Alternative Film Guide

"What we wanted to say is, if these people [Iranians, Muslims] scare you, look closer: They have parents, they have lovers, they have hope, they have stories." That’s filmmaker and cartoonist Marjane Satrapi, referring to Persepolis, at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
(Top photo: Brick Lane by Sarah Gavron. Right photo: Of Love and Eggs by [...]

Next round of Brigitte Bardot vs. Muslims.
No, Bardot’s animosity has nothing to do with, say, a planned Algerian-made sex melodrama called And Allah Created Woman. Bardot, like millions of others in France and elsewhere, just doesn’t like Muslims, period.
She’s now on trial for the fifth time since the mid-1990s for "inciting racial hatred" due [...]

World Cinema Clips: Luis Buñuel, exiled from Spain since 1938, returned to his country of birth to make Viridiana, a low-key — but pitch-black — comedy about traditional European (read: Christian) mores that went on to receive the 1961 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or.
The film stars Silvia Pinal as a young, idealist nun-to-be whose efforts [...]

Screendaily reports that four documentaries scheduled for the 21st Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF), which kicked off on April 4, have been banned by local censors.
According to the report, two of the documentaries — Arab-American director Bassam Haddad’s Arabs and Terrorism, about opposing views on political terror, and Mano Khalil’s David the Tolhildan, which [...]

Fitna, the work of hate created by Dutch far-right-wing member of Parliament Geert Wilders, is now available online. (Don’t expect a link to it here.)
I managed to watch bits and pieces of it before fast-forwarding through repetitive hate-filled discourses by fanatical Muslim clerics interspersed with scenes depicting terrorist attacks committed by Muslim fanatics. By using [...]

Ed Park’s "Arthur C. Clarke’s down-to-earth legacy" in the Los Angeles Times:
". . . [Arthur C. Clarke] left explicit instructions that no religious ceremony accompany his death. (For good measure: In what was possibly his last interview, in BBC Focus magazine last December, he said the greatest danger humanity faced was ‘Organised religion polluting our [...]

Recommended reading: On the The Independent’s Indyblogs, Jerome Taylor discusses Geert Wilders‘ as-yet-unreleased anti-Islam short Fitna.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
"An unapologetic critic of Islam, Mr [Geert] Wilders‘ rabidly populist rhetoric has won him both fans and enemies in a country already strained with religious tension following the murder of the controversial Dutch [...]

Agence France-Presse reports that organizers of the Cairo International Film Festival for Children has agreed to reinstate Mischa Kamp’s Dutch film Where is Sinterklaas’ Horse? (above) after banning it because Dutch far-right member of parliament Geert Wilders is planning to show a 15-minute anti-Muslim short, Fitna, online this month.
As per the AFP report, Fitna in [...]

Erica Abeel interviews Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud at indieWIRE, where they discuss family, politics, non-politics, and cartoon voices.
Satrapi and Paronnaud’s Persepolis will be screened in the US in a dubbed version — though I do hope that a print with the original French-dialogue track will be available somewhere here in Los Angeles. Catherine Deneuve, [...]

Via Tim Drake’s "U.S. Bishops Withdraw Controversial Movie Review" in the National Catholic Register:
"’The aggressively anti-religious, anti-Christian undercurrent in The Golden Compass is unmistakable and at times undisguised,’ [Denver Archbishop Charles] Chaput wrote in a column in the Dec. 12 issue of the Denver Catholic Register. ‘The wicked Mrs. Coulter [above] alludes approvingly to a [...]

Veteran author Anthony Slide has another book out, Incorrect Entertainment or Trash from the Past: A history of political incorrectness and bad taste in 20th century American popular culture (BearManor, 2007, paperback, US$19.95).
Lengthy title for a highly controversial subject matter. Chapters range from "This Race Business" and "Sex" to "Bodily Functions and Dysfunctions" and "Hollywood’s [...]

Stanley Nelson’s Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple and Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Jesus Camp (above) will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ 26th annual Contemporary Documentaries series on Wednesday, October 3, at 7 p.m. at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission [...]

"As an 18-year-old girl who lives in Iran today and who faces very specific ideological, political and social pressures, I have a lot to say … Even though my film was not made in Iran, it shows my desire to speak of collective suffering, in Iran as well as in Afghanistan."
That’s director Hana Makhmalbaf, whose [...]

 
August is the month for Jewish film festivals in Brazil.
The 11th São Paulo Jewish Film Festival is currently taking place in Brazil’s largest city. It’ll be followed by the 3rd Rio de Janeiro Jewish Film Festival (Aug 16-23) and by another Jewish film event in Porto Alegre.

Among the São Paulo screenings are Dror Shaul’s Adama [...]

Via 7 Days:
"Iran has protested to France over the screening at Cannes of an animated film about a woman growing up in revolutionary Iran, slamming the movie as a ‘political act,’ local media reported. Persepolis, which stems from a best-selling comic book series by Iranian emigre Marjane Satrapi [right], shows its heroine struggling with the [...]

At european-films.net:
Boyd van Hoeij interviews director Saverio Costanzo, whose Private was Italy’s submission for the 2005 Academy Awards. (The ever finicky Academy, however, sent the film back because it was not spoken in Italian. Italy submitted another film, La Bestia nel cuore / Don’t Tell, which did get a nomination. Last year, the Academy changed [...]

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Why Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s 1982 final ‘filmic film,’ Fanny och Alexander / Fanny & Alexander bears the appellation it does is a mystery — one of many in the film — since the first titular character, Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) is at best a third- or fourth-level supporting character, and in [...]

Note: The evangelical minister Marjoe Gortner mentioned in the press release below is the same Marjoe Gortner who later became a Hollywood actor, appearing in numerous TV series and in features such as Earthquake (he’s the guy with posters of hunky men in his room), Mausoleum, Starcrash, and Hellhole.
Press Release:
New York, NY — The 2007 [...]

Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor has been censored in Iran. The film’s print for public screening has lost 60 out of its 160 minutes. The Last Emperor stars John Lone, Joan Chen, and Peter O’Toole, and it revolves around the plight of China’s last emperor, Pu Yi.

Recommended Reading:
At Alternet, Sarah Posner offers a revealing look behind the making of the Biblical epic One Night with the King, released by the 20th Century-Fox subsidiary FoxFaith:
“Although the movie, a lavish production filmed on location in India and starring such well-known Hollywood entities as Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole, may seem on the surface [...]

Driving Lessons (2006)
Direction and screenplay: Jeremy Brock. Cast: Julie Walters, Rupert Grint, Laura Linney, Nicholas Farrell
 
THE WAY OUT OF THE CROSS
Jeremy Brock’s comedy-drama Driving Lessons, the story of how a Christian teenager finds inner freedom after becoming friends with a retired actress, is a moderately enjoyable coming-of-age story whose shortcomings in terms of direction [...]

Deepa Mehta’s Water, starring Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, and John Abraham, has been chosen as Canada’s entry for the 2006 Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award.
Set in the Indian holy city of Varanasi, the Hindi-language Water is now eligible as a Canadian entry for the foreign-language Oscar because of recent regulation changes enacted by [...]

Via Ohmy News / Associated Press: ”For me, I am against any war, in any place. Because for me, war is the language of the animals."
That’s Iraq-born director Mohamed Al-Daradji, whose Ahlaam / The Dreams is part of the film line-up of the OSIAN’s-CINEFAN 8th Festival of Asian Cinema in Delhi. Animals everywhere [...]

Reuters (via /The Scotsman) reports that Saudi Arabia’s first film festival, the Jeddah Visual Show Festival, is currently taking place. According to Andrew Hammond’s article, no features are being screened, but the Saudi shorts shown at the festival "deal with bold themes such as domestic violence, drugs and religious extremism. Saudi television carries some dramas [...]

Via The [London] Independent: The Chinese government has ordered theater owners to stop showing Ron Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code. The Hollywood thriller has been in wide release in China for three weeks. As per the official story, the ban is supposed to make space for Chinese films - except that another Hollywood [...]