Web Sites

French Launch Online Film Festival

by James McNally on January 14, 2011

in Film Festivals,Web Sites

MyFrenchFilmFestival.com 2011 (January 14-29, 2011)
UPDATE: I’m dis­ap­pointed to report that here in Canada, it appears that all of the fea­ture films are region-blocked. While I enjoy shorts, I was looking for­ward to checking out a few of the fea­tures. What really stinks about this is that I sus­pect the films have dis­trib­utors in Québec, but none of these films will be released out­side of Québec, and I expect that the site is region-blocking the entire country of Canada. Oh well, enjoy the films, rest of the world!

Leave it to the French. Not only do they have one of the most pro­lific and robust film indus­tries in the world out­side of Hollywood, but now they’re innov­ating again by cur­ating an online fest­ival of recent French films that can be viewed all over the world, sub­titled in ten lan­guages. MyFrenchFilmFestival.com is a col­lab­or­a­tion between Unifrance and Allocine with the sup­port of sev­eral other organ­iz­a­tions including Variety.

Between January 14 and 29, viewers will have access to ten fea­tures and ten shorts in the com­pet­i­tion as well as three out-of-competition fea­tures. They’ve assembled an impressive jury of press critics (including one of my favour­ites, Karina Longworth from LA Weekly) and another made up of inter­na­tional blog­gers. Alas, there is no Canadian rep­res­ent­a­tion this year, but I’m hoping that if the exper­i­ment is suc­cessful, they’ll repeat it next year and maybe Canadian critics and blog­gers might be considered.

They are char­ging to watch the films (2 Euros for a fea­ture and 1 Euro for a short), which may limit the festival’s appeal, but they do offer some reas­on­able package deals: 5 Euros for access to ten shorts 10 Euros for access to 11 fea­tures, or 14 Euros to access the entire fest­ival. Check out the fest­ival trailer below as well as the site and their Facebook page and see if any of the pro­gram­ming appeals to you. There are lots of trailers and inter­views on the site which can be viewed for free, and they’re even spon­soring a con­test for a trip to Paris.

I find it a bit odd that they’re only run­ning this for two weeks, but I sup­pose they’re trying to create a sense that this an online “event.” So even though this par­tic­ular French film fest­ival does not take place on the Riviera, you’d better check it out before the 29th or you’ll have to wait until next year.

Tagged as: france

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Requiem // 102 : Minute 13

by James McNally on November 18, 2010

in Snapshots,Special Events,Web Sites

Requiem // 102 : Minute 13
I wrote a bit about the Requiem // 102 pro­ject a few weeks back. Here’s my meagre contribution.

This moment, cap­tured in minute 13 of the film, is from the “Summer” sec­tion and fol­lows one of the few moments of bour­geois respect­ab­ility in this dark cork­screw of a story.

Harry and Marion have just spent a romantic inter­lude up on the roof of an office building where they are able to look out over the whole neigh­bour­hood of Coney Island and the beach. He encour­ages her to pursue her dream of designing clothes and becoming inde­pendent of her par­ents. He says he’ll help her.

Coming back in through the fire escape door, Marion reck­lessly sets off the alarm that Harry had dis­con­nected and with a mis­chievous grin pulls him toward the elev­ators. They hide as the security guards respond to the alarm, and on the trip down, they make out like horny teen­agers for the security camera. She is the aggressor.

The next time we see the couple, they’re locked in an embrace on the sofa, asleep, sweaty and almost cer­tainly high.

There is love here, cer­tainly. But there is also some­thing else, some­thing more sin­ister. Although Marion at first appears to be the more inno­cent of the two, some­thing about her reck­less­ness in this scene hints at the dark­ness to come.

The inno­cence and freedom of the rooftop, where the lovers fly paper air­planes and talk like shy school­chil­dren, where Harry puts his arm around Marion and kisses her on the cheek, gives way to the con­fined space of the elev­ator, where animal lust takes over and we spy on them through a security camera, a device intended to identify trans­gressors, tres­passers and lawbreakers.

There follow a few more scenes of inno­cence, of what might have looked like pure love between Harry and Marion if we hadn’t already seen a darker side, but the worm is already in the bud.

This essay is a con­tri­bu­tion to the Requiem // 102 pro­ject, con­ceived by Nick Rombes, Associate Professor of English at the University of Detroit, Mercy, as a form of “col­lective, dis­trib­uted film cri­ti­cism.” Requiem // 102 is modeled loosely on Rombes’ ongoing 10/40/70 pro­ject, in which he “reads” three screen cap­tures from a given film taken at the 10, 40, and 70 minute marks.

For this pro­ject, Nick has invited 102 con­trib­utors from across the film cri­ti­cism spec­trum to look at, or oth­er­wise be inspired by, one frame from each minute of Darren Aronofsky’s 102 minute-long film Requiem for a Dream (2000), a movie that unsettled many audi­ence mem­bers when it was first released in cinemas ten years ago.

To learn more about Requiem // 102, check out the project’s About page and/or follow it on Twitter.

Tagged as: requiem102

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The Requiem // 102 Project

by James McNally on November 2, 2010 · 2 comments

in Special Events,Web Sites

Requiem for a Dream

I’ve long been a fan of Nick Rombes’ work. By day, Nick is Chair of the English depart­ment at the University of Detroit Mercy, but that doesn’t begin to describe his wide range of interests or his vast tal­ents. Consider just two of sev­eral books he’s written, Cinema in the Digital Age and A Cultural Dictionary of Punk, and you’ll get a bit of an idea why I’m a fan.

One of his most innov­ative ideas is his ongoing 10/40/70 pro­ject, in which he ana­lyzes screen cap­tures from films taken at the 10, 40, and 70 minute marks. Based loosely on that idea, he’s come up with an inter­esting new pro­ject and invited me to take part.

Darren Aronofsky’s second film Requiem for a Dream was released ten years ago this month, and to mark the occa­sion, Rombes has cre­ated Requiem // 102, a pro­ject for which he has invited 102 con­trib­utors to write about a screen cap­ture from each of the film’s 102 minutes. There will be one new entry each weekday, which should take us into the new year. The pro­ject excited me for sev­eral reasons.

First, I’ve never seen the film. I’m aware of its repu­ta­tion and its sig­ni­fic­ance, and have owned the DVD for more than five years now, but until now, I’ve never had a com­pel­ling reason to watch it. That changes now. Second, I’m a huge fan of cre­ative work based on con­straints. In my brief time teaching lit­er­ature to 12-year-olds, I delighted in for­cing them to write poetry in eso­teric forms like the vil­lan­elle. Despite their ini­tial protests, they were often delighted to find that they’d written some­thing better than they ever could have ima­gined. And per­haps related to the idea of con­straints, I’ve never really written about film in this way before. I’ve been reading Rombes raven­ously because he writes about the more formal aspects of film that I’ve pre­vi­ously left unex­amined, and so I’m excited to be asked to rise to the chal­lenge of writing in an unfa­miliar way about an unfa­miliar film.

The first two entries in the pro­ject are already up, and Chuck Tryon and Catherine Grant have set the bar pretty high. It’s also a bit crazy to me that I’ve been somehow admitted to this group of film pro­fessors and aca­demics. I like that the expect­a­tions are so high, and I’m eager to chal­lenge myself to pro­duce some­thing on par with the other participants.

You can read more about Requiem // 102 on the site’s About page, and you can also follow the pro­ject on Twitter.

Tagged as: requiem102

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Excellent Value Polish DVDs

by James McNally on October 7, 2010 · 2 comments

in Documentaries,DVD,Web Sites

Polish DVDs [front]

Alerted by one of the many smart folks on the DVD Beaver email list, a few months back I checked out Merlin.pl, an online retailer loc­ated in Poland. I was espe­cially delighted to dis­cover a whole series of two-disc sets of the best of Polish anim­a­tion, as well as a col­lec­tion of the work of Polish doc­u­mentary film­makers. As a nation, Poland has always punched well above its weight when it comes to film­making of all kinds. Over the years, insti­tu­tions like the Lodz Film School have turned out very fine film­makers, many of whom have gone on to world­wide fame (Polanski, Kieślowski, Wajda, Zanussi, Skolimowski, to name just a few). While the work of most of these film­makers is readily avail­able in the English-speaking world, the achieve­ments of Poland’s anim­ators and doc­u­ment­arians has been harder to access. Not anymore.

Each of these col­lec­tions con­tain two discs, in the PAL format and coded for Region 2 (except the anim­a­tion col­lec­tion which is region-free), along with an extensive booklet in both Polish and English. All have English and French sub­titles, and most have Russian and German as well. Best of all, they retail for around 36 zlo­tych each, which as of this writing works out to around $13. Shipping is very reas­on­able, adding another 36 zlo­tych to ship four double-disc sets from Poland to Canada. The only draw­back was the gla­cial pace; the package took 7.5 weeks to arrive.

Merlin.pl even includes a helpful page advising English speakers how to pur­chase from their site. Combined with Google Translate, pur­chasing is fairly straight­for­ward. When I even­tu­ally work my way through all 8 discs and 17 hours of Polish film good­ness, I’m coming back for more.

I’m also going to search their site for a good book of classic Polish film posters.

  • Antologia pol­skiej anim­acji — one of sev­eral col­lec­tions of anim­a­tion, this one con­tains work from the 1950s right up to 2005.
  • Krzysztof Kieślowski — doc­u­mentary work from the well-known dir­ector of fea­ture films such as The Double Life of Veronique.
  • Marcel Łoziński — still working today, he is one of the most cel­eb­rated of Polish doc­u­mentary filmmakers.
  • Maciej Drygas — one of the younger gen­er­a­tion of doc­u­mentary film­makers in Poland. All of his work has been pro­duced since the col­lapse of Communism, but still deals with that period of Polish history.

Check out a few more photos of the snappy pack­aging.

Polish DVDs [spines]

Tagged as: animation, poland

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Help Kick Start Andrew James’ New Doc Street Fighting Man

by James McNally on August 5, 2010

in Directors,Documentaries,Web Sites

Andrew James is one of the co-directors of Cleanflix (review), an inter­esting explor­a­tion of copy­right issues in the con­text of Mormon cul­ture. I had the good for­tune of meeting Andrew and co-director Josh Ligairi at TIFF last year and con­ducted what I think was a pretty good inter­view.

Since then, I’ve kept track of their sep­arate pro­jects, and was excited to learn that not only was Andrew working on a new film, but that he was using Kickstarter to help fund it. The brainchild of internet brai­niac Andy Baio, Kickstarter is an amazing way for cre­ative pro­fes­sionals to raise funds for their pro­jects by reaching out to their audi­ences before or during the pro­duc­tion pro­cess, rather than fig­uring out a way to reach them after­ward. And you’re not donating; rather, you’re pre-buying some­thing, whether it’s just a thank-you note or a DVD of the fin­ished film. It’s beau­tiful in its sim­pli­city and it’s a joy for me to browse the site reg­u­larly, looking for inter­esting pro­jects to sup­port. Andrew’s is def­in­itely worthy.

Street Fighting Man is a doc­u­mentary premise that sounds like fic­tion. In the economically-ravaged land­scape of Detroit, a retired cop feels the need to take the law into his own hands after local police abandon his com­munity. Even in the research phase, I think you’ll agree that Andrew has cap­tured some great footage and found a really inter­esting sub­ject. Check out the teaser trailer and then click on the nifty widget to lend your support.

Tagged as: kickstarter

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