Latest Posts

Days in Berlin 2010

Film festival, Film review


James Benning’s Ruhr

By Robert Koehler

Last things first: Having arrived here in Berlin from the Rotterdam film festival, I wanted to let any readers tracking Filmjourney that my in-depth comments on IFFR will be posted following Berlin. That’s because Rotterdam had too many worthy films to merely mention in passing, and because the programming raised ideas and notions worth mulling at greater length.

For now, let’s say that the Rotterdam Tiger jury (led by Amat Escalante) got things generally right, with Tigers for Paz Fabrega’s Agua fria del mar, Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio’s Alamar and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Mundane History…

Read more

Yuri Norstein in Los Angeles

Commentary, Special event

Word is quickly spreading that the man whom many regard as the world’s greatest living animator–Yuri Norstein–is making a brief US tour, with visits to Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and Olympia. My 23-month-old daughter routinely requests viewings of Hedgehog in the Fog, but I’ve been an admirer of Norstein’s work for years (and wrote about Clare Kitson’s biography in 2005).

Norstein is renowned for his attachment to his Russian homeland and his refusal to work abroad, so I was shocked several days ago to stumble upon the announcement of his visit to the University of …

Read more

Me and Orson Welles

Film review

“I had some trepidation about coming to Pasadena,” explained Christian McKay in last Sunday’s Q&A at the Laemmle Playhouse following Me and Orson Welles, in which he brilliantly portrays the famed cineaste. He noted The Magnificent Ambersons was test screened at the historic Pasadena Playhouse across the street, where 50 percent of the audience loved it (“I’ve seen the response cards”) and the other fifty percent hated it, thus prompting RKO to butcher one of the most elegant films in American history. McKay seemed to impress everyone at the Q&A, however, as much for his Welles knowledge as his …

Read more

AFI FEST 2009 preview

Film festival, Site news

I’ve championed AFI FEST the previous two years since Artistic Director Rose Kuo came on board and pushed the festival into becoming Los Angeles’ best survey of world cinema. And I’ve been even more excited this year due to the programming involvement of Robert Koehler, a bona fide cinephile, critic, and festival hound (and occasional contributor to this site).

So I’m especially pleased to announce today that I’ve been hired as the editor of the festival’s Daily News, a position that will begin in October and last through the festival itself, October 30 to November 7, 2009. (The Daily …

Read more

LACMA Film Wrap-up

Commentary, Site news

The Wall Street Journal published an article this weekend–“LACMA and the Cinéastes”–that provides a good account of the efforts of my colleagues and I during our previous five-week campaign to convince the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to reverse its decision to end its 41-year-old film program this October. At the moment, films have been announced for November, the program has been guaranteed to continue at least until next summer, and LACMA has promised to seek out large donors (with the help of Martin Scorsese and others) to fund the program on a long term basis. The …

Read more

Committed Cinema: The Films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Texts

I’m very proud to announce the September publication of Bert Cardullo’s Committed Cinema: The Films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; Essays and Interviews, which includes two pieces that I wrote. You can pre-order and preview the book at Amazon or at Cambridge Scholars Publishing, who describe it as “the first book in English to treat the work of the Dardennes, [which] features the best essays and interviews (supplemented by a chronology, a filmography, film credits, and a bibliography) published to date on the two brothers’ memorable films.”

Cardullo is a longtime critic and scholar currently teaching in Izmar, …

Read more