At a press conference held in Paris yesterday, the Cannes Film Festival unveiled the powerhouse lineup for its 64th edition to be held May 11 to 21 in the French Riviera resort town. The list of films playing in the Main Competition section is by a mix of established veterans and strong newcomers. Among the major auteurs represented are such established arthouse names as Pedro Almodovar, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Bruno Dumont, Terrence Malick and Lars Von Trier.   America...

Day 3 of my Durban trip kicked off with a fire! As I walked out of my apartment block, I thought it was raining, just to see firemen, firetrucks, lots of bystanders and police as the building across the road was on fire. The journalist in me found it hard to just walk away, but I did just that although I couldn't resist to take some pictures. Everywhere I went during the day, I was asked whether I'm going to the Durban July on Saturday. The July is one of the world's top horse racing events. M...

"I was really into mainstream," says Brilliante Mendoza, the director of LOLA, of his career start as an advertising art director and production designer to mainstream Asian directors, "more the glamorous, glossy type of world (as) compared to what I am doing."But Mendoza'sattention has since turned to what he calls "real-time" storytelling, films based on real life stories. LOLA ("grandmother" in Tagalog) was inspired by a news item he saw on television about two different grandmothers, and tha...

"I was really into mainstream," says Brilliante Mendoza, the director of LOLA, of his career start as an advertising art director and production designer to mainstream Asian directors, "more the glamorous, glossy type of world (as) compared to what I am doing (now)." But Mendoza's attention has turned to what he calls "real-time" storytelling, films based on real life stories. LOLA ("grandmother" in Tagalog) was inspired by a news item he saw on television about two different grandmothers, and t...

Main awards all go to first films This Saturday evening, Georgian director George Ovashvili received the CHF 30.000 prize from the hands of jury president Hanna Schygulla. THE OTHER BANK also won the Audience Award. The prestigious "Talent Tape Award" worth CHF 23.000 in non-cash benefit was handed to Iranian director Nader T. Homayoun for his film TEHROUN. The Special Jury Award was presented to the Mexican contribution NORTEADO by Rigoberto Perezcano....

This year the 42nd edition of the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is presenting a selection of 22 in competition films in the Official Selection. The world's number one fantasy film festival continues to offer its audiences a broad spectrum of movies that insist on questioning and vindicating the fantastic concept as one of the genres in constant mutation. A transformation that requires a framework capable of analyzing movies from the mos...

 The Best Director Prize was awarded to Brillante Mendoza for "Kinatay" ...

Filipino cinema is making a triple-barreled return to the Cannes Festival, with the presentation of Kinatay by Brillante Mendoza, in Competition, and Independencia by Un Certain Regard. The latter feature is set in the early 20th century, during the Philippine-American war, when the newly independent republic was annexed by the United States. It is one of two films director Raya Martin is presenting in Cannes this year, the second being the Out-of-Competition Manila. In Indepen...

About the film: One year after the in-Competition presentation of Serbis, Brillante Mendoza is back in Cannes as the advocate for his seventh feature film, Kinatay, competing for the Palme d'Or. In Kinatay, which means "massacre" in Filipino, the streets of Manila turn into a hellhole for Peping, a young criminology student. As a junior member of a local gang, he is never trusted with anything big. One day, however, his crime bosses offer him a lot of money for a very ...

The official juries for the next Locarno International Film Festival are already shaping up, with several personalities having already confirmed their participation.The jury for the International Competition will include filmmaker HONG Sangsoo (Woman Is the Future of Man, Tale of Cinema), a leading talent in contemporary Korean cinema, whose latest film will screen in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes; French screenwriter and filmmaker Pascal Bonitzer, who has enjoyed long term collaborations...

Friday, September 5--------One of the first announcements of a US distribution deal was made today, on the first day of full out screenings here at the Toronto International Film Festival. Regent Releasing, a leading independent U.S. distributor, announcedthat it has acquired North American distribution rights to Serbis (Service), the new film from acclaimed Filipino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza.  Regent acquired the film from international sales agent Fortissimo Films and will distribute Ser...

The film Directed by Brillante Mendoza, Serbis is the first Filipino film to compete in the Official Selection since Bayan Ko by Lino Brocka in 1984. Serbis takes place in an old movie house in Angeles City, in the Philippines, which shows 1970s skin flicks. As the members of the Pineda family, who own the theater, go about their daily activities, we slowly discover their personalities and the difficulties they are grappling with. Tormented by inner demons, they willfully ignore the prostitu...