"To anyone who was immersed in the fervent cinématheque culture of the immediate post-Salazar era in Portugal, the four films that António Reis, a poet, painter, sculptor, and filmmaker, made with his wife, Margarida Cordeiro, are the stuff of legend," writes Gabe Klinger for Moving Image Source. "Just ask Manoel de Oliveira, Pedro Costa, or Jean-Marie Straub. For those lucky enough to be in attendance, this year's Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea has imported three of the films in gorgeous 35mm from the Cinemateca Portuguesa: Jaime, Trás-os-Montes, and Ana. Born to peasants in rural Portugal and growing up in humble, near-destitute surroundings before migrating to cities (Porto in Reis's scase, Lisbon in Cordeiro's), both adopted a profoundly moral position in their work that the critic Luis Miguel Oliveira sums up with the following equation: film that space, understand those people."
Ken Jacobs and his wife, Flo, will present one of his Nervous Magic Lantern works, Time Squared, along with two digital videos, at the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago tonight at 7 pm. For Time Out Chicago, Patrick Friel emails him to ask about this "amazing device that hearkens back to 19th-century technology."
Also in Chicago: "Fourteen programs of features and shorts about design around the world comprise the Architecture & Design Film Festival, which looks to be a solid, diverse bunch." A quick overview on the fest running from tomorrow through Monday from Ray Pride for Newcity Film.
Taiwan Stories: Classic and Contemporary Film from Taiwan opens tomorrow at the Walter Reade Theater and the New Yorker's Richard Brody has decided to single out A Time to Live and a Time to Die to highlight: "The strands of intimate and historical memory twist together in this delicate, haunted drama, from 1986, in which the director Hou Hsiao-hsien conjures his reminiscences of childhood and adolescence in a remote Taiwan village in the 1940s and 50s." At the Film Society of Lincoln Center's blog, Reid Rosefelt advises, "Anybody who sees A Touch of Zen on the big screen is guaranteed to have one of the greatest experiences of their movie-going lives." King Hu's 1969 film screens next Friday, Sunday and Thursday. The series itself runs through May 19. Update, 5/6: More on A Time to Live from Michael Atkinson in the L.
Having just tied up the Phoenix's package on the Independent Film Festival Boston, which wrapped yesterday, Peter Keough turns to the Boston LGBT Film Festival, opening today and running through May 15: "Now in its 27th year, the festival boasts a program of more than three dozen features and documentaries and numerous shorts from all over the world. It has returned to form as a cinema event that makes a difference."
"[W]hite Brooklynites aside," writes Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail, Sophia Takal's Green, featuring her finacé Lawrence Levine and Kate Lyn Shiel and screening today through Sunday at the Maryland Film Festival, "is a sharp and deliberate departure from the mumblecore genre. DP Nandan Rao does much to illuminate the emotion and eros in Takal's swift script, and overall it is an auspicious and elegant debut from the first-time writer/director…. I met up with Sophia, Lawrence, and Kate in Austin to talk about improvising, the 'm' word, and using creativity to combat jealousy."
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