Walking around New York, London or Paris, if you offered someone 100 dollars, pounds or euros to name just one Bulgarian film or director, you'd likely still have the money in your pocket after an hour of trying. Of course, this fact has nothing to do with a lack of productivity or talent in contemporary Bulgarian cinema.And with “Avé”, the feature film debut by director Konstantin Bojanov, Bulgarian cinema's profile is likely to be raised higher, as audiences discover a deeply personal and...

I was in Edinburgh Fri-Sat for a flying visit (without flying actually as I travelled by train) and on the Friday evening I decided to take a few hours off from my laptop and go and see a film at a lovely soulless multiplex (this being cineworld). Since I also work in the horror sector I had the choice between Paranormal Activity 2 and Saw 3D. I really wanted to see both as I was curious as to how Saw had used 3D technology and also how Paranormal Activity was starting to turn itself ...

Sunday, (10.24.10) the official last day of The Philadelphia Film Festival, was my first screenings at Ritz Five, it was unintentional, but everything else I saw just happened to play in University City or The Prince. I saw Housemaid a South Korean film about a overly privileged, insufferably arrogant rich business man who takes advantage of his housekeeper/nanny. When she becomes pregnant his wife and mother-in-law conspire to get rid of her. The set production of their mansion is awesome, look...

  On Saturday, I sat down with three of the narrative features directors represented in this year’s American Film Festival, the first event in Eastern Europe to be solely devoted to contemporary and classic American cinema. Tim Rutilli, a musician-turned-filmmaker whose alternative rock band Califone has played concert and festival dates around the world, is represented at the Festival by ALL MY FRIENDS ARE FUNERAL SINGERS. Bill Morrison is an award-winning avant-garde filmmaker b...

   British director Tom Browne talks to us about his film ‘Spunkbubble’ recently entered in ÉCU’s European Dramatic Short category. As original as it is violent, the film is shot entirely as surveillance-camera footage, witnessing the events taking place in one individual hotel room. Yet what these events actually are, we can never really be quite sure…….  By Mairi Cunningham Q: Your film is unsettling yet intriguing. Tell me what it is about and where the inspi...

Writing for the Genre World a WGA panel moderated by Mick Garris( creator/producer: Masters of Horror; writer/director/producer of Riding the Bullet, Fear Itself and many others. Larry Cohen writer; Phone Booth, I, the Jury and writer or director of numerous other genre favorites. Juliet Snowden and Stiles White co-writers of Boogeyman and Knowing. Stephen Susco writer: The Grudge 1 and The Grudge 2 and Red. Mick Garris began the panel at the AFM by stating that lately genre equates to horror....

by Marc Halperin   Stephen Susco, Mick Garris, Larry Cohen, Juliet Snowden and Stiles White photo by Marc Halperin    Writing for the Genre World a WGA panel moderated by Mick Garris( creator/producer: Masters of Horror; writer/director/producer of Riding the Bullet, Fear Itself and many others. Larry Cohen writer; Phone Booth, I, the Jury and writer or director of numerous other genre favorites. Juliet Snowden and Stiles White co-writers of Boogeyman and Knowi...

It's Halloween, and our treat tonight is speaking with Joe Dante, who will be walking the red carpet in a few hours for the US premiere of his new film, The Hole at the AFI film festival. Some of the stars of the movie, will be there as well. There are actors he has worked with before. I asked Marc Halperin to help me with the interview, as he distributed Joes' film The Howling while at Embassy Pictures in the glory days of 80's Horror films. MARLA: So how was it winning best the 3D Film a...

At the Opening Night party for Independent Film Festival Boston 2008, I asked Managing Director Brian Tamm about the festival’s selection process and whether they keep any themes in mind when filling out the schedule.  His response was: “We just try to select the best films we can. You guys [the press] tell us what the themes are.” Well, let’s see what they came up with. With the Opening Night thriller’s frostbitten Siberian north (Transsiberian) and the Closing Nig...

Interview with Chip Hourihan/Producer (along with Heather Rae) of "Frozen River by Sharon AbellaBio:Chip Hourihan is the producer (along with Heather Rae) of "Frozen River", winner of The Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, 2008 Gotham Independent Film Award (Best Feature), FIPRESCI Prize, and Best Feature Awards at the Hamburg, San Sebastián, Provincetown , and Stockholm Film Festivals. "Frozen River" was released theatrically in 2008 by Sony Pictures Classics and in 2009 by R...

 Friday, April 4-----The 13th edition of the Gen Art Film Festival kicked off festivities on Wednesday night with the East Coast Premiere screening of DIMINISHED CAPACITY, a family drama starring Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda. The Festival continues through next Tuesday, showcasing one feature film and accompanying short film per night, followed by a party at some of New York’s most trendy nightspots. On the eve of the Festival, I interviewed Jeff Abramson, Head of the Film Division for Gen...

Where it once started in San Francisco and blossomed in Park City, director Justin Lin has returned to his roots in more ways than one. The filmmaker, who launched his career with the independent film “Better Luck Tomorrow”, continued with studio products “Annapolis” and the box office hit “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”, has come full circle with his latest product, an independent featured called “Finishing the Game”. Having premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, it...

Movie theater audiences have steadily shrunk over the past 50 years. This brings a very important concern to the forefront: will movie theaters continue to exist among all the new media and technology? With so many different ways to distribute a film, it is a matter of sociology as to why one would want to go into a dark movie theater and experience a film with a group of strangers or even alone in the dark.Several of these topics were addressed at a recent Sundance Film Festival panel I attende...

Pretty/Scary. The duality of the phrase is simple. Women can be pretty. They can also be scary. Women can be pretty scary. In a world where most geeks are men, it’s hard for women to find one another among all the testosterone-ridden conventions, film screenings, comic book stores, and underground video collections. It’s also difficult to find a way for women to accept their beauty, sex appeal, and femininity while acknowledging that they are smart, talented, and intelligent as well. When yo...