Author: Robert Koehler

By Robert Koehler

(Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures.)

Before I check out of the Grand Hotel, I look out the northern view from my room’s veranda balcony. The rain has faded away…

View from the balcony level, looking south to the sea, from the Grand Palais prior to the 8:30am screening of Wang Xiaoshuai’s Chongqing Blues, which drifted into sentimental bathos by the end of it’s humdrum playing time. It was a fairly inexplicable selection for the Competition, no better and no worse than most of Wang’s films to date….

As a further reminder to us all …

By Robert Koehler

(Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures.)

When traveling to Cannes for the festival, I enjoy taking the train straight from Paris De Gaulle (where The Volcano wasn’t interrupting flights, unlike several other Euro hubs) direct to Cannes. Via the French SNCF bullet train aka TGV, which gets you from point to point in a little over five hours. It lets me catch some zzzzz’s (nine time zones can mess you up), and read my favorite French magazine, Les Inrockuptibles. Even better, with Jean-Luc Godard on the cover. (Here’s the magazine, lying on my seat’s desk …

By Robert Koehler

And now Ladies and Gentlemen, your winners of the IndieLisboa 2010 grand prize: Josh and Benny Safdie, directors of Daddy Longlegs (as it’s known in the US) or Go Get Some Rosemary (in rest of world). After nearly a year since its premiere at the Quinzaine–where it was unjustly passed over for prizes–Josh and Benny’s first co-directed feature wins its first major award in Lisbon. It was my pleasure to announce our jury picks from the stage of Culturgest, and the brothers (as can be seen in the next photo) were over the moon with joy. What …

By Robert Koehler

Revolution Day! 25 April marks the 36th anniversary of Portugal’s liberation from the corrosive Salazar dictatorship which had been the country’s yoke for decades. I didn’t even plan to wear a color-appropriate t-shirt for the occasion–just tossed on whatever was hanging in my hotel room closet. This is a mere block from my hotel, looking south down Ave. de Liberdade from Marques Pombal square. The annual parade/demo/manifestation begins at this square, and proceeds south down Liberdade, past the Sao Jorge cinemas where the festival begins and ends. Note the red flags in the background…

A mother brings …

By Robert Koehler

You just can’t stop Lu Chuan, whose City of Life and Death I programmed last year in Los Angeles and has travelled widely on the festival circuit. This is the Chinese one-sheet hanging in the central hallway of the Culturgest headquarters for IndieLisboa. Lu’s film is in the festival’s Observatorio section, and is unofficially the most controversial film in the pages of Cinema Scope magazine. (See Shelly Kraicer’s initial highly critical review and Tony Rayns’ response and defense of Lu’s film. Tony and Shelly are co-programmers of Vancouver festival’s Dragons & Tigers competition.)

Another one-sheet in the …

By Robert Koehler

Here’s your first sighting outside the IndieLisboa (International Independent Film Festival) headquarters at Lisbon’s vast cultural center, Culturgest. The festival’s poster design this year plays on the same Ben Day dots style which Roy Lichtenstein imported into his form of Pop Art nearly 50 years ago. This style plays through in the festival’s overall graphics system, which really is the first thing that hits a viewer at any film festival–perhaps even more than the program lineup itself.

Turning left from the poster banner in the previous image is this northern view up Culturgest headquarter for IndieLisboa. Note …