Festival Reports

By N. Buket Cengiz. The most important event of the year for the cinephiles of Istanbul, the International Istanbul Film Festival, enjoyed its thirtieth birthday this year, featuring two hundred and thirty one films in seven venues and attracting a total of one hundred and fifty thousand viewers. The festival […]

By Daniel Lindvall ‘We think the price is worth it’, answered Madeleine Albright, then US Ambassador to the United Nations, when asked on 60 Minutes in 1996 whether she could justify half a million children dying as the result of the sanctions regime against Iraq. But despite embracing genocide as […]

By Larry Portis. The Mediterranean film festival held in Montpellier during the last nine days of October saw the projection of more than 250 films, selected from the more than 800 received. The films came from all parts of the Mediterranean basin, this year including 23 countries along its shores […]

By James Udden. It is hard to imagine a film festival better run that the Vancouver International Film Festival, now completing its 29th year during the first two weeks of October 2010. Hardly the largest or the most famous of film festivals, this does not seem to concern the organizers, […]

A Report by Rob Dennis. Judging from the selections in the International Competition, boundless cheer was never likely to be a hallmark of the 10th Era New Horizons Film Festival, held in the welcoming and lively Lower Silesia town of Wroclaw. Festival director Roman Gutek promised a programme highlighting the […]

By Philip Cartelli. “Everything is burning. The universe is burning. I am burning.” So repeats the main character in Reason, Discussion and a Story (Jukti Takko Aar Gappo, 1974), one in a retrospective of films by the idiosyncratic Indian-Bangladeshi filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak (1925-1976) at this year’s Festival International du Documentaire […]

By Janine Gericke. The 15th Annual San Francisco Silent Festival did not disappoint, offering everything from the genius of George Méliès to the majesty of a newly restored Metropolis. This year’s theme seemed to echo that of previous years: What’s lost has now been found. Friday’s Amazing Tales from the […]

By Patrick Keating and Lisa Jasinski. Organized by the Cineteca Bologna, “Il Cinema Ritrovat” honors forgotten films rediscovered in the world’s archives, along with recently restored prints of major classics. For eight days in the summer of 2010, an international crowd of moviegoers ambled the porticoed streets of Bologna, a […]

A Report by Gary M. Kramer. This year’s slate included several strong entries about family – especially from Latin America, as well as a pair of offbeat portraits from Finland. Breakdancing provides an element of escape for José Antonio Zúñiga Rodriguez – “Tono” for short – a wrongly imprisoned Mexican […]

By Michael Goddard. This year the Oberhausen film festival, already known for its adventurous programming of short film ‘profiles’, featured four sessions of New York ‘No Wave’ films. These programmes were also screened a month later at the Vienna Film Museum, along with a range of feature films by members […]