This week's edition ranges across the world, with a portrait of a West Yorkshire market town taking centre stage at Sheffield Doc/Fest, a report from the inaugural Doha Tribeca film festival, and a magic ride across the rooftops of London in Disney's A Christmas Carol . First up, Jason Solomons talks to documentary film-maker Jez Lewis, whose harrowing portrait of his West Yorkshire home town of Hebden...
Abu Dhabi - Russian director Valery Todorovsky and Palestinian director Elia Suleiman won the two top awards Saturday as the curtains came down on Abu Dhabi's star-studded film festival. Best Narrative Film went to Todorovsky's Hipsters, a musical se...
Middle East Intl. Film Festival: Palestinian director opens up about his influences -- Elia Suleiman is something of a contradiction. The 49-year-old is, along with "Paradise Now" director Hany Abu-Assad, the most prominent of Palestinian directors working today, yet he has only made three features.
FILMS SEEN YESTERDAY 1.DOUBLE TAKE (2009, Johan Grimonprez, Belgium, A+++++) 2.THE TIME THAT REMAINS (2009, Elia Suleiman, Palestine, A+++++) I like the soundtrack of this film very much http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsQkPxon4j8 3.ADRIFT (2009, Thac Chuyen Bui, Vietnam, A+/A) 4.THE STRENGTH OF WATER (2009, Armagan Ballantyne, New Zealand, A) 5.ALTIPLANO (2009, Peter Brosens + Jessica Woodworth, Belgium,...
Middle East: Director to receive Middle East filmmaker prize -- Palestinian director Elia Suleiman will receive Variety's annual Middle East filmmaker of the year award at Abu Dhabi's Middle East Film Festival in October.
By Naomi Klein The Nation "When I heard the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was holding a celebratory "spotlight" on Tel Aviv , I felt ashamed of Toronto , the city where I live. I thought immediately of Mona Al Shawa, a Palestinian women's rights activist I met on a recent trip to Gaza . " We had more hope during the attacks," she told me. "At least then we...
In 2007, a film called Chacun son cinema was created for the 60th anniversary of Cannes (briefly mentioned here ). Like a Paris je t'aime for the cinematically minded, the film collected 33 shorts from directors across the world capturing their feelings about cinema. The collection was any movie-lovers dream -- David Lynch, Gus Van Sant, Jane Campion, Atom Egoyan, Elia Suleiman, Wong Kar Wai, Lars...
by Chuck Williamson As the formation of Israel seemingly put an end to centuries of Jewish diaspora, a single nationalist slogan encompassed for many the spirit of the time: “A land without people for a people without a land.” But such myopic platitudes did little to accurately explicate the region’s complex reality, instead exemplifying the sort of rhetoric used to legitimize Jewish...
Some Toronto controversy this morning , earlier this week Canadian filmmaker John Greyson apparently withdrew his short film from the festival in protest to their decision to have a program spotlighting films from Tel Aviv. Over the past week it seems Greyson has picked up some support with Ken Loach, David Byrne, Naomi Klein, B. Ruby Rich, Alice Walker, Jane Fonda, Wallace Shawn, Slavoj Zizek, Fredric...
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has posted its entire film list. Here it is, at Darren's TIFF blog, 1st Thursday . As in previous years, I expect to spend a week at the festival, driving back in between to teach my classes. The avant-garde program, Wavelengths, looks very strong, with new films by Ben Russell, Michael Snow, Jean-Luc Godard, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jean-Marie Straub,...
Here's a trailer for The Time That Remains , the latest film from highly-regarded Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman. It opens in France on August 12, after screening as an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival in May. God knows if and when it will open in the US. Here is a catalog of some reviews from US sources, the majority very favorable. David Hudson calls it a "deadpan Palestinian...
As we say goodbye to another year all that remains is the annual self-congratulatory, back-slapping, banknote slipping run at the awards, it's time to dust of your top and tails, drink as much free champagne as you can and put on your gracious loser face. Your master of ceremonies, as always, is one Joe Bowman of the fantastic Fin de Cinema , his definitive and excellent film blog that reviews and...
For as wonderful of a year as 2002 was for film, I'm not sure you'd be able to gather that from the list of awards below. Other than Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her and Todd Haynes' Far from Heaven , most of the top prize-winning films left me rather lukewarm. Talk to Her and Roman Polanski's The Pianist seemed to have been the most widespread in their accolades, but I'm frankly not sold on the...
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