News

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Anthology Film Archives

A series on sex workers includes Spike Lee’s Girl 6, Working Girls, and House of Tolerance.

Bam

Queering the Canon runs between in-theater showings and virtual screenings, including Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour.

Spectacle

Tomu Uchida’s A Fugitive from the Past screens on Saturday.

Roxy Cinema

The French Connection plays on 35mm, as curated by Martin Scorsese; Beethoven screens for free on Sunday.

Film Forum

Mort Rifkin favorite A Man and a Woman begins playing in a new restoration; Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman plays on 35mm this Sunday.

IFC Center

Salò, The Holy Mountain, Stop Making Sense, The Elephant Man, Sorcerer, and Funny Games (the good one) show late.

Nitehawk Cinema

Twelve Monkeys screens early on Saturday and Sunday.

Metrograph

Donnie Darko and Diabolique play on 35mm; In Good Faith and In the Pinku start while Tonino Guerra,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

My ten-film Manoel de Oliveira retrospective Mirror of Life begins, with numerous restorations making their North American premiere.

Japan Society

One of Ozu’s greatest films, Early Spring, plays on 35mm this Friday.

Roxy Cinema

Eraserhead and An American Tail screen, the latter for free.

Anthology Film Archives

The Rules of the Game and The Flowers of St. Francis play on 35mm in Essential Cinema.

Film Forum

A René Clair retrospective continues, as does Luis Buñuel’s Él and Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman; Betty Boop and Friends screens on Sunday.

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; Stop Making Sense, Mulholland Dr., Lost Highway, Sorcerer, and Funny Games (the good one) show late.

Nitehawk Cinema

Hanna and a print of Westward the Women screen early on Saturday and Sunday.

Metrograph

Donnie...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

Martin Scorsese has programmed Living, Breathing New York, which continues with a 35mm print of Bringing Out the Dead on Friday and Saturday; The Quiet Man plays on 35mm Saturday and Sunday; David Lynch shorts and Lost Highway screen.

Anthology Film Archives

A new restoration of João César Monteiro’s Snow White plays on Saturday; a Rosemary Hochschild retrospective screens.

Film Forum

A René Clair retrospective has begun; Luis Buñuel’s Él continues screening in a 4K restoration alongside Play It As It Lays and Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman; Modern Times screens on Sunday.

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; Stop Making Sense, Mulholland Dr., Lost Highway, Best in Show, Palindromes, and Pink Flamingos show late.

Bam

Heiny Srour’s Leila and the Wolves continues.

Nitehawk Cinema

Paper Moon...

Genre-hopping maverick Elio Petri’s half-mod, half-madcap ’60s mindbender is set in a dystopian society obsessed with a government-sponsored game known as “The Big Hunt” that pits volunteer hunters against victims in mortal combat. Based on a Robert Sheckley sci-fi short story, Elio Petri’s social satire, co-written by the director and frequent Michelangelo Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra, takes aim at consumer capitalism and the “society of the spectacle,” five years before Guy Debord popularized the term in his Situationist manifesto.

Among its targets, the film draws a bead on ageism, with Marcello Poletti (Marcello Mastroianni) having to hide his elderly parents from government search and seizure. It spoofs corporate-media domination through the machinations of Marcello and Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress), the wily American trying to track him down, arranging to have their kills broadcast on live TV. And The 10th Victim takes on New Age cultism, with Marcello serving...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

Martin Scorsese has programmed Living, Breathing New York, which starts with Shadows and a 35mm print of Heaven Knows What on Sunday; The Rubber Gun (watch our exclusive trailer debut) plays Saturday with a Stephen Lack Q&a; Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Wild at Heart screen.

Anthology Film Archives

Robina Rose’s Nightshift (watch our exclusive trailer debut) begins playing in a new restoration; Matías Piñeiro-curated series offers Antonioni, Hollis Frampton, and Straub-Huillet.

Film Forum

Luis Buñuel’s Él begins screening in a 4K restoration; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Spring Fever screen; Play It As It Lays and Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman continue; Space Jam screens on Sunday.

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; eXistenZ, Mulholland Dr., Paprika, Best in Show, Palindromes, and Pink Flamingos show late.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research

My screening series Amnesiascope hosts the La Clef Revival Collective for a screening of Bye Bye Tiberias this Sunday.

Spectacle

Meanwhile, La Clef presents Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Dernier Maquis on Saturday.

Anthology Film Archives

A Volker Spengler retrospective brings three films by Fassbinder while a Matías Piñeiro-curated series offers Antonioni and Straub-Huillet.

Nitehawk Cinema

A secret Hong Kong film plays on 35mm Sunday afternoon.

Museum of the Moving Image

Snubbed Forever concludes with The Lady from Shanghai and Vertigo.

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; eXistenZ, Mulholland Dr., Paprika, Dogra Magra, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas show late.

Roxy Cinema

Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart screen.

Film Forum

Play It As It Lays begins a week-long run; Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman continues...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)

One of the 2022’s most resonant films, Aftersun looks at the scratchy dynamics between a father and daughter while on vacation. It’s about memory, the finite nature of the relationships in our lives, and the difficulties of a parent’s diminishing mental health. Charlotte Wells knows where to put the camera in her debut—undeterred from taking risks, from placing her characters outside of the frame, from looking at shadows instead of the people themselves. Aftersun is a rare, tremendous first film, full of heart and focused melancholy; it breaks you down and fills you up simultaneously. The consistent inclusion of camcorder footage, and the fact that it enhances the story rather than becoming a distraction, further proclaims...

Unlike Abbas Kiarostami, a poet of contemporary cinema whose films stopped being about Iran when he stopped making films there, Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia’s preeminent poet of the spirit, proved that while a Russian director could leave his homeland in the name of artistic freedom, he could still be imprisoned by the memories he took with him.

In his book Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky wrote that he wanted Nostalghia, his first film after leaving Russia to escape censorship, to be “about the particular state of mind which assails Russians who are far from their native land.” Shot in Italy and written by Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra, the film explores this acute form of nostalgia through a spiritually wearied poet, Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovskiy), who’s traveled to Italy to research the life of a composer who studied in Bologna during the late 1700s before returning to Russia to hang himself.

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s penultimate film Nostalghia (1983), which he co-wrote with Michelangelo Antonioni’s longtime collaborator Tonino Guerra, Russian writer Andrei (Oleg Ivanovič Jankovskij) travels to Italy in order to research the life of composer Pavel Sosnovsky, along with his interpreter Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano), a young woman who resembles the Madonna del Parto in the famous fresco by Piero della Francesca.

Ahead of the theatrical release of the new 4K restoration, now playing at NYC’s Film Forum, we had the opportunity to speak with Giuseppe Lanci, the Italian cinematographer who shot the film and oversaw this new restoration. The 81-year-old Lanci still teaches at the Csc (National School of Cinema of Rome). In his diaries, Tarkovsky mentioned watching Nostalghia with cinematographer Sven Nykvist: “The photography made a strong impression on Nykvist. Indeed, Peppe Lanci shot the film in an extraordinary manner. This Swedish copy is much better than the one shown at Cannes,...

Andrei Tarkovsky’s penultimate film, 1983’s gorgeously haunting Nostalghia, also marked new territory for the director. His first film made outside the Ussr, the Cannes Best Director winner (a prize he shared with Robert Bresson for L’Argent), was also a unique collaboration with writer Tonino Guerra, frequent collaborator of Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Francesco Rosi. Now restored in 4K in 2022 by Csc – Cinetecanazionale in collaboration with Rai Cinema at Augustus Color laboratory, from the original negatives and the original soundtrack preserved at Rai Cinema, the restoration will begin rolling out on February 21 at NYC’s Film Forum via Kino Lorber and we’re pleased to exclusively unveil the trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “Andrei Tarkovsky explained that in Russian the word ‘nostalghia’ conveys ‘the love for your homeland and the melancholy that arises from being far away.’ This debilitating form of homesickness is embodied in the film by Andrei,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSKristen Stewart in Olivier Assayas's Personal Shopper (2016).The next film directed by Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson and Dick Johnson is Dead) will star Kristen Stewart as…Susan Sontag. Based on Ben Moser’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life, the project will have some hybrid-doc elements, as we might expect from Johnson: according to Screen Daily, Johnson will film an interview with the actress about her preparation for the role at the Berlinale, where Stewart is jury president.Richard Ayoade will direct and star in an adaptation of George Saunders’s The Semplica Girl Diaries, with casting currently underway.New Spanish Cinema luminary Carlos Saura died last week aged 91. His best-known films depicted and critiqued life under the Franco dictatorship, like La Caza...

Star of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films in the 1960s who later turned to light comedies

Although she was often described, perhaps with a touch of irony, as the “muse of incommunicability” for her dramatic roles in several of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, Monica Vitti, who has died aged 90, always aspired to be a comic actor. In 1962, she had an offer to do a film for Agnès Varda, but turned it down; as she explained in an interview, “I want to remain loyal to Michelangelo, who has promised to make me the Carole Lombard of the second half of the century.” Though Vitti certainly had comparable looks and verve, and did eventually succeed in becoming a popular comedic star, she will probably remain in most film buffs’ minds as Giuliana, the complicated young blond woman in Antonioni’s Il Deserto Rosso, his first colour feature.

Giuliana was perhaps Vitti’s most credible and identifiable characterisation.

It’s yet another masterpiece from the Italian director Francesco Rosi, adapting a fiction novel about a political murder conspiracy that is altogether too much of a good fit for the troubled Italy of 1975. Crime star Lino Ventura is the incorruptible detective investigating a series of killings of high-level judges, who begins to intuit that his superiors want the murders to continue. Dark and moody, Rosi’s picture is impeccably directed for a kind of nagging, uneasy suspense, with frightening hints that Ventura is being drawn into a bigger, more sinister frame. With Charles Vanel, Max von Sydow and Fernando Rey, and music by Piero Piccioni. The insightful audio commentary is by Alex Cox. The original Italian title is even more blood-curdling: Cadaveri eccelenti.

Illustrious Corpses

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1976 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 121 min. / Cadaveri eccellenti; The Context / Street Date September 28, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Lino Ventura, Tino Carraro, Marcel Bozzuffi,...

The festival dedicated to films which place an emphasis on nature and the land, created in memory of the poet and screenwriter Tonino Guerra, is unspooling online from 18 to 21 March. Memory, traditions, and respect for nature, beauty and finite resources are the guiding principles behind the I Luoghi dell'Anima - Italian Film Festival, an event dedicated to the memory of the poet and screenwriter Tonino Guerra which aims to shine a light on and reward audiovisual works, both fiction films and documentaries, which are specifically inspired by the spirit of a particular landscape. Devised by Guerra’s son Andrea and directed by Steve Della Casa and Paola Poli, the festival is named after the homonymous “extended museum” which Guerra created in his native town Pennabilli, and...

Chances are, if you’ve seen many of the late films of Theodoros Angelopoulos, Michelangelo Antonioni (everything since L’avventura), Marco Bellocchio, Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini (almost everything since Amarcord), Mario Monicelli, Elio Petri, Francesco Rosi, Andrei Tarkovsky (Nostalghia), the Taviani brothers, and/or Luchino Visconti, and paid much attention to their script credits, you know who Tonino Guerra (1920–2012) was and is—a ubiquitous presence in modernist European cinema, especially its Italian branches. Petri was his first cinematic employer, after Guerra started out as a schoolteacher and poet whose parents were illiterate; later on, he became a visual artist as well as a screenwriter with over a hundred credits.Even after one acknowledges the exceptionally collaborative role played by multiple writers on Italian films, it seems that no one else was considered quite as essential by so many important directors. In Nicola Tranquillino’s documentary about Tonino (visible on YouTube...

It’s a perfect movie for a dark time: Carlo Levi’s famed novel about a political undesirable became a major Italian miniseries by the great Francesco Rosi, starring the now-legendary Gian Maria Volontè. In Mussolini’s most popular years of make-Italy-great-again Fascism, a dissident is given an indefinite ‘time out,’ an exile to a small town in a corner of the country so remote and primitive that not even Christianity could fully change it. He expects nothing but receives revelations about his country, his life and one’s place in society. It’s meditative, it’s illuminating, it’s like a book one can’t put down. It’s also uncut, as opposed to the theatrical version that made a splash here in 1980, as simply Eboli.

Christ Stopped at Eboli

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1043

1979 / Color / 1:33 flat / 220 150, 120 min. / Cristo si è fermato a Eboli / available through The Criterion Collection...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse (1962) is now showing April 18 - May 17, 2020 in the United Kingdom.It starts with a breakup, the dissolution of a relationship between two bourgeois Italians taking place in a stifling atmosphere of all-night contention. But by the end of Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse, the ultimate breakdown, which likewise encompasses the cessation of yet another engagement, also strikes a more spacious, reverberating chord, portending the suspension of a fractured society and perhaps the world at large. Released in 1962, following L’avventura (1960) and La note (1961), the kindred features of what has been dubbed Antonioni’s “Trilogy of Alienation,” L’eclisse similarly hosts a congregation of emblematic individuals standing in for their class and culture, as well as embodying an entirely revelatory mode of philosophical and psychological bearing. Though seldom voiced in any explicit fashion—these are films defined by a...

Writer-director Elio Petri scores big in his first feature, the story of a heel suspected of murder. Is he a killer, or just an average guy trying to get ahead, who uses women to his advantage? Marcello Mastroianni impresses as well in a serious role, with Salvo Randone shining as the police inspector trying to pry a confession from him. Beautifully restored in HD; the show is from a time when Italian film was at its zenith.

The Assassin

Blu-ray + DVD

Arrow Video USA

1961 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date April 18, 2017 / L’Assassino / Available from Arrow Video

Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Micheline Presle, Cristina Gaioni, Salvo Randone, Andrea Checchi, Francesco Grandjacquet, Marco Mariani, Franco Ressel.

Cinematography: Carlo Di Palma

Film Editor: Ruggero Mastroianni

Original Music: Piero Piccione

Written by Tonino (Antonio) Guerra, Elio Petri, Pasquale Fest Campanile, Massimo Franciosa

Produced by Franco Cristaldi

Directed by Elio Petri

Fans of Elio Petri...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze (1995) is showing April 27 - May 27 and Landscape in the Mist (1988) is showing April 28 - May 28, 2017 in the United States.Landscape in the Mist“We Greeks are dying people. We've completed our appointed cycle. Three thousand years among broken stones and statues, and now we are dying.”—Taxi driver, Ulysses’ GazeIt seems that no essay on the films of Theodoros Angelopoulos can neglect to mention that, despite being recognized as one of cinema’s masters in Europe, he has repeatedly failed to cross over to the United States. A retrospective at the Museum of the Modern Art in 1990, a Grand Prix at Cannes Ulysses’ Gaze in 1995, a Palme d’Or for Eternity and a Day in 1998, and, most recently, a complete 35mm retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image and Harvard Film Archive...

Elle

Blu-ray

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

2017 / Color / 2.40:1 widescreen / Street Date March 14, 2017

Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny, Charles Berling.

Cinematography: Stéphane Fontaine

Film Editor: Job Ter Burg

Written by David Birke

Produced by Saïd Ben Saïd and Michel Merkt

Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Michèle Leblanc, glamorous entrepreneur of a successful video game company, is the calm at the center of many storms. Her son’s girlfriend has given birth to another man’s child, an employee is stalking her with anime porn and her botox-ridden mother is betrothed to a male prostitute.

In the face of all this outrageous fortune, Michèle remains cool, calm and collected, even in the aftermath of her own harrowing sexual assault.

Elle, the new film from the Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven, begins with that already infamous assault, our heroine struggling under the weight of her attacker while an unblinking cat perches nearby, watching.

“A Mod Murder Mystery”

By Raymond Benson

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (it’s spelled this way in the film credits, but on theatrical posters and advertising it was called Blow-Up) was a landmark, envelope-pushing film that caused quite a stir. For one thing, it was one of the nails in the coffin of the U.S. Production Code, paving the way for the elimination of cinematic censorship and the eventual creation of the movie ratings. Its depiction of nudity, sexual attitudes, and recreational drugs crossed the line for late 1966. Nevertheless, newspaper ads got away with simply proclaiming that the picture was “Recommended for Mature Audiences,” since this was prior to the ratings themselves.

Blowup also stands as a cultural landmark in that it captures that moment of time called “Swinging London.” Everything was “mod”—music, fashion, art... even groups of youths were called “mods.” Antonioni’s film could serve as...

Franceso Rosi's warm, thoughtful tale sees a family gathering observe grievous modern problems -- after so much violence in Italian politics people are still looking for humanistic solutions. Philippe Noiret heads a great cast (with Charles Vanel) in this mellow reflection on 'the things of life.' Three Brothers Region B Blu-ray + Pal DVD Arrow Academy (UK) 1981 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 111 min. / Street Date April 4, 2016 / Tre fratelli / Available from Amazon UK  Starring Philippe Noiret, Michele Placido, Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Charles Vanel, Andréa Ferréol, Maddalena Crippa, Rosaria Tafuri, Marta Zoffoli, Simonetta Stefanelli. Cinematography Pasqualino De Santis Editor Ruggero Mastroianni Original Music Piero Piccioni Written by Tonino Guerra, Francesco Rosi from the book by A. Platonov Produced by Antonio Macri, Giorgio Nocella Directed by Francesco Rosi

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

So few of Francesco Rosi's films were released in the United States that until Criterion's disc of Salvatore Giuliano my only image of...

Federico Fellini's fourth film to win the foreign Oscar, 1973's "Amarcord" will receive a special tribute at the 2015 Venice Film Festival, which runs September 2-12. A new restoration from eminent preservation entity Cineteca di Bologna will world-premiere — in collaboration with Warner Bros. and Italy's Cristaldi Film — at the festival this Fall. Cowritten by poet Tonino Guerra and shot at Rome's famed Cinecitta Studios, Fellini's semi-autobiographical ode to 1930s fascist Italy boasts a menagerie of eccentric, colorful characters played by the likes of Bruno Zanin, Magali Noël, Pupella Maggio and Armando Brancia. Nina Rota, of course, delivers yet another magical score. "Amarcord" will mark the second Fellini reprint of the year, as the British Film Institute unveiled a new transfer of the director's 1963 meta-classic "8 1/2" in May. Meanwhile, Cineteca di Bologna is also at work on a multiyear project to resurrect and restore the oeuvre of...

L’Avventura

Written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, and Tonino Guerra

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Italy, 1960

Michelangelo Antonioni’s enigmatic and brilliant L’Avventura is one of the benchmarks for international art cinema, a somewhat disputable designation that was, nevertheless, very much in vogue at the time of its release. Take the 1960 Cannes Film Festival for example, where L’Avventura debuted to one of the event’s most divisive responses, with initially more boos than cheers greeting this affront to conventional film narrative and form. Yet, this was also the year of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (the Palme d’Or winner), Chukhray’s Ballad of a Soldier, Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent, and Buñuel’s The Young One, to name just a few of the other titles at the festival, where, ultimately, L’Avventura came away with the Jury Prize (shared with Ichikawa’s...

Zvyagintsev, Hazanov and Harö projects set for 2nd Northern Seas Film Forum.

Projects by Andrey Zvyagintsev, Elena Hazanov and Klaus Harö are among 24 projects being presented at the 2nd Northern Seas Film Forum (Oct 6-8) co-production market during the inaugural St Petersburg International Media Forum (Oct 1-11).

Zvyagintsev, who won best screenplay at this year’s Cannes with Leviathan, is in talks with Russian producer Vasily Korvyakov and Fyodor Druzin of the UK-Russian production outfit Curb Denizen to direct the $5m drama No Tolstoy about the legendary writer’s wife and family fighting over his inheritance after his death.

Russia’s Oscar selection committee yesterday submitted Leviathan to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the Academy Awards.

Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky told journalists that he would support the film’s Russian theatrical release so that it can be released on more than 1,000 prints by A Company in cooperation with 20th Century Fox Russia on Nov...

Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Michelle Presle, Salvo Randone, Cristina Gaioni, Andrea Checchi, Francesco Grandjacquet, Marco Mariani, Franco Ressel | Written by Elio Petri, Tonino Guerra | Directed by Elio Petri

When I think of the Italian film industry I often think of horror and the so-called Spaghetti Westerns but in fact the industry is bigger and far more impressive than that. In the sixties there was a golden era of film making, true to form Arrow Films under its Arrow Academy banner have released one of the most noteworthy movies of that time withL’Assassino.

L’Assassino is the tale of Alfredo Martelli (Mastroianni) a playboy antiques dealer arrested under suspicion of murder of his older lover Adalgisa (Presle). Protesting his innocence to the police his please fall on deaf ears as they increase the pressure on him to confess, convinced without a shadow of a doubt that he is the killer.

Even...

L’eclisse

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Written by Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra

Italy, 1962

L’eclisse is the third film in Michelangelo Antonioni’s so-called “Trilogy of Alienation,” the preceding works having been L’avventura and La notte. (With justification, some would argue that Red Desert, his next film, truly rounds out what would then be considered a tetralogy). While the three films taken together do explore many of the same themes relating to spiritual emptiness, the disbanding of relationships, and a struggle to communicate in an increasingly modern and alienating world, L’eclisse differs from the two earlier works most notably in its increasingly experimental style and its blatant departures from conventional storytelling and formal design.

A tumultuous relationship begins L’eclisse, as we arrive in medias res, near the end of the rather unpleasantly crumbling relationship between Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) and Vittoria (Monica Vitti). Inside Riccardo’s claustrophobic home,...

Nostalghia (1983)

Written by Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

Italy, 1983

Nostalghia was Andrei Tarkovsky’s penultimate film, and the 1983 movie, made for Italian television, has the tone and scope of a work of contemplation and austere topicality, not at all uncommon for an artist in his or her later portions of life. The notion of this frequent tendency, to broach issues of dire seriousness in concluding creations, doesn’t work seamlessly with Tarkovsky, though. To begin with, while Nostalghia may have been his second-to-last feature, he was only 51 at the time (he tragically passed away just 3 years and one film later). In addition, this type of weighty subject matter had been common thematic territory for Tarkovsky since his first films in the early 1960s. And though only having made seven feature films, each approach was a spiritual level of visual, verbal, and atmospheric transcendence not regularly attempted by many other filmmakers,...

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky Writer(s): Andrei Tarkovsky (screenplay), Tonino Guerra (screenplay) Starring: Oleg Yankovsky, Domiziana Giordano, Erland Josephson, Patrizia Terreno Russian writer Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky) travels to Italy to study the life of Russian composer Pavel Sosnovsky a man that would ultimately take his own life upon returning to his native Russia. Andrei brings along an interpreter, Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano), and together they travel to a convent to gaze upon its ancient art and other ruins. There should be joy of some sort in such an adventure, but there is only isolation, both physical and mental. Once in Italy, Andrei begins to unravel and to make sense of his journey becomes an exercise in futility. Let me begin by stating I am not going to attempt to understand completely what Nostalghia means or what it meant to Andrei Tarkovsky. In fact, this is the only Tarkovsky film I've...

Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games book series has often been compared with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels, primarily because both center on a young female protagonist and have become phenomenons for their shared young-adult demo. This is arguably an insult to the novel and the big-screen adaptations, since The Hunger Games is leagues above Twilight in artistic credibility. The sense of familiarity of The Hunger Games goes much further back, recalling everything from William Golding to Phillip K. Dick to even Stephen King. Here are 12 films that come highly recommended, and should be essential viewing for any fan of the Hunger Games franchise.

****

1. Battle Royale

Written and directed by Kinji Fukasaku

Japan, 2000

The concept of The Hunger Games owes much to Koushun Takami’s cult novel Battle Royale, adapted for the cinema in 2000 by Kinji Fukasaku. The film is set in a dystopian alternate-universe, in Japan, with the nation utterly collapsed,...

European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award: Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Judi Dench are the only three female recipients to date (photo: European movies’ Lifetime Achievement Award-less actress Danielle Darrieux) (See previous post: "Catherine Deneuve: Only the Third Woman to Receive European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.") As mentioned in the previous post, French film icon Catherine Deneuve is only the third woman to receive the European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award since the organization’s first awards ceremony in 1988. Deneuve’s predecessors are The Lovers‘ Jeanne Moreau (1997) and Notes on a Scandal‘s Judi Dench (2008). In that regard, the European Film Academy is as male-oriented as the Beverly Hills-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. More on that below. Male recipients of the European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award are the following: Ingmar Bergman, Marcello Mastroianni, Federico Fellini, Andrzej Wajda, Alexandre Trauner, Billy Wilder,...

We salute our dear friends of many years Oleg and Joan on Oleg's birthday. He is one of the major figures in world cinema and is involved now in an exciting documentary on Tarkovsky, the great Russian director.

Oleg Vidov, known as the Russian Robert Redford, celebrated his 70th birthday last week in Moscow during a primetime TV special on Russia's First Channel, hosted by Andrei Malakhov.   He has appeared in 50 films since 1961, some of them the most popular Soviet films ever made.  They are still regularly broadcast on Russian television today. His U.S. credits include "Red Heat," "Wild Orchid," and "Thirteen Days."

Oleg now lives in Malibu with Joan Borsten, his wife of 28 years. They met in Rome in 1985, when he defected, the first major Soviet actor ever to leave the Ussr for the United States.  At that time Joan was writing for the La Times entertainment section. They were introduced by Richard Harrison, an American actor living and working in Rome (with over 120 film credits to his name) who personally took Oleg to the Us Embassy to apply for political asylum.  28 years later, Richard and Francesca, now Malibu residents, hosted Oleg's U.S. birthday celebration.

Even at 70, there is no rest for Oleg as his current film is being the voice of the revered Russian Director Andrei Tarkovsky in a documentary called Time Within Time, based on Tarkovsky's diary, and directed by Pj Letofsky. Tarkovsky (1932-1986) is one of the top 10 Directors of all time (IMDb.com), and #1 in Russia.

Tarkovsky was the first person Oleg called when he himself arrived in Rome in 1985. Tarkovsky had defected 2 years earlier and was living in Italy. Pj approached Oleg early on to be the 'voice' for the project, but didn't know the extent of Oleg's relationship with Tarkovsky. Although they had different roles in the Soviet film world, they knew each other, and Oleg was mentioned  in the diary.

Pj said, 'When we started recording the narration, it was immediately obvious that this was very personal for Oleg. He knew all the  people in the diary, and all the struggles working in that system. We would take breaks during the recording and you could see Oleg going back in his mind, telling me stories how he planned his escape from the Soviet Union'...

Time Within Time is a very compelling story of its day- of international film, art, politics with a real life cast of characters including Michaelangelo Antonioni, Tonino Guerra, Andrei Konchalovsky, Ingmar Bergman, to name a few. 

'By using Tarkovsky's diary, his words, it's almost like he wrote the script for me' says Letofsky.

Tarkovsky- Time Within Time is in the finishing stages. For more information visit www.newcastleproductions.com or contact Pj Letofsky at pjletofsky[a]gmail.com...

An interesting Us - Russia documentary co-production on one of our best and least known international filmmakers - Tarkovsky - is underway and raising funds. U.S. documentarian Pj Letovsky has teamed with, among others, Russian superstar Oleg Vidov to produce this long needed work via Kickstarter.

Kickstarter has been become a go to fundraising tool for indie filmmakers that has recently gained attention for their multi million dollar campaigns for Robert Thomas’ ‘Veronica Mars Movie Project’ $5.7 million, and Zach Braff’s ‘Wish I Was Here’ campaign that netted $3.1 million. 10% of the films at Sundance are Kickstarter funded, and 2 movies have been nominated for an Oscar; 63 Kickstarter funded films opened on in theaters and Kickstarter has 80 Million unique views each month.

Since it’s inception in 2009, Kickstarter has launched 26,759 Film and Video projects, with 10,354 being successful (40% rate) and collecting $120 million for their projects (they also have categories for Music, Games, Art, Photography, etc).

Pj Letofsky is directing/ producing a film on the Russian auteur director Andrei Tarkovsky called Time Within Time, that is based his diary. He has some pretty prestigious names associated with the project- Oleg Vidov (the Russian Robert Redford), Director Andrei Konchalovsky, Tonino Guerra (Fellini, Antonioni, and Tarkovsky’s screenwriter), Katinka Farago (Bergman’s Production mananger for 30 years). Letofsky tried the traditional methods of trying to find co-production partners in the Us, Italy, France, UK, and Russia, and after limited success (and having decided to go into production) he is now trying a Kickstarter campaign- going directly to Tarkovsky fans around the world- to raise the final 20% of the budget to finish his film.

‘Tarkovsky is relatively unknown in the West, but he is such an important, and influential filmmaker in world cinema, that I have to do everything I can to complete this film’ says Letofsky. ‘We are using Kickstarter, and its reach thru social media- Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Blogs- to connect to our niche audience. I’m also looking at it as a ‘pre-marketing campaign’ to build relationships with people who can help when the film is finished. I’ve been getting pledges from Tarkovsky fans from all over the world- Paris, Stockholm, Budapest, Melbourne, London, Mumbai, NY, La, Portland, Austin- it is international financing on a modest scale, but I am looking to build on it for my career. It’s also one part of strategy for funding, and marketing- building awareness’.

Pj teamed up with his friend Patrick Calderon who knows the social network media strategies to target Tarkovsky fans thru Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and Bloggers and get them to the Kickstarter site. ‘Tarkovsky- Time Within Time’ is in the middle of their campaign. Take a look, make a pledge, and tell everyone you helped Produce a movie!

Contact Pj Letofsky at pjletofsky[a]gmail.com...

Scola comes out of retirement for first film in 10 years, How Strange to be Called Federico!.

Italian director Ettore Scola has unveiled more details of his upcoming tribute to his friend and fellow filmmaker Federico Fellini, which is due for release in Italy this autumn to mark the 20th anniversary of the La Dolce Vita director’s death.

Entitled How Strange to be Called Federico!, the hybrid work combining archive footage and re-enactments of Scola’s memories of Fellini is currently in post-production.

The original Italian title - Che Strano Chiamarsi Federico! - is an allusion to a line in a poem by Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca.

“I don’t know what will come out of this. I am as curious as you are to discover it. The intentions and emotions are all there but it’s not ready yet,” Scola told a packed news conference in Rome’s Cinecittà film studios on Tuesday.

The $2.6m (€2m...

Where were Andy Griffith, Larry Hagman and other well-known celebrities in this year's Oscars In Memoriam montage? They were online at Oscar.com.

Every year it's one of the more reliably ridiculous award show controversies: Who didn't make the cut for In Memoriam?

When it comes to the Oscars, these "snubs" are particularly sensitive given the prestige and viewership of the show, and the fact that the montage inevitably leaves out names and faces of recognizable stars -- usually those known far more for their work in television than their work in film, which is the medium that the Academy Awards actually celebrate.

However, the Academy is hip to the annual controversy and this year produced a supplemental slideshow on their website featuring 114 names and photos of entertainers and film craftspeople who passed away in the past year.

Among the late greats included in the slideshow but not on the...

Academy awards In Memoriam section fails to include British film director despite his prolific Hollywood career

The Oscars snubbed British film director Michael Winner as – surprisingly – he failed to be acknowledged in the 85th Academy Awards' traditional In Memoriam section.

Winner, who died just over a month ago, was responsible for a major Hollywood hit, Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson, which was one of the most successful films of 1974.

But, while the Academy honoured the likes of Ernest Borgnine and Tony Scott, as well as cult talents such as Chris Marker, Tonino Guerra and Erland Josephson, no place was found for Winner.

Arguably Winner's most productive years were the string of films he made in the 60s in the UK, including The Jokers and I'll Never Forget What's'isname. The success of the war picture Hannibal Brooks saw him picked up by the Hollywood studios and a series of films with major stars,...

The Writers Guild of America West (Wgaw) announced on Thursday that it is honoring Japanese filmmakers Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni with its Jean Renoir Award for Screenwriting Achievement.

The Jean Renoir Award, which is the Wgaw’s lifetime achievement international screenwriting award, is given to international writers who have “advanced the literature of motion pictures through the years and who [have] made outstanding contributions to the profession of screenwriter.”

Kurosawa (1910-1998) directed more than 30 films and wrote or contributed to more than 70 titles, including many classic films such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ikiru, Yojimbo, Kagemusha, Ran, Red Beard, and High and Low.

Kikushima (1914-1989) contributed to more than 60 films and collaborated with Kurosawa on Stray Dog, Scandal, The Last Fortress, High and Low, Yojimbo, The Bad Sleep Well, and Red Beard. He also worked on Tora! Tora! Tora! with Oguni, and Willful Murder, the latter of...

DVD Release Date: Feb. 26, 2013

Price: DVD $29.95

Studio: Olive Films

Kim Rossi-Stuart (l.) and Inés Sastre enjoy each other's company in Beyond the Clouds.

Legendary filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni (I Vinti) and Wim Wenders (Pina) teamed up to create the 1995 drama-romance film Beyond the Clouds.

Co-written by Antonioni, Wenders and Tonino Guerra and directed by Antonioni, Beyond the Clouds, told from the dreamlike perspective of a wandering film director (portrayed by Secretariat‘s John Malkovich), weaves together four stories of love and lust, inspired by Antonioni’s book about the enigmatic power of modern relationships.

Taking place in Ferrara, Portofino, Aix en Provence and Paris, each story–which always has a woman at its center–turns inwards in its examination of love. Or, as the late Antonioni put it, the stories turn “towards the true image of that absolute and mysterious reality that nobody will ever see.” Er, okay….

Featuring music from Van Morrison,...

Andrei Tarkovsky, who would have been 80 today — he died too young, 54, at the end of 1986 — has been brought back to many minds lately. One prompt would be the passing just last month of screenwriter Tonino Guerra, with whom Tarkovsky wrote Nostalghia (1983). The two documented the long gestation of Tarkovsky's first film made outside of the Soviet Union in Voyage in Time (shot in 1979 but only officially released in 1983). In this entry, you'll find not only a clip from Voyage but also an excerpt from Pj Letofsky's forthcoming documentary Tarkovsky: His God, His Devil in which Guerra, filmed in 2009, looks back on his collaboration with Tarkovsky.

For a few months now, Geoff Dyer has been sparking conversations about Tarkovsky with Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room, which, as Ethan Nosowsky puts it in the Believer, "Dyer dons a metaphorical head-lamp to mine the ore" of...

6- The 10th Victim (La Decima vittima) (The Tenth Victim)

Directed by Elio Petri

Written by Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvioni, Ennio Flaiano and Elio Petri

Italy,1965

The 10th Victim was the first film to offer up the concept of a TV show wherein people hunt and kill one another for sport and to expand the idea into a satire on gameshows. Set in the 21st Century, the government and the private sector have joined forces to create a solution to crime by giving it a profitable outlet titled “The Big Hunt,” a popular worldwide game show in which contestants are chosen at random to chase one another around the world in a kill or be killed scenario. The winner of the first round moves on to the next. After ten wins, a player is retired from the game and gets a cash prize of one million dollars, but very few make it that far.

This Must Be the Place, one of the finest tumblrs out there for cinephiles (and let me hasten to add that there are more than a few!), has just wrapped an intense week-long special focus on Akira Kurosawa. Take a look at these paintings set next to their realizations on screen. In fact, just start by clicking on the Akira Kurosawa tag and take a leisurely weekend stroll through stills, animated gifs, quotations, posters and more.

Reading. At Movie Morlocks, David Kalat argues that another Kurosawa, Kiyoshi, is responsible to a considerable degree for a revival of interest in Japanese cinema in the West in the late 90s; the turning point, he argues, is Cure (1997).

René Clément's Gervaise (1956), an adaptation of Émile Zola's 1877 novel L'Assommoir, "is a masterpiece," argues Mark Le Fanu in Sight & Sound, "as good an example as one can get of the 'tradition of quality'...

This week on Indiewire we were saddened to report the death of screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who collaborated with legendary Italian directors like Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini.  Also this week: Terence Davies & Rachel Weisz chat about their new movie, "The Deep Blue Sea"; we got our first glimpse of "Cosmopolis," which looks to be David Cronenberg's return to weird form; the filmmakers of the AIDS activism documentary "How To Survive a Plague" talk about their film; and movie audiences seem to desire permission to text in theaters.  Click through below for all the best new, reviews, and features from Indiewire this week: News Meet the Nd/Nf Filmmakers Monday at the Lincoln Center For over 40 years, New Directors/New Films has introduced up-and-coming filmmakers to New York audiences each spring. Tribeca Announces Free Events The Tribeca Film Festival has announced the return of its popular free...

"Tonino Guerra, the poet and screenwriter from Emilia-Romagna who has worked with so many directors, died this morning," reports Camillo de Marco at Cineuropa. "He had turned 92 on March 16."

Even the honed-down list at Wikipedia of directors for whom Guerra wrote is rather astounding: "Michelangelo Antonioni with L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse, Red Desert, Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point and Identification of a Woman, Federico Fellini with Amarcord, Theo Angelopoulos with Landscape in the Mist, Eternity and a Day and The Weeping Meadow, Andrei Tarkovsky with Nostalghia and Francesco Rosi with the militant politics of The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano and Illustrious Corpses."

All in all, he wrote more than 100 screenplays, was nominated for an Oscar three times (for Casanova '70, Blow-Up and Amarcord), won Best Screenplay at Cannes (for Angelopoulos's Voyage to Cythera) and the Pietro Bianchi Award at Venice, among many other prizes.

The Golden Apricot Film Festival Board has issued...

The screenwriter Tonino Guerra—who scripted some of the most famous works by Italian directors such as Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni—died yesterday at his home in central Italy, after a long illness. He was 92. Guerra, who began writing during his time as a World War II concentration camp prisoner, was also a poet, painter, and sculptor. But he was best known for his collaborations with most of the greatest Italian film directors of the twentieth century, many of whom he outlived. After breaking into the business in 1956 by co-writing Man And Wolves with Elio Petri ...

Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, the man behind Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up" and Federico Fellini's "Amarcord," has died at 92. The three-time Oscar nominee had been battling illness for several months in Rimini in central Italy, the Afp reported. Born in 1920, Guerra began writing while imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II. Since penning his first script for Giuseppe De Santis' "Men and Wolves" (1956), Guerra has gone on to write for some of the top Italian filmmakers of all time, including Vittorio De Sica ("Marriage Italian Style"), Mario Monicelli ("Caro Michele") and Francesco Rosi ("Lucky Luciano"). He also collaborated with Greek auteur Theo Angelopoulos on the dreamlike "Voyage to Cythera," and with Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky on "Nostalgia." All in all, he's responsible for more than 100 screenplays over the course of...

The legendary Italian scriptwriter and novelist, who died yesterday, worked with a host of Europe's greatest auteurs. Here we pick the highlights of his extraordinary oeuvre

It was Tonino Guerra's fate to become the scriptwriter of choice for a string of master directors whose status as auteurs – "authors" of their films – tended to diminish the status of the writers involved. Nevertheless, Guerra established himself as a major figure in Italian cinema during its golden period in the 1960s and early 70s, as well as venturing further afield to collaborate with the likes of Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos.

But it is the amazing string of films he made with Michelangelo Antonioni for which he will primarily be remembered. After spending time as a schoolteacher in his 20s, he broke into the film industry in his 30s, receiving his first credit aged 37 for Man and Wolves, by Bitter Rice director Giuseppe de Santis.

Hollywood screenwriter Tonino Guerra has died at the age of 92.

The Italian moviemaker worked on more than 100 scripts and was best known for his regular collaboration with director Michelangelo Antonioni, earning an Oscar nomination for best screenplay for their film Blow-Up in 1967.

He was also nominated for an Academy Award for 1973 movie Amarcord, with fellow writer Federico Fellini, and in 1966 for Casanova 70.

Guerra was born in 1920, and honed his writing skills after he was imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II.

He was part of the famed neo-realism movement in Italian cinema during the late 1940s and '50s, but later worked with contemporary directors including Steven Soderbergh and Giuseppe Tornatore.

Italy's former culture minister Walter Veltroni said, "We have lost a poet, a genius and marvellous person."

Guerra was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival in 1994.

Screenwriter and poet who co-scripted films with Fellini, Antonioni and Tarkovsky

The Italian poet, novelist and screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who has died aged 92, brought something of his own poetic world to the outstanding films he co-scripted with, among others, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Francesco Rosi, but also many non-Italian directors including Theo Angelopoulos and Andrei Tarkovsky. Perhaps his most creative contribution was to Fellini's colourful account of life in a small coastal town in the 1930s, Amarcord (1973), of which he was truly co-author, because the film reflected their common experiences growing up in Romagna.

The two were born in the region a couple of months apart – Fellini in Rimini and Guerra in Santarcangelo, in the hills above the Adriatic resort, the son of a street vendor father.

Guerra's own "amarcord" ("I remember" in dialect) is scattered over many books of poetry and short stories. He first started writing...

It's been a newsy day. We lost Tonino Guerra and Ulu Grosbard, the Hong Kong and New Directors/New Films festivals have opened, Takashi Miike has yet another film on the way and Casablanca, celebrating its 70th, is playing coast to coast. It's also been a fine day for posters, so I'm pepping up today's Briefing with a few for festivals and events happening soon or already ongoing. Kevin Tong designed the one above for the three films that Edgar Wright will be on hand to present at the opening of the Alamo Drafthouse on Slaughter Lane in Austin this weekend.

The lineup and schedule for Ebertfest 2012, running April 25 through 29, has been set and Roger Ebert discusses each of the titles in his Journal. Among the highlights: David Bordwell will lead a discussion of Citizen Kane, Patton Oswalt will host a session on Kind Hearts and Coronets and it looks...

Tonino Guerra, the screenwriter who collaborated with Italian neorealist greats Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Michelangelo Antonioni, has died at the age of 92, reports the Afp. He had been battling illness for several months at his home in the central Italian city of Rimini.

Guerra’s start as a writer was as dramatic as his films themselves: He began working on his earliest screenplays while imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II. After getting his start on Giuseppe De Santis’ 1956 release Men and Wolves, Guerra became a staple of the Italian film industry, co-writing more than 100 screenplays in his 52-year career.