The Toronto International Film Festival is best-known these days as a Big Daddy of the awards season. Major films that premiere at TIFF – of which there are many – tend to do so with glamorous red-carpet events, stars congregating outside any one of the gorgeous theatres in the closed-to-traffic festival zone. Many are slick, prestigious studio dramas from celebrated filmmakers – think First Man, A Star Is Born, or If Beale Street Could Talk – and they’re rightly festooned with attention. I did not attend TIFF this year for those films. I attended for Midnight Madness. A weirder, wilder sidebar for weirder, wilder cinephiles, Midnight Madness has been in operation since 1988, where it premiered Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage, and Penelophe Spheeris’ The Decline of Western Civilization Part II. From there, Midnight Madness featured early looks at cult favourites like Dazed & Confused, Saw, The Raid, What We Do In … [Read more...] about Midnight Madness: An Oasis Of Oddity Inside the Toronto International Film Festival
Berlin international film festival
Chichester International Film Festival is on its way!
Artistic director Roger Gibson has unveiled details of the programme for this year’s Chichester International Film Festival. In its 27th edition, the 21-day festival is the largest on the south coast. Running from August 3–26, it includes three open-air screenings in the city’s historic Priory Park (the long-anticipated Disney-Pixar Animation, Incredibles 2, Grease, The Greatest Showman).Roger said: “This year the Festival will screen around 160 films including premieres, previews and new releases from 29 countries across the globe. Highlights include those exposed in the world festivals: Sundance, Berlin Toronto, Venice, Cannes: Leave No Trace, Puzzle, Cold War, Lucky, The Heiresses and Wajib and will be screened at five venues.“Highlights also contain Q&As and In Person events with guests including the award-winning actor, producer, writer Steve Coogan, the much-loved actor, playwright and writer David Wood, actress and screenplay writer of Mrs. … [Read more...] about Chichester International Film Festival is on its way!
The best films from the Transilvania International Film Festival 2018
This year’s festival offered liberating explorations of identity in Adina Pintilie’s Touch Me Not and Sebastián Lelio’s Disobedience.“I wanted to unlearn my ideas about intimacy,” confessed Adina Pintilie when she introduced her documentary Touch Me Not to a sold-out crowd at the Victoria Cinema in Cluj-Napoca. “I wanted to create a system where fiction could work as a safety net to explore personal areas of our lives.” Pintilie’s controversial winner of the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear was the highlight of this year’s Transilvania International Film Festival. A provocative exploration of sexuality, her film spearheaded a selection of this year’s programme that underscores the complex relationship between modernising cultures and sexual identity. This year’s theme of identity seems fitting for a festival undergoing a period of intense self-exploration regarding its role within the industry. Throughout … [Read more...] about The best films from the Transilvania International Film Festival 2018
See world in 2 weeks at Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival
You don’t have to visit Sundance, South by Southwest or Tribeca to experience one of the year’s best film festivals. The Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, starting Thursday, is two weeks and two days of watching films all day and talking about films all night. With more than 300 excellently curated regional premieres on the docket, it is often bigger, a lot cheaper and way more awesome than any rival from Venice to Berlin. Of course, every silver lining has a cloud. The whole process of finding your wish list of ideal films in MSPIFF’s mountain of quirky discoveries is a major strategic challenge. Helpfully, the official calendar at MSPfilm.org provides screening charts dividing much of the 16-day avalanche into popular themes. Is there a part of the world you wistfully wonder about? The run list will help you find movies from Albania to Palestine to Venezuela and most frontiers in between. Want to hear dialogue spoken in your clan’s mother … [Read more...] about See world in 2 weeks at Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival
6 hidden treasures at this year’s Mpls. St. Paul International Film Festival
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