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Searching for Palm Springs

Film festival

By Robert Koehler

Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Francois Ozon–the ideal trio combo to launch the latest edition of the aggressively middlebrow Palm Springs Film Festival, which promotes a certain brand of world cinema that continues to view Europe as the center of the world. And if it stars Deneuve, all the better. The film? You may have heard of it, even though it astoundingly, amazingly, inexplicably, ridiculously hasn’t screened at a US festival until this very moment. (The closest location was Toronto, on the heels of its world premiere in Venice, which got it because Cannes stupidly passed on it …

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AFI FEST 2010

Site news, Special event

AFI FEST starts up today in Hollywood, and this year, I’m the Editor of the Festival blog, AFI FEST NOW, as well as an Associate Programmer. I’ll be introducing the screenings of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, A Screaming Man, Free Radicals, Kubrick’s Lolita, and the double feature of Kim Ki-young’s 1960 classic The Housemaid (which can be viewed for free in its entirety at MUBI, here) and Im Sang-soo’s new remake. I’ll also introduce the Hong Sang-soo double feature, HaHaHa and Oki’s Movie, and I’ll facilitate the Q/A …

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Updates

Site news

Though I haven’t updated in a couple weeks, I’ve been up to my ears in film viewing. Some recent projects:

• I’ve written the program notes for LACMA’s “20th Anniversary Tribute to the Film Foundation,” which starts today. I’ve also guest-blogged about it for my Save Film at LACMA partner, Debra Levine, at her blog, artsmeme.

• I’ve been working as an Associate Programmer (screening submissions) for this year’s AFI FEST (November 4-11) and I’m starting back up as the Editor of the festival’s website this year–AFI FEST NOW. Additionally, I’m always on the lookout for good …

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New Documentaries on Filmmakers

Film review

Two new documentaries about Hollywood craftsmen opened in Los Angeles this week: Something’s Gonna Live and Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (already on DVD in the UK). Both focus on likeable professionals and are brimming with movie clips, making them compulsive viewing, but I ultimately found the former much more compelling than the latter.

In some ways, Something’s Gonna Live is an expansion of director Daniel Raim’s 2001 Oscar-nominated short, The Man on Lincoln’s Nose, which focused on production designer Robert Boyle (who died last month). Raim’s new feature expands his focus to include Boyle’s associates: …

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Upstream (1927)

Film review

Yesterday, I attended the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ preview of the world re-premiere of John Ford’s Upstream (1927), which screens for the public tonight. “Re-premiere” because the film was long believed to have been lost before it was rediscovered last year in the New Zealand Film Archive; the film is part of 75 American silent films that are currently being brought to the U.S. under the guidance of the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF).

In addition to the NFPF and the New Zealand Film Archive, the re-premiere is possible with the cooperation of the Academy Film Archive, …

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The Reel Thing XXV

Special event

I was invited to attend this past weekend’s 25th edition of “The Reel Thing,” the annual technical symposium for the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). The event offered an impressive line-up of some of the top film restorationists and preservationists working today, who presented their work and discussed problems and solutions they encountered. It provided a potent mix of film history, technology, and genuine concern for the past and future of the art form that was positively infectious.

One of the best aspects of the symposium was its cinematic egalitarianism, with attendees offering equally rapt attention to the finer …

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