And other get-togethers across town.
Read MoreJennifer Grey, who is in 'A Real Pain' at the Golden Globes party celebrating the BFI London Film Festival
Photo courtesy of the Red Sea Lodge, an initiative by the Red Sea International Film Festival
The Red Sea International Film Festival announces Red Sea Lodge second edition
The Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has just announced their Red Sea Lodge edition for 2021.
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Five films, and much more, to watch at this edition of the New Zealand International Film Festival
Going forward, if we’re going to learn anything about the pandemics and how to handle them, it’s going to come from New Zealand. And in the film festival world, if we’re going to find a way to move forward, it will also come from this edition of the New Zealand International Film Festival, under the direction of Marten Rabarts.
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The Qumra Diaries: Discovering Agnès Varda in the land of cinema
It is obvious from the moment one steps on a Qatar Airways aircraft that cinema is important in Doha. I mean, just going through the entertainment system on my particular flight, I found ‘Rebecca’ by Hitchcock, Barry Jenkins’ hauntingly touching and all too true ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, Paul Dano’s intimate portrayal of a family struggling to remain a single nucleus ‘Wildlife’ and even the 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner ‘Green Book’.
Qatar knows good cinema and nowhere is that better understood than in the welcoming arms of the Doha Film Institute.
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The National Youth Film Academy roundtable luncheon at Brasserie Blanc, Southbank
The London Diaries: the National Youth Film Academy helps cinema professionals find their working community
When he founded the National Youth Film Academy back in 2011, Chief Executive Rob Earnshaw spotted a gap within the cinema industry in the UK. There were jobs being offered, and people craving to fill those positions both in front and behind the camera, yet absolutely no bridge between them. In fact, in his mission statement Earnshaw talks about building that bridge.
““The National Youth Film Academy is dedicated to building bridges between education and employment in film. Our team works tirelessly to locate, nurture and promote talented, aspirational actors and filmmakers. But most importantly we discover people with the right attitude to be employed in British film.””
— Rob Earnshaw, Chief Executive, National Youth Film Academy
In the last eight years, the National Youth Film Academy has become the most important community to which aspiring film professionals in the UK can belong. And beyond, because of course, the film community — once bridges are formed to connect the jobs with the job seekers — is the largest open circle of artists in the world.
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A still from 'Roma' the Venice Golden Lion winning film by Alfonso Cuarón which will be in theater and on Netflix in December 2018
The Venice Diaries: The mixtape of Venezia 75 is an homage to creativity's soundtrack
This year's Venice Film Festival seemed to carry a special soundtrack, like a mixtape of our collective thoughts and hopes and wishes. For a future where we are finally able to learn from our past and stop thinking that our opinions count individually. For a world where we will discover, finally, a middle ground in shades of grey, instead of living everything in either black or white.
Here is my Venezia 75 Mixtape.
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Sofia Coppola (left) and Kirsten Dunst on the set of 'Marie Antoinette', photographed by Brigitte Lacombe
The Qumra Diaries: Brigitte Lacombe and the power of a photograph
I know that a Diaries series is meant to go chronologically, yet there are moments when the rules need to be broken.
For me, hearing master photographer and longtime Doha Film Institute collaborator Brigitte Lacombe talk about cinema and fashion from a photographic point of view was one such moment. I could not wait to get home and write about the pleasant afternoon I spent in her company -- along with a theater-full of attendees of this Qumra talk -- and her sister's, video photographer Marian Lacombe.
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Elia Suleiman, photo courtesy of the Doha Film Institute
"If a director can come away from the event enchanted and inspired": Elia Suleiman and Hanaa Issa talk Qumra 2018
They say if you want to learn about something, go to the source.
For filmmakers in the Middle East, but also around the world, Elia Suleiman has long been the Oracle, the man with a knowledge to create momentous cinema, cinema that can change the world. Suleiman is the most brilliant source today of modern Arab cinema, the kind that breaks across borders and tears down the divide -- as his frequent trips to international film festivals and award ceremonies have proved.
So I thought, if it works for filmmakers, it could work for me. I shall ask Suleiman about Qumra myself, so I can unravel the mystery of this yearly event held in Qatar, under the auspices of the Doha Film Institute. I mean, the DFI has been very open and forthcoming about their week-long-mentorship-slash-industry-meet-and-greet-slash-film-connection event, but I still hadn't found a fascinating enough explanation of it in the media. One that would hold my attention and really explain the ins and out of Qumra.
Until I met Suleiman, DFI's Artistic Advisor and Hanaa Issa, Deputy Director of Qumra and Director of Strategy and Development at Doha Film Institute during Berlinale. One Sunday morning in Berlin, a leisurely breakfast talk later and now eagerly anticipating the start of Qumra in Doha, I finally understand.
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Courtesy of the Berlinale
The Berlinale Diaries: The #MeToo movement and should the carpet really have been black?
This year, at Berlinale, the annual film festival held in Berlin, there is media chatter of a red carpet that should have been black in honor of the #MeToo movement. In my country a black carpet means someone died so I wonder, do we want to open a film festival, a festive event by definition, with a gloom and doom parade of stars on a drab black piece of carpeting? Isn't it enough that we woke up on its inauguration day to the news of yet one more totally avoidable shooting in the US?
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Photo courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox
The Berlinale Diaries: I Love Dogs -- AKA Wes Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs' is finally here (and not a moment too soon!)
A movie festival is nothing without films and I kicked off my first full day at Berlinale by watching Wes Anderson's animated treasure 'Isle of Dogs' featuring puppets like you've never seen them before, beloved actors giving voices to fantastical dogs and a message of humanity hidden within a film that is so darn entertaining to watch, I may have to go back for seconds. Or thirds even. I know you've heard me talk like this before, but this time I mean it in a whole new and different way: If I went home today, I'd be happy, after watching 'Isle of Dogs'.
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COURTESY OF THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
A still from Rana Eid’s ‘Panoptic’
The Locarno Film Festival Diaries: ‘Panoptic’, Cinematic Heroes and Dinner with a Diplomatic Legend
It is not often that a film journalist like me gets to experience the stuff hard core news are made of in first person, up close. I mean, I’ve been privy to some great cinematic history in the making and yes, I lived in NYC at the time of the attacks of 9/11 so I watched unmentionable horror unfolding before my very eyes, but in Locarno I feel part of another narrative that will affect the world as we know it.
I’m talking about the sudden decision by UN war crimes Special Prosecutor Carla del Ponte to quit her post, because she feels that Syria is now “a land without future”. Appointed to a three-member panel set up in August 2011 by the Human Rights Council to monitor the al-Assad regime and the unfolding civil war in Syria remotely, del Ponte represented the one slight hope for justice and yet today, that hope seems gone. Having previously sat on tribunals that investigated atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, del Ponte is most famous for putting Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević on trial at The Hague. And for having stood up to Sicily’s La Cosa Nostra and won, by simply walking away with her life. Now that’s a hero of a woman right there!
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COURTESY OF THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
The Locarno Film Festival Diaries: ‘Gemini’, the Hotel Belvedere and a Movie That Shall Remain Nameless
My third day at the Locarno Film Festival started with the mind-blowing, wonderful directorial debut by actor John Carroll Lynch, which made me feel ‘Lucky’ all day long. It’s that good and if Harry Dean Stanton doesn’t get an Oscar nomination for playing the title character, I’ll go on a hunger strike — albeit one where I exclusively drink milk and diner coffee just like Lucky. If you haven’t kept up with the Diaries, you can read my thoughts on the film here.
The day went from great to better when I got to interview filmmaker Nadir Moknèche and his lead actor Tewfik Jallab about their film ‘Lola Pater’ on the patio of the Hotel Belvedere — a stylish place overlooking the Old Town that required a brisk walk up a steep hill in the midday heat and humidity to access. After the initial huffing and puffing, I realized that everything which goes up must come down, and the walk back into town after the inspiring conversations with two men who simply make the world better by being in it was soul soothing. I loved being an invisible witness to Locarno daily life, the man who watered his garden unaware of my presence to the left, the band rehearsing at a club a bit further down the hill on the right. There is a wonderful human aspect to the festival and that walk back into town made me reconcile with the world, for a few precious moments.
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COURTESY OF THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
David Lynch and Harry Dean Stanton in a still from ‘Lucky’
The Locarno Film Festival Diaries: Feeling ‘Lucky’, Dame Fanny Ardant and a Cool “Chap Flick”
Locarno is a really pleasant surprise. While Cannes may be the glitziest, Venice the oldest and Berlinale the most packed with titles, the Locarno Film Festival is a rockstar among film fests. Starting from its frontman, Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, to the stars attending and what they are wearing, from the films shown, to how those in the media can comfortably attend mostly everything on their wish lists, Locarno stands out as the hip, cool and happening event.
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COURTESY OF THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL
Noémi Lvovsky and Luce Rodriguez in a still from ‘Tomorrow and Thereafter’
The Locarno Film Festival Diaries: ‘Tomorrow and Thereafter’ and the Elusive Adult Fairy Tale
The city of Locarno, located on the Lago Maggiore, is reached by crossing a tunnel through a mountain that felt like it was a dozen kilometers long. It’s moments like those, in the darkness and echo of an eerie place deep into the core of a solid rock formation that I feel smallest on this earth. But also in awe of the grandness of my fellow humans, who could envision such a project before its inception and managed to dig a passageway where it must have seemed impossible. Perhaps the perfect example that even a journey of a thousand miles begins with one, single step.
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