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

THIERRY’S CANNES, OLIVIER’S QUINZAINE
By ROBERT KOEHLER
If you happen to be at a film festival in March or April–as I was this year in Guadalajara (March) and Buenos Aires (April) (sorry, Film Journey readers, no BAFICI blog this year, but I promise a soon-to-come rehash/overview)–the conversation inevitably turns to what films can be expected to appear [...]

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Jose Avellar
MOMENTS OF GUADALAJARA
By Robert Koehler
Good stuff….Brian De Palma was here with Redacted, but unlike almost any director who ever attends a festival with his/her own film–exceptions include Lisandro Alonso, Pedro Costa, Jose Luis Guerin, the other “Joe,” Lav Diaz, Raya Martin, Albert Serra, Monte Hellman and the late Curtis Harrington–he actually went to see [...]

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GUADALAJARA’S MEXICAN PROBLEM
By Robert Koehler
Sure enough, as Guadalajara wound down, Lake Tahoe was one Mexican film in the competition that mattered, and as the paltry and fairly pathetic lineup played out, proved its value as a way out of the dead-end of what often passes for “comedy” in Mexican film….even if, as I noted before, [...]

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FROM BERLIN TO GUADALAJARA, CONT.
By Robert Koehler
By my count, although there are several films here direct from Berlin, only one is from Berlin’s most interesting section, the Forum: Ishtar Yasin’s astonishing debut, El Camino. This is the kind of film Forum was built for, and that Guadalajara would do well to show more of–intensely committed [...]

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FROM BERLIN TO GUADALAJARA
By Robert Koehler
The Guadalajara festival’s position on the calendar–besides being at a blissfully moderate time of year for the weather–allows it to pluck Latin American films from the various sections of Berlin. Last year, that meant for instance that Chico Teixera’s brilliant feature debut, Alice’s House (which recently played at the Nuart [...]

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GUADALAJARA: SEARCHING FOR A FESTIVAL
By Robert Koehler
So…. the idea with attending the Guadalajara film festival is to survey what’s popping up on the Mexican cinema horizon. The 23-year-old mission here has been to serve as a Mexico showcase, and it still is. Now, there are added layers, creating a slightly unwieldy superstructure of Latin American [...]

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Garbage In Garbage Out, or Why the Foreign Oscars Need to be Blown Up
By ROBERT KOEHLER
Computer programmers have a term for the risk flawed data input poses to the goal of good data results: Garbage In, Garbage Out. No four words better sum up the profound problems that have turned the foreign-language Oscar category into [...]

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In the City of Sylvia
THE FILMS OF 2007
By ROBERT KOEHLER
This is a long list because it was a great year. And it was a great year because weíre in the midst of a new golden age for world cinemaóof which this list is submitted as proof. And because this list is long, Iíll be [...]

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Robert Koehler and I are both planning to attend this year’s LAFF, and as of this afternoon, it looks like I’ve been granted press credentials for the festival, so I plan on writing about a decent share of films. (And rewatching a few favorites, such as Honor of the Knights, Times and Winds, Syndromes [...]

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Wang Bing’s He Fengming
CANNES 2007óTHE FINAL RANKINGS
By Robert Koehler
Below are my final rankings of the films across all sections that I saw before, during and just after Cannes, from best to worst. Given the importance of Cristian Nemescuís California Dreaminí, which won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard competition, I delayed this final [...]

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