliffs over the sea in Cornwall, U.K. While this is really more of a Gothic murder mystery than a pure noir, contract director Joseph...
GOTHIC THRILLER CONCLUDES NOIR CITY, HOLLYWOOD, 2011by Alex Deleon The 13th annual Film Noir festival concluded its edgy three week run at the hallowed Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on April 20, with the stomach churning identity theft thriller, "My Name is Julia Ross", (Columbia, 1945) starring Nina Foch in a memorable role as a kidnapped-for-murder blonde in an eerie Gothic mansion on the cliffs over the sea in Cornwall, U.K. While this is really more of a Gothic murder mystery than a pure noi...
The 13th Annual Film Noir festival, known affectionately as "Noir City", arrived at its usual venue, the fabled Egyptian theater on Hollywood Boulevard, on April 1st, settling in for a three week run until April 20. Here dedicated Noir fans and many merely curious drop-ins will be treated to a series of established classics of the genre and rarely seen new discoveries in a viewer friendly "double feature" format -- just like the old days -- two distinctive black and white features from Hollywoo...
Below is the coverage from Berlin, headlines...
My Berlin Top Ten Films
At a film festival that totals more than 250 feature films (not to mention an additional 250 features in the accompanying European Film Market), one can only skim the surface of an event as wide-ranging as the Berlinale. Film choices are often based on schedule availability....grabbing a screening in between meetings or making sure one is awake to catch the early morning press screenings of the Competition program. In a se...
The weather this Berlinale has been more or less "as usual" -- chilly, around freezing every day, a few snowflakes in the air, and brightly overcast -- no sunshine, but bright cloudy days casting a bright silver haze on the cobblestone meadows of Potsdamer Platz -- the kind of bracing weather that makes one happy to be inside a warm cinema rather than out on a tempting beach ... like at Cannes, Venice, or San Sebastian.
Berlinale veterans --which means anyone who was here before...
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