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TAPESTRIES OF HOPE Screening in New York

PRESS RELEASE
Freshwater Haven, a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the dramatic social change that is required to stop the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of women, announced today it’s production, Tapestries of Hope, will be shown at an exclusive screening on Sunday, October 18, 2009 in New York City. This special event will be followed by screenings at the United States Department of State and in the Capitol Visitors Center Theater 10/20/09.
Tapestries of Hope (www.tapestriesofhope.com) is an astounding story told through the eyes of filmmaker Michealene Cristini Risley. The film captures her sojourn to Africa as she investigated the longstanding myths surrounding the power of virgin blood, including its ability to cure HIV/AIDS.
Documenting the work of Zimbabwean child and [...]

TEN9EIGHT – Mary Mazzio’s Inner-City Youth Documentary

Filmmaker Mary Mazzio

PRESS RELEASE
This is the compelling question behind award-winning filmmaker Mary Mazzio’s newest project Ten9Eight, a thought provoking film which tells the inspirational stories of several inner city teens (of differing race, religion and ethnicity) from Harlem to Compton and all points in between, as they compete in an annual business plan competition run by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE).
The film includes students such as:

Rodney Walker, age 19, Founder of Forever Life Music and Video Productions: Rodney was put into the foster care system at the age of 5 and ended up homeless on the streets of Chicago. Almost becoming a statistic like many of his brothers, Rodney was able to chart a new future – and is [...]

CRIPS AND BLOODS: MADE IN AMERICA, THE GARDEN Screening

Set in Los Angeles’ impoverished inner city areas, the documentaries The Garden (above, lower photo) and Crips and Bloods: Made in America will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 28th annual “Contemporary Documentaries” series on Wednesday, October 7, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission is free.
In Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s The Garden, the organization South Central Farmers fight a wealthy developer in order to preserve the community garden they created after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The Garden earned an Academy Award nomination for Documentary Feature. Kennedy will be present to take questions from the audience following the [...]

Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark: NO WAY OUT Screening

Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark in No Way Out

Ruby Dee will be the special guest at a screening of No Way Out (1950), part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Monday Nights with Oscar” series on September 21 at 7 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City.
Film historian and scholar Foster Hirsch will host this celebration of the centennial of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s birth and the recent gift of Mankiewicz’ papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library.
In the socially conscious No Way Out, Richard Widmark plays a racist patient — and petty criminal — who, following his brother’s death, becomes intent on destroying the life [...]

THE TIGER’S TAIL – Brendan Gleeson – d: John Boorman

The Tiger’s Tail (2007)
Direction and Screenplay: John Boorman
Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Kim Cattrall, Ciarán Hinds, Sinéad Cusack, Briain Gleeson, Sean McGinley
 

Brendan Gleeson, Kim Cattrall in The Tiger’s Tail
 

One might initially be surprised to find that John Boorman’s latest film, The Tiger’s Tail, has all but gone straight to DVD in the United States. Surely the director of Point Blank, Deliverance, and Hope and Glory deserves at least the benefit of the doubt of a significant theatrical release? (Especially since his 21st-century output, particularly the 2005 drama In My Country, has been among his best work.)
But the film industry being what it is these days, The Tiger’s Tail probably has a better shot at an audience on home video than it [...]

THE MASSEURS AND THE WOMAN d: Hiroshi Shimizu

Anma to onna / The Masseurs and a Woman (1938)
Direction and screenplay: Hiroshi Shimizu
Cast: Shin Tokudaiji, Shinichi Himori, Mieko Takamine
 

 

The usual 1930s Japanese film preoccupations with societal roles are explored in writer-director Hiroshi Shimizu’s moving Anma to onna / The Masseurs and a Woman (1938). Whereas contemporaries such as Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi frequently examined the effects of a changing world upon traditional families or acceptable female behavior, Shimizu takes a less direct approach in this beguiling piece. His protagonist is not an overwhelmed father or a fallen woman, but a blind masseur on the fringes of conventional society. Through this main character and his interactions at a rural mountain retreat, Shimizu offers a broader insight into those marginalized [...]

SOUNDER – Paul Winfield, Cicely Tyson

Sounder (1972)
Direction: Martin Ritt
Screenplay: Lonne Elder III; from William H. Armstrong’s book
Cast: Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks, Carmen Mathews, Taj Mahal, James Best
 

 

Sounder probably features more extremely wide shots than any movie besides Lawrence of Arabia — and Martin Ritt’s movie is only half as long.  Time and again, humans become antish dots on the horizon, visually overwhelmed by the vast wilderness around them.  It’s Ritt’s way of establishing the world of David (Kevin Hooks), a young boy living in the Louisiana woods with his sharecropper family and the titular dog.  That world completely envelops him in these shots, which perform the old pastoral trick of contrasting the human and [...]

TRAINING RULES: Q&A with Dee Mosbacher

Winner of the audience award for best documentary at the 2009 edition of San Francisco’s gay film festival, Frameline, Dee Mosbacher (right) and Fawn Yacker’s Training Rules — screening at Outfest tomorrow, July 11, at 4:30pm at the FAIRFAX 1 (on a double bill with Elizabeth Hesik’s Lady Trojans) — tackles the issue of anti-gay bigotry in women’s sports, particularly at the Pennsylvania State University.
For nearly three decades, Penn State’s Lady Lions basketball coach Rene Portland (above, lower photo), known as "The Mommy Coach," insisted that in her team there would be absolutely no drugs, no booze, and no lesbians — purportedly with the intent of removing the stigma of lesbianism from women’s sports. In 2006, [...]

LOREN CASS No Longer Undistributed

Kino International has acquired the theatrical release of Loren Cass (2007), directed, written and edited by first-time filmmaker Chris Fuller.
Nominated for a Gotham Award as one of the best undistributed films of 2007, Loren Cass is finally scheduled to premiere in New York City on July 24 at the Cinema Village. The film will expand to other major markets during the summer and fall of 2009, before being released on DVD at the end of the year.
Filmed in St. Petersburg, Florida, Loren Cass is set in 1997, when a group of teenagers struggle to rebuild their lives following violent ethnic riots provoked by the (real-life) killing of an 18-year-old black adolescent, who was gunned down [...]

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 [...]

Artivist 2009 Call for Entries

PRESS RELEASE
"ARTIVIST" is the 1st international film festival dedicated to addressing Human Rights, Children’s Advocacy, Environmental Preservation, and Animal Advocacy. Our mission is to strengthen the voice of international activist artists – "Artivists" – while raising public awareness for social global causes.
The 6th Annual Artivist Film Festival is currently accepting international Film and Video submissions that concern themselves with human rights, social or political issues, children’s issues/advocacy, animal issues/rights, or environmental issues. Artivist also accepts films that tell inspirational stories or are empowering. Each year Artivist screens shorts, feature-length films, documentaries, narratives, music videos, experimental and animated shorts directed by established international filmmakers, novice filmmakers and the YouTube community. Since 2004, Artivist has showcased 350 [...]

Luis Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA Screening

Viridiana, Luis Buñuel’s provocative 1961 Palme d’Or-winning classic proving that life is a bitch and then you play cards, will run at New York City’s Film Forum from Friday, April 24, through Thursday, April 30.
Inspired by a painting of Saint Viridiana kneeling on the floor before a crucifix and crown of thorns (and by Benito Pérez Galdós‘ novel Halma), co-written by Buñuel and Julio Alejandro, and financed by the lead actress’ rich husband, Viridiana stars Silvia Pinal (recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Ariel Award), as a pious young nun who, before entering a cloister, goes visit her strange and reclusive uncle (Fernando Rey). There, while trying to do Good, she befriends the [...]

TOKYO SONATA d: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Tokyo Sonata (2008)
Direction: Kyoshi Kurosawa
Screenplay: Kyoshi Kurosawa, Max Mannix, Tachiko Tanaka
Cast: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyôko Koizumi, Inowaki Kai, Yû Koyanagi, Kôji Yakusho, Haruka Igawa, Kanji Tsuda, Kazuya Kogima

 

 
Some reviews and commentaries describe Tokyo Sonata, winner of this year’s Asian Film Awards for best film and best screenplay, as showing the disintegration of an "ordinary" Japanese family after the husband-father gets laid off from his administrative post at a big corporation. Although technically that is an accurate summary of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s study of social and personal roles in Japanese society, it doesn’t quite indicate all that happens in this curious, beautifully shot, delicately directed, and capably acted drama.
Written by Kurosawa (known for his horror films, and no relation to Akira), Max [...]

SOLD FOR MARRIAGE – Lillian Gish

Sold for Marriage (1916)
Direction: Christy Cabanne
Screenplay: William E. Wing
Cast: Lillian Gish, Frank Bennett, Walter Long, Allan Sears, Pearl Elmore, Curt Rehfeld
 

Though all but completely forgotten today, Christy Cabanne (at times billed as William Christy Cabanne) was a respected name in the 1910s and 1920s. Among his credits are the1916 Douglas Fairbanks vehicle The Mystery of the Leaping Fish, considered by some Fairbanks’ best film of the 1910s; the highly successful 1925 actioner The Midshipman, which helped to seal Ramon Novarro’s stardom; and several key scenes in the mammoth 1925 version of Ben-Hur, also starring Novarro.
An apprentice to D. W. Griffith, Cabanne seems to have not only learned a good deal from the (now all but insufferable) Master, but [...]

THE ITALIAN d: Reginald Barker

The Italian (1915)
Direction: Reginald Barker
Screenplay: Thomas H. Ince and C. Gardner Sullivan
Cast: George Beban, Clara Williams, J. Frank Burke
 

 
George Beban (right) was a renowned stage and vaudeville star. Even though he never became a major film name, Beban appeared in nearly 20 films from the mid-1910s to the mid-1920s, almost invariably in the role of an Italian. His first feature film, in fact, was quite succinctly called The Italian.
Directed by the respected Reginald Barker (among whose credits is the 1916 William S. Hart vehicle The Aryan), The Italian depicts the plight of an Italian immigrant who arrives in the Land of Plenty only to find poverty, heartbreak, and death (no, not his own).
A not uncommon theme for the [...]

CHOP SHOP: Q&A with Ramin Bahrani

Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop, which opens today in Los Angeles, has received widespread praise since its premiere at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The French daily Le Monde called it "the major revelation of the Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight," while John Anderson remarked in The Washington Post that Bahrani "has created a not-to-miss gem for the discriminating viewer."
The story of a 12-year-old boy struggling to "make dreams happen" for himself and for his adolescent sister, Chop Shop is part "neo-neorealist" cinema, part cinéma vérité, and part gritty social commentary à la Pixote or City of God (minus the blood and violence).
Parent-less Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco) works and lives in an auto body shop in Willets Creek, Queens, where he [...]

MANDA BALA: Brazil’s Corruption, Kidnappings, and Frogs

When I read the synopsis of Jason Kohn’s Manda Bala / Send a Bullet in the Sundance Film Festival’s independent film – documentary list I thought the film sounded like supermarket tabloid trash: “In Brazil, known as one of the world’s most corrupt and violent countries, Manda Bala follows a politician who uses a frog farm to steal billions of dollars, a wealthy businessman who spends a small fortune bulletproofing his cars, and a plastic surgeon who reconstructs the ears of mutilated kidnapping victims."
Not helping matters was reading Mary Milliken’s Reuters article on Manda Bala, in which she asserts that there’s “a boom in ear-reconstruction surgeries” in Brazil as a result of the fact that “gangs from the teeming [...]

THE BAD SLEEP WELL d: Akira Kurosawa

Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru / The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Direction: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Eijirô Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni
Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Masayuki Mori, Kyôko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi, Kô Nishimura, Takeshi Katô, Kamatari Fujiwara, Chishu Ryu, Ken Mitsuda
 

 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Akira Kurosawa’s 1960 black-and-white Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru / The Bad Sleep Well, is often compared to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but that’s an inapt comparison. While Shakespeare’s play has a higher sense of poetry, Kurosawa’s film — though a high-class melodrama — has far more relevance, realism, and complexity.
Written by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Eijirô Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni, The Bad Sleep Well’s Shakespearean pedigree and the fact that [...]

CRASH – Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Ryan Phillippe

Crash (2005)
Director: Paul Haggis
Screenplay: Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate, Michael Peña, Shaun Toub
 
Ryan Phillippe in Crash
 

Screenwriter Paul Haggis‘ multiple award-winning directorial début is set in a Los Angeles that is part Quentin Tarantino, part Paul Thomas Anderson, part Spike Lee, and part Bret Easton Ellis; it is also a surreal place that has precious little in common with the actual Southern California metropolis.
Crash is all about how the Angeleno boiling — definitely not melting — pot is about to explode at any minute. According to Haggis and co-screenwriter Bobby Moresco, Los Angeles denizens spend all [...]

CHAVEZ RAVINE: A LOS ANGELES STORY, AUTISM IS A WORLD at UCLA

Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story (above), Best Sister, Hotel City, and Autism Is a World are four short documentaries that will be screened in the "Contemporary Documentary" series presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy Foundation and the UCLA Film and Television Archive on Feb. 1.
Directed by Jordan Mechner, and produced by Mechner with Don Normark, Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story chronicles the eviction of 300 families in a Mexican-American community near downtown LA. A public housing project was promised at the time, but instead the powers-that-be opted to build Dodger Stadium.
Ira Wohl’s Best Sister tells the story of the filmmaker’s elderly cousin, Frances. In 1979, Wohl won an Oscar [...]

IN GOOD COMPANY – Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace

In Good Company (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Paul Weitz
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett Johansson, Marg Helgenberger, David Paymer, Philip Baker Hall, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell
 

 

Better known for his gross-out comedy American Pie and for co-directing (with brother Chris Weitz) the syrupy morality tale About a Boy (which received an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay), Paul Weitz is hardly the type of talent one would expect behind a movie about a ruthless corporate takeover. But rest assured, In Good Company, despite its business dog-eats-business dog setting, is anything but heavy drama.
In the film, Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid) is the head of ad sales for the New York-based magazine Sports America — though not for very much longer. Right [...]

YESTERDAY d: Darrell Roodt

Yesterday (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Darrell Roodt
Cast: Leleti Khumalo, Lihle Mvelase, Kenneth Kambule, Harriet Lehabe, Camilla Walker
 

 
To date, nowhere has the AIDS pandemic been felt more strongly than in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to approximately 10% of the world population and to more than 70% of the planet’s 40 million AIDS cases. In the past twenty-five years, it is estimated that more than 20 million Sub-Saharan Africans have died from complications of the disease. Even today, drug cocktails that are relatively accessible in other parts of the globe are still beyond the means of the vast majority of Africans.
Writer-director Darrell Roodt’s South African drama Yesterday is set in this catastrophic scenario. The film depicts the effects of AIDS in the life [...]

THE HURRICANE – Denzel Washington – d: Norman Jewison

The Hurricane (1999)
Direction: Norman Jewison
Screenplay: Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon; from Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter’s The 16th Round, and Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton’s Lazarus and the Hurricane
Cast: Denzel Washington, Vicellous Reon Shannon, Deborah Kara Unger, Liev Schreiber, John Hannah, Dan Hedaya, Debbi Morgan, Clancy Brown, Harris Yulin, David Paymer, Rod Steiger
 

 

Like Stanley Kramer, Norman Jewison has often been dedicated to commercial filmmaking with a socially conscious edge: labor relations in F.I.S.T.; corruption in the U.S. justice system in . . . And Justice for All; religious fanaticism in Agnes of God; anti-Semitism in Fiddler on the Roof; and racism in both A Soldier’s Story and the Academy Award-winning cop thriller In the Heat of the Night. Though never a [...]

THE INSIDER – Al Pacino, Russell Crowe

The Insider (1999)
Direction: Michael Mann
Screenplay: Eric Roth and Michael Mann, from Marie Brenner’s Vanity Fair article “The Man Who Knew Too Much”
Cast: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall, Lindsay Crouse, Colm Feore, Michael Gambon, Rip Torn
 

 
"It’s old news. … We’ll be ok," says Don Hewitt (Philip Baker Hall), the creator of the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes. "These things have a half-life of 15 minutes."
"No, that’s fame," replies 60 Minutes anchor Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer). "Fame has a 15-minute half-life. Infamy lasts a little longer."
The infamous "things" referred to by Hewitt and Wallace are the scandals that erupted in early 1996, when it was revealed that CBS News had refused to air an interview [...]

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