While browsing a downtown used book emporium this afternoon, I chanced upon and scooped up the first two issues of Faber & Faber’s film annual Projections. Founded by film director John Boorman and Faber Film editorial director Walter Donohue as a “forum for practitioners of the cinema to write about their work,” Projections began in 1992 and ran for 15 volumes. It now appears to have moved online in a truncated form, hosted by Focus Features.
I’m sure I’ll be boring you soon with some of my discoveries. Just check out the table of contents for Projections 1:
- Bright Dreams, Hard Knocks: A Journal, John Boorman on the year 1991
- Film Fiction: More Factual than Facts, Sam Fuller
- The Early Life of a Screenwriter, Emeric Pressburger
- Demme on Demme, Jonathan Demme
- Masters of Photogenics, Nestor Almendros
- My Director and I, River Phoenix and Gus Van Sant on My Own Private Idaho
- Surviving Desire, a script by Hal Hartley
- Losing Touch, a poem by Tony Harrison on George Cukor
- Making Some Light, Michael Mann on the making of Last of the Mohicans
Projections 2 might be even better:
- Shadow and Substance, George Miller
- Movie Lessons, Jaco van Dormael
- Searching for the Serpent, Alison Maclean
- Freewheelin’, Gus Van Sant and Derek Jarman
- Acting on Impulse, Willem Dafoe on his craft
- The Early Life of a Screenwriter II, Sydney Gilliat
- Altman on Altman, Robert Altman
- Bob Roberts, a script by Tim Robbins
- I Wake Up, Dreaming, a journal by Bertrand Tavernier on the making of L.627
It seems like I’m posting nothing but film festival announcements these days. Fantasia, Shinsedai, and now the big little genre festival that is Toronto After Dark. Now in its fifth year, this intimate 8-day festival (August 13–20), held entirely at the Bloor Cinema, is really hitting its stride. The just-announced lineup is guaranteed to have folks lining up around the block, especially with these in the mix:
- Saturday August 14, 6:00pm: Doghouse — another politically incorrect entry in the burgeoning British horror-comedy canon (Shaun of the Dead, Lesbian Vampire Killers).
- Sunday August 15, 8:45pm: HIGH School — For the horror fraidy-cats (like me!), a stoner comedy featuring Adrien Brody as a pot dealer. Well, that actually sounds pretty scary.
- Monday August 16, 6:00pm: The Last Exorcism — I’ve been curious about this Eli-Roth produced film since it was still being called Cotton. Director Daniel Stamm directed the excellent but little-seen A Necessary Death.
- Wednesday August 18, 6:00pm: Centurion — I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about this violent sword-and-sandals tale, directed by Neil Marshall (The Descent).
- Friday August 20, 6:00pm: Rubber — a philosophical take on a murderous tire? Yes, it’s French.
- Friday August 20, 8:45pm: The Human Centipede: First Sequence (Closing Gala) — this notorious film will almost certainly sell out first.
And this isn’t even half of the lineup. Films screen just once, so you’ll need to buy your tickets as soon as possible. I suggest NOW. And I’ll see you After Dark.
Tagged as:
#afterdark10,
genre,
horror,
scifi
Shinsedai is back for a second year. After a successful inaugural edition last August, co-programmers Chris Magee (J-Film Powwow) and Jasper Sharp (Midnight Eye) have curated an even stronger lineup of new independent Japanese cinema. This year’s festival runs from July 22–25 at the gorgeous Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. For such a young festival, Shinsedai has been able to attract not only a strong lineup, but a significant number of directors and actors will actually be making the trip to introduce their films and conduct Q&A sessions with the audience.
If you’re interested in where Japanese cinema is heading, you need to check out the Shinsedai Cinema Festival. Check the site for film listings, schedule, ticket prices and directions.
Tagged as:
#shinsedai10,
japan,
shinsedaifestival
Running from July 8–28, Montréal’s Fantasia International Film Festival is arguably North America’s biggest and best genre film festival. Stretching over nearly three weeks, it’s an extremely tantalizing proposition for this film lover to embark on a weekend road trip, but unfortunately, it’s rather unlikely this year. It’s become even more tempting after I received the hefty catalogue in the mail yesterday. As always, the festival has included a DVD packed with more than three hours (!!) of trailers for films screening at the festival. And yes, I’ve watched the whole thing already.
The good news is that friends from some Toronto festivals like Reel Asian and After Dark are attending, and will be scouting for gems to bring to Toronto in the next few weeks and months. If they’re reading, here are some for the wish list:
- 1 (Hungary, Director: Pater Sparrow): A sci-fi film reminiscent of the work of Jose Saramago (Blindness). A bookstore’s books suddenly all transform into a book called 1, filled with random-seeming statistics. As scientists race to decrypt the book’s meaning, the store’s employees are confined to a mental hospital. Sounds completely unique.
- Chernaya Molniya (Black Lightning) (Russia, Directors: Alexandr Voytinskiy and Dmitriy Kiselev): A superhero film about a young man with a flying car. This looks better than something like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice though I expect it will have a pretty similar plot and character arc. And the car’s a Soviet-era Volga, so that’s awesome, right?
- First Squad: The Moment of Truth (Russia/Japan, Director: Yoshiharu Ashino): Anime based on a World War II battle between the Soviet 6th Army and the German Ahnenerbe, a secret occult division of the SS. Undead soldiers on both sides fight each other to the, er, well? Some alternate history elements make this interesting, and apparently the Ahnenerbe really existed.
- Golden Slumber (Japan, Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura): From the director who brought us Fish Story (a hit at last year’s Reel Asian festival, another story of intersecting lives and actions. This time, a “chance” meeting with an old college friend leads to a man’s unwitting involvement in an act of political terrorism.
- Rubber (France, Director: Quentin Dupieux): A satirical horror film about a murderous tire. Enough said.
- Sawako Decides (Japan, Director: Yuya Ishii): A coming-of-age-in-the-countryside film that the Fantasia catalogue also describes as “a grim feelgood movie.”
- Secret Reunion (South Korea, Director: Jang Hun): A sort of espionage buddy-cop movie with Song Kang-ho (The Host, Secret Sunshine, Thirst) as an older agent trying to catch a North Korean spy. From the director of last year’s excellent Rough Cut.
- Tears for Sale (Director’s Cut) (Serbia, Director: Uroš Stojanovic): I reviewed this when it played at TIFF in 2008, but it’s never appeared on DVD, and now Fantasia is showing an extended director’s cut with 14 additional minutes of eye-popping visuals. I’d love to introduce more people to this one-of-a-kind film.
- Technotise: Edit & I (Serbia, Director: Aleksa Gajic): Cyberpunk anime from Serbia, about an indestructible young woman. Yes please!
If you do have the opportunity to be in Montréal this month, don’t miss Fantasia. Though the city is welcoming and beautiful, treasures await you in its darkened cinemas.
Tagged as:
#fantasia2010,
fantasia,
genre,
horror,
Montréal,
scifi
Toronto is blessed to host perhaps the largest number of film festivals in the world, and now finally there is a site that can help make sense of them all. Toronto Film Festivals is an initiative supported by George Brown College and the City of Toronto. It appears to have been around since May but I only discovered it this morning through a random tweet.
It gathers more than 75 festivals together and puts them all on one calendar, and a handy submission form means that any new festival can submit its information instantly. I’m still checking it out, but it appears to be much more useful than my pathetic little sidebar listings. One thing that would be nice would be a list on one page of all the festivals in chronological order and with links to their sites, but it appears that the site is designed for a very small screen and so that might not quite fit.
