Fall Film Festivals - Canada, Italy, Spain, USA

69th Venice International Film Festival

 The 69th Venice International Film Festival (la Biennale di Venezia - VIFF), directed by Alberto Barbera, kicks off today, Wednesday, August 29, with the Opening Ceremony and the Palazzo del Cinema screening of Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, out of competition. It will run through September 8th. Check out the Screenings schedule.

WEBSITE (English)

Toronto International Film Festival

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Toronto, Canada, opens September 6, and runs through the 16th. The folks at Toronto claim, "The Toronto International Film Festival is the leading public film festival in the world, screening more than 300 films from 60+ countries every September." I have no facts to dispute that. I do know that their cinematic selection each year is one of the best if not, as they claim, the best. The TIFF has another distinction, that of managing to screen the Academy Award-winning  feature movie with regularity. Therefore, when I begin the process of trying to predict that winner, I turn to Toronto.

A small sample of films to be screened: From the U.S.A. Beasts of the Southern Wild, Great Expectations. Quebec writer-diector Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette's Inch’Allah, and the return of Austrian auteur and two-time winner at Cannes, Michael Haneke with Amour.

Ticket packages are available to buy now. Individual tickets go on sale September 2nd.

WEBSITE
 

60th SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL

French filmmaker Georges Franju will be the subject of one of the retrospectives programed for the 60th San Sebastian Festival (SSIFF), September 21 - 29, 2012. Franju would have been 100 this year. 

Georges Franju (April 12, 1912 / November 5, 1987) was an enormously influential figure in French film culture. In 1936 he founded the Cinémathèque Française with Henri Langlois, and his career as a director began in 1949 with documentaries. His early works demonstrated his particular talent for filming reality from unexpected angles, a trait akin to surrealism and expressionism.

American director Oliver Stone and Scottish actor, Ewan McGregor will each receive the Donastia Lifetime Achievement Award for their contributions to cinema.  Both of them have new movies, which will premiere after the presentation of their awards, September 23 for Stone's Savages. The Impossible starring McGregor and Naomi Watts, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, a young filmmaker from Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, will premiere September 27. Bayona's most recent movie before The Impossible is The Orphanage (El orfanato, 2007), featuring Geraldine Chaplin.

Films in Progress will present six films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. Four films from Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco are selected to participate in Cinema in Motion.

Sixteen Spanish movies will premiere in the Made in Spain section, including Sleepless Knights, a German production in the Spanish Language, due to be released in 2013. The movie has been selected for the 2013 Forum section at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival and the Cine del futuro section at the Buenos Aires Festival. The full screenings schedule for the SSIFF has not yet been released.

The 60th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival will include screenings of the eight films selected this year for the Zinemira section, dedicated to films produced for the most part in the Basque Country. The Premiere's section will include six new productions, while Panorama will offer another two titles produced this year.The six premieres will contend for the Serbitzu Award, a new addition this year. The award will also be open to Basque productions presented in any of the other Festival sections.

WEBSITE  (English)

 

SAN DIEGO FILM FESTIVAL

The San Diego Film Festival (SDFF) will run from September 26 - 30, 2012, and has expanded to two locations, downtown San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter and La Jolla.

If you haven't experienced all the San Diego Film Festival events previously, you need to know this festival is known as "The Party Festival." Each night's fete is held at one of the Gaslamp Quarter's hot spots or in the gorgeous setting of La Jolla. Open to Patrons, Sponsors, VIP & Festival day pass holders, each party will feature a one-hour hosted bar. There are many other smaller parties open to all attendees. At any party, attendees must be 21 with a valid ID.

Gus Van Sant

Oscar nominated auteur Gus Van Sant will attend the special tribute and retrospective of his films. The Festival will screen some of his most acclaimed features, including early indie favorites Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho and more recent Academy Award winners Good Will Hunting, Milk and Cannes Palme d’Or winner Elephant. He is currently directing Promised Land, written by and starring Matt Damon and John Krasinski.

 A small sample of films to be screened: From the U.S.A. Beasts of the Southern Wild, Great Expectations. Quebec writer-diector Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette's Inch’Allah, and the return of Austrian auteur and two-time winner at Cannes, Michael Haneke with Amour. The full Festival schedule has not yet announced.

WEBSITE

Nicole Kidman will be honored, and there will be a special screening of a newly restored version of Lawrence of Arabia. Only two of the juicy events for the 50th New York Film Festival (NYFF), September 28 - October 14, 2012, under the auspices of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York City. More on this one later.

WEBSITE

As information is released there will be more from time to time on this blog about the above festivals.

Venice Film Festival Winners

Venice Festival Scene at Night

Leone d'oro

Aleksander Sokurov, director of Best Film, FAUST

The 68th Venice Film Festival (La Biennale di Venezia), under the direction of Marco Müller, and the longest running international film festival, closed last night. The closing movie, Damsels in Distress (USA, 2011), screened out of competition, and happened to have been written, directed, and produced by an acquaintance of mine, Whit Stillman, whom I met in Barcelona, Spain.

Whit Stillman

Whit, like Woody Allen, writes, casts, directs and produces all his movies through his company Westernly Films. His movie Metropolitan burst on the movie scene in 1990, and garnered critical acclaim. It was followed by Barcelona in 1994, which, of course, is my favorite movie of his.

Damsels stars Adam Brody who played Seth Rogan in the TV series The OC, another of my favorites. His co-star is Greta Gerwig (No strings Attached, 2011). Others in key roles are Megalyn Echikunwoke and Analeigh Tipton. Sony Picture Classics is distributing. Good luck with this one, Whit!

Now, here are the top-five winners of the 68th Venice International Film Festival, decided by the Jury led by U.S. director Darren Aronofsky, and announced September 10, 2011:

Golden Lion (Leone d'oro) for Best Film: Faust by Aleksander (Also, Alexander) Sokurov (Russia). Movie is loosely based on Goethe's classic German story.

Shangjun Cai

Silver Lion (Leone d'Argento) for Best Director: Shangjun Cai for the film Ren Shan Ren Hai (People Mountain People Sea) (China - Hong Kong).

 
Special Jury Prize: Terraferma directed by Emanuele Crialese (Italy), and that title is not a typo.

Michael Fassbender

 
Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup) for Best Actor: Michael Fassbender (Lt. Hicox in Inglorious Basterds) for his role as Brandon in the movie Shame directed by Steve McQueen (United Kingdom). Basterds is not a typo, it is the actual title of the movie.

Deannie Yip

 
 
Coppa Volpi for Best Actress: Deannie Yip for her role as Ah Teo in the film Tao jie (A Simple Life) directed by Ann Hui (China - Hong Kong).

 
 

Click title of this post to go to the Venice IFF Official Web site. Full List of Winners.

It Isn't Fall Yet, But Festivals Don't Know It

I tried to stretch my hiatus out a little longer, but when the Venice International Film Festival started Wednesday, I knew it was time to start paying attention to what was happening on the movie scene. Thus, a break from the cookout today for this post.

Venice IFF's Golden Lion Award

Two major Film Festivals are underway this weekend. For starters, the granddaddy of the film festivals, the 68th Venice International Film Festival - La Biennale di Venezia - opened Wednesday, 31 August, with the well-received world premiere screening of The Ides of March, the highly anticipated new film written, directed, and starring George Clooney, in the Palazzo del Cinema, following the opening ceremony.  Co-starring with Clooney are:  Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ryan Gosling, Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei.

The Ides of March is the only U.S. film screening in competition. However, David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, Germany/Canada, is worth noting. It stars Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung, and Keira Knightley as a troubled young woman seeking treatment. There are no films of note from the USA screening out of competition.
The complete list of films in competition Here.

Telluride

George Clooney

The other festival is the 38th Telluride Film Festival (2-5 September), to which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded a $50,000 grant to underwrite this year's  Festival’s Guest Director program, featuring musician Caetano Veloso, who is described as ". . . a musician who loves movies." For more on the Academy's grant to Telluride, click the title of this post.

George Clooney’s The Ides Of March may have been well-received in Venice, but it did not make the Telluride roster.  None-the-less, Clooney headed from Venice to the Colorado San Juan mountain festival to support the other movie in which he stars this year, The Descendants. It is the new film from director Alexander Payne, his first since his Oscar-winner Sideways (2007). Telluride will host tributes for Clooney, and actress Tilda Swinton, who won a best supporting actress Oscar in 2008 as Clooney's co-star in Michael Clayton.

Besides Venice, Telluride is also a stop in the film festival circuit between Cannes and New York. There's The Artist, a black and white silent film directed by Michel Hazanavicius, and Martin Scorsese’s new documentary about the late member of The Beatles - George Harrison: Living in the Material World, plus the Irish drama Albert Nobbs, co-written by Glenn Close, which has the actress playing a shy butler who is hiding the fact that he/she is a woman.

At Telluride, there are the "to be announced" slots, which keep festival goers guessing. In the past, some films shown in these TBA slots, including last year's The King's Speech, received Oscars. Therefore, there is big buzz of speculation about this year's TBA films. One that has been revealed is Butter, a comedy starring Jennifer Garner, Olivia Wilde and Hugh Jackman. Telluride Festival.

Coming up, the San Sebastian Festival in Spain (16-24 September), has set it's jury members.  Serving as part of the official selection jury will be Babel screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, director Álex de la Iglesia (The Last Circus) and actresses Bai Ling (The Crow), Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) and Frances McDormand (Fargo). American writer and film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum will chair the New Directors competition at the festival. This from Nikki Fink's Deadline/Hollywood blog.