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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My favorite documentary at AFI FEST turned out to be one I had initially passed on. The Unforeseenwas described in the catalogue as “the story of how big developers spoiled a city treasure, and about the consequences continued development has on us all,” which didn’t exactly sound like cinematic gold. But after talking with [...]

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This year’s animated shorts program at AFI FEST proved to be a mixed affair, but well worth a look. While there was the usual style-over-substance and slapstick-yelling-hitting-scatalogical humor entries, a handful of the thirteen pieces were works with a little more ambition. Here are my top five.

Tower Bawher
Bulgarian graphic designer and animator Theodore [...]

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AFI FEST 2007 is progressing smoothly. With its improved emphasis on world cinema, it’s offering a better roster of higher profile titles that have played at festivals around the globe, even if it still has a way to go to compete with the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the best festival for international films in [...]

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AFI FEST is about halfway through now (expect my midpoint summary tomorrow), but I ran into critic Robert Koehler last night and he offered to post his recommendations for films that are still screening. If you live in Los Angeles and you haven’t yet gotten a ticket or two,

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