Marco Pontecorvo, Pier Paolo Pasolini at the Venice Film Festival 2008
Andrew Pulver in The Guardian:
"Film-wise, the lack of spectacular programming in this year’s festival really hit home yesterday. I opted (mistakenly I now think) for the new Abbas Kiarostami over the new Takeshi Kitano. …"
"Much more interesting, but equally unlikely to make it to a cinema near you any time soon (unless one of our film festivals has a brainstorm) was a reconstruction of the original version of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s early 60s essay-doco La Rabbia ("The Anger"), which was severely mauled about by its producers before release. It was conceived as a political version of a ‘mondo’ film: Pasolini took already-existing newsreel footage, edited it together and wrote his own commentary. Fearing, some say, a rightwing backlash, producer Gastone Ferranti took a chunk out of Pasolini’s film and invited a populist, conservative journalist called Giovanni Guareschi to make the counter-argument. But nothing succeeds like a legend: Guareschi’s contribution is now banished, with Bertolucci drawing on Pasolini’s original plan to restore the newsreel sections junked in the first place. Of course, it’s all supposition; but we can safely say there’s no way any major director would be willing or able to make such an unashamedly poetical, deeply analytical statement today."
***
"In Belgian director Patrice Toye’s Nowhere Man, an apparently comfortably off and happily married man sees a raging house fire and on the spur of the moment walks into it in order to fake his death and disappear. The rest of film details the many ways he regrets that decision.
"Intriguing and insightful, the film shows that while the fantasy of abandoning everything and everyone, and assuming a completely new identity, might sound appealing, the wisdom remains true: Wherever you go, there you are."
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Via The International Herald Tribune / The Associated Press:
"Organizers of the Venice Film Festival waited to announce the Iranian film Khastegi, or Tedium, by first-time Iranian director Bahman Motamedian until the last minute to avoid alerting authorities to its sensitive subject: transsexuals in modern-day Iran."
…
"’We know that throughout the world this problems exists,’ Motamedian said. ‘The idea was to raise awareness among families especially, because this is the first layer of barrier, and to help people to realize they are not alone and be able to face the problem.’"
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Peter Popham’s "Pontecorvo wows Venice with Romanian gypsy film" — that’s Pa-ra-da — The Independent:
"In 1966, the year he was born, Marco Pontecorvo’s father Gillo won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion with one of the greatest postwar Italian films, The Battle of Algiers. Forty-two years on, the soft-spoken cinematographer stood with a look of stunned bemusement on his face as the Venice audience gave him a standing ovation and 12 minutes of applause for his first film as director.
"He wasn’t to know it when he conceived the project seven years ago, but Parada, which opens in Italian cinemas in September, is cruelly relevant to Italy’s most pressing national debate. For more than a year the country has been obsessed with what to do about the surge of impoverished immigrants from Romania."
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Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle:
"Last night was just about getting settled, but in keeping with my practice of concentrating on foreign films I might never get to see (as opposed to American films I’ll see sooner or later), I saw Puccinia [sic] e la fanciulla (Puccini and the Girl), a new film about a famous tragedy in the domestic life of the composer.
"Visually, it’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen — so clear, with such depth of focus, rich colors and detail that it’s really something to behold. It’s also shot in the old-fashioned 4:3 aspect ratio that I prefer to widescreen, but which has all but disappeared for the last forty of fifty years. But the film has a slack narrative (intentionally, but slack all the same) that will prevent it from ever being distributed stateside. It’s, in essence, a silent film, or rather a film with no dialogue, an approach that allows it to achieve a dream-like quality which is appealing, but which begins to feel like an enforced gimmick within ten or fifteen minutes. Still, it’s one of a kind and I’m not sorry I saw it."
Venice Film Festival 2008 - Too Little Hollywood
George Clooney, Brad Pitt at the 2008 Venice Film Festival
Sarasota Film Society’s GLBT Film Festival 2008
North Carolina Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Venice Film Festival 2008 - Competition Line-Up
ASK NOT, WERE THE WORLD MINE, THE LOST COAST: Outfest 2008
SORDID LIVES, SEBASTIANE, THE WORLD UNSEEN: Outfest 2008
LA CORONA, CIAO, MULLIGANS: Outfest 2008
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Perhaps the restored “la Rabbia” will come out on DVD. Even Pasolini’s worst films must be watched at least once.
Hopefully at least some of those films will find US distribution — at least on DVD or cable.