April’s longer hours of daylight are terrific. Feeling warmer weather as winter slips aside is marvelous. But for cinema lovers, the month brings to the Twin Cities something even better. The Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) returns Thursday and continues through April 29. For many people, it is a highlight of the year’s film calendar. Fans arrange their vacation schedules, drive hundreds of miles and put on their comfortable standing-in-line shoes for the rich, friendly, exciting experience. Longtime devotees know that finding the most promising choices among 170 international features — and even more shorts, documentaries, filmmaker seminars and whatnot — is a challenge. For me, it’s also a job. As a film reporter, I’ve explored mass film screenings from Toronto to Reykjavik to Sundance. While serendipity helps, it’s invaluable to spend a bit of time ahead of the gala to learn the best options. Winnowing through … [Read more...] about 6 hidden treasures at this year’s Mpls. St. Paul International Film Festival
Berlin international film festival
Digital dominates Berlin International Film Festival
The 2012 Berlin International Film Festival presented a total of 659 screenings in DCP formats, as well as 627 in 35mm film and some 1,100 in diverse video formats on over 50 different screens across the city. To ensure “the smooth operation of this year’s digital screenings,” festival organizers set up what they called “an elaborate procedure to test the technical quality and structural integrity of the submitted DCP formats” with help from the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits.Eliminating compatibility problems was left to the festivals’ “internationally renowned” partners. Amongst them, Dolby set up a network of 37 digital-cinema servers at the festival venues, each with a capacity of 2.75 terabytes, and supplied five 24-terabyte SAS data libraries. Barco provided the Berlinale “with their knowhow” as well as with 11 high-performance d-cinema projectors. Connectivity supplier Colt Technology Services linked … [Read more...] about Digital dominates Berlin International Film Festival
Oldenburg International Film Festival
Venues: Nine venues, including Oldenburg PenitentiaryDates: Sept. 10-14Opening-night gala: "Peaceful Times"Closing-night gala: "Tyson"When Torsten Neumann and Thorsten Ritter started the Oldenburg International Film Festival on four screens in 1994, they had no idea that over the course of the next 14 years they would turn a high-security prison into a screening venue, have a filmmaker flown in at the last minute via single-engine plane, and witness their little venture being labeled the German Sundance by an increasingly curious trade press.Oldenburg hit the ground running, with legendary independents like Alex Cox (1984's "Repo Man") and Nancy Savoca (1989's "True Love") showing up for the festival's inaugural, where they screened about 70 films -- a number that has remained relatively constant since its inception."We figured that we'd rather start from the top and then adjust downward to the right size," says Neumann, who has been running the festival since Ritter left in 1998. … [Read more...] about Oldenburg International Film Festival
Venice International Film Festival
This is the former critic's first "Mostra" -- as the event is known -- since he was reupped as festival director at the end of 2007 for a second four-year term, the only man in modern times to receive such support from the Venice Biennale, its parent organization. That is quite a turnaround for a festival that has had years of turmoil and nearly collapsed after interference from Silvio Berlusconi's government. Venice has had five toppers alone in the past 15 years: Mueller's predecessor, Moritz de Hadeln, exited unceremoniously after a two-year run after his own predecessor, Alberto Barbera, was dismissed under pressure from Berlusconi's aides in Italy's cultural ministry. But is the support Mueller has received -- and the considerable enthusiasm he has generated in Italy itself -- justified? Have the politicians who control the festival's fate chosen wisely, or merely returned the 55-year-old executive to power through lack of a better choice?By and large, insiders on both sides of … [Read more...] about Venice International Film Festival
Report from Ukraine: The Odessa International Film Festival
It’s never easy to pull off a successful film festival, but current conditions in Ukraine have made it nearly impossible. Five years ago, when organizers initiated an annual summer event in Odessa, the Ukrainian film industry was developing and the first festival rather small. But the Odessa International Film Festival grew quickly, reportedly beyond its organizers’ expectations, and began to receive the attention of the international film community, particularly in Europe. Now the Potemkin steps made immortal by Eisenstein are the site of outdoor screenings of classic films like (of course) Battleship Potemkin and the in-competition feature films have swollen by 140%, besides other events, screenings, and industry deal-making. The film industry’s infrastructure developed along with the festival; although the fest can’t be given exclusive credit for this — funding, training, and distribution networks have all played a part — OIFF does … [Read more...] about Report from Ukraine: The Odessa International Film Festival