f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g

10-17-88 (1989)
I’ve got an article in this week’s LA Weekly about the films of Ross Lipman, whom many readers will recognize as the UCLA restorationist behind classic films by independent luminaries such as Kenneth Anger, John Cassavetes, John Sayles, and Charles Burnett. However, his upcoming show at REDCAT on March 30 (a Tuesday event [...]

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Nicolas Pereda’s Perpetuum Mobile
By Robert Koehler
The juries have spoken, and—what else is new with festival juries?–I’m trying to wrap my head around some of the results. First, a big day for directors Maria Novaro for The Good Herbs and Nicolas Pereda for Perpetuum Mobile. The Mexican results went almost exactly as I predicted: Perpetuum Mobile [...]

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By Robert Koehler
We’re an hour away from the awards announcement in Guadalajara, so rumors are flying. In the Ibero-American competition, will it be Colombian veteran Victor Gaviria for his Berlin-debuting Portraits in a Sea of Lies, or Javier Rebollo for his masterfully witty Woman Without Piano? Or perhaps a wild card like Esmir Filho and [...]

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Some of the cinephile loot at Videotheque, and its owner, Mark Wright.
I’ve long wanted do an interview with Mark Wright, who established a remarkable DVD store named Videotheque in South Pasadena a few years ago. Los Angeles has a few stores renowned for their ambitious classic Hollywood and world cinema selections (Eddie Brandt’s Saturday [...]

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By Robert Koehler
From the traces of suicidal young in Listorti’s debut to the presence of suicidal young who won’t go away in Esmir Filho’s The Famous and the Dead/Os Famosos e os Duendes da Morte (another debut, in the Ibero American competition)—death is in the air in Guadalajara. Slippery as a fish and defying any [...]

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By Robert Koehler
 
It’s a bit surprising that the Guadalajara International Film Festival isn’t screening the competing non-fiction films for the press, especially at a time when non-fiction programming is proving to be the life blood of many festivals, and when festivals devoted to non-fiction—from IDFA to True-False—are on the rise. So, naturally, on the first [...]

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Bong Joon-ho, courtesy of the author
By Hye Jean Chung
The synopsis of Mother, the latest film from award-winning Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, whose filmography includes the critically acclaimed and widely popular films, The Host (2006) and Memories of Murder (2003), is deceptively simple: The titular character is a devoted single parent (Kim Hye-ja) who lives [...]

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The current issue of Film Comment has been on news stands for a few weeks, and it includes best-of-the-year and best-of-the-decade polls to which I was invited to contribute. I moved to Los Angeles in 2001 and starting blogging in 2003, so in many ways, pondering the decade has encouraged me to reappraise my [...]

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