Festival Reports

By Gary M. Kramer The DC Independent Film Festival, billed as “the oldest independent film festival in our nation’s capital,” started screening dozens of features, documentaries, shorts and animated films March 4-13. Here are some of the highlights from this year’s program. Train Station (March 10, 8:15pm) is an impressive […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Modern films can be hard to categorise: with so many increasingly open to different interpretations it is often hard to single out one core theme or trait. Fortunately though, this is not a problem often encountered by those that fall within the horror genre, and particularly for […]

By Erica Johnson Debeljak. The 26th Ljubljanski mednarodni filmski festival (LIFFE) took place from November 11 to November 22 last year. It is the fifteenth incarnation of this festival under the catchy acronym LIFFE, which doesn’t match the initials of the name in the Slovenian language, but perfectly captures the […]

By Yun-hua Chen. DOKU.ARTS, after its seven-year residence in Amsterdam and Brazil, returned to Berlin and has stayed here since 2012. The event focuses on documentaries exploring art and artists, some of which, such as Saving Mes Aynak and The Chinese Mayor this year, follow the project in a longitudinal […]

By Gary M. Kramer. The American Film Institute’s annual European Union Film Showcase screened December 1-20 at the AFI Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. This year’s program, the festival’s 28th, opened with Spanish filmmaker Fernando León de Aranoa’s comedy-drama A Perfect Day, set in the Balkans, and closed with Radu […]

By Gary M. Kramer.  The 53rd New York Film Festival runs through October 11 and there are several outstanding features by established and returning filmmakers playing at the fest. Here is a rundown of five notable films. Athina Rachel Tsangari has been chosen as the official New York Film Festival […]

By Gary M. Kramer. The New York Film Festival is a terrific showcase for shorts, and this year, there are four short film programs with international, genre, animation, and New York themes that feature many worthwhile films. Here is a sampling of the best shorts from each anthology. In the […]

By Yun-hua Chen. The Indian Film Festival Stuttgart, founded by Filmbüro Baden-Württenberg, is one of the oldest and largest Indian festivals in Europe. Previously named “Bollywood and beyond” up until 2011, the festival now focuses on what is “beyond” Bollywood in Indian cinema and strives for a multifaceted program which […]

By Gary M. Kramer.  The AFI Docs film festival showcased more than 50 feature and short length documentaries in Washington, DC, and Silver Spring, MD venues. Here is a rundown of two World Premieres from the fest—1st and 17 and The Three Hikers—as well as reviews of several documentaries from the […]

By Michael T. O’Toole. So, 20 years on and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) is still proving their commercial knack for showcasing movies that cover the timeline, genre gaps and stylistic stamps—not to mention innovative presentations and musical accompaniment that breathed new momentum into previous released material and […]