Film / Video

Béla Tarr has arrived in Minneapolis. In the brief conversations I’ve had with him, it’s immediately apparent that the dialogue will prove to be insightful, interesting, and likely funny. A visit to the US is quite exceptional for him as he rarely allows himself to be pried away from his work, and I can’t urge you enough to take advantage of an opportunity to hear him speak about his work. Even if you are not entirely familiar with his films, the even will prove to be an excellent introduction to the lauded director, his style, and his work.

The folks over at Bomb magazine published an interview with Béla Tarr in their summer issue. It focuses a great deal on his latest work, The Man From London, which will make it’s Midwest premiere here at the Walker on october 20, but delves into what drives his filmmaking in general.

Now for the contest.

If you would like to win two free tickets to the Regis Dialogue with Béla Tarr, email your answer to the following question to: joe [dot] beres [at] walkeart [dot] org.

-What was the subject of the 8mm film Béla Tarr made when he was nearly 16 years old?*

The first three people with the correct answer will win the tickets.

*hint, the answer can be found in Bomb.

We have just added a free preview screening of the new Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose!

Thursday, June 7. 7:30pm. Walker Cinema. FREE!

A swirling, impressionistic portrait of an artist who regretted nothing, writer-director Olivier Dahan's La Vie En Rose stars 2005 Cesar Award-winner Marion Cotillard (A Very Long Engagement, A Good Year) in a blazing performance as the legendary French icon Edith Piaf. Perhaps finding her nearest American analogues in figures such as Billie Holiday and Judy Garland, the world-famous chanteuse lived a tragic life worthy of a novel by Zola or Balzac. From the mean streets of Paris' Belleville district--where she was born into abject poverty and grew up surrounded by street performers, hookers, and pimps--to the dazzling limelight of New York's most famous concert halls, Piaf constantly battled to sing and survive, to live and love. Her magical voice made her a star on both sides of the Atlantic. 2007, color, 35mm, 140 minutes.

Take a look at the trailer below.

Anytime a festival schedule is announced, it can be an overwhelming experience plowing through the list of films. When I'm traveling, we try to find out what is playing as far in advance as possible to start researching the titles and to confer with my colleagues about what they've heard. Recommendations are gold, especially when films may have played other festivals.

With the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival opening tonight, there has been little printed material in advance. Their website, however, has never been easier to navigate.

Here are my recommendations based on what I've seen and heard:

Films that I've seen that I'd recommend:

Journals of Knud Rasmussen (4/28)

Ghosts of Cité Soleil (4/24-4/26)

Something Like Happiness (4/24-4/26)

12:08 East of Bucharest (4/27-4/28)

Films I'm looking forward to seeing:

Away From Her (4/27)

Summer Palace (4/26)

Forever (4/25)

Sweet Mud (4/26-4/28)

Once (4/27)

Eagle vs. Shark (4/24-4/28)

Cause and effect factors heavily into Hubert Sauper’s new documentary Darwin’s Nightmare (screening tomorrow through Sunday at the Walker Cinema), all the way down to its conception. In 1997 while working on the film Kisangani Diary, which tracked the plight of Rwandan refugees during the Congolese rebellion, he noticed an odd juxtaposition, two planes carrying very different cargos. One, coming in, was loaded with 45 tons of yellow peas, sent from the US to feed refugees in UN camps. The other, departing the Congo, was filled with 50 tons of filleted fish heading to markets in wealthy European countries. “But soon it turned out that the rescue planes with yellow peas also carried arms to the same destinations,” he writes, “so that the same refugees that were benefiting from the yellow peas could be shot at later during the nights.”

This effect had an unlikely cause: as an experiment in the ’60s, Nile perch were introduced into Tanzania’s Lake Victoria and wiped out local fish populations. While people living near the lake languished on the brink of starvation, a booming export market for the fish emerged, bringing with it the byproducts of globalization--factories, guns, and corrupt trade officials. Sauper writes, “I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish and the ephemeral boom around this ‘fittest’ animal into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order. I could make the same kind of movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil.” The winner of more than a dozen film prizes, including the 2004 European Film Award for Best Documentary, Darwin’s Nightmare was praised by New York Times critic A.O. Scott as “an extraordinary work of visual journalism, a richly illustrated report on a distant catastrophe that is also one of the central stories of our time.”

Now, if that all sounds too depressing, here’s something to cheer you up: We’re giving away five pairs of tickets to screenings of Darwin’s Nightmare. Just be among the first five people to email Joe Beres in the Walker Film/Video department (please mention which screening you’d like to see). View dates and times--or for those of you who are too slow, buy tickets--here.

Going into its 8th year, The San Francisco Independent Film Festival is looking for entries. Send in “your most delicous, twisted, unique, historical, fictional, subtitled, stop-motion, curious, cadaverous, outsider, outstanding and otherwise brilliantly-executed indie-films and videos.” Deadline is October 15; the festival runs February 2-16, 2006. Download an application here.

[Via WiFi Art.]