REFLECTIONS ON FILM CULTURE

Daily | Courtisane, Owen Land, John Lurie

Ana

António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro’s ‘Ana’ (1985)

Courtisane, “one of the leading European festivals entirely devoted to artists’ moving images,” opens today in Ghent and runs through Sunday. I’m guessing that most of you, like me, won’t be able to attend, but! At diagonal thoughts, programmer Stoffel Debuysere has been generously posting a series of texts in conjunction with the lineup, beginning with Once was Fire, a program of films by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, Stavros Tornes and Charlotte van Gelder, and Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. Along with notes on the three filmmaking couples, he’s gathered passages from Manoel de Oliveira and Serge Daney on Reis and Cordeiro as well as Yann Lardeau‘s 1983 interview for Cahiers du Cinéma and Daney‘s 1983 piece on Ana for Libération; Antonis Moschovakis and Illias Kanellis on Tornes and van Gelder, and Daney and Jean-Claude Biette on Straub-Huillet. You’ll also find notes and passages on Marcel Ophuls (more) and Leslie Thornton.

“Over the course of the past fifteen years, artist Jean-Gabriel Périot has created a series of meticulously constructed and finely tuned found footage movies that are at once both disturbingly provocative and deeply moving,” writes Jon Gartenberg at Moving Image Source. The series We Are Winning, Don’t Forget: Short Works by Jean-Gabriel Périot is currently touring North America.

It’s Owen Land Day at DC’s.

New York. Rooftop Films has announced a first round of titles for its 17th Annual Summer Series, opening on May 10 with the program This is What We Mean by Short Films. The next evening sees a screening of Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, and further films lined up include David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Sebastián Silva’s Crystal Fairy, and Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies.

John Lurie will be at the Nitehawk Cinema this evening for an encore presentation of Fishing with John and a Q&A. On Saturday, he’ll be back for more Fishing, plus “the rarely seen film he directed called Men in Orbit (1979), his music video Big Heart, and an artist video featuring his paintings called First and Royal Queen.”

Opening tomorrow at MoMA: Kino! 2013: New Films from Germany, on through April 24.

Austin. The Cine Las Americas International Film Festival is on through Sunday, and Dan Solomon talks with executive director Eugenio del Bosque “about the risks he’s able to take in programming, looking for emerging voices in countries like Peru and Guatemala, and why female filmmakers are especially keen to take advantage of these new opportunities.” Also in the Chronicle, Kimberley Jones previews the Austin Film Society’s Tuesday night series Classic 35mm Treasures From the Janus Films Archive.

Vienna. The Austrian Film Museum presents Hanns Eisler: Compositions for Film from tomorrow through May 6.

In the works. Christoph Waltz has been an opera fan for years, and now he’ll try his hand at directing one. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports (in German) that December 15 will see the premiere of his staging of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp.

“In a new documentary from director Perri Peltz (The Education of Dee Dee Ricks), [Robert] De Niro will examine the life of his father, Robert, a painter and bohemian figure who died in 1993 at the age of 71,” reports the Los Angeles TimesSteven Zeitchik. “Currently titled Robert De Niro Sr., the film is being produced by De Niro producing partner Jane Rosenthal and involves the work of Peltz collaborator Geeta Gandbhir. The movie has been acquired by HBO and will likely be shown on the network later this year, Rosenthal said.”

“The Franco-German Commission decided during its meeting on April 8th in Paris to fund four promising coproductions, granting a total sum of 1,030,000 euros,” reports Bénédicte Prot at Cineuropa. And they are: Volker Schlöndorff’s Diplomatie, “focusing on the liberation of Paris on August 25th, 1944, and the capitulation of General Dietrich Von Choltitz, against Hitler’s orders to defend the city or leave it in ruins”; Olivier Assayas‘s Sils Maria, a film created especially for Juliette Binoche, in which she plays an actress who faces her old age and her past”; Vincent Perez’s adaptation of Hans Fallada’s 1947 novel Every Man Dies Alone, featuring Martina Gedeck; and Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s The Trial.

The Weinstein Company has picked up U.S. rights to Suite Francaise, Saul Dibb’s adaptation of Irene Nemirovsky’s novel, reports the Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth. Michelle Williams and Matthias Schoenaerts are, as they say, attached.

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