There’s a now-famous scene in the film Dead Poets Society when Robin Williams, playing the inspirational instructor of an all-boys school, hops onto his classroom desk and commands his young flock to widen their life outlook and seek out “the extraordinary.” “Why do I stand up here?” Williams asks the boys. “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way… Lean in boys, can you hear that voice whispering to you? Carpe diem! Seize the day.” I thought of Williams’ hop — really a leap of faith — as I…
Author: James Ulmer
CASTELFIDARDO, Italy – When they’re not publicly feuding with the French over whether the Mona Lisa should be returned to their madrepatria, Italians are busy this month flaunting their “love for Leonardo” with plenty exhibits, concerts, movies and menus to mark the 500th anniversary of Da Vinci’s death. There are retrospectives of his work as a scientist, architect, mathematician and humanist, movies on life’s work, handsome displays of his sketches of inventions found in his half-dozen cryptic notebooks, or codexes – even of a lock of his hair, prior to DNA testing. But one of he most ingenious homages to…
With the passing of Romanian director Radu Gabrea earlier this year, it was anyone’s guess whether the small cineaste-friendly film festival he founded six years ago, in Transylvania would have the capacity to survive, much less thrive. But to the happy surprise of festival afficianados in Europe and beyond, Gabrea’s cinematic gem – formerly called the Medias Central European Film Festival (MeCEFF) and set in the sleepy hills of central Romania — will resurrect itself September 3-9 in Romania’s third largest city, Timisoara. Re-christened the Central European Film Festival (CEFF), the 7th edition of the festival plans to offer twice…
Russia’s political image as the “sleeping” bear on Europe’s borders may seem maddeningly oxymoronic following its recent military forays into Ukraine and Crimea. But its images in cinema — seven decades of them since the death of Stalin — are being heartily welcomed this fall by one of central Europe’s most inventive vest-pocket festivals, located next door to the Bear’s newly-made Crimean lair. Romanian director, writer and producer Radu Gabrea has announced that his annual Medias Central European Film Festival (MeCEFF), based in the central Transylvania town of Medias and curated around a different national cinema each year, will launch…
ANTALYA, Turkey — You wouldn’t think a film festival situated only 500 miles from war-torn Syria – and that opens only six weeks after a major terrorist attack in its country – would have the gumption to invite a bunch of Hollywood stars to help celebrate itself. At least, not if it expected to get any takers. But that’s exactly what Turkey’s largest and oldest film forum, the Antalya International Film Festival, managed to pull off during a star-studded and hectic week last December. Located on a spectacularly cinematic stretch of Turkey’s south Mediterranean coast, with enough lumens of key…
Back in 2007, I attended the first Madrid International Film Festival as part of a Hollywood contingent that included the great Hungarian émigré cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and his wife, writer and director Susan Roether Zsigmond. Among the many fond memories I have of Vilmos are a few talks we shared over tapas and sangria, and an especially memorable walk through the Prado Museum one summer morning. As we ambled through the galleries of Caravaggios and Goyas, Vilmos would pause every so often in front of a painting, tilt his head, and proceed to offer a running commentary on the character…
Celebrating the fifth year of his ambitious Medias Central European Film Festival (MECEFF), Romanian filmmaker Radu Gabrea has announced this year’s edition will be examining “one of the most profound influences on the culture of the 20th century” — World War I and its cinematic legacy. Set to unspool from August 30-September 6 in the Transylvanian town of Medias, MECEFF curates its non-competition films around a central theme that changes each year, an approach that sets it apart from similar competitive European niche fests. With 2014 marking the 100th anniversary of the start of “the Great War,” and future global…
Tucked away in the Transylvanian countryside, Radu Gabrea’s annual festival of Central European films may be small – it was considerably smaller this year than its previous two incarnations– but the passions behind it are manifestly big. (The Medias Central European Film Festival – MeCEFF for short — closed its four-day run at the end of June.) How else to explain its scrappy survival against those devilish odds of fickle funding, political pitfalls, lousy weather and, well, those monstrous, never-dying shadows of economic downturn still haunting most cultural events in this corner of Europe? Talk about vampires. And just as…
Agust 2013 – Like comfortable old shoes, favorite films are meant to be lived in. Some evenings I’ll shuffle about my DVD collection and slip into a well-worn movie for the sheer, toe-squishing pleasure of revisiting old friends and haunts. These companions never seem to wear thin, even when I myself am feeling worn out. As an itinerant film journalist, I’ve sometimes reconnected with my favorite movies by crossing borders and oceans to visit the places where they were filmed. The most memorable locations are those tiny, idyllic villages that make me want to trade L.A.’s hyper-connected and stressed-out rhythms…
After a long career as writer-producer, Ilmar Taska’s second feature, Thy Kingdom Come, moves the Estonian-born talent not only more confidently into the director’s chair, but through new territory in the horror genre as well. This Spanish-Italian co-production with a polyglot cast steers what might have been a standard-issue tale of monster-haunted yuppies into fresh turf tackling the darker side of artistic expression, the cancerous creep of fear in a post-9/11 society and, as a consequence, our global insecurities about how to confront and survive the changing norms of whatever we call the “real” world. The movie’s artistic themes and…