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  • From Raindance: Top Women’s Film Festivals

    From Raindance: Top Women’s Film Festivals

    From Raindance.

    Women’s film festivals aim to provide a true perception of women, whether they are victorious or defeated. With an industry that is dominated by males, these film festivals have turned into a global project by, for and about women.

    The criteria I used to select these top film festivals are similar to those that could be used for general film festivals. The one defining quality is that the festival, in fact, promotes what it actually is. Women’s film festivals began due to the lack of female voice within the film industry. To combat this hindrance, their own film festival was designed.

    If women’s film festivals don’t promote the issue that women aren’t in the industry, no one will listen and nothing will change. Individuals involved have the opportunity to call attention to the fact that, while just as many women may be going into film studies and other forms of film education, men still dominate the field. These festivals are attended by individuals who are likely to be the most sensitive and passionate about the issue. If you can’t make them care, no one will.

    I’d also like to applaud broadening efforts that most of these festivals are making. They have acknowledged more than just the suppresses that women face, and now work to challenge many other discriminatory disputes. It’s no longer feminist banter to promote more women in the film industry. Women film festivals are facilitating new perspectives against other minority populations as well.

    Women’s International Film & Arts Festival – Starting in 2005, the Women’s International Film Festival only presented five films. More recently, bigger names have been in attendance including Alley Sheedy from Breakfast Club. It has also attained some large U.S. Corporate sponsors such as American Express, Miami Herald, Comcast, NBC and Bacardi. Expanding their relations and reputation even more, WIFF has developed partnerships with Paramount Studios, Mega TV, MTV Films, and held workshops with representatives from PBS, The History Channel, ACTRA, The Discovery Channel, Mega TV, the Directors Guild, and more. These growing partnerships with national and international entities continue the ongoing mission to promote women and film on an even broader scheme.

    Moondance International Film Festival – This festival stays true to their original goal to present films and writing which successfully raise awareness about a variety of vital social issues. Besides their feminist initiatives, other objectives include educating writers, filmmakers, and film festival audiences, and inspiring them to take action upon this knowledge. Moondance uses this entertainment media to stimulate social and environmental change. Having initially started to widen the knowledge of the hardships women face, as the festival has matured, it has also expanded the social issues it promotes.

    Women’s International Film Festival in Seoul – The festival contributes to the development of women’s positive values and plays an essential role establishing a network between Asian and the other countries. WFFIS provides ways to promote and exhibit Korean women’s films abroad by discovering and supporting women in film industry. It also helps Korean film industry develop and have diversity. Forming future-oriented, alternative culture, WFFIS contributes to the development of the balanced Korean culture to improve the Korean national image. Last year’s festival screened 115 films from 30 countries. The festival, on average, fills 90% of its screenings – rare for any film festival.

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    • Date: April 2013

    Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival – With its initial start in 1988, it is one of the longest running women’s film festivals in the world. With the beautiful backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado Springs withholds an aesthetic value for this highly-regarded film festival. Aside from the three day festival, RMWFF hosts “Festival in the Community” during the week leading up to the festival. This week-long commencement for the festival includes free film screenings as well as a youth outreach program for at-risk youth. RMWFF maintains a conscious effort to cease the suppression of women in the film industry, and have branched out to aid all those who are suppressed, starting with the youth.

    Films De Femmes/International Film Festival of Creteil – Founded in 1979, today the festival welcomes women from all over the world and screens almost 150 films. Films De Femmes takes pride in women’s prideful moment, highlighting their artistic commitments and political and social achievements. The event typically brings together more than 130 filmmakers and 20,000 spectators.

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    • Date: March 22-31, 2013

    Birds-Eye View Film Festival – Birds-Eye promotes the fact that until the film industry is equally employed by both sexes, we are missing half the picture. Their mission is to raise public awareness of this issue and change the current statistics. Birds-Eye is the UK’s only public celebration of international women filmmakers. This year is a transition year for the film festival due to the changes in funding of British film. The full form festival will return in 2013. To jumpstart their feminist promotions, the festival opens on International Women’s Day.

  • Code Name: Geronimo (EDIT – Three Clips!)

    Code Name: Geronimo (EDIT – Three Clips!)

    Four More Years.

    There is no denying that Barack Obama’s term as President has been littered with major historical moments. Not least when he became the US leader to find the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. Now this story comes to the UK as Code Name: Geronimo on 24 December 2012. From the producer of the multi-Academy Award winning The Hurt Locker, this is the gripping account of what has been labelled the greatest manhunt in history.

    Described as an “exciting drone-and-dagger film that generates a ridiculous amount of suspense,” (The Philadelphia Enquirer), the film stars Cam Gigandet (Easy A; Twilight; The O.C.), Anson Mount (Straw Dogs; All The Boys Love Mandy Lane), Freddy Rodriguez (Ugly Betty; Planet Terror; Six Feet Under) and Alvin ‘Xzibit’ Joiner (Bad Lieutenant; Derailed; xXx2: The Next Level) as the Navy SEALS who hunt down bin Laden. Acting on a tip-off from a Guantanamo Bay detainee, the SEALS are appointed to spearhead one of the most clandestine and audacious military operations of a generation. Initially unaware that their target is the most wanted man in the world, the members of SEAL Team Six begin training for their mission, one that will culminate in a daring night-time raid on the bin Laden compound.

    This is a must for all fans of gritty war cinema in the vein of The Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down, Green Zone and The Kingdom – as well as thrilling war games like Call of Duty – who will revel in the movie’s action set-pieces and its nail-biting finale. Fans of hit TV series Homeland, meanwhile, will love the thrilling dramatised true account of the CIA’s hunt for bin Laden.

    EDIT – Three clips for you!

  • Trouble In Paradise – Review

    Trouble In Paradise – Review

    Director Ernst Lubitsch may be best known for To Be Or Not To Be and Ninotchka but this delightful lost gem is one of his finest. The simple set up sees thieves Gaston (Herbert Marshall) and Lily (Miriam Hopkins) go to work for the wealthy Madame Colet (Kay Francis) with the intention of robbing her. The plan is dependent on Madame Colet falling head over heels for the charming Gaston and by gum he is charming, we’re talking Terry Thomas mixed with John Le Mesurier mixed with a terribly charming duck. Wouldn’t you know it? Gaston ends up having feelings for the very woman he’s trying to con and a delicious game of romantic cat and mouse ensues.

    Made in 1932 before the dreadful Hayes Code infected Hollywood, Trouble in Paradise has a suprising sexuality not often seen in early American cinema. It was for this reason that the film was effectively banned, remaining unseen again until the late 1960s. Luckily it’s now been registered as a film of cultural importance and like a Nathional Trust manor house will be preserved for generations to come. Which is fantastic as Trouble in Paradise is genuinely more entertaining than a lot of recent rom-coms released. Yes that’s partly the opinion of someone who has a love for the nostalgic, seemingly naive looking cinema but I was also entertained the entire time with many a grin crossing my face at the sitcom like humour.

    The dialogue and acting is over-the-top at times. Miriam Hopkins does become a little grating and the comedy stylings is verging Three Stooges territory but you can forgive these faults by falling back on the “it’s of it’s time” mentality. The pluses far out way the negative script itself is snapping and lively. Marshall makes for a very endearing leading man. The climax which leads to a “whom will he choose” love triangle did have me wondering how it would end. Yes the title sounds like you’re about to embark on some turgid melodrama but Trouble in Paradise is one of those perfect films for a crappy Sunday afternoon in with takeway and a huge log fire.

    The Masters of Cinema print is beautifully restored and makes me realise that Ernst Lubitsch is a director that I need to watch up on.

  • The Night Child – Review

    The Night Child – Review

    The success of The Exorcist led to a slew of knock-off films from Beyond the Door to the The Sentinel. Here we have The Night Child, originally known as The Cursed Medallion (that would have looked spookier in a ghoulish font). Directed by Massimo Dallamano who cut his teeth as DOP on films including For A Few Dollars More but enough of naming other films.

    This film revolves around Michael Williams (The Haunting‘s Richard Johnson) a TV producer/presenter, working on a documentary. He is aided by an attractive colleague played by a pre-Blade Runner Joanna Cassidy (I promise to stop name dropping now). Along for the trip is his young daughter Emily (Nicoletta Elmi) who is still haunted by memories of her mother’s gruesome death and her Nanny (Evelyne Stewart) is secretly longs for Michael’s loins. In between investigating the occult for his new doc Michael sparks up a relationship with his attractive colleague, breaks the heart of his Nanny, meets a psychic countess – if I had a penny for every time I’ve written that out – and gives his daughter a medallion which belonged to her late mother.

    Once around her neck the medallion starts to change Emily’s manner in such terrifying ways as; screaming a bit loudly and throwing vases. Not quite as bad as masturbating with a crucifix but I think you’ll agree nuisance behaviour nonetheless. As the plot unfolds we discover that Emily is in fact the re-incarnation of a little murderers who was once chased down by a mob of bad actors in cloaks. Slowly Emily’s true colours start to shine through as she generally acts a bit naughtier until the film climaxes with her being terribly naughty. The Night Child is a very nice looking film. The photography is travel-show pretty but the pace is languid and apart from Richard Johnson and Joanna Cassidy, who manage to be charming and watchable, the acting is average at best. Nicoletta Elmi is considered by some to be an etherial child presence in her early career. For me she’s just creepy. Not in a Damien, “that kid’s creepy looking and very mysterious”. More in a “her face is upsetting me” way. For a film that was clearly made to capitalise on The Exorcist’s success it’s a shame that Dallamano decided not to lift some of the more unsettling aspects from it. We have the possessed child but other than have fits of anger there is no disturbing physical or emotional transformation. Johnson remains stoic throughout whereas if he were to crack under the situation we may have felt more peril to the situation. The Night Child looks pretty but as a horror has very little to recommend.

    The main reason to buy the newly released DVD is the accompanying documentary which discusses The Exorcist’s influence on Italian horror in the 1970s.

  • The Celluloid President

    The Celluloid President

    By Owain Paciuszko.

    This has been on my mind for a while now and it all started when I was watching Air Force One on TV a few years ago. I was marvelling at the heroics of Harrison Ford as American President James Marshall as he stays on board the hijacked titular transport to save his staff from the evil Gary Oldman, when a thought struck me. Could this film be made now? Of course, at the time of this puzzler, the incumbent president was George W. Bush and the notion of a motion picture being released that depicted the U.S. president as a heroic man of action seemed doubly ludicrous. With Air Force One being released right in the middle of Bill Clinton’s time in office I at least felt that the notion was somewhat plausible, Clinton was a president who did reckless things but ended his term with the highest approval rating of any President since the end of World War II.

    In George W’s term time we’ve seen a number of celluloid presidents come and go; there’s been Dennis Quaid as a thinly-veiled Bush-a-like in American Dreamz, which pitched the president as a simian idiot manipulated by his Chief of Staff (Willem Dafoe). Elsewhere Billy Bob Thornton portrayed a somewhat untrustworthy President in Richard Curtis’ Love Actually, who seemed designed to further make us cheer on Hugh Grant’s hallway dancing Tony Blair clone. Of course things culminated at the end of last year, and at the end of Bush’s run, with Oliver Stone’s surprisingly even-handed (and thusly under-performing) portrayl of the man himself in W (dub-ya).

    With Barack Obama now taking over I can’t help but wonder what movie presidents will be like? Naturally South Park has already jumped in and shown Obama to be not-unlike George Clooney in Ocean’s 11, again though, entirely plausible, charming, smart and not unattractive! Of course Obama was not the first black president, there’s been Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact, Terry Crews in Idiocracy and Danny Glover in 2012.

    Also with Watchmen and Frost/Nixon there’s been an on-screen resurgence of Tricky Dick, who has also found fame again with his return to Presidency in Futurama(Billy West’s Richard M. is my personal favourite). Theodore Roosevelet as well has found himself back thanks to Robin Williams in Night At the Museum (and its upcoming sequel), undoubtedly the kids of America shall remember him more fondly for doing battle with tiny Romans than negotiating peace in the Russo-Japanese War. Finally Spielberg’s long cherished Abraham Lincoln project should see a big name actor taking on an Oscar-baiting role, though whether he’ll be any match for Robert V. Barron’s portrayl from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is another question (“PARTY ON, DUDES!”)

    Meanwhile on these shores Michael Sheen seems to have copyrighted playing Tony Blair (or any other real-life Englishman), whilst other foreign dignitaries are usually reserved for lampooning in spoofs such as The Naked Gun with its brilliant opening ambush or Team America: World Police.

    Personally I’d like to see some sort of ‘Movie Presidency’ being organised, akin to Marvel’s contracting of Samuel L. Jackson to play Nick Fury across all its output leading up to The Avengers. What would happen is a number of actors are nominated and audience’s vote for who should play the President in all contemporary set movies over the next few years, thusly the President in Transformers would be the same as the President in G.I. Joe, and his run would continue until 2013 when he’d either be re-elected or replaced. Personally, my vote goes to Jeff Bridges.