No doubt Hollywood writers would love to write themselves out of a bad scene – the current strike – but their foreign counterparts are determined to write themselves into the drama by demonstrating today (Wednesday, Nov. 28) for an international day of solidarity with the Writers Guild. Sponsored by the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds, which represents over 20,000 screenwriters in unions worldwide, the marches will rally writers demonstrating in Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Sydney, Auckland, Montreal, and Berlin. And there’ll be a rally at NBC Studios in Burbank, too.It’s great that the writers overseas are taking the cause of…
Browsing: Other Arts
Will Russian filmmaker and opera director Alexander Sokurov follow in the footsteps of Bruce Beresford, Billy Friedkin and Garry Marshall to direct opera in Los Angeles? While on a rare visit to Los Angeles for a special screening of his newest film “Alexandra” (which competed at this year’s Cannes festival), the visionary filmmaker, best known to American audiences for his one-take 2002 feature “Russian Ark,” told Cinema Without Borders he’d “love to direct an opera here” but has yet to be approached with an offer. He was responding to rumors in the music community that he might indeed be on…
When we are exploring the effects of specifically gender-coded characters in the cinema, we are reminded of the very fundamental question about the effect of a movie on its spectator: Is it the movie that dictates the behaviors of society or is it society that dictates the behaviors in a movie? As far as exploring the relationship between gendered characters (i.e. a character who is specifically skewed as either completely feminine or masculine, and has very few androgynous qualities otherwise) we must question the purpose for that skew, as most people are not completely masculine or feminine, but rather a…
If you’ve ever walked into a pitch-dark house, only to have blinding lights turned on to a room full of friends who scream, “SURPRISE!!!”… That is the best way I can described my extreme shock and speechlessness of my siren screeching ambulance ride pitching me left and right as it darted in and out of traffic, my crash-cart rush through the ER as the excruciating knife jabbing pain pulsated in my chest, my gurney’s dream-like sleigh-ride down halls, up elevators, to the final sky-dive landing into the operating room, my left wrist burning like a forest fire. My body lay…
Javad is dead. He passionately loved Hitchcock, Mango and strawberry ice cream. Javad lived his abridged life through other people. This should explain his unending appetite for watching movies and counting other people’s money. He was a bank clerk, an Iranian communist wannabe that ended up as a Bank of America employee! I am sure Lenin would not have called him a “comrade”. Javad was a shadow. He will not be remembered by anybody. He never suffered from what others call disaster or pain. When he discovered his wife’s farewell letter, in which she explained that she was dumping him…
“Trust Me!” he roared. I glanced briefly down to check my footing. I had driven the entire day through sweltering desert heat with several large, full gas canisters filled to the brim jostling in the back of my little Citroen 2cv truckette. We were in the midst of the seventies oil crisis and could only buy gas on odd or even days depending on the last number of our license plates. But I was twenty-something, and nothing was going to stop me from driving to some house, somewhere in Cave Creek, Arizona where I would wait alone for hours in…
“Don’t follow trends, start trends” was the lesson Frank Capra instilled upon us all when he accepted the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 1982. While other filmmakers of his day were unspooling mindless musicals, burlesque comedy and gangland shoot em’ ups, Mr. Capra was making films focused on his undying faith in the uplifting of the human condition by highlighting the actions one individual can make upon the community. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and my favorite, It’s A Wonderful Life all illustrate the conflict of the Good Man in Society v.…
I was having the most fun I ever had with my clothes on. Finally I had created a working environment where I was producing a project that I had written, was directing and also performing in. It parallel the theme to one of my favorite films of all time; François Truffaut’s “Day for Night”. It is Truffaut’s , journal of a filmmaker as he battles against the forces of nature and man’s innermost primal passions of survival and self-destruction. His cinematic journey swings like a pendulum in a tornado. In the end, he completes his film. Not like he envisioned.…
Last week I saw “Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále”, “I Served The King of England“ in a film club in the heart of Prague. The film is directed by JiÅ™í Menzel and the impression that it evoked in me was a mixture of amazement, nostalgia, and happiness. I was glad I didn t miss it. Scenes in the film brought back the world from the beginning of the 20th century that promised so much and opened the gates of the modern age and then produced two great tragedies. On the background of art nouveau, where everyday life has its grace and…
NY-based Animator and Art Director In 1999 Zartosht Soltani graduated from Fine Arts at Azad University of Arts at Tehran. One year later he moved to New York where he is now working as art director and illustrator for an animation studio called FlickerLab. There he works on different projects such as cartoons, TV commercials and broadcast design. Shohreh Jandaghian- What is your educational background and what prompted you to move into a career in animation? Zartosht Soltani- I started painting back home in Iran when I was a kid about 8 or 9… but I was always into animation…