Jan Komasa awarded at ART FILM FEST 2011.

The Blue Angel for Best Director went to Polish director Jan Komasa for his "Suicide Room" (Sala samobójcow). The five-member international jury summed up the picture as:
"[a] violent film steeped in the loneliness of a young generation lost in modern technology, on the backdrop of a society coming to terms with the problems of the post-communist era."

Komasa’s feature debut was presented in Main Competition with 15 other titles among which there was “The Hunter” by Bakur Bakuradze. The nineteenth annual Art Film Fest was held from June 17 to 25 in Trenčianske Teplice and Trenčín.

Art Film Fest was established in 1993 as the first international film festival of its kind in Slovakia. It was originally aimed at presenting exclusively 'art films', hence the festival's original name, Art Film. During its seventeen-year history, the festival has undergone several reorganizations and has grown noticeably in size. Each year in its festival cinemas, Art Film Fest presents films introduced at prestigious international film festivals such as Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Locarno.


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Olga Domżała

Olga Domżała
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Polish Film Institute
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The documentary movie "Mother" by Jakub Piątek won Best Documentry award during 9th In the Palace International Short Film Festival in Bułgaria, one of the biggest documentary event in Balcan region.

In the Palace International Short Film Festival took a place in Balchik, Bulgaria between 18-25 June. 250 movies up to 45minutes from 44 countries were shown during the Festival.

The Movie was produced by Munk Studio of Polish Filmmakers Association uner the First Documentary Movie program.

"Mother" by Jakub Piatek is a psychological studium of the mother visiting her son in prison.

ANNOUNCEMENT

International Short Film Festival of Cyprus
15 - 22/10/2011

Announcement for the new International Short Film Festival of Cyprus
Call for Entries

The Ministry of Education and Culture and Rialto Theater announce that the Short Film and Short Documentary Festival has been upgraded to the International Short Film Festival of Cyprus (ISFFC). The aim of the festival is to promote and propagate the production of short films and to develop a spirit of friendship and cooperation among filmmakers. ISFFC has as its main objective the promotion of cinematographic art by presenting a diverse showcase of short films from around the globe. It also aspires to present the work of talented filmmakers who successfully use creative cinematic language forms and effectively tell a story in a short film. It is an annual event. Fiction, documentaries, experimental and animation short films not exceeding 25 minutes in length are eligible for participation in the festival’s competition. Cypriot films compete for both the international awards and the national awards of the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture. Cypriot Directors who live and work in Cyprus or abroad are entitled to submit their work. Foreign films running the international contest for 2011 are selected and invited by the Artistic Committee, comprised by directors Alexia Roider and Ioakim Mylonas. The right to participate is reserved for films that were not shown in any other festival in Cyprus.

The Festival will take place at the Rialto Theatre in Limassol, between 15-22 October 2011.

A five-member international Jury will award the prizes among submitted and invited films. Jury names will be announced in due time.

The Festival’s upgrade to an International Competitive one marks an especially prolific year which aspires to boost local production of short films and at the same time reveal new talents and stories from around the globe.

Interested parties are invited to submit an entry form by 20 July 2011.

For details on the ISFFC terms and entry forms, please visit www.isffc.com.cy , www.filmfestival.com.cy and www.moec.gov.cy (Announcements) For further information, call 77 77 77 45, 77 77 25 52 and 00357 22-80 98 11.


RIALTO THEATRE ΘΕΑΤΡΟ ΡΙΑΛΤΟ
Anastazia Anastassiou Αναστάζια Αναστασίου
Τ:(+357) 25 34 39 00 Τ:(+357) 25 34 39 00
F:(+357) 25 74 96 63 Φ:(+357) 25 74 96 63
www.rialto.com.cy www.rialto.com.cy

33 MIFF presents: Sam Peckinpah

Kathryn Bigelow and Michael Mann, Takeshi Kitano and Park Chan-wook acknowledge his influence, though he stays one of the most disputable filmmakers in history. Sam Peckinpah began his feature career in 1961. The Deadly Companions, Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid distinguished him as innovator in the old western genre,dismantling the great America myth and depicting anti-heroes - loners and outsiders facing obsolescence, betrayal and death. Since the time he shot western epic The Wild Bunch in 1968, which was seen as a metaphor of intervention in Vietnam, Sam Peckinpah became a notorious legend with the nick Bloody (or Mad) Sam. This one of the most controversial movie of the period alongside with Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange and Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, disclaimed for their naturalistic ultra-violence marked the helmer as a ‘counter-studio’ director. The latter implied that Peckinpah joined the row of respected losers like Orson Welles, whose works underwent brutal truncation. He battled producers, ruining his reputation in Hollywood and as a result managed to shoot just a dozen of movies for theatre distribution. Straw Dogs (1971) with Dustin Hoffman evoked still more controversy and deprived many of his advocates of their reason: Peckinpah was accused of over-exploitation of violence as the element to be sold in movie market; the feminists gang up on him for sexism and machism…

Peckinpah tried his innovation in various genres; in his war movie Cross of Iron (1977) he delivered a powerful antiwar message in depicting two philosophically opposed German officers on the Eastern front in World War II.

Though Peckinpah underwent a heart attack in 1979, he never stopped working and entered music video with two clips for Julian Lennon and was preparing a Stephen King adaptation when he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1984.

Unfortunately the actual value of his work was overshadowed by debates about the limits of screen violence whereas its technological and moral subtleties were neglected.

In the course of time his creation has been reconsidered. Now they say there would be no Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez or John Woo without Sam Peckinpah. Last year producer Al Ruddy (The Godfather, Million Dollar Baby) put into development the script The Texans written by Peckinpah more than 20 years ago. And in 2011 the launch of two Peckinpah’s remakes was announced, that is a spy thriller The Osterman Weekend and Straw Dogs. And, as the star of the latter Kate Bosworth mentioned, “Of course there will be controversy, I can't see how there wouldn't be with a remake of 'Straw Dogs'!”

List of films would be announced later.

His name is usually associated with New German Cinema, a group of such directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta and Wim Wenders, who in 1962 reacted against the artistic and economic stagnation of German cinema in determination to build a new industry founded on artistic excellence rather than commercial demand. Anyhow today Werner Herzog refers to this movement as a fiction. It doesn’t mean that the internationally recognized artist left the grounds of his home culture as well as he ignores the present since many of his films, like The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo are set in the past.

Extravagant characters, heroes obsessed with impossible dreams, people in distant places confronting wild nature are not only the subject of his films, but to some degree reflect the auteur’s ego. This may be exemplified by documentary Burden of Dreams, made him when shooting Fitzcarraldo.

Though he resides in Los-Angeles now, Werner Herzog has been always on the move (“I’m a moving target”, - he jokes) since that time when he covered on foot 500 km from Munich to Paris to inspire his dear friend, dying film theorist Lotte Eisner. Every his journey is purposeful. One of the latest appeared especially remarkable: Herzog was chosen the only filmmaker on earth to capture on film the paintings on the murals of the Chauvet Pont d’Arc cave in southern France – the oldest drawings in the world. For the sake of their retention the entrance to the cave is closed, and the unique Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3D will secure these images for mankind forever.

It should be noted that Herzog is not only film director, producer, screenwriter, actor but also opera director – that’s why no wonder, that his creative style and wide scope of interests is often characterized as Wagnerian. Profound seriousness neighbours in his works with ludicrous, elevated with common, and the one of the greatest world directors in the year of his 70^th jubilee didn’t hesitate to appear in one episodes of the Simpsons (2011) starring in the role of a German pharma industrialist.

The director’s choice consists of his best and last:

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972)

Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974)

Herz aus Glas (1976)

Stroszek (1977)

Woyzeck (1979)

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen (1984)

Cobra Verde (1987)

The White Diamond (2004)

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

My Son My Son What Have Ye Done (2009)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)

For twelve years Media Forum has brought new media art to the Russian audience. It presented an avant-garde trend in the works of artists, performers, video artists and animation-makers experimenting with language, context and techniques of electronic and digital mass media. Theme of the Media Forum 2011 – «Expanded cinema». The MIFF Media Forum exhibitions at Moscow Museum of Modern Art (13 June - 3 July 2011) and at Garage Center of Contemporary Culture (24 June - 24 July 2011) presents works by artists that deny all canons and traditions and destroy the traditional structure of film. It's important for us how the artist breaks space whether it is screen or reality, social or virtual space. Media art and video art now make it possible to break and transform space. The works selected give an extra dimension to the film festival and open new opportunities to analyze and evaluate the prospects of cinema expansion and creation of more complex forms of perception by means of contemporary art. Exhibitions curators: Olga Shishko (art critic, curator, founder and director of Moscow Center for art and culture MediaArtLab, Art Director of MIFF Media Forum), Kirill Razlogov (professor, art critic, Director of Russian Institute of Culture, Program Director of the Moscow International Film Festival) At the exhibition at Garage Center of Contemporary Culture will be shown three magnificent projects: the European debut of Yang Fudong's The Fifth Night (2010), the most recent work by Eija-Liisa Ahtila Annunciation (2010) and a real video bestseller by Isaac Julien. At the exhibition at Moscow Museum of Modern Art the idea of «expanded cinema» will be visualized with works by such artists as Fiona Tan (the Netherlands), Leslie Thornton (USA), Doug Aitken (USA), Gary Hill (USA), Keren Cytter (Israel/Germany), Anri Sala (Albania/France), Johanna Billing (Sweden). Also the program will include the life multimedia performance of Ryoji Ikeda (Japan) at the Opening ceremony and a series of artists talk and lectures at the Center for contemporary culture Garage (24 June – 28 July 2011).

The first meeting of the organizers of the 33^rd Moscow Film Festival with the national and international press will take place at the Cannes film festival. Among those taking part in the presentation will be the general producer of the MIFF Leonid Vereschagin, the program director Kirill Razlogov and the public relations director Pyotr Shepotinnik. During the presentation which will take place at the “Russian Pavilion” on May 18^th at 11:00 the organizers of the MIFF will describe the main areas of work being carried out in connection with the MIFF, give the names of some of the participants, members of the Jury and some films in competition. The entrance is free for all the participants of the Cannes festival accredited as press or at the film market. The official press-conference of the 33 rd MIF, where the full list of films in the 33^rd MIFF competition will be announced, will take place on June 2^nd in Moscow. The time and place of the press-conference will be announced later.

On the first 33 MIFF presentation which took place today in Cannes first competition films and Jury members were announced. The 33 MIFF will be opened with the World Premiere of Hollywood blockbuster Transformers: Dark of the Moon (dir. Michael Bay).

Actress Geraldine Chaplin, Israel director and art designer Amos Gitai and Mexican director Arturo Ripstein will join festival as the Jury members. The first competition films to be announced are:

Leaving / Odcházení, dir. Václav Havel

Czech Republic, 2011

The film is based on a certain symmetrical composition of scenes mapping the last two days of Rieger’s stay in the villa, before he is finally evicted. Those present are chiefly the residents of the villa, the secretaries making an inventory of the contents and visitors from outside, who arrive and then leave. They are either Vlasta and Albín or Jack and Bob, who are preparing an interview, or Bea. With each succeeding scene the situation gradually goes from bad to worse. Irena loses her respect for Rieger, particularly after she catches him with Bea in the gazebo. Vlasta not only goes back on her proposal to offer a roof but even proposes a change to Rieger’s will. The journalists turn out to be in the pay of the gutter press which won’t print Rieger’s replies to political questions, but focuses solely on his private life, so his departure from public life is cast in a disreputable light. The phase shortly before the end in which Rieger loses his mind is expressed by a wild romp of all the characters around the pool and in it, accompanied by a huge light show.

Joanna, dir. Feliks Falk

Poland, 2010

Everyday life in the German occupied Warsaw in the midst of the WW2 runs between efforts to find a job and therefore – something to eat, and the efforts to avoid “seizures” carried on regularly by Gestapo on the streets. One of the days takes away a Jewish woman, whose 8-year-old daughter accidentally manages to avoid the seizure, but now – left completely alone – hides in the nearby church, hungry and frozen almost to death. It is Joanna, an ordinary middle-class woman waiting for her husband to return home for over four years now, who sees the girl. She feels a natural, strong urge to help, but doesn’t know anyone of the underground opposition circles, who would be able to secure the safe home for the Jewish child. The gravest danger hangs over everyone involved as there is the death penalty for hiding a Jewish person. It is then when Joanna has to decide for herself whether to engage or whether to stay safe. With this choice the whole reality changes and lays bare before her eyes, leading to places she would never have expected she will experienced.

American Translation, dir. Pascal Arnold, Jean-Marc Barr

France, 2011

A love grows from a chance encounter between Chris and Aurore. They are twenty years old and their passion is exclusive. It's a beautiful love story like you see in the movies... But then Aurore discovers that Chris is a killer. Will she continue to live passionately, an accomplice in spite of herself, or denounce the one she loves in spite of everything?

Chapiteau-show, dir. Sergei Loban

Russia, 2011

Chapiteau-show is a film dealing with how people’s relationship reflect on their social intercourse and bonding – telling how tragically everything tend to seem from within, and how comical it really looks from the outside. The protagonists of the four stories told in the movie are connected to each other to a greater or lesser extent – some of them are acquainted in real life, other tend to communicate in different networks. Each one of them is living through his own, private drama not noticing what’s happening to other people. Each one of them delivers his own accusatory speech not knowing that the words he’s pronouncing are not really his. Their dramas deal with different types of human relationships – love, friendship, respect or cooperation, but all of these stories are evolving simultaneously. And the tempest in the soul of one character will reflect with a tempest in the soul of another. The action takes place far away from Moscow – on a sea shore, against serene scenery and beautiful rugged mountains. In the moments of crisis characters find themselves on the stage of a mystery gilly theater where each of them can sing his “swansong”.

33 Moscow Festival announced this year’s competition program. This year the festival will take place at 23.06 with the world premiere Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon. The closing film as was announced before - The Debt starred Helen Mirren.

JURY

Geraldine Chaplin
Amos Gitai
Arturo Ripshtein
Nikolay Dostal

PERSPECTIVES COMPETITION JURY
Miroljub Vučković


OPENING FILM

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON
Dir. Michael Bay
USA, 2011
CLOSING FILM

THE DEBT
Dir. John Madden
USA, 2011


COMPETITION

AMERICAN TRANSLATION
Dir. Pascal Arnold, Jean-Marc Barr
France, 2011

LA VITA FACILE / THE PERFECT LIFE
Dir. Lucio Pellegrini
Italy, 2011

ICHIMAI NO HAGAKI / POSTCARD
Dir. Kaneto Shindô
Japan, 2011

USHENOD MGONI MOVKVDEBI / I’LL DIE WITHOUT YOU
Dir. Levan Tutberidze
Georgia, 2010

VISSZATÉRÉS / RETRACE
Dir. Judit Elek
Hungary, 2011

CHAPITEAU-SHOW
Dir. Sergei Loban
Russia, 2011

KETSOVE / SNEAKERS
Dir. Ivan Vladimirov, Valeri Yordanov
Bulgaria, 2011

JOANNA
Dir. Feliks Falk
Poland, 2010

LA OTRA FAMILIA / THE OTHER FAMILY
Dir. Gustavo Loza
Mexico, 2010

W IMIENIU DIABŁA / IN THE NAME OF THE DEVIL
Dir. Barbara Sass
Poland, 2011

ODCHÁZENÍ / LEAVING
Dir. Václav Havel
Czech Republic, 2011

MONTEVIDEO, BOG TE VIDEO / MONTEVIDEO, TASTE OF A DREAM
Dir. Dragan Bjelogrlić
Serbia, 2011

ESCALADE / ESCALATION
Dir. Charlotte Silvera
France, 2011

FUK SAU CHE CHI SEI / REVENGE: A LOVE STORY
Dir. Wong Ching Po
Hong Kong, 2010

TABU - ES IST DIE SEELE EIN FREMDES AUF ERDEN
Dir. Christoph Stark
Austria, Germany, Luxemburg, 2011

LAS OLAS / THE WAVES
Dir. Alberto Morais
Spain, 2011

SERDTSA BOOMERANG
Dir. Nikolai Khomeriki
Russia, 2011


PERSPECTIVES COMPETITION

SAMOOLUI BIMIL / SECRETS, OBJECTS
Dir. Lee Young-mi
South Korea, 2011

ANARCHIJA ŽIRMŪNUOSE / ANARCHY IN ZIRMUNAI
Dir. Saulius Drunga
Lithuania, Hungary, 2010

KHANEYE ZIRE ÂB / THE HOUSE UNDER THE WATER
Dir. Sepideh Farsi
France, Iran, Netherlands, Germany, Morocco, 2010

LAOWAI / FOREIGNER
Dir. Fabien Gaillard
China, 2010

VIATA MEA SEXUAL / MY SEX LIFE
Dir. Cornel George Popa
Romania, 2010

TAPE END
Dir. Ludwig Wüst
Austria, 2011

SNOWCHILD
Dir. Uta Arning
Germany, Japan, Singapore, 2011

RUE HUVELIN
Dir. Mounir Maasri
Lebanon, 2011

GAKKU
Dir. Gaziz Nasyrov
Kazakhstan, 2011

BRIM / UNDERCURRENT
Dir. Árni Ólafur Ásgeirsson
Iceland, 2011

The Moscow International Film Festival presents A Tribute to Rob Nilsson, a Retrospective of films by San Francisco director/writer/actor Rob Nilsson to be held during 33rd annual festival June 23-July 2, 2011. The Retrospective will feature NORTHERN LIGHTS, co-directed by John Hanson (Camera d’Or at Cannes, 1979); HEAT AND SUNLIGHT, (Grand Prize at Sundance, 1988); NEED, from the 9 @ Night Film Series (San Francisco Film Critics Circle Marlon Riggs Award, 2008) and IMBUED, starring Stacy Keach (2009).

Nilsson’s work—which John Cassavetes has called “beautiful, exciting, imaginative, unfamiliar and outside of that, very good”—has featured cinematography by San Francisco DP Mickey Freeman, and roles from actors such as Ron Perlman, Bruce Dern, Pam Grier, Stephen Lange and Robert Viharo. His films have been produced by David and Carol Richards and San Francisco producers Michelle Allen, Marshall Spight, Beth LaDove and Steve and Hildy Burns, with music, sound cutting and mix by Al Nelson and the Noise Floor.

Four of the five Retrospective films are San Francisco productions and NORTHERN LIGHTS, shot in North Dakota, also features interiors shot on San Francisco locations. From 1992- 2005 Nilsson worked with his San Francisco Tenderloin Y Group, conducting acting classes and making feature films with the homeless, inner city residents, local actors and all comers. Nilsson Retrospectives and Lifetime Achievement awards include Mill Valley, Kansas City, St. Louis, Fargo, Syracuse, Yerevan in Armenia, and Silver Lake in Los Angeles. The Filmmaker’s Alliance of Los Angeles gave him their inaugural Nilsson Award in 2008 which Nilsson now curates annually.

“To be recognized in the land of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Chekov, Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel and my favorite director, Elem Klimov is humbling to say the least,” says Nilsson, whose latest film WHAT HAPPENED HERE?—which he describes as “a road movie/essay about Leon Trotsky, virtue and political certainty”—will be his 30th feature film.