News

With more than 400 films being shown across the city of Buenos Aires at sites as diverse as an outdoor amphitheater, the planetarium and the city's opera theater, Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de cine Independiente (Bafici) is set to roll from April 15th through the 25th. Here is an overview of this year's lineup at South America's largest film festival. Both the opening night film and the closing night film are world premiers of works by Argentine directors, which Bafici showcases year after year. The opening film is El cielo del Centauro by director Hugo Santiago, who returned to Buenos Aires to shoot forty-three years after collaborating with the immortal Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges on the film Invasión. On closing night, Bafici will show the...

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The 49th New York Film Festival has announced their Masterworks and Special Anniversary screenings that will show between the festival’s seventeen days, September 30th – October 16th. The Masterworks program and the festival’s additional programming will provide audiences with exciting opportunities to explore new film-making styles and storytelling events. To learn more about the Masterworks and Anniversary films, please check out below for full synopsis and details.

Masterworks And Special Anniversary Screenings

Masterworks: The Gold Rush

Chaplin’s personal favorite among his own films, The Gold Rush (1925), is a beautifully constructed comic fable of fate and perseverance, set in the icy wastes of the Alaskan gold fields. Re-released by Chaplin in 1942 in a recut version missing some scenes, and with added narration and musical score, The Gold Rush will be presented in a new restoration of the original, silent 1925 version. In this frequently terrifying and always unpredictable universe of...

25 special programs and screenings have been added to the lineup for this year's New York Film Festival, running September 30 through October 26. The only secrets left are the 2011 Views from the Avant Garde lineup and a few free forums in the works.

Because this round is so heavy on the documentaries, I want to first revisit the lineup for Toronto's Real to Reel program in another entry and then return here to add further notes and linkage. For now, the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Eugene Hernandez has a few more details, but here's the gist of today's announcement:

Masterworks Screenings

Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), restored.

Hugo Santiago's Invasión (1969), restored.

Sara Driver's You Are Not I (1981), restored.

Special Presentations: Documentaries

Xan Aranda's Andrew Bird: Fever Year.

Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.

Nelson Pereira dos Santos's Music According to Tom Jobim.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced more titles to the 49th New York Film Festival, including Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky‘s Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, with the much publicized new ending that surrounds the release of the West Memphis 3 (pictured). Oliver Stone will also have a sneak peak preview of his 10-part documentary for Showtime, The Untold History of the United States, which will air in 2012.

Also announced are Masterworks and Special Anniversary screenings. Read the new slate of titles below.

Nyff will take place this year Sept. 30 – Oct. 16. See closing night and Nyff main slate.

Masterworks And Special Anniversary Screenings

Masterworks: The Gold Rush

Chaplin’s personal favorite among his own films, The Gold Rush (1925), is a beautifully constructed comic fable of fate and perseverance, set in the icy wastes of the Alaskan gold fields. Re-released by Chaplin in 1942 in a recut version missing some scenes,...

News is rolling out of Toronto for this year's festival, with the Galas and the Special Presentations sections announced.  As always with Tiff, the sheer number of films can seem overwhelming, but with new films by David Cronenberg (A Dangerous Method, pictured above), Terence Davies (!), Francis Ford Coppola, Wang Xiaoshuai, Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, and William Friedkin added to big names that premiered already this year (including Almodóvar, Von Trier, Nanni Moretti, and Nicolas Winding Refn) it looks like the 2011 iteration will be as packed with must-see cinema as ever before.  We'll be updating this listing as new lineups are announced.  See Tiff's official website for details.

Galas

Albert Nobbs (Rodrigo Garcia, Ireland) Butter (Jim Field Smith, USA) A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, France/Ireland/UK/Germany/Canada) From the Sky Down (Davis Guggenheim, USA) A Happy Event (Rémi Bezançon, France) The Ides of March (George Clooney, USA) The Lady (Luc Besson,...

San Sebastian Film Festival

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain -- From Argentina comes this enchanting experimental film with very limited market potential but immense power of attraction for lovers of independent filmmaking. Lovers of Guy Maddin's or Jonas Mekas' experiments will probably be thrilled by Esteban Sapir's The Aerial, an innovative piece depicting everyday life in a city whose inhabitants have lost the ability to speak. Shot in black-and-white with nondigital special effects giving it the look of a silent film, The Aerial is a poetic and metaphoric artwork about human communication and contemporary society.

The film follows the struggle between two characters, a resisting woman who has kept her voice, and Mr. TV, an evil man who controls the entire society thanks to his hypnotic TV channel and the products he forces people to consume.

Full of cinematographic references such as to Fritz Lang's Metropolis and to George Melies' Man in the Moon, The Aerial is less an easy criticism of consumer society and television brainwashing then it is a poetic attempt to recreate a world through the sole power of images. It is reminiscent of Hugo Santiago's 1969 classic Invasion and the spirit of Sapir fellow Argentine, Jorge Luis Borges.