The Los Angeles Film Festival ended yesterday, and I managed to catch a handful of films despite my beleaguered schedule the past few weeks, which I hope is settling down. Look for some posts the next few days summarizing my viewing, including my two favorite LAFF films, Philippe Ramos’ Captain Ahab and Lance Hammer’s Ballast.…
Read moreI’m always proud of the resources Trond Trondsen and I provide at Robert-Bresson.com, and our latest project–years in the making–is an exclusive online Bresson Bibliography that uses Jane Sloan’s 1983 out-of-print bibliography and Shmuel Ben-Gad’s recent bibliographies as a starting point.
As we note on the page: “Users who want to correct or extend the bibliography, or report dead links, are invited to send their comments to Frank Blaakmeer. If you do, and if you agree, your name will be added to the list of contributors at the bottom of the bibliography and the community of Bresson scholars …
Read moreAfter five years running, Filmjourney.org is undergoing a complete transfer from Weblogger to WordPress, so expect a lot of design changes over the next few days. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know!…
Read moreTHIERRY’S CANNES, OLIVIER’S QUINZAINE
By ROBERT KOEHLER
If you happen to be at a film festival in March or April–as I was this year in Guadalajara (March) and Buenos Aires (April) (sorry, Film Journey readers, no BAFICI blog this year, but I promise a soon-to-come rehash/overview)–the conversation inevitably turns to what films can be expected to appear in Cannes (May). It’s part of the seasonal spring chatter/gossip/speculation/informed insider talk, and it’s partly generated by the fact that in pre-Cannes festivals, “The Cannes Effect” is fully felt. This is especially true in festivals in emerging market countries like Argentina and Mexico, …
Read moreI’ve had Bazin on the brain lately, partly in conjunction with spending last week discussing the form and function of criticism as well as reading the Winter 2007 issue of Film International dedicated to Bazin. It’s a provocative magazine (expect a blog on it soon), such as when guest editor Jeffrey Crouse highlights Bazin’s “striking assertion, a dazzlement” traced through the work of Flaherty, Renoir, Vigo, Chaplin, and the neorealists: “In my opinion,” Bazin wrote, “the cinema more than any other art is particularly bound up in love.” This wasn’t rhetorical flare or mere sentiment, but a sustained argument about …
Read moreFor decades, the great visionary of film preservation and exhibition, Henri Langlois, dreamed of building a museum of the cinema despite exorbitant costs and dwindling resources, so he obsessively collected scripts, props, costumes, models, art work, and defunct equipment in the hopes of providing a space to honor the hallowed detritus of film production. He’d be thrilled that many archives and museums exist today, including the Museum of the Moving Image (dedicated to film, TV, and digital media), which is currently doubling in size and set for a major reopening in 2009. The expanded museum will include a 242-monitor installation, …
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