For those who didn’t see the 2011 South East European Film Festival (SEE FEST) last May, I thought I’d recap a few of my favorite films. Me, My Gypsy Family, and Woody Allen was a humorous and moving 2009 documentary about the Halilović family’s move from caravans into a permanent apartment, and the daughter Laura’s intent on being a filmmaker rather than getting married at 18, as her mother and relatives expected. Halilović’s family had lived in caravans in Italy sin...

You may elect your best Film Curse using our Poll click to VOTE  •1.          Dorian Gray (2009) Cursed character: Dorian Gray - played by Ben Barnes The Story: Fresh-faced and innocent, Dorian Gray arrives in London to move into the house he has inherited. Almost immediately he falls under the influence of amoral and calculating Lord Henry Wotton, leading to a life of increasing debauchery and even violence. Through many years Gray stays as young...

Jasmine Dallal the director said: "I originally named this film after a Romani proverb about how to cope when life doesn't deal you a straight hand ("You cannot walk straight when the road bends"). So the film title began as "When the Road Bends... tales of a Gypsy Caravan." However, brevity and the marketplace have prevailed so that it is being released simply as "Gypsy Caravan" in many places. Sorry about the confusion, but it is all the same movie a...

"U-CARMEN eKHYELITSHA" is an extremely unusual version of the opera Carmen set in a squalid shanty-town "Township", Khyelitsha, near Capetown, South Africa --and sung entirely by African singers in the "click language", Khosa! This black Carmen is a light year beyond the light brown "Carmen Jones" of 1954 which starred Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge and seemed so sucy and racy at the time. For one thing, Pauline Malefane (Carmen) is not a slender Hollywood mannekin type like Dandridge ...