Easter comes early to the not-so-United Kingdom this year, and so has KINOTEKA which has brought for its 16th annual Edition a  cornucopia of features, shorts and documentaries of Polish provenance or connection,  as well as events, exhibitions, Master Classes (with  Krzystof  Zanussi, a true master of film-making returning from Warsaw to present his  very first feature The Structure of Crystals, made in 1969, and to discuss his work in the ICA),Workshop...

It could hardly be a more topical time, given the international brouhahas in the media about Soviet cyberhacking and the alleged,well-funded if unsubtle  interference of Putinistas in elections around the globe for a second Russian Filmweek to be unleashed on an unsuspecting London.....the Brexiting metropolis whose only daily newspapers are now owned by a Russian plutocrat who also happens to run  the only full-time local TV  channel(which,incidentally, currently prog...

Though based in High Wycombe ,the Third Edition of the highly independent Fisheye Film Festival ventures to nearby Beaconsfield tonight with a special screening inside the cinema of the famed National Film and Television School (recently complimented in the Hollywood Reporter as the top international film school) of the remarkable and multi-award-winning strange romance God's Own Country. The film has just won another two top awards, at the Dinard Festival of...

One of the most remarkable British directing debuts of this or any year, In Another Life is a swiftly-paced,convincingly acted and utterly involving recreation of the struggles of a handful of refugees trapped in the "Jungle" camp near Calais. Directed with flair,finesse and dignity by Jason Wingard it has credibly woven from clearly personal,true stories a fictionalised fable of flight and pursuit and optimism, blending a multi-racial cast of highly capable professional actors ...

In characteristic contrast to the ever-earlier Launch of the BFI London Film Festival, held (on 31st August 2017) in the terror-attack capital's largest cinema, which was awash with sponsor's mineral waters and organic chocolate bars as countless clips and trailers unreeled after breakfast, the Raindance Film Festival hosted a week of press previews in one of the tinest but toniest of screening rooms in the West End, in the lower floor of the Virgin lounge on the Haymarket, where there...

There is another White House, an iconic apartment-house opened in  1936,and now a listed building, in bustling Marylebone, close to Regent's Park in the centre of London, and opposite the site of the Diorama, a fore-runner of cinema, which employed candle-light on huge paintings, with audiences literally moved around a flexible,arena-like space.Adjacent in Albany Street was another celebrated Victorian attraction, the Colosseum, constructed in the  1820s to house &qu...

Almost in defiance of the impending gloom of Brexit, London continues to host a plethora of European film events, national film-weeks and a variety of cultural cinematic gatherings, screenings and mini-festivals, sometimes on Embassy premises or in other non-cinema venues. Currently, on one of the capital's smartest streets in merry Marylebone, and more or less opposite the ever-busy  entrance to one of London's film-starriest hostelries, the Chiltern Firehouse, is a most unusua...

        Not only the not-so-very United Kingdom is facing crises of identity and culture-clashes currently, in the months apres-BREXIT and avant the various elections looming across Europe, but the cinema itself seems to be going thr...

Following a string of contemporary and classic Polish film screenings in a variety of venues across London, the 15th  Kinoteka came to a spectacular close in the labyrinthine Barbican Centre (on Wednesday  5th April, 2017).This annual Polish Film Festival always creates something original,besides the usual programmes of features and documentaries, workshops and presentations-  another  on-screen logo by the local Quay Brothers, and this year Kinoteka  commissioned new sc...

The Polish Film Spring came early into London this year, as Kinoteka unreeled, for the 15th time, from 17th March to 5th April, 2017,in various venues across the capital, presenting new and classic features and shorts, documentaries and animations, with workshops,talks,master-classes, art, music, a dinner,and a plethora of tasty Polish cakes. It is quite literally a rich programme, capably curated as ever by movie-mad Marlena Lukasiak, and her old and new colleagues in the Polis...

More than a visual visiting card for a young or debuting film-maker, the short film should be a work of cinematic art in its own right, comparable to the stories of Guy de Mauant or the exquisite etudes of Frederic Chopin. It is fascinating to view the graduation pieces or early narrative films by established directors, where often their look, style, techniques, and continuing concerns can be discerned in embryo form, and would be developed in future feature films.The film festivals are th...

My arrival in Cannes was unusually smooth, having found- only days before travelling- a return flight on British Airways that was somehow cheaper in sogenannt Club Europe than in Economy Class (albeit it to and from Gatwick- where the only BA lounge still open after 3pm was surprisingly well-stocked). After the usual diplomatically-ignored delays, we arrived more or less on time, on the eve of the festival, and although Nice Airport's carousel threatened a 57 minute wait for my luggage, the...

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  The Romania International Film Festival celebrated its 10th edition with a hot and wild new location, the famous -if not notorious party-beach resort of Vama Veche, a mile away from the border with Bulgaria.A kind of Felliniesque (think -Satyricon rather than La Dolce Vita)holiday rendezvous for the not-too-gilded youth of Central Europe its vibrant music and drinks-fuelled atmosphere makes the revels of the Karlovy Vary Festival seem like a vicars' tea-party,with the dress se...

Jean-Marc Thérouanne Festival de Vesoul   If you go down on the beach today may 21st - de cinq a sept- you're sure of a big surprise.....the biggest clutch of film festival directors in one party.. All summoned by FilmFestivals.Com supremo Bruno Chatelin  -for it is he- to the most truly international bring-a-bottle party you ever might see. This traditional Cannes rendez-vous  is tly hosted by that maven of the Black Nights of Tallinn - Madame Tina L. -...

Although the country of Croatia, which acceded to the European Union on July Ist this year, is not large in land it has a seemingly infinite number of islands,and, although its current production of feature films does not exceed a couple of dozen annually, there seem to be almost as many film festivals of varying size and content held regularly within its borders. The exquisite capital, Zagreb, a compact and seductive Hapsburg metropolis (its so- -called, if somewhat misnamed,  &...

Although the country of Croatia, which acceded to the European Union on July Ist this year, is not large in land it has a seemingly infinite number of islands,and, although its current production of feature films does not exceed a couple of dozen annually, there seem to be almost as many film festivals of varying size and content held regularly within its borders. The exquisite capital, Zagreb, a compact and seductive Hapsburg metropolis (its so- -called, if somewhat misnamed,  &...

There were plenty of tricks and treats at the 10th Anniversary  and Graduate Showcase of the London Film Academy, with a well-attended screening in the recently-refurbished NFT 1, the largest auditorium in what we are now encouraged to call the BFI Southbank, overlooking the Thames ,on Hallowe'en (31st October 2012).A dozen shorts of varied styles and contents demonstrated how well this commercial film-school in leafy Fulham has been developing under the dynamic duo who founded it...

Whatever name you call it- Constantinople or Byzantium- or however you spell it    (Graham Greene's Orient Express-connected novel, also filmed, styled it Stamboul Train), modern Istanbul is unquestionably a world city, a beautiful bustling megalopolis, literally ing Asia to Europe, and the only capital that has a leg in two continents. A fascinating fusion of ancient, medieval, religious and secular architecture and cultures, cuisine and  and stylish contemporary design and fashion, w...

Nomen est omen - what's in a name? I have to title the homeland of the marvellous Manaki Brothers International Cinematographers Film Festival with considerable care, as the Artistic  Director of this fine but moveable feast of film in Balkan Bitola already bollocked me for locating it in what we in the EU are obliged to call FYROM, and which my Grecian friends will be equally horrified if I style simply  the Republic of Macedonia.(Indeed, it was the much-missed movie magnate ...

What makes a festival successful? Great films and great audiences, and Belgrade's 40th FEST had both in spades- indeed, the event was such a hit, it was extended by a day to accommodate a last-minute regional premiere for The Artist, fresh from its triumph at the Oscars in Hollywood(and in keeping with its immaculate organisation, there was even an advance press screening of the French 'surprise' gift to Belgrade's enormous audiences. For the event is centred in what must be one of...

Suddenly this summer documentary festivals seem to be mushrooming across England.On the eve of Cannes I attended a crowded croissants and coffees Launch for the Sheffield DocFest, in the smart offices of the The Guardian newspaper in Kings Place, on the fast-developing side of the Kings Cross railway station.It was a very professional presentation by the Festival Board and programmers with many clips of selected entries, and ample footage of previous festivals which seem to have filled t...

I go back quite a way with Gaius Caligula....having studied his crazed life and inevitable death when I was  a Classics Scholar at Balliol, and read his first 'biog'in Latin, what more natural  than that ,during  my third excursion to cover Cannes (for BBC radio and other media), I should have been invited by Andre Previn's movie-exec brother to attend the   very secret and first presentation in the world of the full-length, unexpurgated  film version of Caligula.It was an off-Marke...

It was a gloriously sunny day but there was a capacity crowd in the East Chapel in Golders Green Crematorium, in north London, for the Celebration of your life, Virginia Dignam, sometime actress, published poetess, film reviewer on  The Morning Star, and long-serving hard-working Honorary Secretary of the UK Critics' Circle("a shrivel of critics" you used to call us, in your pert and often impertinent way).It would have been your 87th birthday, but you'd left us, after a sudden, sh...

A curious coincidence seems to have confined me, so far in unseasonal 2012, to attending international film festivals in cities beginning with a B!  This is not to say that any one of them is a B-Festival (we know, pace F.I.A.P.F., that the world of 613-4,000 festivals is not really divided into 'A' category and 'B' category events) but even though --for the first time-- I missed the Berlinale, for a variety of reasons (though I did manage to preview it on BBC World Service Radio from London,...