Monday, July 28-------As the summer sizzles in New York City, the sound of samba cannot be too far behind. A revival of an old tradition----dancing to live music under the stars----has swept New York in the last few seasons, with many venues and styles of music for budding Fred Astaires. A favorite for summertime heat is samba, the music of Brazil. This summer, the sizzle is not only on the street, but up on the big screen.

Since last week, the Museum of Modern Art has been presenting Premiere Brazil!, its sixth annual exhibition of contemporary Brazilian cinema. A collaboration between MoMA and the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, this series introduces New York audiences to original films by both new and established Brazilian filmmakers.

Brazilian cinema has a long history starting with the start of sound films, but grew especially popular and influential with the Cinema Novo movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The recent docudrama City of Men is just one example of recent Brazilian cinema that has captivated a worldwide audience.

The 10 feature and documentary films comprising this year’s selection showcase the diverse palette of both filmmaking styles and subject, ranging from Marcos Jorge’s Estômago: A Gastronomic Story (2007), a comic fable that also serves as a gastronomic allegory for ambition and survival, to Cao Guimarães’ Andarilho (Drifter) (2007), a story of three lonely drifters, the second installment in Guimarães’ ambitious trilogy on solitude.

One of the highlights of the series are the rich variety of vibrant films about Brazilian music and musicians, including the international premiere of The Mystery of Samba and the world premiere of The Man Who Bottled Clouds, director Lirio Ferreira’s engrossing portrait of popular songwriter Humberto Teixeira. Most filmmakers will be present to introduce the first screenings of their films.

Other strong entries in the series include Basic Sanitation, The Movie, a lighthearted tale about the intersection of social activism and filmmaking; My Name Ain’t Johnny, in which the familiar perils of drug dealing and drug abuse are explored in a new light through expressive camera movement and inspired direction; and Sign of the City, an evocative ode to São Paulo in which a few lonely strangers find their paths converging in the night.

The flourishing Brazilian documentary scene is represented by Drifter, a hauntingly gorgeous portrait of human transience; The Xavante Strategy, the story of the Xavante tribe’s courageous attempts to keep their culture relevant; and Pindorama: The True Story of the Seven Dwarves, the amazing story of the seven dwarves of the Pindorama circus, which tours the poorer reaches of northeastern Brazil.

With Brazil becoming a major political and economic power due to its sugar cane-as-ethanol crop (gas is less than $2.00 a gallon......suckers), its cultural influence is also ascending. The films in this series present both an accurate and poetic picture postcard of a complex mix of paradise and purgatory that is an essential part of the Brazilian view of life. So, samba over to 53 Street and get your Brazilian wax.....it's air-conditioned too. For information on the full series and other MoMA attractions, log on to their website: (...)

by Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor 

Friday, July 18-------The winner of this year’s Cannes Film Festival’s most prestigious award, the Palme d’Or, will open the 46th edition of the New York Film Festival (NYFF), one of the most important film showcases in North America.

The Class (Entres Les Murs), a gritty but very human story of the dysfunctional French education system, won the top prize at Cannes for its director Laurent Cantet. Three of Cantet's four features have played in programs at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which presents NYFF, including Human Resources at the 2000 New Directors/New Films series, Time Out at the 2001 New York Film Festival and Heading South at the annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema program at the Walter Reade Theater, the Society’s flagship cinema.

The Class is is the fourth Palme d'Or film to open the fest, following Lars Von Trier’s  Dancer in the Dark (2000), Mike Leigh’s Secrets And Lies (1996) and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). The Class, about high school teachers and students at an interracial inner city school, marked the first time that a French film had taken the Palme d’Or honor since 1987’s Under The Sun of Satan.

Arthouse powerhouse Sony Pictures Classics, a “classics division” of Sony Pictures, picked up the rights to the film after Cannes. The Class has been praised for its neo-documentary feel and the intensity of the acting and script. Although it snagged Cannes’ top honor, the film was not immediately picked up at the Festival, but took many weeks for a deal to be secured with Sony Pictures Classics (at far less than the Cannes asking price). “The film is great and deserve to be seen”, one veteran American distributor shared with me. “But it is a tough film to market to an audience…..the key will be how to interest American audiences in a tough film that is not a classic French love story.”

The New York Film Festival has also announced two special showcases to run parallel to the main programming event. In The Realm of Nashima will feature an exhaustive survey of the work of one of Japan’s most controversial directors. Views from the Avant Garde, an ambitious program that checks the pulse of contemporary video and media arts, will offer the thirtieth anniversary presentation of French director Guy Debord’s underground classic We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire. The New York Film Festival opens on September 26 and runs until October 12. For more information on the Festival and other Film Society programs, log on to their website: www.filmlinc.com (...)

At The Crossroads: Slovenian Cinema 

Friday, July 11-----What most American do not know about the country of Slovenia could easily fill the mileage that separates the two countries. Well, with the idea that film can be an informative and illuminating guide to other cultures, New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Slovenian Film Fund will be presenting a program of classic and contemporary Slovenian films from July 16 to 22. So ladies and gents, it’s time to brush up on your Slovene savvy.

Let’s start with some basics:  Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia is a country in southern Central Europe bordering Italy to the west, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north. The capital of Slovenia is Ljubljana. At various points in Slovenia's history, the country has been part of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Republic of Venice, the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia following World War I and the Socialist Republic of Slovenia after 1945, before gaining full independence in 1991. Slovenia is the only former communist state to be at the same time a member of the European Union, the Eurozone, the Council of Europe and NATO. Through its long and often troubled history, the Slovene people have retained their own distinct cultural identity.

In terms of film, Slovene cinema has a more than century-long tradition with such notable historical film auteurs as Karol Grossmann, Janko Ravnik, Ferdo Delak, France Štiglic, Mirko Grobler, Igor Pretnar, France Kosmač, Jože Pogačnik, Matjaž Klopčič, Jane Kavčič, Jože Gale, Boštjan Hladnik and Karpo Godina. In the past decade and a half, since becoming its one sovereign nation, there has been a generation of film artists who have been referred to as the “renaissance of Slovenian cinema”, including such contemporary film directors Janez Burger, Jan Cvitkovič, Damjan Kozole, Janez Lapajne and Maja Weiss. In all, there have been over 150 Slovene feature films, plus a few hundred documentaries and short films, currently producing between four and six feature films each year.

Film genres have been a mix of domestic comedies, social realist dramas and poetic meditations. As with many films produced in the post World War II era, Slovenian films were often more warmly embraced outside the country than inside it. A case in point is the 1957 film Valley of Peace, for which African-American John Kitzmiller received the Best Actor prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. The same new openness that characterized films from Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s were evidenced in Slovenia as well, with such international hits as Dance in the Rain and Paper Planes. The post-Communist period was rocky, but the creation of the Slovenian Film Fund in 1994 has been essential in fostering new talents and promoting Slovenian cinema internationall (...)

Wednesday, June 25------European Film Promotion (EFP), the pan-European association of governmental promotion agencies that represent the film industries of 25 European countries, continues its New York Industry Screenings as a way of targeting New York-based distributors, programmers and press. Over the past two days, EFP presented a program of 4 critically acclaimed European feature films with special screenings and receptions at the Tribeca Cinemas in lower Manhattan.

Films Distribution partner, François Yon believes that the screenings will offer distributors an all important follow-up opportunity to see films which have just been presented at major film festivals, including the recent Cannes International Film Festival. The four films getting the New York treatment include: No Network (Iceland, Ari Kristinsson), The Stranger In Me (Das Fremde In Mir, Germany, Emily Atef), Private Lessons (Eleve Libre, Belgium/France, Joachim Lafosse) and Eldorado (Belgium, Bouli Lanners).

No Network tells the story of Kalli, a young boy who is brought up by a single mother in the suburbs of Reykjavik. He thrives in a world of imaginary characters, where he gets most of his life experiences through screens: movies, television shows and computers. The film has won several major awards at children’s film festivals around the world, including Sprockets International Film Festival for Children, Kristiansand International Children’s Film Festival, Taiwan International Children’s TV and Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival Junior and the Audience Award at the Zlin Film Festival. The sales agent for the film is Nonstop Sales, www.nonstopsales.com 

The Stranger In Me offers an emotionally devastating portrait of post-pardum depression, as a young mother plunges into the depths of despair after having her baby. As her relationship with her husband unravels, she is advised to go to a clinic, where her maternal instincts are aroused and she learns to appreciate her role as a mother. The film had its premiere at the Semaine de la Critique section of the Cannes Film Festival and is represented internationally by Bavaria Film International, www.bavaria-film-international (...)

 SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

Friday, May 23-----If you are a lover of film (guilty) and also a lover of jazz (guilty again), then you are destined for movie and musical heaven at the on-going film series Jazz Score at the Museum of Modern Art. Starting last month, this unique retrospective will showcase 50 feature films and a selection of shorts that meld the power of jazz and the moving image.

The series celebrates well-known and obscure jazz scores composed for films from the 1950s to the present, with a particular emphasis on the rich and largely unexplored relationship between postwar filmmakers and jazz composers, arrangers, and musicians. 

The series began in high style on April 17 with the rare screening of Mickey One (1965), which was introduced by its director Arthur Penn.  The film, a seminal film that anticipated the anti-hero myth and featured a terrific performance by a young Warren Beatty, featured the virtuostic sax stylings of jazz legend Stan Getz.

Alex North’s Academy Award–nominated score for Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) is generally credited with opening up jazz scoring to a new generation of composers, including Elmer Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Bernard Herrmann, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini, and Lalo Schifrin. Significantly, this development coincided with the breakup of the Hollywood studio system, and with the commercial and artistic success of independent film directors like John Cassavetes (Shadows, 1959, and Too Late Blues, 1961), Shirley Clarke (The Connection, 1962, and The Cool World, 1964), Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie (Pull My Daisy, 1959), and Herbert Danska (Sweet Love, Bitter, 1968).

Those films experimented not only with dramatic themes and film genres, but also with more improvisational forms of postwar jazz like hard bop, free jazz, modal jazz, and Afro-Cuban. This was equally true of New Wave filmmakers and a younger generation of European and Japanese directors in the 1950s and 1960s—including Bernardo Bertolucci, Jean-Luc Godard, Jørgen Leth, American expatriate Joseph Losey, Louis Malle, Mikio Naruse, Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski, and Roger Vadim—who enlisted such seminal artists as Gato Barbieri, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Krzysztof Komeda, John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Tôru Takemitsu, and others to compose jazz scores that would reinforce or provide a counterpoint to their disjointed imagery.

Jazz continues to be used in diverse ways in contemporary cinema, whether to evoke a writer’s paranoid fantas (...)

Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in PHILADELPHIA 

Thursday, May 15-----The timing could not be more perfect. On the same day that the California Supreme Court issued a historic reversal against the ban on gay marriage, the Jacob Burns Film Center in New York's Westchester County is launching its annual Out At The Movie series, focusing on films made by and targed to the gay and lesbian community (and those who love and admire them).

Whatever one's position on the subject of gay marriage, the civil rights of gay couples is an issue that goes beyond the legal. It is a matter of dignity and decency. It is a testament to how far the United States still needs to go in this regard that the film chosen to lead off the series, which screens this evening, was the winner for Best Documentary Short Subject in this year's Oscar race.

FREEHELD follows the legal battle of Lt. Laurel Hester, a New Jersey police officer dying of cancer, as she desperately fights to transfer her pension to her domestic partner. After spending 25 years investigating crimes and protecting the rights of victims, Hester finds herself pitted against shockingly reactionary local officials. This bracing film was directed by Cynthia Wade, who will be present at the screening for a question-and-answer session.

The film series is mainly made up of documentaries, including such Festival favorites as FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO (2007) by Daniel Karlake, which focuses on five religious Christian families— including that of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopal Bishop Eugene Robinson—who must learn to reconcile their fundamentalist religious beliefs with their love for their own gay or lesbian child; A JIHAD FOR LOVEA JIHAD FOR LOVE (2007) by Parvez Sharma, the first documentary exploring the coexistence of Islam and homosexuality, and the risk that Muslim gay men and women take when they are public about their personal lives; BLACK, WHITE & GRAY (2007) by James Crump, an intimate look at the relationship between celebrated and controversial photographer Robert Mapplethore and his much older patron and manager Sam Wagstaff; and CHRIS AND DON (2007) by Tina Mascara and Guido Santi, which chronicles the relationship between internationally famous author Christopher Isherwood and his much younger paramour Don Bachardy, two openly and unapologetically gay men in an era before it was common to be out.

(...)

Tuesday, May 13------Poland has had an active film industry since the beginning of the 20th century and continues to be one of the most active players on the Eastern European film scene. Having produced such acknowledged film masters as Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Jan Lenica, Lech Majewski and Jerzy Skolimowski, the Polish film scene has flourished, even under the strict demands of 40 years of Communist rule. As the economic dynamo of the “new Europe” and host country to the world-renowned Lodz International Film School, a new generation of filmmakers is now emerging.

American audiences have an opportunity to discover these new talents-in-the-making at the New York Polish Film Festival, which runs from May 9 to 13 at the Anthology Film Archives, one of New York’s most committed film showcases. For the fourth time, the Festival is presenting a fascinating program featuring some of the most interesting, exciting and diverse feature, short and documentary films from Poland. 

One of the Festival’s highlights occurred on Sunday evening, with the premiere at the prestigious Museum of Modern Art of Katyn, the Oscar-nominated film by film master Andrzej Wajda. The film is a recreation of one of the most shocking incidents of World War II, when Soviet soldiers slaughtered thousands of Polish officers and citizens in the forests of Katyn. A story that could not be told during the Communist regime, Wajda brings all the drama of the incident and its aftermath in an impressive sweep of historical importance. The special screening was introduced by Dr. Annette Insdorf, Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University and a noted writer and film critic who has written several books on films that chronicle the Holocaust. 

TricksAmong the festival's films are: Savior's Square by Krzysztof Krauze and Joanna Kos- Krauze, which won Best Picture honors at the Gdynia Film Festival; Immensity of Justice by  Wieslaw Saniewski; Jasminium by Jan Jakub Kolski; Extras by Michal Kwiecinski; Tricks by Andrzej Jakimowski, which won the Best Film prize at the Miami Film Festival; Time To Die by Dorota Kedzierzawska; Tomorrow We Are Going To The Movies, which won the Best Debut film prize at the Gdynia Film Festival; Preserve by  Lukasz Palkowski; and Summer Love by Piotr Uklanski, a Polish Western (imagine that) that had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. A short film or documentary accompanies each feature. 

Most of the Festival’s are award-winners in Poland and abroad but have never been seen in the United St (...)

Jean-Luc Godard 

Wednesday, May 7-------This May marks a milestone in recent world history. It is the 40th anniversary of the “events of 1968”, a series of revolutionary protests that spanned the globe and created social and political turmoil, particularly in the United States, England and France. While the protests centered on the escalating war in Vietnam, the main engine was a discontent with politics as usual. In France, in particular, art mixed with politics, as leading filmmakers, artists and philosophers led the charge and envisioned a proletarian state where artists, students, workers and intellectuals would fight side by side for basic human rights. The protests even reached into the vaulted ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival, stopping the proceedings for the first and only time in the Festival’s sixty plus year history. With Cannes starting up again next week, the timing is perfect for a look backwards.

One of the key “artistic agitators” of the period was the director Jean-Luc Godard, whose prolific films of the decade were the most accurate depiction of both the promise and the doomed fatalism of the period. To mark the “events of 1968”, the Film Forum, New York’s most progressive arthouse complex, is screening a milestone five-week program devoted to Jean-Luc Godard, which began this past weekend with Godard’s breakthrough film, Breathless, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.

Godard famously said of the films of this period that they “should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” That anarchic attitude is reflected in most of his films of the decade. Throughout the 1960s, cinephiles eagerly awaited the latest film — or two— by thedirector, a founding father of the French Nouvelle Vague. The former film critic for Cahiers du Cinema was the most innovative and prolific of his contemporaries, with each new work seemingly rewriting the grammar of film. Jump cuts, asynchronous soundtracks, self-narration, cinema as essay, cinema as collage, self-referential cinema, cinema of anarchy — you name it, Godard’s 60s oeuvre redefined “cutting edge” — and, with location and available-light shooting, now provides a near-documentary time capsule of Paris in those years.

Godard spawned a new kind of movie star, as well, with such New Wave icons as Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Anna Karina, the latter doubling as the director’s muse through seven film collaborations and a rocky four-year marriage. Forty years after the tumultuous events of May ’68, one can almost see the chaos coming through the satire and social criticism in Godard’s chronicles of “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” For this pivotal decade, (...)

 THE PAPER WILL BE BLUE

Tuesday, April 22----In the world of cinema, there is always a “new wave” occurring in a country or region or even genre. No question, in 2007/2008, that new wave is centered in the country of Romania, which has flexed its muscles on the international stage with a series of lauded films. At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, the Romanian abortion drama 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS by Cristian Mingui was the surprise winner of the Palme d’Or, the Festival’s highest honor. Another Romanian film 12:08 OF BUCHAREST by Corneliu Porumboiu also won a prize at Cannes and has since become an international arthouse cult favorite. Earlier in the year, the naturalistic THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU by Cristi Puiu showed on many film critics “top ten” lists. 

For those who think that this Romanian renaissance is some kind of new phenomenon, the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York (which sponsors both the New York Film Festival in the Fall and the recently concluded New Directors/New Films series) is presenting a survey of Romanian cinema of the 1960s through the 1980s, a dark period before the fall of the Ceausescu dictatorship, when Romania was one of the most closed societies in the world. For “Shining Through A Long, Dark Night: Romanian Cinema, Then And Now”, which runs from April 16 to 27 at the Walter Reade Theater, the series presents 18 films, most of which have never been seen in North America before.

Probably the best known film in the series is FOREST OF THE HANGED, directed by Liviu Ciulei, who won the Best Director Prize at Cannes in 1965. Set during World War I, as the Romanian and Austro-Hungarian armies battle for control of Transylvania, the film tells the story of a young Romanian lieutenant who becomes a conscientious objector in the midst of battle. The film mixes epic-scale battle scenes with bold surrealistic touches in a stunningly shot panorama of black and white Cinemascope.

Also from 1965, when Eastern European was experiencing cultural thaws in neighboring Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well, is the non-linear narrative SUNDAY AT SIX by debut director Lucian Pintilie. The film, set in the late 1940s, when the Communist Party was consolidating its power, presents an unlikely romance between two Communist revolutionaries who find their mutual affection at odds with their party orthodoxy. This clash between the personal and the institution is one of the themes explored in many of these films, which were financed and controlled by the state film machine.

Films from the 1980s, including Iosif Demian’s A GIRL IN TEARS (1980), which uses both professional and non-professional actors to retrace an unsolved murder of a young woman and Dan Pita’s THE CONTEST (1982), which mixes harsh realism with allegory, use cinematic symbols of discontent or unease to offer a “between the lines” criticism of the Communist regime and the passive acceptance of totalitarianism that marked this generation of Rom (...)

WATER LILIES 

Thursday, April 3-------New Directors/New Films,  one of New York’s film world rites of Spring, is now mid-way through its program. Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists, New Directors/New Films has earned an international reputation for its cutting-edge programming and commitment to more artistically ambitious filmmaking.

This year, a total of 26 features and 6 short films made the cut, spotlighting first and second-time directors who are beginning to make their mark on the international film world. This year, European films and co-productions make up 10 of the 26 features, among the strongest showing of European talents in the Festival’s 37 year history.

In a city which is open about its embrace of all things French, it is no surprise that France is the country most represented in the Festival mix. The two purely French productions include WATER LILIES, by director Celine Sciamma and LA FRANCE by Serge Bozon. WATER LILIES,.which won the Prix Louis Delluc as Best First Feature and was nominated for several Cesar Awards, tells the intriguing story of three young women who form a murky bond of desire and emotional violence during a sultry summer in the Paris suburbs. LA FRANCE is a historical epic with musical interludes set in the waning days of World War I. The film, which stars the sultry Sylvie Testud as a woman who disguises herself as a man to find her husband on the frontlines, won for its director the Prix Jean Vigo. 

France is represented in several co-productions as well at this year’s Festival. In JELLYFISH, co-directors Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen offer a fresh exploration of life in contemporary Tel Aviv. The film won the pretigious Camera d’Or prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for best debut feature. In A LOST MAN, a French co-production with Lebanon, director Danielle Arbid explores sexual taboos in the Arab world in a story of an encounter of a French photographer with a Lebanese man who can’t remember his past. France is one of three co-producers with Spain and Argentina in the provocative XXY by Lucia Puenzo. The film tells the intriguing tale of a hermaphrodite raised as a girl who must now decide on whether she wants to live as a man or a woman. The film has been a major hit on the international film festival circuit, having won Best Film prizes at the Cannes Critics Week, Bangkok, Athens and Montreal film festivals, as well as a Best Director prize for Lucia Puenzo at the Edinburgh Film Festival. In EAT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY, director Michelange Quay brings considerable gifts to his debut feature set in his native Haiti. Vibrant musical sequences give way to contemplative tableaux of sexual ambiguity and colonial politics in this unique film debut.  

Two new films from Greece make a surprising showing at this year’s Festival, pointing to the vitality of this lesser known cinema of southern Europe. In CORRECTION by Thanos Anastopoulos, a young man just released from prison wanders the streets of Athens and becomes fascinated by a woman and her daughter. This affecting story of inner and national identity won the Best Screenplay Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. In the (...)

DIMINISHED CAPACITY 

Wednesday, April 2------One film/one party…..it’s a formula that has served the Gen Art Film Festival well during the last dozen years. Well, the film + party theme kicks off again this evening, as the 13th Annual Gen Art Film Festival begins a week-long showcase of the best of new American independent cinema. The Festival, presented by Acura, offers spotlight showcases seven features and seven shorts from emerging filmmakers, which are followed by seven premiere parties at some of New York’s trendiest restaurants and nightclubs. This is one film event that allows film buffs to experience a movie premiere like a true insider. In its way, the Festival is like an interactive experience, allowing filmmakers, media, and the audience to share in the excitement.  The premiere parties will be held at exclusive NYC nightspots including The Bowery Hotel, Kiss & Fly, Pink Elephant, Prime, The Park, Touch, and Spotlight Live.

“Movies are a social experience”, Gen Art Film Festival Director and Film Division Vice President Jeff Abramson told me in an interview (more from Jeff in a detailed interview later this week). “We accentuate that social element by having film lovers meet for one showcase screening and then invite all audience members to join us for an exclusive party at a hot spot that they may not even know. Since we only show seven films, one per night, the spotlight is directed on the film and filmmakers, and the audience is there for a big party.” The Festival brings to New York premieres of films that have had their first exposure at Sundance, Slamdance, South By Southwest and Toronto. “Our audiences are of a certain mind set”, Abramson explained. “We can really take chances with our programming to stress works that are wildly individual and creative, which is what our audience appreciates and savors.”

While finding creative threads in this year’s program is perhaps best left to individual experience, the films selected have a common theme of over-coming adversity and finding inner peace in a complicated world. Festivities begin this evening at the Ziegfeld Theater, the preeminent single-screen movie palace still standing in New York, with DIMINISHED CAPACITY, directed by Terry Kinney. This delightful, bittersweet comedy about two men struggling with memory loss toplines Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda, who are both expected to attend tonight’s premiere. The Festival closes on April 8 with THE TAKE, which features a fierce performance by indie fave John Leguizamo as a family man who is thrown into a violent situation and must find the balance between morality and revenge. The film, directed by Brad Furman, also stars Tyrese Gibson, Bobby Cannavale and Rosie Perez. Following the Opening Night, films will be screened at the Visual Arts Theater, formerly the Chelsea West on West 23 Street, which was recently acquired by the School of Visual Arts.

The eclectic mix of dramatic features and documentaries includes a rare World Premiere. NIGHTLIFE, directed by Tim Sanderson, is a post-modern take on the classic vampire tale. In this mockumentary comedy, a small film crews follows six of the undead in their (...)

FROZEN RIVER Opens ND/NF 

Wednesday, March 26----As another sign of seasonal change, the venerable New Directors/New Films festival returns to the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center in what is one of New York’s rites of Spring. Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists, ND/NF has earned an international reputation for its cutting-edge programming and commitment to more artistically ambitious filmmaking.

This year, a total of 26 features and 6 short films made the cut, spotlighting first and second-time directors who are beginning to make their market on the international film world.  While ND/NF has always been a supportive home for American independent filmmakers over its 37 year history, this year’s Festival has dedicated 9 feature films (one-third of the program) to new works from emerging indie auteurs. The Festival will open this evening with what is sure to be one of the most talked about films of the season. FROZEN RIVER, a debut feature by director Courtney Hunt that won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, is a classic indie in style and content. Two women in upstate New York—one recently left with two sons to raise, the other a widow on the Mohawk reservation straddling the U.S./Canadian border—need money fast, and they become unlikely partners in a perilous and illegal enterprise. The two leads, Melissa Leo and Misty Upham give exquisite and vulnerable performances in a film that builds in power as the twists of the story unfold.

Other Sundance titles making their East Coast Premieres include: BALLAST (Lance Hammer), a heart-wrenching human drama about an African-American family in the depressed Mississippi Delta region; MOMMA’S MAN (Azazel Jacobs), a tour-de-force mix of drama and documentary that chronicles the filmmaker’s own story as a man who finds himself unable to leave his childhood home in his parents’ bohemian loft; SLEEP DEALER (Alex Rivera), winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Prize, is a masterfully intricate and intriguing mystery set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences; SLINGSHOT HIP HOP (Jackie Reem Salloum), an uplifting documentary that showcases the voice of a new generation, as Palestinian rappers form alternative voices of resistance within the Israeli-Palestinian struggle; and TROUBLE THE WATER (Tia Lessin and Carl Deal), an audience pleaser about an aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, armed with a video camera, who  show the world what survival is all about when they are trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters.

Other American indie titles (and co-productions) include MUNYURANGABO (Lee Isaac Chung), an absorbing drama about an orphan of the Rwandan genocide, who travels from Kigali to the countryside on a quest for justice; MOVING MIDWAY (Godfrey Cheshire), the feature debut of the acclaimed New York film critic, this moving documentary chronicles the filmmaker’s search for his family roots in North Carolina, unearthing often painful reminders of the past and a host of truly quirk (...)

Ellen Page in THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS 

Wednesday, March 19------In a bitter twist of irony, Americans know far more about the film culture of Europe and Asia than they do about their neighbor to the north. Canadian cinema, which has flourished for decades, makes an occasional dent in the United States in an unfair balance of trade that sees American films flooding the Canadian market (as they do everywhere else in the world).

Well, for the past week, the Museum of Modern Art has attempted to redress this imbalance with their lively program CANADIAN FRONT 2008. The series present eight new Canadian feature titles that have been making waves on the international film festival circuit and are now coming to New York with a good head of steam. The series includes a mix of films from established names such as Denys Arcand and Bruce McDonald, as a well as a host of exciting new talents.

The series kicked off last week with the New York Premiere of POOR BOY’S GAME,, an engrossing melodrama about boxing from Nova Scotia, with great star turns by Danny Glover and Rossif Sutherland (the son of Donald Sutherland and half-brother of Kiefer Sutherland). The film delves into the lives and communities of two families who have been affected in very different ways by a brutal incident that happened years before. The film is also being given a special run under the MoMA Presents banner, which features films that will be screened for a week, giving MoMA audiences an extended opportunity to catch these significant works.

The series of eight films is distinguished by some memorable and powerful performances. Tom Cavanagh (of the ABC series ED) is pitch-perfect in BREAKFAST WITH SCOT by director Laurie Lynd. In this comedic satire, Cavanagh plays a gay NHL sports announcer. The film, which has been officially sanctioned by the NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs, subverts traditional notions of masculinity and marks the first time that a professional sports franchise has allowed its logo and uniforms to be used in a gay-themed story.

Veteran Quebec actor Marc Labrèche gives a stand-out performance as a Walter Mitty-like civil servant, who resorts to daydreams in a bureaucracy gone made, in Oscar-winning director Denys Arcand’s dark comedy DAYS OF DARKNESS, which closed the Cannes Film Festival this year. The film concludes the director’s Quebec Trilogy, which included the acclaimed THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE (1986) and THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (2003).

Oscar nominee Ellen Page (JUNO) gives another warm and quirky performance in  iconoclastic director Bruce McDonald’s innovative THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS. Utilizing split-screen techniques and multiple images o