The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival opens today in Durham and runs through Sunday. David Fellerath opens the Independent Weekly's cover package, noting, too, that Indy's arts writers will be blogging at Artery from the fest all weekend. Keep an eye on the cinetrix's place as well.
Inside the Weekly: Dozens of capsule reviews; Lisa Sorg on global soccer doc Pelada, pictured above; David Klein talks with Geoff Edgers about his Kinks doc, Do It Again; Bronwen Dickey on Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's How to Fold a Flag; olufunke moses asks Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert about their curated program of 18 films about work; Grayson Currin on the Jazz Loft Project's Thelonious Monk piece, In My Mind; Fellerath, briefly, on Rodrigo Dorfman's Generation Exile; and Neil Morris talks with Full Frame's brand new executive director, Deirdre Haj.
OTHER FESTS AND EVENTS
"Stephanie Rothman directed a spate of exploitation films between 1967 and 1974 and then disappeared from the industry," writes Marjorie Baumgarten, introducing her interview. "Unlike other young directors such as Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Kaplan, Francis Ford Coppola, and scores more who got their starts in producer Roger Corman's low-budget academy of down-and-dirty filmmaking, Rothman never graduated into the big time." And yet "a case could be made for Rothman being the most productive and consistently auteurist filmmaker in the exploitation stable." On Wednesday, Rothman will be in Austin to present The Student Nurses and Group Marriage at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz.
And there are a couple more interviews in the Chronicle. Nora Ankrum: "Since Geralyn Pezanoski's documentary Mine won the Documentary Feature Audience Award at the 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival, the film has won Best Feature at the San Francisco DocFest and has been picked up by the PBS Independent Lens series. It's doing pretty well for a tear-jerker about pets left behind during Hurricane Katrina." Also screens Wednesday at the Drafthouse. Marc Savlov talks with Steve Mims about Honorarium, screening at the Austin Jewish Film Festival, running Saturday through April 16; and here are the Chronicle's other picks. And briefly, Kimberley Jones on Viagem a Portugal: Contemporary Portuguese Cinema, running Tuesdays at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar.
As noted yesterday, the Philadelphia Film Society is presenting a Spring Preview, "three days of never-seen-in-Philly films all for the low, low price of absolutely nothing," notes the Philadelphia City Paper, introducing its capsule reviews of eight highlights. "The 11-film mini-fest is a precursor to the full-length version planned for the fall (Oct 14 - 24), which PFS says will consist of more movies than last year's 18½ Philadelphia Film Fest."
"Robert Altman's beloved film M*A*S*H celebrates its 40th anniversary Saturday as part of the American Cinematheque's retrospective Maverick of the Mashup: The Genre Blending Comedies of Robert Altman at the Aero Theatre," and Susan King has more on local goings on in the Los Angeles Times.
"This coming week, Pittsburgh filmgoers will have several chances to see St Nick on the big screen, via Lucas McNelly's weekly Indies For Indies screening series," notes director David Lowery.
IN OTHER NEWS
Glenn Kenny on World on a Wire: "Director/co-writer Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic two-part 1973 film, made for German television, is about as mind-bending as moviemaking gets, and not just because of the sci-fi premise. The film is simultaneously constantly piss-taking and deadly earnest, a labyrinthian riot of scenes seen solely via reflective surfaces, set in an only vaguely futuristic world where characters do their expository walk-and-talks around a small indoor swimming pool whilst a male Marlene Dietrich impersonator swoons about."
Update, 4/11: Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath's Enemies of the People is "the big winner" at Full Frame this year, reports AJ Schnack, who's got the full list of awards.
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