La Pistola

The Movies That Missed Us

(Benjamin Smoke)

One of the great things about programming for a film festival is traveling to other festivals and being able to see the newest films by directors I love as well as discovering first time works. One of the worst things about programming a film festival is seeing something I love at another festival and inviting it to screen in Denver and not getting it. There are myriad reasons why this happens; premiere policies at other festivals, distributor and sales agents roll-out strategies that don’t match festival dates, a single print that is already booked elsewhere, etc., etc.

Another great thing about being part of an organization that also operates its own year-round theatre (in our case, the Starz FilmCenter) is that occasionally I can go back and put together a program of films that didn’t work out the first time around for the festival, re-imagine and re-package it all for the film center and still be able to introduce new works to Denver.

I’ve done just that for a series that will screen in June: The Movies That Missed Us, part of a monthly program at the Starz FilmCenter called, appropriately, The Series. Taking place every Wednesday at 7pm, The Movies That Missed Us looks back at 4 films I saw (and loved) at other festivals but have never screened in Denver.

June 4 – Svjedoci (Witnesses)
(directed by Vinko Bresan, Croatia, 2003)

June 11 – Benjamin Smoke
(directed by Jem Cohen & Peter Sillen, USA, 2000)

June 18 – Seom (The Isle)
(directed by Kim Ki-duk, South Korea, 2000)

June 25 – Taxidermia
(directed by György Pálfi, Hungary, 2006)

More on each of these films as we get a bit closer.

Democratic National Convention / Cinemocracy

As most everyone knows, the Democratic National Convention is taking place in Denver this summer—August 25-28—and it’s shaping up to be a dandy. We, at the Denver Film Society are working in conjunction with the city of Denver to produce an online film festival that is taking place now and leads up to the convention that asks the question, “How do you define democracy?”

Submit a film up to five minutes in length answering that question, and the top 25 videos (as determined by public online voting) will be screened publicly during the week of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The top five films will be screened as part of the official program of the 31st Starz Denver Film Festival (November 13-23).

The top ten vote getters will be flown in and provided hotel rooms so that they can take part in the events and parties taking place here in Denver during the convention.

For more information and to submit your film (it’s free), go to cinemocracy.org.

Crispin Glover / Spike Lee in Denver

A pretty fantastic pair of upcoming events at the Starz FilmCenter I wanted to mention; first Crispin Glover will be here for three nights (April 18-20) to present his Big Slideshow, his film What is it? followed by Q&A’s and a book signing. I’m really looking forward to it. Relive some of your (or my) favorite Crispin Glover moments here, here and here. For a preview of the Big Slide Show, go here. For times and tickets, go here.

On May 1, Spike Lee will be in town for an interview/conversation in conjunction with the University of Colorado at Denver's CU-Live! program. Leading up to that the Starz FilmCenter will be screening four of Lee's films on April 27-30; Malcolm X, 25th Hour, Crooklyn and Do the Right Thing. For more information or to ourchase tickets, go here.

SXSW / They Killed Sister Dorothy

For the second year in a row, a Denver film has won an audience award at the SXSW film festival. Daniel Junge’s wonderful new documentary, They Killed Sister Dorothy, not only picked up the audience vote last night according to Mr. Hernandez over at IndieWIRE, but won the Grand Jury doc prize as well.

I saw the film in rough-cut form a few months ago and liked it quite a bit. Congratulations Daniel, Henry, Davis, et al….

Hope for the future

I’ve been meaning to get around to this since I read an article by Mike Goodridge in Screen International during the Berlinale, especially because it gave me such…hope, after what has felt like a lackluster start to the 2008 festival season. I haven’t been thrilled by a whole lot this year at Sundance and Berlin, but according to Mike, here are some of the possibilities that could turn up in Cannes, and they excite me a lot: a new film by Wim Wenders, The Palermo Shooting; the Dardenne brother’s The Silence of Lorna; Walter Salles’ Linha  De Passe; Carlos Cuaron’s Rudo Y Cursi; Fernando Meirelles' adaptation of Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago’s Blindness (the film, however, will be in English and stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Gael Garcia Bernal which, having read and liked the book, gives me pause); Tran Anh Hung has a new film called I Come With the Rain, and I generally like him, but this is also English language and stars Josh Hartnett…so, again, pause; Jia Zhang-ke hardly ever goes wrong in my book and has a new film called 24 City; I’ve been dying to see Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, The Bad and The Weird since I read about it more than a year ago; I missed Kim Ki-duk’s Dream in Berlin and he is one my favorites; both Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hirokazu Kore-eda have new films…Tokyo Sonata and Even If You Walk and Walk, respectively; and there are plenty more possibilities by Michael Winterbottom, Barbet Schroeder and Agnes Varda among others.

It looks like it might be a very, very nice May.

The People vs. George Lucas

Filmmakers and friends of mine, Alexandre and Vanessa Philippe, are working on a new project; The People vs. George Lucas. It's already gotten considerable attention, as all things Star Wars tend to do, and details can be found over at Slash Film, the ever-present Karina Longworth at Spout.com and Obsessed With Film among others.

The projects official web site is here.

If you've got strong feelings about the Star Wars franchise...and you know who you are...this is for you.

Berlin / III

The Belinale is over and it seemed, for me at least, to more or less stagger to a close and collapse more than anything else. The best films I saw (other than Errol Morris’ mid-week Standard Operating Procedure) were in the first few days and I was actually stunned by a few of the films I saw in the Panorama wondering if I hadn’t wandered into the market instead, And, getting back to SOP, I had dinner with some friends the night I saw it and four of them, three German and one American, walked out of the screening they disliked it so much. Some criticized the reenactments, some the Danny Elfman score. For me, it was probably the best thing I saw here (although I did not see the Mike Leigh comedy which I’ve heard nothing but good things about.)

There had been a lot of talk about the vitality and viability of the Berlin program leading up to the festival this year—obvious comparisons were made between it and the other large, old European festivals, Cannes and Venice—and the release this week of some of the titles premiering in Cannes in a couple of months definitely made the Berlin festival look, well…let’s just say not very exciting.

Wrapping things up, however, with the awards…

José Padilha’s Brazillian film The Elite Squad won the Golden Bear for Best Film. I didn’t see the film, mostly because the reviews were so mixed, leaning towards bad, but I suppose if it turns up in Cannes I’ll check it out.

Erroll Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure won the Silver Bear – The Jury Grand Prix

Paul Thomas Anderson won the Silver Bear for Best Director for There Will Be Blood

Sally Hawkins won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her role in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky

Reza Najie won the Silver Bear for Best Actor for his role in Majid Majidi’s The Song of Sparrows

Eran Riklis’ The Lemon Tree won the Panorama Audience Award

Berlin / II

So, halfway into the festival and so far, at least the competition screenings have been met with a general ho-hum-ness. The first screening of Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure this afternoon should ratchet things up, I hope. I’ve been largely disappointed by some films I had high expectations for—Johnnie To’s latest, Sparrow, which, while beautiful, felt awfully thin story-wise. I did like the French, black and white, I Always Wanted To Be a Gangster and The Lemon Tree, less so the Majid Majidi’s Song of Sparrows, Stefan Arsenijevic’s Love and Other Crimes and Fernando Eimbcke’s Lake Tahoe but mostly I’m still waiting for that one film to really get me excited.

Berlin / I

Here in Berlin and I’ve realized a few things right of the bat: I’m staying in a room for geriatrics (note chair in shower…I even have a button next to the toilet that rings the front desk in case, well…I’m not sure why) and you can no longer smoke anywhere. I’m fine with this in the United States and I knew it was coming in France…but Berlin? Christ, The other odd thing about my hotel is that they have WiFi…but only on floors five and six. I’m on two…which I realized at about 2am, is right about a major nighttime bus stop.

The initial look at the Competition schedule isn’t sending shivers down my spine, but I am dying to see Errol Morris’ new doc, Standard Operating Procedure.

Day 1 was a relatively slow start with the first Competition film from China, but I also saw Slingshot Hip Hop which I missed at Sundance and liked more than I expected and an excellent documentary on Joy Division called, um…Joy Division. Great old concert footage, a bizarre showing by Genesis P. Orridge from Throbbing Gristle and Pyschic tv and a realization that Sam Riley's performance in Control was simply dead on. A mid-day Czech film was a bit of a sleeper but all in all not bad for the first day. Now off to a reception by the Danes…

Travel Warning - Dwarves!

Preparing to leave the country ain't as easy as it used to be. Of course there was always the fear of forgetting the passport and wondering if you had enough of those miniature bottles of scotch tucked away (if you have to fly coach...) but now we've had to get used to putting bunches of stuffs in plastic bags and carrying on virtually nothing. And now this warning from the U.K. Telegraph about Dwarves zipping themselves into suitcases and clearing out the rest of the luggage from the hold.

I'm really not sure what to say.