Contact Help Wanted

CITIZEN KANE Screenings in the UK

Orson Welles‘ 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane, winner of the best original screenplay Academy Award, will hit UK theaters on Nov. 30. In addition to London’s bfi Southbank, Citizen Kane will also be screened in Newcastle, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.
Written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, Citizen Kane stars Welles as a newspaper magnate based on William Randolph Hearst. Also in the cast: Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore (a distorted version of Marion Davies), Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, and Everett Sloane.
Cinematography by the masterful Gregg Toland, music by Bernard Herrmann.
Citizen Kane was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including best picture, director, and actor (Welles).
More information here.

London 2009: THE ROAD, MEN ON THE BRIDGE

A handful of Friday highlights at the 2009 The Times-BFI London Film Festival:

The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, sounds like the perfect Thanksgiving movie:
"An unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel alone through a post-apocalyptic landscape, ravaged by an unspecified catastrophe. Ash and soot hang in the air, it is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is grey. The sky is dark, the cities abandoned and empty, the roads littered with corpses, the countryside deserted save for marauding gangs eating human flesh to survive."
Appropriately enough, The Road opens in the US on Nov. 25. Mortensen, I should add, is a potential [...]

Joseph Losey bfi Schedule

Joseph Losey at the bfi
Schedule and film info from the bfi:

Accident
* 5 – 18 June
Joseph Losey’s brilliant study of simmering class conflict, sexual tension and the British character.

The Big Night
* Thu 4 Jun 18:40
* Tue 9 Jun 18:20
Joseph Losey’s final American film co-scripted with novelist Stanley Ellin.

Blind Date
* Mon 1 Jun 20:40
* Tue 9 Jun 20:45
* Sat 13 Jun 16:00
A tough, socially critical thriller about a murder frame-up.

The Criminal
* Sun 14 Jun 15:20
* Fri 19 Jun 20:40
Stanley Baker stars as a doomed gangster in this unquestionably outstanding movie.

The Damned
* 23 – 28 June
A riveting nuclear-angst thriller set in ‘the age of senseless violence’.

The Lawless / [...]

Joseph Losey at the bfi

Dirk Bogarde, James Fox in The Servant (top); The Damned (bottom)

"Among the greatest things that happened to British cinema were the arrival on our shores of the Korda brothers in the 30s, Losey in the 50s and Kubrick in the 60s," reads the introduction to an upcoming Joseph Losey series, which runs June 1-July 23 at the bfi Southbank in London.
The Wisconsin-born (on Jan. 14, 1909) Ivy Leage-educated Losey became a political refugee following the post-World War II anti-Red hysteria. He fled to Britain where he would remain for the next three decades until his death in 1984.
The most curious thing about the bfi series is an omission: The Go-Between (1971), a scathing attack on social mores [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: TO FARO, BABY LOVE, Lesbian Shorts

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Wednesday, April 8, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

"Mortal Desires"
Vampires, hoodlums, a hot detective and a few high class call girls make up this programme of sexy lesbian shorts.
In Twilight’s Shadow (above)
USA 2008. Dir T.M. Scorzafava. 12min.
Carlisle’s girlfriend is being held hostage and she’ll do all it takes to get her girl back before sunrise.
Crazy Baby
USA 2008. Dir Jules Nurrish. 3min.
An unhinged patient, a sexy nurse and a very large needle…
Liminal
USA 2008. Dir Stephen Keep Mills. 14min.
A powerplay between lovers escalates with devastating results.
At Home (or Love as well)
Spain 2008. Dir Mariel Macia. 25min.
Rosa’s first time has to be perfect.
What I found in [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: DREAM BOY, SOCIETY

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Monday, April 6, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

"Home"
An international selection of films exploring the idea of home.
Lot’s Wife
Turkey 2008. Dir Harjant Gill, Koray Durak. 9min.
A reworking of the biblical story of Lot’s wife, set in the outskirts of Istanbul, where three uncles intend to break up a happy home.
Boxed In
USA 2007. Dir Joy E. Reed. 10min.
A comedy demonstrating the importance of clearing out your closet when you move home.
The Turkey
France 2008. Dir Anna Margarita Albelo. 10min.
A wife and mother runs off with her battery operated birthday present.
Two Spirits
USA 2007. Dir Ruth Fertig. 22min.
Queer Native Americans fight to reclaim the place of honour [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: WRANGLER: ANATOMY OF AN ICON, CHEF’S SPECIAL

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Sunday, April 5, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

Out Late

Directed by:
Beatrice Alda, Jennifer Brooke

Country:
USA

Year:
2008

Running time:
62min

 
A truly inspiring and important film about the experiences of LGBT elders, specifically those who have come out in their sixties and seventies. There are stories about coming out in church, discovering The L Word for the first time at eighty and transitioning from male to female after a lifetime in the navy and raising a family. The film movingly explores the difficulties and liberation of discovering sexuality later in life and in particular highlights the often unsuccessful search for life partners in a world that places so much value [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: APRES LUI, FUCKING DIFFERENT TEL AVIV

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Saturday, April 4, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

Après lui

Directed by:
Gaël Morel

Cast:
Catherine Deneuve, Thomas Dumerchez, Adrien Jolivet

Country:
France

Year:
2007

Running time:
90min

 
Following the sudden death of her son Mathieu in a car accident, Camille (Catherine Deneuve) reaches out to his best friend Franck in an attempt to cope with her loss and gain a focus for her pain. However, this initially cathartic relationship soon begins to border on the obsessive, and Camille’s family begin to question her state of mind as she devotes more and more time to Franck. While the film hints at a possible sexual relationship between Franck and Mathieu in the opening scenes, sexuality is not [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: BANDAGED, 57000 KM BETWEEN US

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Friday, April 3, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

Johanna D’Arc of Mongolia

Directed by:
Ulrike Ottinger

Cast:
Delphine Seyrig Xu Re Huar, Inès Sastre

Country:
West Germany

Year:
1989

Running time:
165min

 
All aboard the Trans-Siberian railway where you’ll find titled ladies, Broadway stars, camp cabaret acts and a Mongolian princess who has come to kidnap them all. This sumptuous epic from Ottinger ranges from the obvious artifice of a studio film to an almost documentary realism when the film moves from train to the glorious vista of the Mongolian landscape. As the culture clash between the Western women and their Mongolian ‘hosts’ intensifies a sweet love affair blossoms between the princess and the young Giovanna, [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: BURN THE BRIDGES, CAMPILLO, YES I DO

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Thursday, April 2, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

One Summer in New Paltz, a Cautionary Tale

Cast:
Nancy Nicol

Country:
Canada

Year:
2008

Running time:
54min

Campillo, Yes I Do

Directed by:
Andrés Rubio

Country:
Spain

Year:
2008

Running time:
52min

 
One Summer in New Paltz, a Cautionary Tale
In 2005, George W. Bush called for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to enshrine a heterosexual definition of marriage. The mayor of New Paltz however didn’t agree and performed 26 gay weddings one sunny afternoon, beginning a wave of civil disobedience. Whether you are the marrying type or not, only the hardest of hearts could fail to be moved by this clever and touching film about love, commitment and pissing off George [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: GHOSTED, THE AMERICAN SOLDIER

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Wednesday, April 1, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

Before Stonewall

Directed by:
Greta Schiller, Robert Rosenberg

Distributor:
Peccadillo Pictures

Country:
USA

Year:
1984

Running time:
87min

 
25 years ago this film felt like a revelation of a hidden gay history. Conventional wisdom had defined the modern movement for gay liberation from the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York, however, this film shows just how much activism and creativity haad been going on before 1969. A dazzling line-up of interviewees includes poets, writers, political organizers, dancers, actors who bear witness to a life before Stonewall, including Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde, Barbara Gittings, Harry Hay, Ann Bannon and many more.
The courage and bravery of those [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: PEDRO, MADAME X: AN ABSOLUTE RULER

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Tuesday, March 31, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

Madame X – An Absolute Ruler

Directed by:
Ulrike Ottinger

Cast:
Tabea Blumenschein

Country:
West Germany

Year:
1977

Running time:
141min

 
Adventure and fun on the high seas comes at a price for this band of stereotyped women, who answer a call to join Madame X on her ship Chinese Orlando and experience a life without rules and patriarchal tyranny. However old roles reassert themselves and the women find themselves swapping one kind of servitude for another as Madame X demands complete devotion from her shipmates, even the ones she is enamoured with.
An early low-budget film from renowned avant-garde filmmaker [Ulrike] Ottinger, who actually took all crew positions [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: EROS O BASILEUS, STEAM

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Monday, March 30, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

Lion’s Den

Directed by:
Pablo Trapero

Cast:
Martina Gusman, Elli Medeiros, Laura García

Distributor:
Unanimous Pictures

Country:
Argentina

Year:
2008

Running time:
113min

 
Julia, a two weeks pregnant 25-year-old student is sent to prison for a crime she may or may not have committed – the murder of her boyfriend’s male lover. No one can remember what happened that night, and as Julia adjusts to life inside prison walls, gradually commanding respect from other inmates on the ‘maternity’ wing and developing a tender and loving relationship with fellow internee Marta, she not only has to fight her wrongful incarceration, but also for her son Tomas, born inside prison and due [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: BORN IN 68, Latin American Shorts

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Sunday, March 29, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

Born in 68

Directed by:
Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel

Cast:
Laetitia Casta, Yannick Renier, Yann Trégouët

Distributor:
Peccadillo Pictures

Country:
France

Year:
2008

Running time:
170min

 
Festival favourites Martineau and Ducastel return to the LLGFF with an epic drama covering life and sexual politics in France. Friends and lovers caught up in the excitement of May ‘68 at the Sorbonne eventually leave Paris for a communal life in the country. The collective seems at first like a fairytale of left wing hippydom. But principles are betrayed as members of the commune drift away to bourgeois careers. Laetitia Casta gives a great performance as the central figure, Catherine, loved by [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: DOLLS, THE DEVIL’S CLEAVAGE

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Saturday, March 28, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

Dolls

Directed by:
Karin Babinská

Cast:
Marie Dolezalová, Sandra Nováková, Petra Nesvacilova

Country:
Czech Republic

Year:
2007

Running time:
99min

 
This debut feature from Karin Babinská is a beautifully made and poignant coming of age tale, about three best friends from high school embarking on their last summer together before going their separate ways at summer’s end. Iska, struggling to understand her burgeoning sexuality and why she feels different from other girls, has been forced to join her little brother Vojta at a summer camp for athletes. Whilst he can back flip and somersault like a pro, the timid Iska can barely hold her own against a punch [...]

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009: Fred Halsted, THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2009
Friday, March 27, highlights
Schedule and synopses from the LLGFF website
 

The Naked Civil Servant

Directed by:
Jack Gold

Cast:
John Hurt, Liz Gebhardt, Patricia Hodge

Country:
UK

Year:
1975

Running time:
85min

 
This dramatization of Quentin [Crisp]’s first volume of autobiography won BAFTAs for its director Jack Gold and its star. John Hurt gives a dazzling performance as the young Quentin, a flame-haired flamboyant homosexual when such things were not permitted. It contains much of the wit and wisdom of Quentin and celebrates a life lived in a refusal to conform. The highlight is Quentin’s impassioned speech from the dock when charged with soliciting for an immoral purpose.
Plus an interview with Bernard Braden filmed in 1967. Previously [...]

Out at the Pictures: DESERT HEARTS, GET REAL, JULIA, COCKLES AND MUSCLES

Patricia Charbonneau, Helen Shaver in Desert Hearts

The British Film Institute will screen four films with (at least some) gay content in their "Out at the Pictures" series in the next two months. The four titles are: Desert Hearts (1985), Get Real (1998), Julia (1977), and Crustacés et coquillages / Cockles and Muscles / Cote d’Azur (2005). The series will also feature "Generations of Love," an intergenerational panel discussion. (See full schedule below.)
Based on Pentimento, Lillian Hellman’s 1973 book of (highly fictionalized) memoirs in which Hellman discusses her close friendship with a woman named "Julia," Julia is my favorite Fred Zinnemann film. Jane Fonda can be quite actressy, but her Lillian Hellman is perhaps her most sober, self-contained characterization, [...]

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX, JOHNNY MAD DOG: bfi London Film Festival 2008

Considering the sheer number of films — between 200 and 300 — being screened, in addition to their variety and scope, the two-week bfi London Film Festival, now in its 52nd edition, must be one of the best film festivals in the world. Quite possibly the best.
On the festival’s website, there are plenty of festival images, information on the screening films, and several interviews with film personalities, among them Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, Nandita Das, Albert Serra, and Barry Jenkins.
Below are four films being screened on Sunday, October 26. Those represent only a small sample of what will be available to Londoners every day until October 30.
Schedule and synopses from the bfi website.
Information on [...]

The Joy of Sex Education

Kinky voyeurism of yesteryear: A couple learn about it by watching a wild bird-bunny-bee orgy.

"The Joy of Sex Education" at the bfi Southbank:
"Running the gamut from syphilitic soldiers in WW1 to puberty pep-talks for girls to the government’s infamous AIDS awareness campaigns, this jaunt through 90 years of sex education films aims to enlighten, entertain and, above all, encourage you to subjugate your passions for the moral health of the nation.
"Many of the early films highlight Britain’s horror at the very thought of sex and sexuality. Euphamisms [sic] abound and, if you can get away with making your point with the aid of a few birds or rabbits, why not?"
***
Well, little has changed in much of the world in regard [...]

London Australian Film Festival 2007: Documentaries, Archive Films

Rolf de Heer in The Balanda and the Bark Canoes (top); Hunt Angels by Sue Maslin (bottom)

London Australian Film Festival 2007: New Features
THE DOCUMENTARIES:
This year’s documentary strand boasts a selection of eight titles. A double-bill co-presented by Dochouse explore cross culturalism in Australia. Rolf de Heer’s The Balanda and the Bark Canoes (UK Premiere) is a compelling companion piece to his Ten Canoes. “We are making a movie. The story is their story, those that live on this land, in their language, and set a long time before the coming of the Balanda, as we white people are known. For the people of the Arafura Swamp, this film is an opportunity, maybe a last chance to hold on to the [...]

London Australian Film Festival 2007

Laura Linney in Jindabyne (top); Ten Canoes by Rolf de Heer (bottom)

PRESS RELEASE
The 13th London Australian Film Festival
Thursday 15 March – Sunday 25 March
The ten-day London Australian Film Festival returns to the Barbican for its 13th consecutive year with the biggest and strongest programme yet of 25 new features (including for the first time this year all the 2006 Australian Film Institute award winners), eight documentaries, two family films, and three archive classics, including the UK Premiere of the digital restoration of the earliest film ever made, The Story of the Kelly Gang. As in previous years the programme is enriched by the inclusion before most screenings of shorts selected from Flickerfest, Australia’s short film festival. In addition, the [...]

FINIS TERRAE in London

At London’s Barbican Centre: Jean Epstein, best known for his Gothic silent classic The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), was also responsible for the naturalistic semi-documentary Finis Terrae (1929), which will be screened at the Barbican’s Cinema 1 at 3 p.m. on Sept. 17.
Shot on the coast of Brittany, Finis Terrae portrays the hardships faced by Breton fishermen and coastal kelp-harvesters. Musical accompaniment will be provided by Curt Collective. (According to the Barbican website, "Curt Collective’s daring new score uses oboe, clarinet, trombone, guitars, percussion, electronics and voices, spoken and sung.")
The Latin Finis Terrae, by the way, means "the end of the world" or "where the earth ends."
Also at the Barbican: From Sept. 23-Dec. 10, the Barbican Centre [...]

bfi London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 2006

Among the film selections of the 20th bfi London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival are:
Trond Winterkjær and Jan Dalchow’s Norwegian documentary 100% menneske / 100% Human, which was filmed in the months immediately before and after Monica (born Morten) underwent a male-to-female sex change operation; Ramón Salazar’s Almodovaresque musical 20 centímetros / 20 Centimeters, starring Monica Cervera (Crimen ferpecto / Perfect Crime) as a narcoleptic pre-op transvestite who "falls asleep at the most awkward moments and dreams herself the star of outlandish, perfectly choreographed musical numbers"; Andy Warhol’s 1969 homoerotic Western romp Lonesome Cowboys, with Julian Burroughs, Eric Emerson, and Joe Dallesandro; first-time director Yair Hochner’s Yeladim tovim / Good Boys, the tale of two teenage hustlers in [...]

Recently Posted

• Golden Globes 2010 Predictions: Best Actor - Drama
• Oscar 2010: Animated Short Film Semi-Finalists
• Golden Globes 2010 Predictions: Best Picture – Comedy or Musical
• Golden Globes 2010 Predictions: Best Picture - Drama
• Noel Clarke's ADULTHOOD on IFC Festival Direct
• Oscar 2010: Documentary Feature Semi-Finalists
• THE FUPLERS: Q&A with Matt Koval
• Yoav Shamir's DEFAMATION Opens in NY/LA
• TCM Classic Film Festival: A STAR IS BORN, METROPOLIS, BREATHLESS, 2001
• FOUR SEASONS LODGE Screenings

Most Popular Tags

2008 Oscar 2010 Oscar Academy Awards Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Animation Best Films Books Box Office Brokeback Mountain Censorship Classic Movies Daniel Day-Lewis Documentaries DVDs Film Awards Film Festivals Film Reviews Gay Film Festivals Gay Interest Gay Movies Heath Ledger Helen Mirren Interviews London Film Festival London Film Festival 2009 Los Angeles Screenings Martin Scorsese New York Screenings No Country for Old Men Oscar Movies Photos Political Movies Politics Sex Shorts Silent Films Slumdog Millionaire Sundance Film Festival Trailers Turner Classic Movies


Related Posts

THE CELLULOID CLOSET, VICTOR/VICTORIA in ChicagoTorino GLBT Film Festival 2009: Auraeus Solito’s BOYLondon 2009: Gemma Arterton, Nick Park, Jacques AudiardLondon’s Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Wednesday, April 9Four Documentaries Banned from 2008 Singapore Film FestivalLondon’s Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2008 – Tuesday, April 8