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Federico García Lorca’s Remains to Be Exhumed

Javier Beltrán as Federico García Lorca, Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes

According to reports, forensic experts have begun digging at a mass unmarked grave in search of the remains of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (right), executed in the early days of Spain’s bloody 1936-39 civil war.
The work is taking place on a remote hillside area near Granada, in Spain’s southern province of Andalusia. The assassins were members of a militia loyal to right-wing Gen. Francisco Franco. Approximately 500,000 people were killed during the civil war, which erupted after Franco, abetted by Spain’s business establishment and the Catholic Church, rebelled against the elected leftist Republican government. (Guillermo del Toro captures the brutality of this dark period [...]

Gael Garcia Bernal and Survival

In the above photo, Gael Garcia Bernal, the star of Y tu mama tambien and Amores perros, models the new T-shirt designed by John Rocha to mark the 40th anniversary of the human rights organization Survival International.
As per the Survival website, the design was inspired by Rocha’s collection of tribal masks.
On its website, Survival is described as "a human rights organisation that helps tribal peoples defend their lives, protect their lands and determine their own futures. It was founded 40 years ago, following an article by Norman Lewis in the Sunday Times Magazine about the genocide of Brazilian Indians."
The commemorative Survival T-shirt is available exclusively from Survival’s Christmas catalogue.
Photo: Courtesy Survival International

Penélope Cruz, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gael García Bernal Sign Polanski Petition

Actor Gael García Bernal, Academy Award-winning actress Penélope Cruz, veteran director Mario Monicelli, veteran screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr, and Academy Award-winning filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Ethan Coen are a few of the latest additions to the list of signatories demanding freedom for filmmaker Roman Polanski, currently being held by Swiss authorities.
Among the other new signatories of the petition organized by France’s Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) are:
Author Ariel Dorfman; actor-screenwriter Buck Henry; composer Vangelis; actors Sylvia Kristel and Anne Consigny; filmmakers Fatih Akin, Juan Antonio Bayona, Djamel Bennecib, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Alain Berliner, Guillermo del Toro, Michel Deville, Sam Gabarski, Diane Kurys, Tonie Marshall, Brett Ratner, and Jerry Schatzberg; World Cinema Foundation director Kent [...]

Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani, Mike Nichols Sign Another “Free Polanski” Petition

Actors Louis Garrel, Isabelle Adjani, Elsa Zylberstein, and Isabelle Huppert; filmmakers Danièle Thompson, Steven Soderbergh, Neil Jordan, Sam Mendes, Taylor Hackford, and Mike Nichols; formerly persecuted writer Salman Rushdie; author Milan Kundera; and stylist Diane von Furstenberg are among those who have signed another petition demanding freedom for 76-year-old filmmaker Roman Polanski, currently being held at a Swiss prison while awaiting word from local authorities whether he’ll be extradited to the United States on a charge of having sex with a minor in the late 1970s.
In his journal, La Règle du jeu, writer Bernard-Henri Lévy has asked for signatures supporting Polanski’s release. Lévy’s petition reads:

Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive [...]

Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch Sign Roman Polanski Petition

Woody Allen, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, and Terry Gilliam have added their names to the petition, organized by France’s Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), demanding the release of Palme d’Or and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski, currently in the custody of Swiss authorities.
In 1978, Polanski pleaded guilty to a charge of statutory rape (sex with a minor) of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey (now Geimer), whom he allegedly drugged before having sex with her against her will. Polanski, who at the time claimed that the sex was consensual and that he was led to believe that the 13-year-old was 18, reportedly fled the United States upon learning, after spending 42 days in prison, that [...]

Petition for Roman Polanski Signatories

List of individuals who have signed (as of Oct. 7) the “Free Roman Polanski” petition organized by the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD):
Michael A. Russ Erika Abrams, Fatih Akin, Yves Alberty, Stephane Allagnon, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Gianni Amelio, Greta Amend, Wess Anderson, Michel Andrieu, Roger Andrieux, Pascale Angelini, Yannick Angelloznicoud Jean-Jacques Annaud, Tomas Arana, Frédéric Aranzueque-Arrieta, Alexandre Arcady, Fanny Ardant, Asia Argento, Marie-Hélène Arnau, Stéphane Arnoux, Darren Aronofsky, Olivier Assayas, Alexander Astruc, Simone Audissou, Gabriel Auer, Zdzicho Augustyniak, Alexandre Babel, Vladimir Bagrianski, Lubomila Bakardi, Fausto Nicolás Balbi, Eleonor Baldwin, Jean-François Balmer, Alberto Barbera (Museo nazionale de Torino), Sylvie Bardet-Borel, Luc Barnier, Christophe Barratier, Ernest Barteldes, Carmen Bartl, Pascal Batigne, Anne Baudry, Henning Bauer, Tone Bay Juan [...]

Roman Polanski Petition

Veteran filmmakers Marco Bellocchio, Wim Wenders, and Claude Lelouch; Oscar winners Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Pedro Almodóvar; the French Film Academy; the Cannes Film Festival; and hundreds of other individuals and organizations have signed a petition demanding the release of Roman Polanski, who was arrested by Swiss police — at the behest of the American Justice Department — following his arrival at the Zurich airport on Sept. 26. Polanski was headed to the Zurich Film Festival, where he was to have received a Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1978, Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful intercourse with a minor (13-year-old Samantha Gailey, now Geimer) at a Los Angeles court, but fled to France before he could be sentenced. His court [...]

Toronto 2009: UP IN THE AIR, YOUNG VICTORIA, Israel Controversy

George Clooney in Up in the Air

Nomi Morris on Up in the Air in GlobalPost, via The Huffington Post:
"This year, the film that has generated the greatest buzz is Up in the Air, the latest by [Jason] Reitman, director of the hits Juno and Thank You for Smoking, and son of Hollywood director Ivan Reitman (Ghost Busters). Up in the Air stars [George] Clooney as a "termination engineer," who has no home life outside of his job, jetting around the country helping American companies fire people. Both funny and sad, the film examines a society where frequent flier points become a substitute for family attachments. Reitman used documentary footage of 25 real people who had lost their jobs in Detroit [...]

FRANCESCA Controversy: Alessandra Mussolini Called “a Whore”

Monica Birladeanu in Francesca (top); Bobby Paunescu (bottom)

Romanian-born filmmaker Bobby Paunescu’s Francesca, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival, may be banned from Italian screens following a legal motion by far-right lawmaker Alessandra Mussolini (right), granddaughter of dictator Benito Mussolini and niece of Sophia Loren. Reason for Mussolini’s outrage: in one scene in Francesca, she is called "a whore." (In 2007, Mussolini created a furor after stating that all Romanians living in Italy were "criminals.")
According to reports, right-wing Verona mayor Flavio Tosi has said he has also filed a criminal complaint against Francesca because in the film he is depicted in a "vulgar" manner. Tosi, who has been accused of both racism and instigating racial hatred, is [...]

THE 10 CONDITIONS OF LOVE Controversy at the Melbourne Film Festival

Protesting the planned appearance of Uighur-independence activist Rebiya Kadeer, whom the Chinese government blames for the ethnic violence this month between Uighurs and Han Chinese, a hacker has posted a Chinese flag on the Web site of the Melbourne International Film Festival, the New York Times has reported, citing the Associated Press. The ethnic riots in the East Turkistan region left nearly 200 people dead.
The hacker, reportedly a Chinese man offended by Kadeer’s scheduled appearance at the screening of Melbourne-based filmmaker Jeff Daniels‘ documentary The 10 Conditions of Love, also left messages in English demanding an apology from festival organizers. The 10 Conditions of Love, which chronicles Kadeer and her family’s struggles against the Chinese government’s oppression, premiered at [...]

LEMON TREE: Q&A with Eran Riklis

Based on actual events, Eran Riklis‘ Lemon Tree (no connection to Sandy Tolan’s novel The Lemon Tree), which opens today in the Los Angeles area, chronicles a Palestinian widow’s fight to prevent the Israeli army from razing her lemon grove. The problem is that all those lemon trees are located right next door to the brand new house — actually, "fortress" would be a better description — of the Israeli minister of defense. Security agents have deemed the grove a potential hide-out for terrorists, who could then fire rockets right onto the minister’s dining table.
Sounds like a political film? Well, sure. Lemon Tree is definitely political. (The real-life case was that of defense minister Shaul Mofaz and his [...]

LEMON TREE: Q&A with Eran Riklis Part II

LEMON TREE: Q&A with Eran Riklis Part I
Along those lines, the men in charge in Lemon Tree don’t come across in a very positive light. A bossy male security agent demands the destruction of the lemon grove. A bossy Palestinian man threatens Salma because of her relationship with her lawyer. The defense minister is obsessed with his career and may be having an affair with an assistant. The Palestinian lawyer himself seems to be as interested in advancing his career as in helping Salma, even though he actually cares for her.
The two women, however, are both admirable characters. Was that a conscious decision, to make the women “stronger” — in their [...]

John Greyson Boycotts 2009 Tel Aviv LGBT Film Festival

In Haaretz.com, Cnaan Liphshiz discusses the reactions to Toronto-based filmmaker John Greyson’s refusal to attend the 2009 Tel Aviv International LGBT film festival, which runs June 23-27. Below are a couple of brief quotes from Liphshiz’s piece:
"’What Greyson has done is an act of violence both against Israeli gays as well as [gay] Palestinians, for whom this festival is a rare ray of light,’ said Yair Hochner, the festival’s Israeli-born organizer and an internationally-acclaimed director. Greyson told Anglo File this week: ‘With ongoing violations by Israel of Palestinian human rights and given the specific content of my film, screening it in Israel would be hypocrisy.’ The film, Fig Trees, deals with [...]

Betsy Blair

Betsy Blair, best known for her Academy Award-nominated performance as Ernest Borgnine’s love interest in the 1955 Oscar- and Palme d’Or-winning drama Marty, and for her marriage to Gene Kelly, died of cancer on March 13 in London. Blair, who was 85, had been a London resident for many years.
Born Elizabeth Winifred Boger on Dec. 11, 1923, in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, the former child model switched to professional acting in the early 1940s. Throughout the next five decades, she was to appear on Broadway (in, among others, the Cole Porter musical Panama Hattie), in more than two dozen films, and several television shows.
In addition to Marty (she lost the best supporting actress Oscar to Jo Van Fleet [...]

DAYS OF ‘36 d: Theo Angelopoulos

Meres tou ‘36 / Days of ‘36 (1972)
Direction: Theo Angelopoulos
Screenplay: Theo Angelopoulos, Petros Markaris, Thanassis Valtinos and Stratis Karras
Cast: Giorgos Kiritsis, Christoforos Chimaras, Takis Doukakos, Kostas Pavlou, Petros Zarkadis, Christophoros Nezer
 

 
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos‘ 1972 effort Meres Tou ‘36 / Days of ‘36, winner of the International Film Critics Association award at the Berlin Film Festival, is the least of the several films of his that I’ve seen. It is also, by over a decade and a half, the earliest one I’ve seen so far, and at one hour and 45 minutes it is by a good margin the shortest as well. [...]

International Outreach Initiative: Annette Bening, Alfre Woodard, James Longley in Iran

Eight members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are currently in Tehran for several days of educational and cultural exchanges with Iranian filmmakers, students and others from Iran’s artistic community.
The Academy delegation includes actresses Annette Bening and Alfre Woodard (right, with fellow actress Fatemah Motamed-Aria); writer Frank Pierson; writer-director Phil Robinson; producer William Horberg, executive Tom Pollock; Academy President Sid Ganis; and Ellen Harrington, the Academy’s Director of Exhibitions and Special Events. Documentarian James Longley, who was already in Iran working on a project, is also taking part in the proceedings.
The visit was organized as part of the Academy’s International Outreach initiative, which has previously [...]

THE SINGING REVOLUTION: Q&A with Filmmakers James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty

"Imagine the scene in Casablanca in which the French patrons sing ‘La Marseillaise’ in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you’ve only begun to imagine the force of The Singing Revolution," wrote Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times in his review of James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty’s documentary about Estonia’s struggle to end Soviet occupation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The curiously titled The Singing Revolution chronicles the history behind the little-known, nonviolent protests that began in the late 1980s in the small Baltic republic of Estonia, which had been annexed by the Soviet Union nearly half a century earlier.
With glasnost and [...]

Matteo Garrone, GOMORRAH, and the Camorra

In Agence France Presse, European Film Award winner Matteo Garrone discusses real-life issues related to Gomorrah (above, with Toni Servillo), his mafia thriller that is a likely contender for the 2009 best foreign-language film Oscar:
"The idea of bringing the army to fight them is, for me, superficial. It’s good for the image of the Italian government, but it won’t do anything to fix the problem.
"You have to work from the inside, to create a relationship between citizens and the institutions of power. The Camorra is very strong because they live there, they grew up there, they are close to people.
"If you don’t work from the inside it will be very difficult. [...]

Gay Wedding Ceremony in QUEENS

Hugo Silva, Raúl Jiménez (top) tie the knot; moms Betiana Blum and Carmen Maura (bottom) are on their side

In Manuel Gómez Pereira’s fluffy 2005 Spanish comedy Reinas / Queens, a group of gay men and their mothers get ready for Spain’s first mass gay wedding ceremony. That year, despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church and from religious and social traditionalists (many of whom still miss the good old traditional days of Franco’s right-wing dictatorship), same-sex marriage became legal in Spain following the election of the socialist government led by prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Shockingly, Spanish society hasn’t collapsed under this heavy burden of sin and immorality — though I guess there’s still time [...]

Anthony Slide on HOLLYWOOD’S BLACKLISTS: A POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY

Anthony Slide on Reynold Humphries‘ Hollywood’s Blacklists: A Political and Cultural History:
"The entire history of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) is well recorded. The author explains the origins of the Blacklist, dating the story from Roosevelt’s election in 1932 and the rise of what he describes as the Liberal-Communist Alliance. The Alliance quickly ended with the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, but the damage had been done to the liberal elements in Hollywood. They had, and continued to develop, a history. It is all here: Upton Sinclair’s running for the governorship of California in 1934, the rise of the Guilds and unions and their struggles for recognition, and, of course, Hollywood’s [...]

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and India’s Social Inequalities at Don’t Panic

Heydon Prowse’s "Slumdog and Billionaires" at Don’t Panic:
"Danny Boyle’s latest film, Slumdog Millionaire, about an orphan from the Mumbai slums who reaches the final of the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is winning awards all over the place (including Best Film and Best Director at BIFA). We should all go to see it, but perhaps not because of the superlatives that it is consistently squeezing from the pens of critics, but because of what it tells us about Mumbai’s social inequality in the wake of the recent attacks.
"Who exactly does want to be a millionaire in Mumbai? The answer is, pretty much everyone. And how many will actually [...]

Sundance 2009 Boycott: Park City to Suffer?

 
Jay Hamburger reports in The Park Record:
"Mayor Dana Williams acknowledges he is ‘certainly concerned’ with the prospects of a boycott of Utah by gays and their allies, saying Park City could suffer even though the city had little to do with the gay-marriage ballot measure in California.
"Park City has a tradition of acceptance of gays, he says, but the city could be swept up in a movement by gays against Utah based on Proposition 8. Williams says gays are welcome in Park City."
…
"’It’s too bad that we could potentially take the brunt of an issue we didn’t participate in,’ Williams says, adding he is worried about the effects on the ski [...]

Cairo Film Festival 2008: What’s the Use?

The effectiveness of the first Cairo Human Rights Film Festival, a sidebar of the 32nd Cairo International Film Festival, which comes to a close on Nov. 28, is questioned in the Middle East Times:
"’We are looking to reach people who are not used to receiving information through art and this will hopefully educate about human rights,’ [American Islamic Congress' Dalia] Zaida said. ‘First and foremost, the festival aims at education and getting people aware of human rights.’
"’The goal is to highlight international human rights issues and build understanding between cultures,’ Zaida added. ‘Most of the films focus on issues outside Egypt and the Arab world that will expose the Egyptian audience to issues not [...]

Sundance, Prop. 8, and Boycotts

Via The Advocate:
"Film Independent released a statement on Friday in response to Los Angeles Film Festival director Richard Raddon’s donation to the campaign for Proposition 8, which succeeded in banning gay marriage in California. ‘As a champion of diversity,’ the statement said, ‘Film Independent is dedicated to supporting the civil rights of all individuals. At the same time, our organization does not police the personal, religious, or political choices of any employee, member, or filmmaker.’"
***
Via Robert Hofler and Michael Jones‘ article "Same-Sex Activists Target Sundance" in Variety:
"With activists against Proposition 8 — California’s ban on same-sex marriage — turning to threats of boycotts, attention is focusing on [...]

UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US: Q&A with Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell

Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell’s Until the Light Takes Us was one of the most unusual entries at the 2008 AFI FEST held in Los Angeles in early November. In the words of co-director Ewell, the film is "a feature length documentary chronicling the history, ideology and aesthetic of Norwegian black metal — a musical subculture infamous as much for a series of murders and church arsons as it is for its unique musical and visual aesthetics. This is the first (and only) film to truly shed light on a movement that has heretofore been shrouded in darkness and rumor and obscured by inaccurate and shallow depictions."
I’d never heard of Norwegian black metal, [...]

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