IFS Blog

This Week at the International Film Series

2011-11-04T12:44:00.004-06:00

It’s hard to believe there are only two weeks left for the Fall International Film Series program. This week there are five different films on tap; a German sci-fi epic, a black-and-white archive print featuring Dennis Hopper in his first leading role, two music-related documentaries (one is about the ska-funk band Fishbone, the other a riveting look at a piano tuner – and, no, I’m not being facetious, it will have you on pins and needles), and then we top things off with the Boulder premiere of a film that looks at the life of infamous Jewish-singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg.

World on a Wire by Werner Fassbinder comes to us courtesy of a new 35mm print struck by Janus Films. It originally aired in 1973 as a two-part miniseries made for German television and was long thought unavailable until a restored version was shown at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. Who should check this out? Anyone who likes Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, or tales of cybernetics engineers uncovering massive corporate/government conspiracies. It’s being hailed by many as a film that beat The Matrix to the punch by several decades – but here in retro/future cool. Because of its length, it only screens once on Saturday (at 7pm), and once again on Sunday (as a matinee show at 2pm). If anyone wants to come watch the first half on Saturday, and the second half on Sunday, they are welcome to do so – just keep your ticket stub handy.

Night Tide by Curtis Harrington was released in 1961 and is, like last week’s screening of Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, and ultra-rare 35mm print that has been made available to us thanks to the kind help of the Academy Film Archive along with support from The Film Foundation and Curtis Harrington. It’s been over 20 years since I’ve seen this film, but I remember being entranced by it’s particular spell and its beautiful black-and-white cinematography. I’m also a sucker for carnivals, freakshows, and – specifically – mermaids. Mermaids are the original femme fatale, and Lord knows I’ve dated enough of those to feel a kinship with all the sailors that have been lured to their doom. This time out the sailor is played by Dennis Hopper, and adding to the attraction is the fact that Night Tide was inspired by “Annabel Lee,” a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. Producer and screenwriter Tod Davies will be present for an intro and question-and-answer after the film. Davies wrote the script for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but long before that she was assigned the task of writing up a sequel to Night Tide, and she knew Curtis Harrington personally. Any film students who are interested in screenwriting should be sure not to miss this screening on Wednesday at 7pm only.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is a biopic of French singer Serge Gainsbourg. He counted Brigitte Bardot among his ardent lovers and is the father to actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! This film won three Cesar Awards this year, along with many other nominations here in the U.S. This film traces his life growing up in the 1940′s Nazi-occupied Paris, on through the hedonism and song-writing success of the swingin’ sixties, and all the way to his death in 1991 at the age of 62. The film screens on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 10 & 11, at both 7pm & 9:30pm.

All the above screenings take place in the Muenzinger Auditorium, which has 400 seats, and reel-to-reel projectors (which allow for the rare archive prints to show there). The other two screenings happening this week take place in a new alternative venue we are using that can be found in the basement of the Visual Arts Complex on the C.U. campus in Boulder, just north of the Euclid Autopark. This venue has 200 seats, and everything in there is new, with a great screen and sound-system. Eventually this space will be fitted to show every media format possible (including reel-to-reel 35mm projectors), but for now we are focusing on H.D. digital presentations.

I’m still trying to figure out how to increase the visibility of this venue to our customers, and we clearly have a long way to go. I was especially shocked to see that our screening of a documentary about women artists (titled !Women Art Revolution) only had seven people in attendance. It’s a bit crazy for me to pay $450 for the public rights performance exhibition fees (nevermind the rest of our overhead) to this film if we’re only going to recoup about $40. When I booked the film I was sure it was a perfect fit for a new venue located in a building dedicated to the visual arts, but clearly much more needs to be done to get the word out. The last two films that we will screen for the fall in the V.A.C. Auditorium will hopefully fare better as we shift gears from visual arts to look at the concert world.

Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, the alternative rock band that’s been around since 1979, and still kickin’ it! As fate would have it, Fishbone recently added a bunch of tour dates, including one in Denver the week after our screening of this documentary. (They are playing at Cervantes’ Other Side on Nov. 17th). The bad news is that Everyday Sunshine director Chris Metzler, who was originally slated to come out for a Q&A, just informed me two days ago that he’ll be unable to attend due to an unexpected conflict. The good news is that he’ll try to make amends to our audience by letting me give out four guest-list spots to the Denver Fishbone concert, along with other freebies. Everyday Sunshine was one of the better gems screened at the SXSW Film Festival, and has its Boulder Premiere this Thursday at 7pm only.

Pianomania is a documentary about a piano-tuner; Stefan Knüpfer. Stop. I know what you’re thinking; that sounds like a total snooze-fest. It’s not. The hint that it’s not can be found in this sentence on the distributor’s website: “Stefan Knüpfer is dedicated to the unusual task of pairing world-class instruments with world-famous pianists. Juggling the demands of the pianist, the piano, and the piece to find the perfect match requires boundless enthusiasm, but also endless patience and nerves of steel.” This is a film about craftsmanship, about passion, perfectionism, and also a little bit of madness. It opened today in NYC, and here we are in Boulder following its illustrious east-coast premiere only one week later! It screens Friday, Nov. 11th, at 7pm only.

Curator's confessions part deux

2011-10-31T16:02:00.000-06:00

http://www.boulderweekly.com/blog-246-confessions-of-a-curator-part-two-pablo-kjolseth-on-the-ifs.html

BW Blog

2011-10-21T17:18:00.001-06:00

I'm now contributing a weekly blog for the BW, which can be read at the link below:

http://www.boulderweekly.com/blog-245-confessions-of-a-film-curator-pablo-kjolseth-on-the-ifs.html

Fall Calendar is in full swing!

2011-09-08T13:02:00.002-06:00

Back from the Telluride Film Fest last Tuesday night. Hit the ground running with yesterday's free screening of TUCKER which was selected by Alex Cox with special guest and sound-designer: Richard Beggs. More special guests tonight! Director/writer M.A. Littler, cinematographer Philip Koepsell, and producer Alexander Hebert will all be in attendance. It's a Boulder premiere which I think will really resonate with the community and hopefully spark some good word of mouth (ergo the repeat screening of KINGDOM OF SURVIVAL next week in the VAC auditorium on Sep. 16).

PSA to show in front of films...

2011-06-06T16:08:00.002-06:00

To the following PSA that is shown in front of Alamo Drafthouse Films, we say: Amen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1L3eeC2lJZs

Cat's now officially out of the bag: ALEX COX joins CU Film Studies Program faculty!

2011-05-18T23:31:00.003-06:00

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_18090600

Previously on TCM, I interviewed Cox here:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2011/03/13/from-repo-man-to-westerns-a-conversation-with-alex-cox/

Followed up by this:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2011/03/27/parting-thoughts-with-director-alex-cox-part-2-of-2/

Welcome aboard, Alex!

IFS IN THE NEWS: WE LIVE IN PUBLIC

2011-04-15T10:22:00.001-06:00

We screen this fascinating film about people prostituting themselves for the internet tomorrow at 7pm only - FREE and WITH director in-person!

For more info check out today's article in the COLORADO DAILY:

http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_17847456#axzz1JbpQusB0

Coming up this Sunday: a 35mm print of THEY LIVE!

2011-04-11T22:42:00.001-06:00

In my last post I wrapped up my interview with Alex Cox by talking a bit about John Carpenter’s They Live (1988). Alex said: “They Live holds up for the first 45 minutes, and then there’s this long wrestling match between Roddy Piper and Keith David, and it never recovers. But those first 45 minutes are amazing. Pretty much the only good science fiction film I’ve seen post 2001: A Space Odyssey.” When I heard that, I thought for sure there would be a long tussle of words in the comment section to rival what John Carpenter claimed was “the longest fight scene in movie history.” To my surprise, only two people chimed in, both in support of the film in general. Where were the cries of bloody murder from the fans of THX 1138, Brazil, Videodrome, RoboCop, A Clockwork Orange, Tetsuo, Inception, Alien, and so on? There are plenty of bones to fight over here, but I’ll stick to They Live for the purpose of this post. As to the long fight scene, I’ve gotten into my own fights with people who dismiss it as ridiculous. Agreeing to some extent with Alex Cox is author and music journalist Greil Marcus who says of They Live that it is “a fabulous movie (except for the endless fight behind the building).” Again, I strongly disagree.

I’m not alone in thinking the fight scene in They Live is essential to the film. Its absurdity is not beside the point, but part of the point – and memorable for a variety of reasons. It even resurfaced in popular culture, as South Park fans already know, in the “Cripple Fight!” (Season 5, episode 2) which was very much an homage to They Live:

We actually animated to that soundtrack, so, for a while, before we put our own sounds in it, it was, like, Jimmy and Timmy fighting, but it was the sounds, the grunts from Roddy Piper, from They Live, with the music and all that… It was actually pretty funny that way, and I think it ended up on the Internet that way or something… The original version… it’s a great fight sequence in They Live… They Live is a… could have been a… it’s a pretty great movie, uh…” (Trey Parker and Matt Stone, commentary track for South Park “Cripple Fight!” episode.)

Although South Park exploits the camp value, the extended fight scene in They Live endures for very cerebral reasons too:

The violence staged here, this violence of the two of them fighting, is a positive violence, a condition of liberation. The lesson is that our liberation from ideology is not a spontaneous act, an act of discovering our true self. And that’s what I find convincing in this simple scene… just think how it totally turns around the usual new age idea of critique of ideology, which would be: “in everyday life we have ideological glasses, learn to put down, take off, the glasses, and see with your own eyes reality the way it is.” No, unfortunately, it doesn’t work like this. Liberation hurts. You have to be forced to put your glasses on.” (Slavoj Žižek, They Live! Hollywood as an Ideological Machine)

I cribbed both of the quotes above from author Jonathan Lethem’s Deep Focus edition on They Live (released by Soft Skull Press). His own take is one of grudging respect:

If either of them stepped outside their entrenched positions to frame this absurdity (“You’d really rather keep at this than wear these glasses?” “You really want me to wear those glasses so badly you’re going to take this endless beating?”) the air of abjection and embarrassment would be hugely relieved, but the deadly serious joke lessened: here’s another instance of Carpenter’s willingness to lose your respect in order to consolidate your amazement and discomfort. If you hate the fight scene, you blame the director. If you love it, you credit yourself. (Jonathan Lethem, Deep Focus: They Live)

The fight scene, which Carpenter says “was an incredibly brutal and funny fight, along the lines of the slugfest between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in The Quiet Man” is essential to me for three reasons. The first is that Carpenter’s choice to make a wrestler, Roddy Piper, his leading man was purposefully ideological. Carpenter, himself a wrestling fan who’d met Piper at WrestleMania III earlier in 1987, considers it the working man’s sport and They Live is a film about the war being waged on the working class, the blue collar workers, the under-employed, or the unemployed. For the purpose of this film, they are all in the underclass.

As They Live isn’t just about the underclass but very much for the underclass, the extended fight scene sneaks in some wrestling where you wouldn’t expect it: a science-fiction movie. (Well… an American science-fiction movie. Had it been a Mexican science-fiction movie, or fantasy, or horror film, romance, etc., a big protracted wrestling scene would not be such an anomaly, especially given how huge a folk icon the professional wrestler El Santo is in Mexico. In fact, Carpenter missed a nice opportunity to include Latinos into the underclass he represents in They Live – doubly strange given its Los Angeles setting – an omission that will surely be redressed in any remake.)

The second reason the fight scene is essential to me, also ideological, is much more important: it illustrates how hard it is to make anyone change their perception of the world – even when you have hard proof. (Current topical events to file into this category include climate-change and evolution. Talk about ridiculously extended fight sequences! The latter topic alone has been going on for well over a hundred years.)

The third reason I think the fight sequence is essential is summed up nicely by Phil Hardy in his Science Fiction Overlook Film Encyclopedia. It’s “an effective political point about the underclass being too busy beating each other up to start a revolution.” The revolution here, to be clear, being a revolution against the Reagan revolution of the eighties. But if you look at the disparity in wealth between the haves and have-nots over the last few decades, it really doesn’t matter whether you have a Democrat or Republican in office, the gulf continues to grow. Not only that, but the number of new and unique ways in which we are being bombarded with ads that ask us to “consume” this or that have also skyrocketed.

To see the graph below, and then to read Carpenter’s comments from 20 years ago, is to understand that the central warnings within They Live didn’t disappear with the eighties but rather have become even more relevant today than ever before:

I felt that They Live could be an Invasion of the Body Snatchers for today; rather than Communists-under-the-beds, the monsters would be unrestrained capitalists…

In the US, the middle class is slowly disappearing: there are more poor people and more rich. I think They Live will be looked back on as one of the few voices of outrage at a time when everyone wanted two things: to win, and to make money; all other considerations were secondary…

So it’s about seeing the world in two different ways – normally and through the sun-glasses, which show the truth. We shot every scene twice, which was time consuming; dressing a whole street of billboards with subliminal messages was a pain in the ass. Strangely, though, most people didn’t notice, which was also frightening. Especially the newsstand display, where the magazine covers were plastered with slogans, they passed right by without paying any attention at all. (John Carpenter, Cheap thrills and dark glasses, by Sheila Johnson, London Times, June 22, 1989)

The last point made me laugh. My FB sidebar includes six or seven ads that target me geographically and by personal interests using key-word algorithms. My Gmail account does something similar (albeit more discretely). Product placements are ubiquitous (be they in movies, sporting events, video games, TV, etc.) I don’t even notice them anymore. Yet there they are. Everywhere. And that is one of the reasons why I think They Live is so important: the black-and-white scenes alone are a startling reminder of the world we live in and, like Roddy’s glasses themselves, offer a visual inoculation to the dangers of mindless consumption.

The fact is: the time is ripe for a remake by an astute social critic, one that would drop some of the clumsy buddy-film tropes, mullets, cheesy one-liners, and genre clichés toward the end that hamper the original. And while I’m engaged in such wishful thinking, let me add another suggestion: have the protagonists keep their glasses on most of the time – because those black-and-white scenes kick ass.

Speaking of the glasses that clearly reveal the money-grubbers around us to be soulless alien monsters; I have to share a story that Nile Southern (son of Strangelove scribe Terry Southern) told me was passed along to him by acclaimed title-designer Pablo Ferro:

Pablo Ferro told me a great story told to him by John Carpenter – about the marketing plan meeting with the Universal execs – where they said they were going with ‘Plan B’ (instead of wide distribution and advertising) because “we don’t think this film will appeal to the general movie-going public” John takes a deep breath, pulls out the glasses from his jacket pocket, puts them on and surveys them before saying, “I thought as much,” and leaves the room…

http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/themovies/tl/tl.html

ON THE BOWERY

2011-04-07T15:18:00.001-06:00

Tonight's screening of ON THE BOWERY gets a plug in the CO DAILY. This restored and award-winning film was a huge influence on Cassavetes and will be followed by THE PERFECT TEAM, a 45 min long "making of" doc.

IFS IN THE NEWS

2011-03-29T12:28:00.003-06:00

DAILY CAMERA & CO DAILY interview Boulder's Aron Ralston regarding 127 HOURS (please note, the film does NOT screen on Tuesday - it screens Wednesday and Thursday at 7 & 9pm):

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_17707799?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com

CU INDEPENDENT gives coverage to our APRIL FOOL'S DAY screening of the so-bad-it's-good film THE ROOM:

cuindependent.com/2011/03/29/movie-buff-preview-%e2%80%9cthe-room%e2%80%9d/

THE SUNDAY CAMERA ran a column on the subject of the up-coming documentary for THE WOODMANS:

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_17702279?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com

ADDED EVENT: BONUS & FREE MATINEE SCREENING OF BLUE VALENTINE TODAY

2011-03-06T10:22:00.002-07:00

Last night's packed screening of BLUE VALENTINE meant that we had to turn people away - which we hate to do. So to accommodate those folks we've added a bonus 3pm screening of BLUE VALENTINE today (Sunday). Unfortunately, Derek had to leave today so he can't be there to attend that screening in-person - but, we did tape his Q&A last night and will put it up on our website as soon as time allows. Thanks to everyone for their patience, and for showing up and supporting Derek's film.

TOUCH OF EVIL

2011-02-13T16:45:00.003-07:00

The print tonight is in great shape! Read my latest TCM post for more info:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2011/02/13/a-toast-to-a-touch-of-evil/

THE MAN FROM LONDON finally arrives.

2011-02-09T14:50:00.002-07:00

The 35mm print that was lost is now found, and we will screen it on Monday, Feb. 14th, at 7pm only.

Tarr's purposefully slow visual meditations are not for everyone, but they are not without purpose, and his visual compositions are full of beauty. His particular magic will only work on those who are willing to put aside the "need for speed" that has accelerated over the years. If you let the spell be cast, he will carry you to surprising places and reward the part of your soul that yearns for something metaphysical. Tarr's work provides an antidote to the currency of our time and its constant squeezing of our adrenal glands.

"(THE MAN FROM LONDON) deals with the eternal and the everyday at one and the same time. It deals with the cosmic and the realistic, the divine and the human, and to my mind, contains the totality of nature and man, just as it contains their pettiness." Béla Tarr

THE MAN FROM LONDON update: Monday, Feb. 7th, 2011

2011-02-07T14:51:00.004-07:00

:-(

Well... we tried, but as of 2:45pm today the 35mm print of THE MAN FROM LONDON is still M.I.A.

We'll go ahead and screen our digital copy again for those who simply want to see it, no matter what, and we're very sorry for this unfortunate turn of events. This is what happens when the national weather, as Bill Maher said of the pic at top, reminds one of "Charlie Sheen's coffee table."

MAN FROM LONDON update for tonight (2.6.11)

2011-02-06T11:07:00.002-07:00

Due to extremely bad weather conditions, the 35mm print bound for IFS has gotten stuck on a UPS truck somewhere between here and Ohio. What we are left with for tonight is a back-up DVD that was overnighted to us by the distributor. Our digital projection system is pretty good, but the whole purpose of Sunday night programming is to see beautiful black and white movies on film, so what I would encourage IFS customers who wanted to see THE MAN FROM LONDON to do is wait until tomorrow (Monday) when we'll know by 3pm whether the 35mm print *finally* makes it to the office. If it does, we'll screen it Monday night at 7pm in Muenzinger. Look for updates here on the IFS blog on IFS website.

THE MAN FROM LONDON is still not otherwise available in the U.S., so if tonight is the only night you can catch it - the show will go on.

2011-01-18T16:08:00.003-07:00

I celebrated the new year by proofing a final mock-up of my Spring arthouse calendar film series program. It will screen about 50 films. Some new. Some old. The selection usually nets an equal amount of praise and criticism. I put out a sneak preview of coming attractions on my FaceBook page the other day and within a few minutes received one enthusiastic remark from a reader looking forward to the latest Steven Soderbergh documentary about Spalding Gray (that one called And Everything Is Going Fine) while simultaneously getting one smack-down from a reader wanting to know why I won’t be screening González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, or Charles’ Ferguson’s excellent documentary regarding the details of our recent financial collapse, Inside Job, or even something so obviously winning as L’illusionist, which displays the latest animation of Sylvain Chomet of The Triplets of Belleville fame – especially as it is working from an unpublished screenplay by Jacques Tati. What could be more perfect for an arthouse theater? For those curious how this particular film curator made his final choices, here are my answers.

A little background: In one week, I’ll have 25,000 schedules to distribute. When it arrives from the printers, I’ll invariably hack open a box from the first shipment, reach in, grab a freshly minted program, and within .03 seconds spot a glaring typo – and it won’t be my printer’s fault (they – unlike me – are consummate professionals who have done everything in their power to prevent this). Nope, the buck stops at my desk. It should, anyway. But I’m a sloppy guy and I make a lot of mistakes and this typo now in front of me will have somehow escaped the detection of the half-dozen people who helped me proofread the damn thing back when we had all the time in the world to peruse it line-by-line. And who am I kidding? There won’t be just one. There will be many. But that’s okay, I’ll still be as proud as can be. That’s because, unlike any chain theater whose programming is dictated by the bottom-line or committee, I’m a non-profit and, furthermore, in the enviable position of being the only programmer calling all the shots. There’s no question who the father is – this is my baby, warts and all.

I kick things off on January 26th with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (dir. by Daniel Afredson, 2009), and this despite the fact that it comes out on DVD the day before. Once a film is widely available on DVD, that cuts my attendance numbers by over half, and I usually avoid it when showing newer titles. The venue I screen films in has 400 seats, so the difference between a sold-out show and one scarcely attended is huge. But in this case I’ve already screened the other two films in Stieg Larsson’s very popular trilogy, and since admission to my series is half the rate being charged at other theaters I’m still providing a service for the budget-minded folks out there who purposefully missed it at the multiplex. Also insofar as this trilogy is concerned; we have bragging rights to having given The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo its Colorado premiere. A big “thank you” to Music Box Films for that feather in our cap. Those sold-out shows gave me the freedom to program other more obscure films that I knew would lose money but still deserved to be seen on the big screen. As a non-profit I don’t have to make a lot of money to function, but I can’t lose too much either – so it’s important to have a few high-profile performers to help subsidize the repertory and off-the-beaten track titles that don’t usually pack ‘em in. That’s the other reason I’m leading the Spring series with this title; most of the films on my program don’t have any multi-million dollar publicity campaigns behind them to boost public awareness, so best to put something up front that people will recognize and draw attention to itself. It’s a good way to prime the pump as we get back from a holiday hiatus.

The Sundance Shorts package is a collection of nine shorts that have been culled from the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. This year, the Sundance Film Festival takes place between Jan. 20 – 30, so I thought it’d be appropriate to highlight this shorts package from last year at a time that overlaps with the current festival. I normally only give a title one or two days on my program so that I can cram in as many other films in as possible, but this is a rare case where the money due to the filmmakers is divided amongst all nine of them equally. That extra day will help increase the box office tally being split by these young filmmakers. Also, on a Sundance-related note, I usually attend the first half of the festival and, after watching four or five films a day it’ll be nice to give my eyes a small break when I return. I’ve already seen this collection of shorts, so timing their screening with my return means having three extra nights to catch up on emails and laundry.

BLACK & WHITE MAGIC ON SUNDAYS! As I wrote in my program notes, over the years I’ve purchased a lot of my favorite films on DVD. Most of them are still wrapped in their cellophane. Why? Because by watching it on DVD I knew I’d be cheating myself of their reel magic. This Spring calendar I’ve decided to dedicate Sunday to some of these titles. The first half are film noirs, the second half are enigmatic, haunting, or somehow infused with the fantastic. All of these Sunday films make incredible use of black-and-white cinematography, and all of these Sunday films are on 35mm film.

I just saw the Coen Brother’s True Grit at the theater via digital projection. It was beautiful. No scratches. Crisp. In focus. The audience loved it. So did I. But the black spectrum of color, for me, still lacks the nuance of 35mm film. It was a solid and inky black, rather than a graduated and nuanced black that felt alive within its shadows. It was the difference between a counterfeit Mona Lisa and “the real deal.” I’m amongst a shrinking handful of people who care about such things, but for those shrinking handful I dedicate every Sunday of my Spring program, and I kick thinks off with The Killers (dir. by Robert Siodmak, and starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner). Grubby hotels, sleazy nightclubs, shadowy, dark, expressionistic lighting… On actual film it’s like walking out under a full moon and seeing the landscape all dreamy and surreal-like – a format portal that gets you as close to the real thing as possible.

Digital Projection? It looks awesome, it’s here to stay, and it will soon eclipse the heavy, expensive, and easy-to-scratch celluloid prints of the past. But a small part of your brain will be asleep during the proceedings. It’s a small but important part of your brain that is connected with intuition. For me, that slumber is awakened by a pure image of reflected light, be it from a time long past or recent – it’s still the closest I can come to time travel. This does not yet exist for me in the digital realm but, again, I’m in a rapidly shrinking minority of people who still think of such things. In True Grit a horse is spurred on to its death for the purpose of saving the protagonist. In my case, I’ll keep beating that horse long after it’s dead because, well, I loved it too much to believe it would ever stop transporting me to new places. Or perhaps I should put it this way; as long as I own my own damn horse, I’ll take care of it for as long as nature allows. Coincidentally, the nearby Landmark Theatres will also be screening some film noirs around the same time, with a focus on Orson Welles, but this thematic “film festival” is really a “digital series” void of celluloid and mostly on Blu-Ray.

I have a confession for this week’s programming selection: I’ve only seen William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (dir. by Yony Leyser, 2010). The three that follow I’ve only read reviews for or heard about via trusted sources. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (dir. by Apichatopong Weerasethakul, 2010) was the winner of the Cannes Film Festival 2010 Palm d’Or and is a tribute to local Thai myths with a whimsical narrative that embraces a leisurely and non-linear structure. Those who accept it on its own terms will be rewarded with something very unusual while a majority will probably leave scratching their heads – and that’s okay. I have to be honest, Inspector Bellamy (dir. by Claude Chabrol, 2009) normally would not have made the cut as it comes out on DVD two weeks prior to my screening. But as this was Chabrol’s 50th and last film before passing away, I felt the old maestro deserved a nod on the schedule. As to The Man from London (dir. by Bela Tarr, 2007), this had to to with the fact that when I think of magical black-and-white films, Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies ranks there at my very top for pure celluloid bliss. This last film by the cantankerous Hungarian garnered mixed reviews, but the only way I would ever see a Tarr film is on 35mm, so given that it’s both in black-and-white and billed as a modern noir I selfishly figured this was as good a chance as any to finally see it on film myself.

The week of President’s Day Weekend is always a bit tricky because that’s also when the Boulder International Film Festival sets up shop one mile away from us for its for its yearly and four-day event. BIFF is very successful, has no problems packing its venues, and always gets a lion’s share of the local publicity. That being said, most of their screenings are digitally projected and they rarely, if ever, show repertory. In contrast, most of my offerings are on film and I always give a fair shake to the classics. I also charge much lower admission and offer up screenings throughout the year, so we’re very different animals. I start things off with two very powerful docs, A Film Unfinished (dir. by Yael Hersonski, 2010) and Last Train Home (dir. by Lixin Fan, 2009). These two films are of the sort that might have screened at BIFF, but I show them on film, and I show them early on. When BIFF is in full swing I go with a cinematic kick in the nuts: Enter the Void (dir. by Gaspar Noe, 2009). Noe has long embraced a drug-fueled misanthropy that assaults its audience in many ways, and there are many people who will (and should) avoid him like the plague. But the fact remains: Enter the Void is one of the most visually audacious films to ever sizzle through the human synapses and fry the cerebral cortex. Last year BIFF‘s opening night film was The Lightkeepers (dir. by Daniel Adams, 2009) – and I cannot think of a more diametrically opposite film to this than Enter the Void – its opening credit sequence alone would give Blythe Danner a heart-attack. As BIFF winds down with closing night ceremonies, I also wind down the week with the 1998 restoration of Touch of Evil (dir. by Orson Welles, 1958), a repertory bit of programming that won’t step on BIFF‘s toes in any way and which I’ve been wanting to revisit for a long time coming.

Next up: a restored Godard print, some U.K. comedy, Spalding Gray, and my favorite Jim Jarmusch film. Every Man for Himself (dir. by Jean-Luc Godard, 1980) is enjoying a new 35mm print courtesy of a The Film Desk, a small distributor who has taken up the clarion call of keeping great and interesting arthouse titles alive on film. Gotta support ‘em, plus Godard still (!) brings in both the young and old. Four Lions (dir. by Chris Morris, 2010) made my small list of favorites at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, and finds laughs in unexpected places, like Life of Brian, it gleefully tips over various sacred cows with wild abandon. And Everything is Going Fine (dir. by Steven Soderbergh, 2010) has gotten great reviews and hearkens back to such arthouse anchors as Swimming To Cambodia – which used to play for months on end at neighborhood arthouse cinemas now long extinct.

On my fourth “noir” Sunday night I will admit to a cheat. Dead Man (dir. by Jim Jarmusch, 1995) is certainly no film noir in any traditional sense and probably should have been squeezed into the second-half of my Black & White Magic on Sunday’s program (what with it being haunting, enigmatic, and having fantasy elements). Still… so many of my favorite film noirs feature doomed characters and deadly gunslingers in an existential battle that put their free will into question, and I feel Dead Man touches on all of those things – and more. J. Hoberman referred to Dead Man as “the Western Andrei Tarkovsky always wanted to make.” Here is a film that casts a spell. If you get it, you’re mesmerized and carried somewhere transcendent. If you don’t get it, well, you’ll probably hate it and get sick, quickly, of Neil Young’s repetitive (aka: hypnotic) score. Much like American Astronaut (another true, great, black-and-white original), it’s one of those films where you can easily divide those who love it (these usually having seen it on film, on the big screen, with a receptive crowd), versus those who don’t (which, from my personal experience, means those who saw it on DVD, on a small screen, with a distracted friend or two). When programming a series of resplendent films whose black-and-white cinematography shine on celluloid, I had to sneak Dead Man in. Perhaps this excerpt by Jonathan Rosenbaum for his BFI Modern Classics on Dead Man will explain why:

Robby Müller’s stunningly beautiful and exquisitely composed black-and-white cinematography, which includes a wide range of intermediate greys, is punctuated by fade-outs and black-outs between scenes, as if giving us forecasts of Blake’s death even before he’s wounded. Playing against the rhythms of the westbound train at the very beginning of the film, these interludes of unconsciousness or something resembling dream time create a form of of suspension that continues periodically throughout the film, and are an essential part of Neil Young’s haunting score, one of the greatest in contemporary movies.

Phew! Okay, now we get to Oscar Week. Not much for me to say here other than I find it interesting that this, the most aesthetically bleak chunk of layout we have – due to the fact that we didn’t know who the Oscar nominees were when we went to press – will still probably be our most successful in terms of attendance. How to explain this? Well… an anecdote does come to mind. In 2000 John Corigliano won an Oscar for Best Music to The Red Violin. We brought him out as a special guest, and I’ll never forget an idea he had that he was convinced would make millions; condoms that were molded to look like Oscar. Why? Because John’s experience was that when he had that Oscar in his hands he couldn’t believe how many people at the after-parties wanted to touch and grab it (at that time this included one-time pin-up queen Farrah Fawcett). Corigliano swore me to secrecy on this, but that was ten years ago, which I figure is now past the statute of limitations. If any condom makers out there are reading this; you’re welcome. Not only does everyone want to touch Oscar, it’s also a big social event on par with Super Bowl parties, and for a lot of people these screenings of the nominees in the shorts categories will be their only chance to see them before the festivities.

We now reach the half-way mark of my schedule with: Enemies of the People, Korkoro, Blue Valentine, and The Third Man. Enemies of the People (dir. by Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, 2009) takes a look back at the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge and won the World Documentary Special Jury Prize at Sundance and is also a front-runner in the Oscar Forecast. I could have programmed it earlier in my schedule, but obviously I’m hoping that it nets an Oscar nomination and that the added exposure gives it legs. If it wins? That’s gravy. Korkoro (aka: Freedom, dir. by Tony Gatlif, 2009) follows a Gypsy family on the French roads of WWII. Gatlif is well known to my audiences for such previous films as Latcho Drom (1993), Gadjo dilo (1997) and, most recently, Transylvania (2006). Gatlif’s ability to convey the passions of a tribe via music and dance defy normal narrative structures and tap into passions so genuine that they often make you feel like you’re watching a unique documentary. Blue Valentine (dir. by Derek Cianfrance, 2010) just had it’s big city premiere last week with the Weinstein Company eager to cash in on its many accolades (2 Golden Globe nominations, etc.) and is clearly also hoping for some Oscar nods. It has made many Top 10 short lists for last year, and was one of my favorite films at Sundance. Of course, I’m biased, as Derek is a friend, and so I’m bringing him and his film here for a free screening to give our boy a hero’s welcome. The local newspaper recently put him on the cover, and I feel the following excerpt from the article by Alex Stein (Wild “Blue” yonder, Daily Camera, 12/24/10) speaks volumes about Derek as a filmmaker:

Cardiocellulosic event

International Film Series director Pablo Kjolseth also knew Cianfrance during his years at CU. “I’ve chosen Blue Valentine as the cover image for our Spring calendar,” says Kjolseth. “Partially because Derek was a fixture at the screenings. I can even say that Derek attended ‘religiously’ because it was at an IFS screening of Pasolini’s The Gospel According To St. Matthew that Derek became so overwhelmed he lost his breath and gave everyone a scare. The word went around the department that Derek had had a heart attack during the film.”

“When I asked him about it, several days later, he told me he been so affected by the movie he’d had chest pains and shortness of breath.”

“I remember that,” says Cianfrance, “IFS always played the best movies. The Gospel According to St. Mathew is as good as film gets. Basically, it’s a documentary about Jesus that uses the simplest cinematic aesthetics. Nothing showy. Pasolini even cast real people. It became a huge inspiration to me. It’s all over Blue Valentine.”

“I’d come with a friend and we were late. We had rushed, sprinting, to the theater, and arrived about five minutes into the movie, so my heart was already beating fast and I was swept into these intensely evocative images, these powerful screen moments. I realized that my heart rate was not slowing down. In fact, it was beating faster. All the repressed experiences of my Catholic upbringing were up there in front of me.

“At one moment, a terribly deformed man is walking, just walking, toward the camera. It’s a 20-second shot with the camera pulling back as the man comes toward it. Then Pasolini cuts to a shot of Jesus telling the man if he has faith he will be healed, and then he cuts back to the deformed man, except the man’s face has become normal. He has been cured.”

“At that instant, a jolt of pain seared my body. I felt my hand going numb, I didn’t want to leave, I could barely tear myself away, but I had to. I called my girlfriend. She took me to the hospital. The whole time I was in the emergency room waiting for the doctor, I kept thinking I would know I was dead if the doctor looked like Jesus. Thankfully, he didn’t. The doctor wasn’t Jesus, so I knew I was still alive.”

Topping off the week is Carol Reed’s much (and rightfully) beloved The Third Man (1949). I picked this classic to top off the film noirs for a simple and elegant reason that dovetails in with the preceding screening of Blue Valentine. Speaking about The Third Man, Derek’s says “that final shot was an inspiration for Blue Valentine.” For my next post I’ll finish off the second half of my programmer’s Crib Notes with more eclectic fair – but this time the Sunday night black-and-white films switch from noir to titles that veer a bit more toward fantasy.

In the interest of providing closure to those who read my opening paragraph, made it all the way down here, and don’t want to wait around for my second post to hear the response as to why I didn’t bring Biutiful, Inside Job, and L’illusionist – the answer is simple. Roadside Attractions distributes the first. Sony Pictures Classics distributes the other two. Neither will return my phone calls. Why? Because I only show films for a day or two, don’t charge very much, am a non-profit, and in their eyes belong to a non-theatrical ghetto. That’s a long topic that should be reserved for some other post. Keeping it simple for now, suffice to say I’m the low man on the totem pole and it’s all about money, honey. Which is ironic, really, when you consider the subject of Biutiful and Inside Job.

I accept the fact that anyone looking at my program will inevitably point to one (or more, perhaps even many) titles here and, in essence, ask the following question: “What the heck is THAT doing there?!” What follows below will hopefully dispel all head-scratching.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector (dir. by Vikram Jayanti, 2009)

This documentary weaves together BBC interviews conducted by Jayanti with Spector in 2007. Spector, at that time, was being charged with the murder of Lana Clarkson, an actress he’d picked up at a nightclub. It’s a fascinating look at the eccentric record producer and songwriter, one that juxtaposes the interview with scenes from inside the courtroom and archival footage from the past. His fingerprints aren’t just on a bloody gun, they’re also on the Beatles’ Let It Be album and a string of monster hits that had a huge influence on the music industry. Highlights, for me, included incredible concert footage of Ike and Tina Turner burning the stage with incredible vigor. Although this film is far from comprehensive, readers of Keith Richards’ current autobiographical best seller, Life, will be able to fill in a lot of the holes for themselves.

Marwencol (dir. by Jeff Malmberg, 2010)

A bit risky to follow one documentary about an eccentric artist with another doc that one might say is also about an eccentric artist, but it’s still apples and oranges – even though both are anchored by a crime. Marwencol won the SXSW Competition Award for Documentary Feature and gets its name from the doll-populated and 1/6th scale World War II-era town called Marwencol that was built by Mark Hogancamp. Marwencol started out as a form of homemade art-therapy to help Hogancamp rebuild hand-eye coordination after five men beat him into a brain-damaging coma, but the project takes on a life of its own. I think this film makes an interesting companion piece to the Spector doc because one film shows how art can sometimes lead into madness, while this one shows how art can lead you out.

Sweetgrass (dir. by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2009)

Yup, it’s doc week at my series – but the choice here is one that overlaps with another event: the 7th Annual Brakhage Center Symposium (March 11 – 13). Both Barbash and Castaing-Taylor used to teach here at the Film Studies program where my office is located, so I know them both and was happy to see their latest documentary garner critical acclaim. I wanted to program this earlier, but was unable to beat the DVD release. Happily, it has been selected by the B.C.S. to launch “a weekend dedicated to the exploration of new ideas in cinema art.” The other selling point for this film about Montana shepherds herding their sheep one last time through the Beartooth Mountains is that, although it’s been out on DVD for several months now, the word of mouth is spreading about its panoramic beauty. Our audiences will more fully enjoy its lush exteriors on 35mm and the big screen. Plus: it’s a free event with both Barbash and Castaing-Taylor there to introduce the film and follow-up with a Q&A.

Alert readers will now notice that my program skips the second and third week of March altogether. The reason for this is simple: my staff is composed of university students who take off during Spring Break. Technically, Spring Break is only one week long during the third week of March, but students have a tendency to leave early around Thursday of the second week. It’s a fortuitous break that also allows me to attend the SXSW Film Festival (March 11 – 15), and this year I may even check out the Ann Arbor Film Festival (March 22 – 27). Then, upon my return, I’m ready to dive into even more films…

127 Hours (dir. by Danny Boyle, 2010).

I always need to make sure there are at least a couple “big” titles on my calendar, but these can be tricky for reasons associated with my status as a non-profit calendar program located on campus. In most cases I can deal directly with with the main distributor for a specific film. But for some wide-release films, that’s not the case. Without going into too many details, suffice to say that Fox Searchlight Pictures won’t give me the time of day and, instead, shuffles me off to a non-theatrical distributor; essentially a middle-person who charges three times more for the privilege of letting me show the film only long after it’s exhausted its theatrical run. 127 Hours is currently slated to come out on DVD in March, and if that’s the case it’ll cut my audience numbers by over half. So I originally tried to program it at an earlier date, but I was told by the distributor that, nope, I’d have to push it back. So here it is, programmed at the very end of March because that’s the earliest I could get it. I’m having to pay an absurd amount of money for a film that might already be widely available via various rental markets, but I went ahead and did it anyway. Why? Because if it gets enough Oscar buzz maybe the DVD release will get pushed into February, and also because this film is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, a resident here in my neck of the woods. With a little luck, I’m hoping he’ll come to the screenings to talk with my audience.

The Room (dir. by Tommy Wiseau, 2003).

This notoriously bad film was selected specifically for April Fool’s Day. Its cult-status as “the worst movie ever made” has slowly been growing over the years, with fans giving it a bit of The Rock Horror Picture Show treatment by adding various interactive bits. Personally, I prefer Troll 2 (dir. by Drake Floyd, 1990), along with its companion piece the Best Worse Movie, which was a 2009 documentary dir. by Michael Stephenson (aka: Joshua Waits from Troll 2). But, for reasons unfathomable to me, my assistant loves this movie with the red-hot passion of a cougar in heat. My assistant is also my house-sitter while I’m at the SXSW Film Festival, so I’ll consider this a full return of favor.

Copacabana (dir. by Marc Fitoussi, 2010).

This is unapologetically light-hearted fare about a quirky mother and her mortified daughter. I think Isabelle Huppert is one of the most daring actresses to grace the screen, but my audiences usually see her in heavy roles (like The Piano Teacher). Copacabana allows Huppert to show us a more playful side. It reminded me a bit of like when Mike Leigh came out with Happy-Go-Lucky… it was a pleasant surprise for those who only knew him as the dour and intense filmmaker behind Naked and Secrets & Lies.

Woman in the Dunes (dir. by Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964).

Ah! Now we begin the second-part of my black-and-white celluloid series. The first half was film noirs while this, the second half, tilts itself toward different terrain. It boils down to showcasing films with black-and-white cinematography that gives me goosebumps – and Hiroshi Segawa’s work in Woman in the Dunes most certainly does exactly that. It’s surreal premise involves a bug collector who gets tossed into a sandy pit by the sea, trapped as a mate to a mysterious woman. I first saw it as a college student, whacked-out on no sleep and after several days of cramming for exams. It’s haunted me ever since. This is a film I like to bring back every few years for my own repeat enjoyment.

The Strange Case of Angelica (dir. by Manoel de Oliveira, 2010).

Manoel de Oliveira was born in Portugal in 1908 and has worked in the movie industry since 1928. How often can you say that you are watching a film made by somebody who is over a 100 years old? I’ll confess to the fact that I haven’t seen this film yet, but I programmed The Strange Case of Angelica for two reasons. One: I was quite moved by Oliveira’s previous film (Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl), so I knew he still had all his chops down. Two: when going over the long list of films I was thinking about bringing to my Spring calendar, I asked one local filmmaker (Jeanne Liotta) for input. She pointed out this title with wide and enthusiastic eyes. Jeanne’s been showing her latest work at different film festivals, so she’s certainly “in the know.” Anyway, she told me this film was one of her favorites on the fest circuit and that was the frosting on the cake. One of my dirty little secrets, here revealed, is that as somebody who loves watching film prints over digital projections I sometimes forego a preview DVD screener in favor of seeing the film for the first time alongside the audience. But only after the necessary amount of research, of course. Still, I’ll ‘fess up to having had a few – *cough* – “bad” blind dates. (And, yeah, dragging a few hundred other people along for a bumpy ride isn’t the coolest of moves, but sometimes you gotta fly by the seat of your pants to keep things fresh.)

On the Bowery (dir. by Lionel Rogosin, 1957).

Speaking of spanning 100 years: The good folks at Milestone Film & Video have a library of titles that go from 1908 to the present. They have impeccable taste, and here have put their efforts into a newly restored print of a film that was nominated for an Oscar back in 1958. On the Bowery features incredible footage of New York’s skid row and caused a bit of a stir when it first came. Some critics didn’t care for how it mixed some scripted moments into its documentation of a very real place and its people. Here’s to hoping it creates a stir again: but this time for its invaluable worth in preserving the latter.

Sing, Cowboy, Sing (dir. by Dean Reed, 1981).

An East German spaghetti western about singing cowboys that – frankly – only has a few reviews (and not exactly favorable ones, at that)? What was I thinking? Well… Dean Reed might not ring any bells stateside, but as a musician he was bigger than Elvis… in Eastern Europe and South America. He made albums, starred in movies, had a television show, and was a real rabble-rouser known for protesting various U.S. policies of his time. Aside for his own film career (cut short when he died in 1986 at the age of 47, and under mysterious circumstances), there are three documentaries about him: American Rebel: The Dean Reed Story (1985), Dean Reed – Glamour und Protest (1993), and The Red Elvis (2007). There are two reasons for me to bring this film to my calendar. One: he has roots to this area (born in Denver, buried in Boulder). Two: another local film programmer (Joel Haertling, director of the Boulder Public LIbrary Cinema Series) urged me to bring it because he can only do 16mm and digital presentations, and the only way to screen this German film with subtitles is on a 35mm print from Deutsche Film. I told him that if he’d pay for the rental of the film I’d do it. Added bonus: it’s free!

The Woodmans (dir. by Scott Willis, 2011).

Here’s another film with a local-angle, but this time out the film in question gets much better reviews. The Woodmans got some very nice press at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, and Melissa Anderson, writing for The Village Voice, put it on her list of “5 Tribeca Film Festival Must-Sees.” The film looks at how George and Betty Woodman use art to deal with the death of their daughter, Francesca (also an artist and photographer). I’m not sure where George and Betty Woodman are now, but I know they used to teach and live in Boulder, and they still have many connections and friends to the area. Illustrating how small the world can be, my ex-wife was the subject of many of George Woodman’s photos.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (dir. by Jack Arnold, 1957).

Heck, yeahs! A personal favorite? Must be Sunday night! This amazing film never ceases to make me laugh, giggle, cringe, and gape slack-jawed with childish awe and wonder. I don’t even know how many times I’ve seen it, but it’s not enough. I’d always fantasized about being on the set to this film, with its oversized blocks of cheese and coffee cans – but watching it on the big screen is the closest I’ll get. And I’ll take it! Also: this is the ONLY 35mm print Universal has in their archive. (Thanks to Paul Ginsburg at Universal for trusting me with the print – we will take good care of it, I promise.)

Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie (dir. by Michelle Esrick, 2009).

I first learned about Wavy Gravy back when I was programming concerts for campus in the late eighties and I booked a band called The Vicious Hippies. At that time they were criss-crossing the country with Mr. Gravy as part of a 1988 “Nobody for President” tour. The film opened last month in San Francisco and also screened at the International Buddhist Film Festival – and here in Boulder we’ve still got a thriving community of both hippies and Buddhists, so this documentary about the ever cheerful counter-cultural icon who’s been at it for fifty years seemed like a good fit.

City of Life and Death (dir. by Chuan Lu, 2009).

Yin to Wavy Gravy’s Yang is this somber Chinese film that looks at the atrocities committed by the Japanese during the Rape of Nanking in 1937. I admit that it’ll be hard to pull people in to see a film whose main subject is mass murder and other war-related horrors, but my hope here is that readers of my program will also take a moment to read a few external reviews. If they do, they’ll quickly see that despite the disturbing subject matter this film is being hailed by many critics as a very accomplished movie that is gripping, moving, and profound.

Poetry (dir. Chang-dong Lee, 2011).

One of my favorite films to screen at the last Telluride Film Festival, this South Korean film by the director of Secret Sunshine is about a 65-year-old woman who finds out that her grandson was involved in the gang-rape of a girl who later killed herself. Adding to her grief is the onset of early stages of Alzheimer’s. Yeah, I know, I know… what kind of genius programmer am I to follow up a film about mass rape with yet another film that will subject my audience to the nasty topic of rape. Honestly? That’s probably a bit of a flub on my part. In my defense, Poetry isn’t so grim. In fact, it’s unpredictable and beautiful, and Korean actress Yoon Jung-hee is amazing to watch.

We Live in Public (dir. by Ondi Timoner, 2009).

This film by the director of DIG! made a big splash at Sundance and is already out on DVD. But when a poker buddy told me that he made the acquaintance of the director and floated out the idea of bringing her out, I jumped at the chance. With the help of another poker buddy (who controls the strings to the Lea and Nick Aronson Visiting Documentary Filmmakers Series) and one grant (from the Roser Visiting Artist Program) I can now fly Timoner out for a free event. Much like DIG!, which benefited from many years of footage that Timoner had slowly accumulated and which chronicles the very different outcomes of two bands, here she once again puts together an incredibly insightful film that benefits from her Zelig-like ability to have been smack-in-the-middle of craziness spanning several years, and with footage to back it all up. In this case it’s the various social experiments conducted by internet pioneer Josh Harris in the early nineties. As I recently wrote to the director: “WE LIVE IN PUBLIC really blew me away – I thought it was way better than THE SOCIAL NETWORK, especially in terms of its insights into how technologies morph our behavior.” No lie.

They Live (dir. by John Carpenter, 1988).

I’d like to make this the subject of a longer and separate post in the near future. Some people might squawk at my decision to drop this in on my Sunday night programming with it’s focus on magical black-and-white films, and I’m well aware that the film has many detractors who dismiss it as a bumbling bit of cheesyness, but I’m a genuinely big fan of what Carpenter did here. Although most of it is in color, the key sequences that really blow me away are the ones in black-and-white: when Roddy Piper dons the glasses that let him see the world for what it really is. I’m not the only one who finds this film interesting and worth revisiting; author Jonathan Lethem recently picked They Live as worthy of in-depth analysis (check out his entry into the Deep Focus series of film books by Soft Skull Press at softskull.com).

I Am (dir. by Tom Shadyac, 2010)

I read about this in The New Yorker (Nov. 15, 2010). The director behind Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and other films that have, collectively, grossed over a billion and a half dollars around the world decided to make a handmade documentary that cost “seventy-four million dollars less than his last comedy.” Unlike Roddy Piper, Shadyac didn’t stumble across sunglasses that suddenly revealed the world to him with sudden clarity . Instead, he stumbled off his bike and got a concussion. That accident caused him to look at the world differently. The result? He gave up his private jet, cell phone, and 17,000 square foot property in Pasadena. He now lives in a Malibu trailer park and is helping various charities. Have I seen this film? Nope. But I’m pretty sure it’ll be a great fit for Boulder. According to The New Yorker article, Shadyac tours “around the country – sometimes by bicycle – screening the film.” Hey! We’re all about bicyclists here in Boulder! Second only to Portland. Mr. Shadyak, we welcome you with open arms and a comprehensive map of local bike paths. Our microbrews aren’t too shabby either.

Brazil (dir. by Terry Gilliam, 1985)

The Angry Robot who signs off on my TCM checks once accused me of treating my film series as a personal Netflix queue – and he’s absolutely right. This programming choice is the most blatant example. Brazil is my all-time favorite film for several reasons. I just screened it two short years ago, so I’m not even giving the poor thing time to breathe. But here’s what happens: as I make new friends and they ask me what my favorite film is, I’ll reply “Brazil,” and then I’ll ask them if they’ve seen it. To my shock and horror, the answer is often “no.” Then they ask me to show it at my house since I have a nice digital projection system and a big screen. But unless it’s on Blu-Ray, I don’t want to do this. And why the heck is Brazil STILL not out on Blu-Ray? That’s not just appalling, it’s weird! Disaster Movie gets the Blu-Ray treatment but Brazil does not? This makes no sense. Anyway, yeah; I’m bringing this in specifically for a couple friends who need to see it on the big screen. Even so, it’d be optimistic to think we’ll have the theater to ourselves as Brazil always packs the auditorium with other fans who feel the same way as I do.

Having been the first person to import the European version of Brazil as a college student back in 1991 I feel a bizarre kinship to this film. Last year, at Sundance, I ran into Gary Meyer (of Landmark Theatres and Telluride Film Festival fame) and he told me something that was news to me: back in the early nineties he’d referred to me as “The Brazil Kid,” and the print that I’d imported (and which Landmark later borrowed for a national tour) was almost confiscated by the MPAA because it hadn’t been given a proper U.S. rating at that time. Meyer hid the print and, despite orders not to screen it, showed it at Landmark Theatres anyway, thus setting a new precedent allowing unrated films to be shown in chain theaters in the U.S. I’m sure there’s more to it than that but, hey, it was a long time ago, and why pop my bubble? I sleep better at night thinking I may have played a small role in helping unrated films get wider exhibition.

Bill Cunningham New York (dir. by Richard Press, 2010).

As an avid bicyclist with over a half-dozen bikes in my carport, it’s no surprise that I’d be happy to screen a film about the 80-year-old fashion photographer for The New York Times who still rides his bicycle throughout the streets of NYC taking pictures of everything. Funny, uplifting, and inspiring – here’s where I try to make up for all the bad mojo people put up with the previous week.

IFS CELEBRATES ITS 70TH ANNIVERSARY!

Yup, it’s a party. We’re not quite as old as Manoel de Oliveira, but we’re working on it. My plan is to have a couple of my favorite bands come out for a concert and add a whole bunch of other festivities for a big shebang. Of course, various films will also be screened… but the details are all still being worked out. I’d like to say that it’ll be a fundraiser, but the last time I threw a huge fundraiser with bands, circus freaks, movies, beer, etc., well… I seem to recall spending four thousand dollars and only netting two thou at the door. I’m really bad at making money, so it’s probably a good thing I’m programming a non-profit.

The American Astronaut (Cory McAbee, 2001).

I have, admittedly, lost track of how many times I’ve brought this film to my film series. But there’s no way I can screen a bunch of films with beautiful black-and-white cinematography and not include this sci-fi, western, and musical – it’s right up there with Brazil as one of my all time faves. Another reason for repeat screenings: we brought our own 35mm print, a new one – struck right from the lab. We first screened that new print last year, with Cory in attendance, but he was a bit unhappy with how the blacks came out. They seemed a bit washed out. So he told us he’d have another new print struck for us, one with deeper blacks. And that’s what we’ll screen tonight. Cory’s band, The Billy Nayer Show, also has a new album out and – hey! – wouldn’t it be great if they showed up the day before to be part of our 70th Anniversary Party? I’m crossing my fingers…

THIS WEEKEND YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

2011-01-13T15:39:00.008-07:00

Jerry Aronson took the pic above. That handsome devil to my right is director Derek Cianfrance. He and Joe Curtis (co-writer), Jim Helton (co-editor), and other folks hailing from hereabouts are currently making a splash with the film BLUE VALENTINE. It was one of the best films at Sundance last year, and if you buy a ticket to see it this weekend you're not just supporting one of our own, you're also helping push cinema away from its current shallows, obsessed with teen demographics, and upward toward something more adult, interesting, and intelligent.

Wide Release vs Platform Release

Big studio films usually enjoy a wide release with three to six thousand prints flooding the nation on the same weekend. Their fate is determined by their weekend grosses. Smaller films get specialized releases (aka: platform releases). This means a handful of prints are screened in certain key markets. BLUE VALENTINE, for example opened a couple weeks ago in four theaters in NYC, a few more in L.A. It did well there, so they struck more prints and now push it out a bit wider. BLUE VALENTINE opens this weekend in Colorado. I've already seen it, but plan to buy two tickets this weekend to help it gain momentum. Here's why you should too.

Authentic vs Phony

It's as clear as putting Jeff Bridges up against Matt Damon in TRUE GRIT - Jeff's character plays the authentic part with his boozy, blotched skin, straggly beard, stained clothes, and yellow teeth. Matt's mega-watt movie-star smile is not without reason as he's supposed to be a squeaky clean Texas Ranger - but it's a distraction nonetheless, one that reminds us we're watching a millionaire movie star. It's a great film, and lots of fun, but full of patented movie contrivances (ie: a person's foot being caught by a dangling root as they fall into a pit full of snakes). This kind of artifice is commonplace in movies. It's a testimony to our love of distractions , ones that take us away from the every day pitfalls of real life. Even so, for me Jeff Bridges' character was far more interesting than Matt Damon's character. Why? Everything about him seemed more authentic. Y'know: grittier.

I miss the "true grit" that American movies used to have. The late sixties and early seventies were full of great examples. Even the blockbusters back then, like THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) had a "man, that's what it's really like on the streets" kinda feel to 'em. Speaking of Gene Hackman, I have to add that a few years later he starred in another film with even more true grit: SCARECROW (1973) - which focused on an ex-con drifter and a homeless ex-sailor. The locations were real: Colorado gets a couple nods (Canon City and Denver), and so does Michigan, Detroit. You see parts of America there that don't normally get the time of day. Thinking about drifters takes my mind to MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) and FIVE EASY PIECES (1970) - also great examples of films infused with an authenticity for the battles of the human spirit, and both also show us places and times that we recognize as genuine. And then, of course, there are the films of John Cassavetes, which alone deserve their own essays and contemplations.

JAWS (1975) and STAR WARS (1977) ushered in the new model... and here we are still, swimming in tent-pole, big-studio films that get churned out like sausages at a factory. The cinematic marketplace is now a ruthless arena dictated by the box office and the reality is that we, the customers, make it or break it with the tickets we buy - and specifically the tickets we buy on the opening weekend.

Go!

So that's why I want to urge everyone reading this to go out there this weekend and buy a ticket to see BLUE VALENTINE. This is a film with true grit. It makes Jeff Bridges' so-called "true grit" look like a cardboard cutout on an old STAR TREK set. BLUE VALENTINE hearkens back to a time when filmmakers were interested in showing us the messy and harsh realities of what it means to be human. Now, granted, there are a lot of other movies out there that will be competing for your attention, like THE GREEN HORNET, TRON, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, etc. And I know some folks out there have been forewarned that BLUE VALENTINE is a harsh toke, and so they might ask themselves, well... what's the point of watching a relationship disintegrate before your eyes?

The point of THE GREEN HORNET will probably be "avoid explosions." The point of TRON will probably be that "3-D is kinda cool." The point of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS will probably be to "not get tied down." Not having seen any of these, I'm guessing here, and these are all good points. But I think BLUE VALENTINE has something to say about love and the nature of being human. Which is to say, the point will be evasive - but much more interesting. Especially as you will be in the hands of a passionate filmmaker who really cares about tapping into something genuine. It's a very personal film, one that deserves your support.

As I would like to see more films like this, I urge you to go out and buy a ticket to see it this weekend. If we do, we help make it. If we don't, we help break it. And we all sorta broke the whole damn contraption already when we fell too far in love with the big studio blockbusters of the mid-seventies. It's time to take back the marketplace from all the computer generated piffle that riddles the multiplex. Make a difference this weekend: buy a ticket to a film that looks into the human soul. It might even help the next person out there who wants "to keep it real." It'll pave the way.

BLUE VALENTINE opens this weekend at the locations below. We bring it to IFS again on March 5th with Derek in-person. I encourage you to see it BEFORE that - for all the aforementioned reasons - and then to come back and see it again for free and with fresh eyes after a couple months have rolled by.

- Pablo Kjolseth, IFS Director

BLUE VALENTINE's opening weekend can be caught at these theaters:

Highlands Ranch 24

Westminster Promenade

Century 16 - Boulder

Mayan Theatre

The Greenwood Village

IFS SPRING 2011 TO BE ONLINE JANUARY 1ST.

2010-11-22T14:40:00.003-07:00

SUNDANCE SHORTS, UNCLE BOONMEE, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE, and much, much more... all coming soon to the IFS. We are holders of the flame, providing "reel" celluloid, great films, and all at affordable prices! Thanks for supporting us and enjoy the holiday break. We look forward to entertaining you again in the Spring.

Tip of the hat to IFS regular Julia Joun for sending this our way!

2010-11-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/an-iranian-directors-impassioned-defense/?emc=eta1

Get Ready for PEEPING TOM!

2010-10-24T14:49:00.001-06:00

My TCM post this week takes a look at the film screening this Wednesday at IFS:

A nice 35mm print of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) is making the theatrical rounds thanks to Rialto Pictures. (Its next three screening engagements are in Boulder, San Diego, and Charlottesville.) Peeping Tom has interesting similarities to Aflred Hitchcock's Psycho. Both were released the same year and feature seemingly shy and timid protagonists with murderous issues. More importantly, both films show venerated directors working at the peak of their powers and delivering an artistic tour-de-force on that core subject that weds an audience to any film: voyeurism. There are also some very important differences. Psycho was shot in black-and-white with a budget of under one million dollars and reaped profits that skyrocketed to a worldwide gross beyond the $50 million mark. Peeping Tom had a similar production budget, but was shot in Powell's preferred color-saturated medium of Technicolor and was a financial disaster. Even worse, it dealt Powell's career a crippling blow. Both have now long been studied and revered as masterpieces, so what went wrong for Peeping Tom?

One theory is that Hitchcock was expected to deliver the macabre, whereas Powell (along with frequent collaborator Emeric Pressburger) was associated with accessible classics like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Black Narcissus (1947), and The Red Shoes (1948). It's a sad fact; most people don't like surprises. It reminds me of Adam Sandler fans who walked into Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002) and then stomped out in a confused rage worthy of Happy Gilmore. Another theory is that Peeping Tom pushed the topic of Scopophila uncomfortably into the foreground whereas Psycho alludes to it obliquely. Hitchcock's elaborate visual grammar makes it easy enough for any intellectual to dissect, but Psycho also delivers a murder mystery that can be enjoyed by crowds who don't want to get squeamishly self-conscious on the subject of their own pleasures in watching a person being murdered.

In Peeping Tom, Carl Boehm plays the part of Mark Lewis, a 16mm cameraman obsessed with capturing the essence of the moment when a person realizes they will die. A customized tripod holding the camera becomes the murder weapon, and a parabolic mirror is added for the benefit of the victim to witness their own murder. Phil Hardy nails it best (no pun intended) in his Overlook Film Encyclopedia for Horror:

The Chinese-box structure allows us to watch the image of a film-maker filmically penetrating the object of his desire while he, and we, watch her looking at her own image, unsettlingly splitting the audience's identification process as we - and he- are both in the position of aggressor and victim, at both ends of the sado-masochistic spectrum. To prevent any avenue of escape or defence, Powell also introduces subjective camera techniques for his soft-porn images, and later, when the police have discovered his victims, links Boehm's obsession with exactly the kind of images viewers seek in "normal" cinema: scenes showing attractive women, action, emotion, investigations, drama - although each is somehow turned back upon the audience, the porn model is revealed to be scarred, for example.

Peeping Tom's foregrounding of Scopophilia is precisely why it is even more relevant today than ever before. Never before in the history of mankind have so many people derived pleasure and/or cues for how to behave as they do today from a steady stream of visual stimuli. Be it airports, at the bar, on the TV, cellphone, laptop, or a passing digital monitor of any kind... we are all bombarded by visual images on a level hardly imagined by our predecessors. Ad folks call these "impressions." The average person today probably receives as many of these "impressions" in one week as people during the time of Psycho and Peeping Tom received in the fullness of a whole year. Ironically, rather than becoming more visually literate most of us have succumbed to either a surrendered fatigue or even a blissful acceptance.

Voyeurism has gone viral and continues to fascinate the most uncompromising cinematic intellects of our day (Michael Haneke's Funny Games comes immediately to mind), but Peeping Tom still towers over the many films that have tackled the subject. Lovingly crafted, criminally reviled in its time, it remains a prophetic power-house of insight into a dark corner of the human psyche that has grown exponentially in our current climate. Think of this country, traumatized by past events, with each person packing a camera in their cell phone, capturing images from Abu Ghraib on down to the most private act in a dorm room, and then posting it to a social network where everyone else can further poke and prod the subject to death (sometimes quite literally, as in the case of Tyler Clementi). We are a nation of Peeping Toms, but unlike Mr. Lewis, only a small minority care to see the reflection.

For more on Peeping Tom, click on the TCM essay below by Felicia Feaster:

http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article.jsp?cid=102783&mainArticleId=102771

WestWord talks with the animator behind HOWL

2010-10-21T00:24:00.003-06:00

Susan Froyd (WestWord) snagged an interview with New Yorker cover artist and HOWL animator Eric Drooker. Read the article by clicking on the link below:

http://blogs.westword.com/showandtell/2010/10/artist_eric_drooker_on_animating_allen_ginsbergs_howl_for_a_new_film.php?page=2

HOWL screens tonight and tomorrow at 7pm & 9pm.

PULL MY DAISY - a rare, short 16mm film, starring a young Allen Ginsberg, will precede the 7pm show at 6:30, and follow after the 9pm show.

Notes from the IFS Desk - 10/15/10

2010-10-20T15:31:00.003-06:00

The Boulder Valley Media Alliance tagged along on a recent trip to KGNU, and they put together this clip that is less than four-minutes-long. You can see it here:

http://www.bv22.org/archive?vid=226

Sunday: IFSfan Event #3 w/ special guest Michael Aisner

2010-10-14T14:38:00.003-06:00

Muenzinger Auditorium, Sunday, Oct. 17th, at 7pm only: Michael Aisner & Mrs. Carpenter.

Crawling terror -- 100 feet high, destroys everything in its path...

---- the dramatic synopsis of TARANTULA!!

The most maligned creature in all the world -- the sweet tarantula has been the victim of a cruel and insidious Hollywood, who seized on the lovable, harmless, hairy, fanged spider as some evil, dastardly treacherous wretch, dripping with poison and an insatiable thirst for voluptuous bombshells. What? This is not Godzilla or Rodan, it's just an overgrown, comely arachnid that is profoundly misunderstood! What is this about -- this absurd portrayal of these delights of the den. Well it's unfair!! And this movie, this Hollywood movie was where it started -- right there in 1955!!! Do not go to this!! It's not fair to tarantulas and will just make you scared, and laugh and scared and laugh. It's JUST NOT RIGHT!!

Michael Aisner, longtime Boulder tarantula lover will share blissful moments with his 8-legged concubine Miss Carpenter, the most beautiful tarantula in all the world. And she is so excited to honor the 33 miners of Chile, her home country!! You can hold and kiss her but leave before the movie starts. It's JUST NOT FAIR to her kind!!

SUSPIRIA - 8pm - 10/10/10

2010-10-10T14:15:00.001-06:00

"Witches always fascinated me; I don't believe in the devil, in the movies he always makes me laugh... What's more, Suspiria is heavily influenced by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; in an early draft I even planned to have the action take place in a child's school where the witches were teachers who tortured the children." - Dario Argento

Dario Argento used to really turn my crank and I sought him out everywhere. In the the late 1980's it was hard to be a completest - but I tried. I'd watch him on VHS, bootlegs, laser-discs, (later DVD's), plus - of course - the occasional film screenings. Mostly, later, it was in my basement on laser-disc (I'm dating myself - but that's the way it was). Either way, back then Argento delivered the goods. His films were synonymous with both the visceral and the cerebral. He'd show a guy losing his teeth as he face-planted onto a glass table from many different angles, but he'd also construct a mystery on par with something I always imagined Edgar Allan Poe would get a kick out of as he revealed a trump card in the third act that could still shock the audience. And then there was the music: wasn't it always The Goblins cranked up to 11?

A few years ago I made a trek to Denver to watch a theatrical screening of Mother of Tears (2007). This final installment of the Three Mothers trilogy was (finally!) being brought to the screen by Argento and featured his daughter, Asia, in a prominent role. I have to admit to enjoying it on a distinctly campy level. But I also felt like a silly adult who dropped money to squeeze into an amusement park ride meant for teenagers. I was also left wondering what had changed - the medium or the subject? That is to say: was Argento still being Argento while I, his viewer, had grown older and jaded? Either way, Mother of Tears struck me as an overwrought mess with too many jaw-droppingly stupid head-slappers. Sure, some guilty-pleasure moments, but overall I was left feeling like a middle-aged adult who was still trick-or-treating despite not even enjoying the candy any more. It was enough to make me question my original fascination with Argento. Had my younger self been too easily charmed by the visceral, colorful, and aggressively surreal trappings of some other culture?

Tonight I will revisit that question by watching what many people agree is one of Argento's finest moments with Suspiria (1977). Suspiria is the first part of his Three Mothers trilogy, with Inferno (1980) being the second. What's on tap is this: a 35mm imported print from the U.K. whose colors are still strong - and this is important because, among other things, while Argento shot the film on Eastman Color Kodak he then printed it with one of the last remaining 3-strip Technicolor processors around. Maitland McDonagh gets even more specific in her book Broken Mirrors / Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Argento.

The consistency of Suspiria's colour stratagey, in which the riotous dayglo colours embody the hysterical, hypersensitive world of witchcraft and sorcery, is truly marvelous; it was both rigorously planned and meticulously executed. Suspira wasn't just designed and lit according to a complicated visual scheme, but was also manipulated in the laboratory to achieve its final extreme effect. "With (Director of Photography Luciano) Tovoli, we used the same procedures as they did in the fifties with Technicolor, with very vivid colours," Argento remarked. "It's a matter of using three film matrixes for the three base colours: red, green, and blue, and then superimposing them while each time stressing the colour you want to have stand out. Kodak didn't even have more than a few thousand meters of this type of stock." The success of their endeavour is evident in virtually every frame of Suspiria.

Then there's that cranked up crazy music. Not only did Argento help compose The Goblins score, he also blasted the track on the set to rattle his actors. Also, it was to have starred his girlfriend at the time, Daria Nicoladi, who both co-wrote it and was inspired by stories of her grandmother who fled a German educational institute because of the supposed witchcraft that was being performed there. The lead role was even written for Nocoladi, but for marketing reasons the studio insisted on an American actress.

McDonagh discusses Argento's inspiration behind the Three Mothers trilogy as coming "not from authentic folklore, but rather from a passage in a short essay by Thomas De Quincey, best known as the author of the autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium Eater." On several occasions McDonagh points to Argento's surreal excesses as tapping into the grammar and iconography of our unconscious: "Suspiria and Inferno, with their pervasive images of fire and water conflated into an apocalyptic mandala, beg discussion in terms of Jungian archetypes." Given the source material used from De Quincey, this makes total sense due to the many hallucinatory and feverish dreams that De Quincey had that were fueled by his opium addiction. McDonagh adds these important notes about De Quincey:

University-educated, bookish as a child, and morbidly romantic as an adult, he had visions of heaven and hell, dreams of classical deities and wholly self-generated wraiths. One such dream (or rather, literary construct that may have been inspired by an actual dream; it's far too elegantly coherent to be the direct transcription of some welling up of subconscious concerns) is recounted in De Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths), a collection of essays intended as a follow-up to the Confessions. Its title is Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, and it contains the essential notions that underlie Suspiria and Inferno and that will equally shape the third film - tentatively referred to as Mother of Tears - yet to be made."

McDonagh's book came out in 1991 - a full 16 years before Argento finally put out his third installment to the trilogy. As I wondered how McDonagh reacted to Mother of Tears, I flipped around in his essay and found an interesting section where she notes that although Suspiria "proved to be Argento's greatest ever box office success in the United States," this was to be despite some very scathing reviews. Many critics harped on it for not making sense. McDonagh argues that "Well, no it doesn't precisely make sense... not in any conventional way, but then neither does the story of Little Red Riding Hood; what kind of a stupid little girl can't tell her grandmother from a great hairy wolf? Does the situation call for complicated solutions involving associative mental disorders? No. That isn't the point."

Since one of my complaints with Mother of Tears was that it made no sense, I caught myself wondering if perhaps I'd been too harsh. Was I missing the point? Now I'm doubly interested in how McDonagh reacted to Argento's last installment of the Three Mothers and what I find is a June 2008 quote on Film Journal.com with the following:

Maitland McDonagh hated the film, describing it as "sadly lacking in the baroque atmosphere and visual aesthetic that elevated Argento above the horror hacks—it's flatly lit, indifferently staged, coarsely violent and brutally straightforward. The English-language dubbing is the final indignity: even the voices are ugly."

Phew! That gives me the succor to believe that my original fascinations with Argento were not simply the bong-water enchantments of an immature mind. I have a feeling tonight's screening will still grab me from the grave of yesteryear. There does exist, of course, the chance that I have outgrown my youthful appreciations for widescreen compositions with startlingly vibrant colors that visually scream alongside jangly electronic music at every impending death... but I doubt it. Especially during this month, when so many boogeyman come back to the fore and scare up my inner-child. Speaking of Three Mothers and the boogeymen, let's not forget that three of our most infamous American slashers - Michael Myers from Halloween, Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street - all owe a tip of their hat (or mask, or glove) to various Italian horrors of the sixties and seventies, but that's conversational fodder for a future talk around the campfire. Tonight belongs to the witches.

Become an IFSfan for off-the-radar special events.

2010-09-14T11:20:00.003-06:00

Click on IFSfan.com to sign up for special email alerts that only go out to IFSfans. These will be private screenings for passionate cinephiles who would like to socialize before and/or after select screenings that will happen once a month or so.

Claude Chabrol & Kevn McCarthy - R.I.P.

2010-09-14T11:10:00.003-06:00

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/sep/13/entertainment-news-claude-chabrol-and-kevin-mccart/

RED RIDING X 3

2010-09-11T12:20:00.001-06:00

Although the RED RIDING trilogy is available on DVD, the IFS will screen it three weekends in a row - starting tonight at 6pm - so that folks can experience it on 35MM film and on the big screen. It was a distinct highlight at last year's Telluride Film Festival, and we wanted to share that experience with Boulder audiences by replicating the program so that you can choose to watch them back-to-back, or separate them out over the weekends.

http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/09/06/36th-telluride-film-festival/

RIP Bruno S.

2010-08-12T16:14:00.002-06:00

Bruno S. passed away yesterday, so we're dedicating our very first IFS screening for the FALL to him: Herzog's THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER.

This will be a 35mm print from NYer that was only struck four years ago! I was told it's still in great shape and hasn't gotten too much wear-and-...tear. it screens Wednesday, Sep. 8th, at IFS.

Although we're still hammering away at some of the content, the schedule of films is now up and posted on our regular website.

For more on Bruno, read below:

http://thethoughtexperiment.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/rip-bruno-schleinstein-bruno-s/

Sunday, Aug. 8th, 2010

2010-08-08T15:57:00.004-06:00

FALL 2010 IFS SCHEDULE TO BE POSTED VERY SOON!

If you'd like to kill some time in the meanwhile, IFS director Pablo Kjolseth talks about a close encounter of the cow kind (and some related films) in today's TCM post:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2010/08/08/cowmageddon/#more-25591

Great picture of THE ISIS just down from THE BOULDER THEATER, back in the day...

2010-05-18T12:04:00.003-06:00

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_15094010?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com#axzz0oIyH3zKe

This post goes out with our Belcourt Theater (Nashville) friends in mind.

2010-05-04T11:50:00.004-06:00

Dear Mr. Kaufman,

I'm writing to apologize, for I feel partly to blame for what has happened to The Daily Camera. You see, I'm one of the people who, when asked why I read The Camera, reply by saying that it's "for the local news." I have a feeling it's a common reply. And I have a feeling it's why The Camera continues to give all local news an inordinate monopoly of the front page.

This is a mistake that needs to be rectified. Please understand that many of your readers say we read The Camera for the local news simply because we're too embarrassed to say we read The Camera for real news. Today's edition exemplifies it to the extreme: while Nashville drowns with almost 30 dead this story gets relegated to a brief snippet on p. 3. Meanwhile, the front page is awash with stories about parking ticket quotas and excuses that students give for missing exams.

Mr. Kaufman, with all due respect, please reconsider this insanity.

Please read what a friend of mine from Nashville posted via Facebook, and give serious thought to the part you play in shaping the priorities of the community you serve:

Non-Nashvillians: please spread the word in case everyone doesn't grasp the severity of what's going on in Nashville. Temporary shelters are at capacity, missing people are unaccounted for, many homes are under water, there is a water conservation emergency, much of Nashville's economic base is threatened by flood damage. Text 'REDCROSS' to 90999 to donate $10 to disaster relief.

On a closing note, let me add that I've been reading The Camera for over thirty years and I plan to continue, but I do so with the hope that some day I can tell people that I read it "for the news" and not just "the local news."

With hope for a better tomorrow,

Pablo Kjolseth

His response:

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Kevin Kaufman wrote:

Mr. Kjolseth:

Thanks for your note and suggestions.

The Camera doesn't focus the vast majority of its resources and space to local news based only on readers telling us that's what is important to them in a local newspaper and that that's why they read us.

Indeed, the highest interest among readers long has been local news, which of course we pay attention to.

However, given the wealth of news sources in these days of hundreds of cable TV news channels, countless news websites, headlines transmitted via cell phone, the access via smart phones, and well, frankly local news is the one thing local readers cannot get anywhere else. It's what can make the Camera unique and add value to it.

National and world news, such as the flooding in Tenn., is everywhere -- on every TV news program, all over the Internet, on our cell and smart phones. And it's incredibly fresh as those mediums can carry breaking news and developments as they are happening.

Frankly -- and in some measure, unfortunately -- the Camera could pick up the latest AP story, but it wouldn't tell readers anything they hadn't seen on the Internet, etc. And, to be honest, by the time we get the story, print it and deliver the paper to readers, the information in that story is at least 12 hours old ... many new developments in the story likely happened within that timeframe.

So, while we would love to have the robust national and international news report we carried a decade ago, we know that we cannot compete on that news with the hundreds -- thousands really -- other news sources covering that news in real time. We simply are not competitive that way.
As a result, we focus on what news we can cover locally that will keep us unique and of value to readers.

Does that make sense?
... kk

Hi, Kevin -

Thank you very much for the speedy reply.

I fully understand that newspapers face a whole new array of challenges, competition, and obstacles based on the variety of new media that are instantaneous, visual, and visceral - and how getting scooped that way can undermine your coverage of the same event.

Still... I urge you to consider that putting important national news on the front page, even if outdated, does two things: it prioritizes awareness on issues of broader importance AND will help with the prestige of your paper. A side-bar on the front-page that provides readers with an index of all the local events, covered in-depth and elsewhere within the pages of The Camera, would still give important front-page real-estate to those unique local stories that give you an edge over competing news-sources here in Boulder County.

I am an average reader and, yes, I do tap into the myriad of sources you list for cutting-edge "as-it-happens" coverage, but I still start every day by reading the newspaper over breakfast - and during that time when I'm reading the paper I'm ready, indeed eager, to go for more "in depth" coverage than was gleaned from previous sound-bites and accompanying visuals provided by the computer or television.

Ultimately, I appreciate the mounting challenges faced by the "old media." And I definitely appreciate you taking the time to write me a thoughtful, and detailed, reply. But I still want to cast my voice, and vote, toward the idea of having more heavy-hitting national news on the front page. If nothing else, it sets the tone for elevated debate within our community, and it also helps our citizens prioritize the problems that face us, collectively, as a nation.

Thank you, again, for your time.

Best,
pk

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO returns!!

2010-04-07T08:32:00.002-06:00

We hate to turn people away, so.... back by popular demand: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

Bonus screenings are:

Wednesday, April 21, 7pm only
Thursday, April 22, 7pm only
Friday, April 23, 7pm only

As always they will be shown in the Muenzinger auditorium on the CU Boulder campus.

More about the free Easter Sunday screening of AGUIRRE

2010-04-04T12:53:00.002-06:00

http://moviemorlocks.com/2010/04/04/aguirre-the-choice-of-ebert/#more-21010

CLOVERFIELD Wednesday, April 7th at 8pm only

2010-03-30T22:44:00.002-06:00

Our special guest for the last ALIEN'S ATTACK: SCI-FI SIX-PACK series is a go. We had a bit of a freight when T.J. Miller was taken in for a brain operation and they removed a golf-ball sized chunk of his grey matter, but he's back on his feet and raring to go: CLOVERFIELD's going to have a fun and triumphant Q&A on Wednesday, April 7th at 8pm only

AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD Sunday, April 4th at 4PM and 7PM

2010-03-30T22:42:00.002-06:00

It's official! As of today I can now say, with authority, that we're getting a 35mm print of AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD straight from Herzog's office in Germany. Why is this import such a big deal? Because it's going to be the original - AND ONLY - English 35mm print in existence. Most of the prints people have seen of AGUIRRE were in German with English subtitles, but what most people don't know is that the German was done later in post-synchronization. And Kinski wouldn't do the the dubs because he wanted more money! So not only do you get to see this film (shot with the 35mm camera that Herzog stole from his film school) on the big screen, you get to actually hear it straight from the mouth of madness.

The screenings are Sunday, April 4 at 4pm and 7pm only. FREE! These are the only un-interrupted screenings that will take place before the CWA breaks it down as part of Ebert's week-long "cinema interruptus." Herzog will be there Monday and Tuesday only! This is truly a once-in-lifetime event not to be missed.

THE ROOM, April 1st at 10PM

2010-03-30T22:33:00.003-06:00

An April Fool's Day bonus: Jacob is presenting the Boulder premiere of THE ROOM on 35mm this Thursday at 10pm in Muenzinger Auditorium (after the 7pm THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO screening - which, btw, is another Boulder premiere - and of a top-selling book). He's promised to add a couple treats beforehand too.

Interview with STRONGMAN director Zachary Levy

2010-03-28T15:32:00.002-06:00

We've added a bonus show to the IFS! On Saturday, April 24th, at 7pm, come check out an acclaimed documentary, with director present for intro and Q&A. I caught up with Zachary while in Austin last week at SXSW, you can read more here:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2010/03/28/a-brief-interview-with-strongman-director-zachary-levy/#more-20663

Oscar Nominated Shorts February 20th at IFS

2010-02-05T08:28:00.002-07:00

Launching their Website and Facebook today! Find more information at http://www.theoscarshorts.com/

2010 Oscar Shorts – Animated Program – total running time 68 min.

“French Roast” Fabrice O. Joubert (French, 8 min.)
“Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty” Nicky Phelan and Darragh O’Connell (English, 6 min.)
“The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” Javier Recio Gracia (Non-dialogue, 8 min.)
“Logorama” Nicolas Schmerkin (English, 17 min.)
“A Matter of Loaf and Death” Nick Park (English, 29 min.)

2010 Oscar Shorts – Live Action Program – total running time 92 min.

“The Door” Juanita Wilson and James Flynn (Russian, 17 min.)
“Instead of Abracadabra” Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellström (Swedish, 18 min.)
“Kavi” Gregg Helvey (Hindi, 19 min.)
“Miracle Fish” Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey (English, 18 min.)
“The New Tenants” Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson (English, 20 min.)

Notes from Sundance

2010-01-24T12:22:00.001-07:00

http://moviemorlocks.com/2010/01/24/sundance-2010-2/#more-18499

New Semester

2010-01-15T13:15:00.001-07:00

Check out all of the great films that are coming to IFS this semester! There are some great movies that you won't see any where else in Boulder and some that you may have missed at the movie theatre. Our first showing is ONG BAK 2 on Wednesday, January 27. Come on by Muenzinger Auditorium and see some priceless films. You can check them all out at http://internationalfilmseries.com/schedule.php.

End of Our Fall 2009 Series

2009-11-13T09:50:00.002-07:00

This week is the end of our fall series. The Starz Denver Film Festival is here this weekend, so check out these original films. Please come back to join us in the Spring for a whole new set of great films!

SDFF in Boulder! Nov 13-15

2009-11-06T09:17:00.005-07:00

Friday, November 13th

7:00 PM FILM IST. A GIRL & A GUN

A battle of the sexes told with myth and magic: Gustav Deutsch's erotically charged epic,crafted from extraordinary archive footage. (93 min)

9:30 PM LEAVES OF GRASS

"One Edward Norton performance is often enough reason to see a movie, so it comes as no surprise that the prospect of two--he plays twins--is very much the main attraction, and reward" of this film says Variety. (105 min)

Saturday, November 14th

7:00 PM BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS

Werner Herzog and Nicholas Cage revisit Abel Ferrara's 1992 film, that "in its own way every bit as sincerely, doggedly demented as its ostensible source." (121 min)

9:30 PM ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLONDE HAIR GIRL

"De Oliveira celebrates his hndredth birhday with a blithe shaggy dog story that shows his storytelling at its simplest and most pleasurable." -Screen Daily (64 min)

Sunday, November 15th

7:00 PM BEST WORST MOVIE

"Strangely moving...insightful...consistently funny and smart about celebrity, vanity and bad movies -and what makes them lovable." -Variety (93 min)

9:30 PM TROLL 2

"Some filmes are so bad they're great. TROLL 2 is so bad that it's actally a life chaanging experience." -Horrorwwatch.com (95 min)

Daily Camera Letter to the Editor 11/05/09

2009-11-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

When the Daily Camera contacted me for my opinion on the new art house theater I was away from my desk promoting my series on the radio and missed my chance to remind people about the International Film Series. The resulting article states that “Boulder has not had an art house presence since Landmark Theaters closed its Crossroads Cinema on Pearl Street in 2007.” Yikes! The IFS brings over a hundred international and independent films to Boulder every year, along with many special events. We are sometimes overlooked due to our location on campus, but we do our best to reward cinephiles with affordable and eclectic programming. We’ll even pay for your parking if you buy a punch card. People who patronize us have had a chance to see Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens), Werner Herzog (Aguirre, the Wrath of God), Terry Jones (Life of Brian), John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), and many other filmmakers in-person (often for free). We’ve also been doing this since 1941; that’s not just a good art house presence, that's a singular track-record with bragging rights as Boulder's first art-house series - and still kicking.

Back to the new Dairy Center theater: It can only help to have another place showing quality foreign and independent films in the community. These films desperately need word-of-mouth and buzz which my calendar program can’t sustain since we only show films for a day (or sometimes two). On our Fall program alone we brought over 40 premieres to the Boulder area and only two non-premieres that had already shown at CineMark. Guess which film has done the best business so far? The one that had already shown at CineMark. It just goes to show that awareness is key, and the more the merrier. So welcome aboard!

Pablo Kjolseth

IFS Director

A short local view on the upcoming I CAN SEE YOU

2009-10-27T09:45:00.000-06:00

http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/10/25/i-can-see-you/#more-15417

Happy Halloween Week!!

2009-10-23T09:36:00.002-06:00

This week is filled with great movies to get in the holiday spirit! For great specials this week tweet @boulderifs halloween.

Film Festival Fundraiser!

2009-10-16T09:32:00.002-06:00

AFRICAID’S

2009 Kisa Film Festival

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Screenings at 4:00 p.m. and 6:15 p.m.

Starz Film Center at the Tivoli

900 Auraria Parkway, Denver, Colorado

Admission is free, and parking in the Tivoli Student Union surface lot will be validated in the box office.

African Items, Books & Jewelry **** Coffee and Dessert

AfricAid will be screening several short films created by a number of Coloradans about their connections to, experiences, and work in Africa, as well as other African films. Come join us for some of the evening or for all of it, and share in the experience of personal digital storytelling and African filmmaking. We look forward to spending the evening together watching great films and supporting girls’education in Africa through the Kisa Project. For more information about the festival program, visit www.africaid.com.

The Kisa Project is an innovative AfricAid initiative that will directly link families and groups in the U.S. with some of Africa’s brightest young women – our Kisa scholars. American families and groups will raise funds for a Kisa Project scholarship, which will provide these young women with a school scholarship, entrance into a two-year leadership program, and individualized mentorship. During this period, the American sponsors will develop a meaningful relationship and forge strong bonds with their Kisa scholar, sharing in the joys and challenges of one another’s life stories through an interactive website. Upon graduation, these talented young women will return to their home communities to implement vital community projects and provide life-skills mentoring to other young women. In this way, the Kisa Project helps to uplift and support the next generation of leaders across Africa – and within your own community.

NO IMPACT MAN (Again)

2009-10-09T15:16:00.000-06:00

As our screening of NO IMPACT MAN was so heavily impacted by technical problems we are going to show it again on:

Sunday, October 11 at 7pm only.
Sunday, October 18 at 7pm only.

Marina Goldovskaya

2009-10-07T15:19:00.008-06:00

Marina Goldovskaya, world-famous award-winning Russian documentary filmmaker, professor (UCLA) presents:

Sunday, October 25, 3-6 pm, HUMANITIES 125

THE HOUSE ON ARBAT STREET, 1993, 59 min
The story of the people who lived in the House on Arbat Street in Moscow is the story of Russia in the 20th

century. Built in the early 1900s, this grand apartment building at first was a residence of rich and privileged families. Then, after the Revolution of 1917, it was turned into a collective housing unit. People from very different backgrounds were brought in and told to live together. Through historical footage and the reminiscences of former residents, some now 99 years old, the incredible story of the House on Arbat Street comes alive.

THE SHATTERED MIRROR, 1992, 60 min
This

film is an extraordinary personal journey through ordinary Russian life at a time of great change. The filmmaker uses her camera and familiarity with Russian society to present an intimate and piercing view of her fellow citizens and her country. At a fast-moving pace, we meet her friends and acquaintances, from the simple laborer to a newly rich entrepreneur. The filmmaker turns the camera on her own life as well, providing deeply personal revelations, through scenes of her own wedding and of her mother's death.

Monday, October 26, 3-5:30pm, ALTAS 102

A TASTE OF FREEDOM, 1991, 46 min. The film is a unique glimpse into the spring of 1990, a time of amazing change and urgency as Russia took its first steps after the fall of a 75-year old totalitarian regime. At the heart of it is a young family of journalists – Sasha Politkovsky (a prominent TV anchor), his wife Anna (who was destined to become a journalist of truly international fame for her coverage of the Chechnyan conflict and contemporary Russian issues) and their children.

THREE SONGS ABOUT MOTHERLAND, 2008, 39 min. This film gives a frank and vibrant picture of Russia today by focusing on its three different cities. In the Far East, in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, older Russian citizens cling to the glorious promises of the Soviet Industrialization, and express disappointment at its ultimate failure. Then, Moscow bids farewell to Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless journalist and human rights activist who was assassinated for her political activity amid the chaotic power struggles of the post-Soviet nation. Finally, residents of Khanty-Mansijsk, one of the centers of Siberia’s budding oil industry, speak about their beloved fairy tale-like town, where the communist dream has been swept away by new aspirations for a prosperous future.

All screenings are free and open to the public

THE EVENT IS SPONSORED BY THE GCAH, DEPARTMENTS OF GSLL AND FILM STUDIES, AND THE SLAVIC DISCUSSION GROUP

PARKING SNAFU

2009-09-29T14:03:00.003-06:00

Please disregard parking information on our printed schedule and from previous posts. It now appears that the only "FREE AFTER 5PM" lots that we can depend on are 396, 436, and 308.

Please accept our apologies and know that we are currently in talks with people at Parking Management to try to figure out what is going on and to see if we can come up with a creative solution for the problems that are plaguing our customers.

A look back at STINGRAY SAM.

2009-09-27T13:55:00.002-06:00

http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/09/27/science-fiction-westerns-music-fun/#more-14667

Westword reviews THE ESCAPIST.

2009-09-23T22:17:00.000-06:00

See link below:

http://www.westword.com/2009-09-24/film/the-escapist-university-of-colorado-international-film-series

Another FREE film Event!

2009-09-23T12:39:00.002-06:00

As part of ARTS AND CULTURE WEEK the IFS is showing two free films this Sunday. One is THE WINDMILL MOVIE in Muenzinger Auditorium at 7pm, the other one is LAILA'S BIRTHDAY in ATLAS 102 - also at 7pm. And now: this just in - ANOTHER free film event: On Tuesday, October 6th, director Adoor Gopalakrishnan will present his award-winning film RAT TRAP.

More information for all of these films has recently been uploaded to our website.

2009 Art House Project Shorts Program (Oct. 21)

2009-09-18T09:21:00.017-06:00

NEXT FLOOR - During an opulent and luxurious banquet, complete with hordes of servers and valets, 11 pampered guests participate in what appears to be ritualistic gastronomic carnage. (Denis Villeneuve, Canada, 12min)

JOHN AND KAREN - John the polar bear apologizes to Karen the penguin after an argument. (Matthew Walker, UK, 4min, Animated)

ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS FROM NEBULA-5 – “Almost” everybody is going to die very soon. (Chema Garcia Ibarra, Spain, 7min)

LOVE YOU MORE – Two teenagers are drawn together by the Buzzcocks' single 'Love You More' in the summer of 1978. (Sam Taylor-Wood, UK, 15min)

OMELETTE - While a woman makes an omelette, we learn how difficult it is to make ends meet. (Nadejda Koseva Bulgaria, 5min)

I AM SO PROUD OF YOU - Dark family secrets cast a shadow over Bill's recovery in this second chapter to the prize-winning short Everything Will Be OK. (Don Hertzfeldt, USA, 22min, Animated)

STEEL HOMES - Self-storage units are windows into human histories: their discarded objects and dust-covered furniture are inscribed with past dreams, secret hopes, and lives we cannot let go of. (Eva Weber, UK, 10min)

COUNTERTRANSFERENCE - An awkward woman with assertiveness issues finds her problems multiplied in therapy(Madeleine Olnek, USA, 16min)

WESTERN SPAGHETTI - Everyday objects become delicious ingredients as we learn how to cook spaghetti through stop-motion photography. (Sarah Phelps, USA, 2min)

SHORT TERM 12 - A film about kids and the grown-ups who hit them. (Destin Daniel Cretton, USA, 22min) - Recipient of the 2009 Jury Prize in U.S. Short Filmmaking

STINGRAY SAM

2009-09-18T09:12:00.002-06:00

Just a quick note to let people know I'm on my way to the airport to pick up Cory McAbee and his latest film: STINGRAY SAM - which he's bringing with him as carry-on luggage. Last night his film premiered in San Francisco, and he's got a bunch of other international destinations yet to hit. We feel blessed to get him on the early part of the launch!

I saw STINGRAY SAM at the last Sundance Film Festival and out of thirty or so films screened there it was definitely one of my favorites. Cory had just finished it with only a few days to go before the festival started and it's a testimony to his creativity that Sundance would make it part of their festival line-up without having a chance to pre-screen it.

What I saw at Sundance was a digital projection. What YOU will see tonight is on 35mm film! They transferred it just days ago...

To add to the magic we're making it a double-feature and adding a VIRGIN film print of AMERICAN ASTRONAUT.

That's all happening tonight at 7pm in Muenzinger.

See you there!

More highlights from the recent Telluride Film Festival.

2009-09-13T13:23:00.002-06:00

http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/09/13/highlights-from-the-telluride-film-festival/#more-14246

Telluride Film Festival update

2009-09-06T22:03:00.002-06:00

http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/09/06/36th-telluride-film-festival/#more-14076

CEC ArtsLink NYC in collaboration with GSLL Department at CU-Boulder PRESENT:

2009-09-04T10:53:00.004-06:00

New short films by 4 award-winning Russian filmmakers
who were selected for their cinematic accomplishments in a competitive nomination process.

a free public screening on Wednesday, September 9th, 5-7:50pm in HUMN 150

The Last Day of I.S. Bulkin (2009, 13 minutes, dir. Aleksey Andrianov) What happens when death comes knocking…
Official Selection at various Russian film festivals.

Field, Clowns, Apple… (2008, 13 minutes, dir. Shota Gamisoniya) Dreamscape and reality meet in this surrealist and sweeping single shot film. Official selection, Rotterdam, Trieste, and Bolzano Film Festivals. Winner of the Film Critic’s Guild Prize at the Festival of Debut Film at the Moscow Museum of Cinema.

Resurrection (2008, 29 minutes, Petr Zebelin) A Tarantino-esque look at Saint Petersburg’s dark underbelly.
Official selection, 2008 Open Cinema International Film Festival (Saint Petersburg).

Sanatorium (2008, 19 minutes, dir. Natalya Govorina) It happens to all of us sooner or later… a film based on the works of Russian literary figures Venedikt Erofeev and Sasha Sokolov. Named Best Narrative Film at 2008 Moscow Short Film Festival.

Aleksei Andriyanov is a filmmaker from Moscow. Born in 1976, he holds a degree in Screenwriting from the Gerasimov Institute (VGIK), and a degree in Film Directing from Moscow’s Higher Courses of Screenwriting and Directing. His cinematography credits include Katya Grokhovskaya and Peter Stepin’s feature length film The Man of No Return (Chelovek bezvozvratnyy, 2006), and numerous promotional advertisements for major clients from Coca Cola to Panasonic. He has directed three short films, including The Last Day of I.S. Bulkin (2009) and Fun Time, which was included in the 2007 Filminute Festival (London).

Shota Gamisoniya is an actor and filmmaker living in Moscow. He was born in 1981 in Sukhumi, a city on the coast of the Black Sea in a politically volatile region of Georgia. He has lived in Moscow since 1993. His first academic pursuit was acting: he graduated from the Vakhtangov Theatre Institute in 2003, and went on to work for two years with Yuri Lubimov’s Taganka Theater. In 2007 he began a Master’s degree in Filmmaking, graduating in 2008 with his short film Field, Clowns, Apple (2008) as a final project. The film received the Film Critic’s Guild Award at the Moscow Festival of Debut Films, and was an official selection at numerous European festivals including Rotterdam, Trieste, and Bolzano. He is currently at work on his next film, with production beginning in August of 2009.

Natalya Govorina, a filmmaker, was born in 1982 in the city of Tomsk in Siberia. As a college student, she studied Philosophy at Tomsk State University and worked for the Russian television program “Rush Hour.” She went on to study at the Internews School of Film and Television in Moscow, and in 2009 she graduated from the Gerasimov Institute (VGIK), Russia’s top film school, with a degree in Film Directing. Her student films, including The Investigative Experiment (Sledstvennyy Eksperiment, 2006), Jazz (2007), and Sanatorium (Zdravnitsa, 2008) have been screened and received awards at Russian and international film festivals.

Pyotr Zabelin is an actor and filmmaker. He was born in 1978 in Leningrad. He studied Acting for Theater and Film at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Theater Arts and received a degree in Film Directing from the Saint Petersburg University of Culture and the Arts. He also studied Theory and Practice of Media Arts at the Pro Arte Institute of Contemporary Arts. He is the founder and organizer of an independent movement, The Society of Creative Adventurer Radicals (S.T.A.R.). He has worked as an actor in various Saint Petersburg theaters and his films have been screened and won awards at Russian and international film festivals. Currently he is working on a full length independent film.

DATE CHANGE

2009-09-04T09:21:00.003-06:00

The very first Brakhage Film Series scheduled for Sunday, Sep. 6th, at 7:30 will now actually be on the day before on Saturday, Sep. 5th, at 7:30. (Due to conflict with huge football game on Sunday.)

Ellen Maslow

2009-09-01T12:33:00.003-06:00

This post is to share my sadness at the passing of Ellen Maslow. She was a vibrant member of the Boulder Film Alliance and took on the challenge of bringing great films that she felt would help people process difficult issues of our time. She often did this at great personal expense - one time bringing in a screening of HEARTS AND MINDS which I know cost her an arm and a leg. It's one of the best docs ever made on why we go to war, and with our blunders in Iraq in full bloom at that time it was an important film to revisit. That was Ellen: doing what was right, no matter the price.

I wish I could be at the memorial this Thursday, but I'll be hitting the road for Telluride that morning. Last time I saw Ellen was a few months ago for a bite at the Southern Sun. She looked very frail but still had that optimistic glimmer in her eye that she could beat it. Ellen was a staunch fighter for social justice and shared of herself freely. She told me some pretty amazing stories and lived through a lot craziness - always finding ways to be better for it. And we were all better for knowing her.

Rest in peace, Ellen:

http://www.presenttensefilms.com/

Welcome to Fall 2009!

2009-08-28T11:24:00.005-06:00

Welcome back to another season of IFS! The schedule has been posted and we are pumped for another season. Be sure to check out our Facebook page and Twitter site. This year twitter is playing a big role in getting you into shows for free and more information on special showings. So follow us, BoulderIFS! Let us know what your looking forward to and what you think about the new schedule.

Parking Update

2009-08-25T22:49:00.003-06:00

Parking Update!!

IFS has recently upgraded and printed our map in this fall’s IFS schedule, however, with all the construction around campus, changes have continued to be made to the parking layout. As of September 4^th, the parking layout will become definitive.

This means good news for you! There are now several parking lots around the Muenzinger area that are MUCH closer than the previous free lots. The closest FREE parking lots to the IFS Theater in Muenzinger Auditorium are the following lot numbers:

Lot numbers 380, 378, 360, and 359.

Unfortunately, some of the lots that were previously marked as free on the map, no longer are free after 5. The following lots are now GATED lots, meaning that after 5 you must pay a flat rate of $3 until midnight when they close. The following lots are NO LONGER free:

Lot numbers 208, 204, 310

….and lots 221 and 210 now require permits AT ALL TIMES.

We apologize for any inconvenience and hope you look forward to all the closer lots that are now free after 5!

IFS STAFF

StrongBad gets an email...

2009-08-25T22:36:00.006-06:00

Check out this commentary on independent films made by StrongBad, of Home Star Runner. http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html

Weighing in on DISTRICT 9

2009-08-24T23:11:00.000-06:00

http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/08/23/catfights-in-district-9/

Check out this list of IFS contenders for the fall - and vote!

2009-05-28T12:07:00.000-06:00

http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/05/24/vote-for-your-favorites-part-2/

Because it's summer:

2009-05-28T12:05:00.000-06:00

http://wondermark.com/521/

Last Week

2009-04-21T09:05:00.002-06:00

This week is the last week of our Spring 2009 film series. Come out and enjoy some great films: BRAZIL, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, TOKYO and the BFD Film Fest! This is your last opportunity to enjoy some excellent movies at an amazing price! General Admission $6 and only $5 with a CU ID. So come down to Meunzinger Auditorium this week and enjoy the series before it goes away for the summer. Look for our new schedules at the beginning of next semester!

TOKYO (April 24 and 25)

2009-04-14T11:58:00.001-06:00

Just a heads-up that our website lists TOKYO as only playing on Friday, but correct screenings are:

FRIDAY, APRIL 24
SATURDAY, APRIL 25

7PM and 9:15pm.
All showings play in the Muenzinger Auditorium on the CU Boulder Campus. $6 General Admission. $5 with a CU ID.

John Cameron Mitchell

2009-04-14T11:41:00.000-06:00

SPEAKING IN CODE (April 17)

2009-04-14T08:36:00.003-06:00

SPEAKING IN CODE is a documentary on all aspects of electronic music. This showing is FREE in Atlas 100, 4:30 & 7 PM, and a Q&A with director Amy Grill will follow. This movie fits in perfectly with the Communikey Festival of Digital Arts and Electronic Music. So come in and enjoy a FREE movie.

As well on Friday, April 17th and Saturday, April 18th, there is a showing of ABSURDISTAN in the Muenzinger Auditorium at both 7 & 9 PM . General Admission $6. Students with CU ID $5.

Fun trailer

2009-04-14T08:17:00.001-06:00

Upcoming Shows

2009-03-31T08:41:00.009-06:00

SKILLS LIKE THIS
Wednesday April 8th, 7 p.m. only.
Boulder Premiere!
Special Guest: Producer Donna Dewey

An audience favorite from the SXSW Film Festival that combines a hilarious script with a great soundtrack. This crime caper comedy was shot entirely in Denver by C.U. Film Studies alumni Monty Miranda and uses local talent - both in front and behind the camera. For more information go to skillslikethis.com.

JASON MCHUGH
Sunday April 12 7 p.m. only

McHugh has acted and produced several projects with Trey Parker and Matt Stone and continues to be involved in a variety of eclectic projects. Tonight he'll show clips from past films and shorts that he worked on and share with us his experiences . Clips to be screened include: Man on Mars, Cannibal, Timewarped, Spirit of Xmas, Orgazmo, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, The Hot Show, Mindfield/Lollapalooza and Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo.... and more.

TYSON Director

2009-03-17T09:36:00.001-06:00

The Demise of the Movie Theatre

2009-03-17T09:27:00.002-06:00

"Of Buggy Whips and Celluloid

Technology is depriving us of what makes movies special: each other

by James Burrus

I have seen the end of film, and while it may not be pretty, it is certainly sharp. Movies aren’t about to disappear. As long as there is an auteur with a digital recording device and iMovie on his or her Mac Book Pro, there will be movies.

But movies will not be immune from the carnage of digital isolationism and the loss of what amounts to the soul of cinema: its social element.

Oddly, this will not be due to a lack of quality. Quite the contrary; the end of movies will be projected in high-def digital glory on walls and plasma screens and laptops and cell phones across the nation.

Because as the technology gets better and cheaper, more and more people are bringing it home—and therein lies the danger. If you think NetFlix is giving theaters a financial Charlie horse, Blu-ray discs, players and projectors are set to turn the once-communal experience of watching a movie into a relic of the past, just as pulling into the local drive-in for a burger has become an icon of the Good Ol’ Days.

I know this is true because my film aficionado friend, Pablo “Keelsetter,” told me so. In fact, there’s a lot more to the loss of the group experience of watching a film. As he wrote in his film blog—found at moviemorlocks.com:

“…there is a collection of pheromones and audible and physical communications emitted by a large crowd of people reacting to a film that can definitely accentuate the experience. Also, let’s face it: true immersion into a film is more likely in a theater where you cannot pause the action and where your silence and attention are part of the understood bond of that setting.”

In addition is the demise of viewing a story told via a classic medium: film.
Just as a gearhead can tell by the sound of an idling motor that he’s in the presence of a 1968 Cobra Jet Mustang, a film connoisseur appreciates knowing details like aspect ratios and print quality. Because they matter in the same way aspiration and compression matter in an engine or brush strokes matter in a Van Gogh painting..." Continued here

Valeria Camporesi

2009-03-10T10:41:00.007-06:00

Monday., March 16 from 6 PM to 7 PM in ATLAS 102.

"Valeria Camporesi, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
'A country as a cinematographic set. Exoticism, landscapes and architecture in the history of cinema in Spain'
(paper proposal for a seminar on Spanish cinema to be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder on March 19-20, 2009).

'Since the mid-1990s, the very idea of the “Spanishness” of films realized in Spain has been the object of scientific debate (a sketchy summary of it can be found in Triana-Toribio; and Zunzunegui; for an influential general appraisal in Spanish on national cinemas, see Sorlin). As a way to deal with this issue from an innovative perspective, my talk shall explore a small group of films which explicitly use recognizable natural settings (landscapes, monuments, historic buildings) as a metaphore of some kind of a collective identity, either rejected or assumed. The sketchy reconstruction will go back to the early 1920s, when French directors shooting in Spain in natural settings inaugurated a new way to look at oustanding sceneries and “real” architecture.' -Valeria Camporesi

Born in Bologna, Italy, Valeria Camporesi is a Lecturer of Film and Audiovisual Media History in the Art History and Theory Department of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She is also coordinator of the PhD Program in Film History of the same University. Author of a book on British reactions to Americanization in broadcasting history in the inter-war years (Mass Culture and National Traditions. The BBC and American Broadcasting, 1922-1954, European Press Academic Publishing, 2001), since 1989 she lives and works in Madrid. Her current research interests range from extensive and intensive analyses of representations of Spanish cultural identity in film history (an overall approach can be found in her book Para Grandes y Chicos. Un Cine para Los Españoles, 1940-1990, Turfán, 1994); transnational aspects of Spanish cinema; historical approaches to intertextuality in European film history; analysis of changing patterns of verisimilitude in production and reception of audiovisual media; contemporary cinema and film theory; film, video and television in European cinema since the 1960s.

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY
AA.VV., La nueva memoria. Historia(s) del cine español, A Coruña, Vía Láctea Editorial, 2005.
V. Camporesi, Para grandes y chicos. Un cine para los españoles, 1939-1990, Madrid, Turfán, 1994.
P. Sorlin, “¿Existen los cines nacionales?”, Secuencias, 7 (1997), pp. 33-40.
N. Triana-Toribio, Spanish National Cinema, London, Routledge, 2003.
S. Zunzunegui, Historias de España. De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de cine español, Valencia, Filmoteca, 2002.

BASIC FILMOGRAPHY
El Dorado (L’Herbier, 1921)
La galería de los monstruos (J. Catelain, 1924)
La aldea maldita (F. Rey, 1929)*
Domingo de carnaval (E. Neville, 1948)*
Surcos (J.A. Nieves Conde, 1951)*
Los golfos (C. Saura, 1959)*
El extraño viaje (F. Fernán Gómez, 1964)*
El espíritu de la colmena (V. Erice, 1973)*
Vacas (J. Medem, 1991)*
Todo sobre mi madre (P. Almodóvar, 1999)*"

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH

2009-03-10T08:39:00.003-06:00

**REMINDER**

The film HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH will be playing Monday, March 16th at 7 PM only. The showing will take place in the Muenzinger Auditorium and will feaature the director John Cameron Mitchell in person. Plus -its all FREE!!

"This film named after a body part truncated in a botched sex-change operation could be disturbing or tragic, but this glam-rock musical sparkles with life-affirming energy. John Cameron Mitchell not only wrote and directed the film but also plays Hansel, a Berlin teen who falls for an army sergeant but to get a marriage license submits to an inept sex-change operation that leaves him with the inch described in the film's title and the abandonment of his GI husband. Hansel becomes Hedwig, falls unrequitedly in love with rock star Tommy Gnosis, and follows Gnosis' tour as he steals her songs and sells out stadiums. In her performances for tips by the salad bar at Bilgewater's, Hedwig works through her identity crisis and pursues her moving quest for affirmation. With lyrics and music by Steven Trask." -IFS website

The showing is sponsored by the Conference on World Affairs.

Brakhage Symposium

2009-03-10T08:29:00.004-06:00

This Saturday and Sunday will be the fifth annual Brakhage Symposium. It is held from 10 AM to 9 PM both March 14th and 15th in the ATLAS building on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus.

"Quickly becoming a tradition in the world of avant-garde filmmaking and artistry, the Stan Brakhage Symposium will again be hosted this year by the Colorado University's Film Studies Department. This symposium will be unlike any before it. Spanning over two days, two programmers from cities on either side of the country will meet at America's core to recognize, honor, and carry on the legacy of the late Stan Brakhage, a man who once all but defined the American Avant-Garde. Cementing together the extensive video and film events being offered will be the symposium's core of academia. Each day will feature either presentations or panels that will contextualize the programs in the light of the contemporary avant-garde world. What Brakhage began, the symposium seeks to continue, by each year bringing memebers of the experimental film and video community together, not only to celebrate art, but to share ideas and promote the evolution of the moving image." -Brakhage Symposium website

Support is provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences & the William H. Donner Foundation. For more information, please check out the Brakhage Symposium websit e.

Stephen King on DAWN OF THE DEAD

2009-02-24T10:12:00.003-07:00

Tomorrow night, IFS is showing DAWN OF THE DEAD at 7 PM and 9:15 PM. Come see this movie that even Stephen King liked.

"I hope Fox and Warner Bros. will settle their nasty cat-fight over Zack Snyder's WATCHMEN movie. I think Snyder's tremendously talented (I just watched his DAWN OF THE DEAD remake to see if it holds up -it does), and WATCHMEN is one graphic novel that cries out for a film adaptation. That one has been made and I might not be allowed to see it seems absurdly unfair."

-Stephen King, "Wishing and Hoping", Entertainment Weekly, 1/23/09

For the whole article, click here.

Film Reports from February 18-22

2009-02-24T09:59:00.004-07:00

Yes, we do still show most of our movies on 35mm film. And we now post our projectionist's take on the film. When you walk in the door you can see how the nights print will be right at the box office. Here are the Projectionist's (Tony's) Opinions for last week:

CHILDREN OF MEN

Condition: Perfect. Print is clean and free of scratches. Print is uncut. Appears to have been run very few times. Possibly a studio archival print.

Comes From: Blowning Cinema in Notre Dame, IN

BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID

Condition: Excellent. Clean and splice free. There may be some very minor base scratches on the right side of reel 1.

Comes From: Criterion Pictures in Morton Grove, IL

FEARS OF THE DARK

Condition: Good. Clean and splice free. Some base scratches in the middle of the picture throughout the movie, but not too bad.

Comes From: TCD Wilmington Distribution Center in Wilmington, OH

JCVD

Condition: Fair-good. Some dirt. Some minor base scratches. 3 splices throughout reel 2. Good both cues. Replaced all head and tail splices.

Comes From: Lyric Cinema Cafe in Fort Collins, CO

Look for this week's projection's review at the box office before the film starts.

Facebook

2009-02-24T08:56:00.005-07:00

Ok, we know everyone has/wants one, whether they admit it or not. One cool way to get into the Facebook world and get more information on all of the great films that IFS are playing is by becoming a fan of the International Film Series. Just follow the link here, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boulder-CO/International-Film-Series/38116812724?ref=ts%20 or click on the Facebook link on the side panel. Even if you're curious, just check it out. Facebook is a great and easy way to discuss all of the films we show in Meunzinger, but you can also discuss anything you want pertaining to the film realm. So joining is just a click away. Come on...we know you want to.

Another Round of Youtube Favorites

2009-02-17T08:55:00.003-07:00

2009-02-12T10:39:00.003-07:00

VIRGIN PRINT!

According the projectionist who inspected tonight's print of THE HUSTLER, it's an untouched print! Power-house performances by Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in beautiful black-and-white CinemaScope - don't miss it!

On another note from the projectionist: "When the police officer came to talk to that strange guy in the lobby, I overheard him saying to the officer "well why don't the clowns who show movies in here all hours of the night get in trouble too?"

Well... it certainly was a night full of clowns, especially seeing as how last night's film (A BOY AND HIS DOG) was full of 'em. And not the "funny-clown" kind, mind you, but the "post-apocalyptic, underground-dwelling, seamen-extracting" kind.

UPDATE

2009-02-10T08:24:00.007-07:00

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (originally to play on April 8th) is coming SOONER! On Monday, March 16th at 7PM there will be a FREE showing of HEDWIG with director John Cameron Mitchell at the showing. This showing is sponsored by CWA. Don't miss your opportunity to meet the director and see a great film!

SKILLS LIKE THIS will now be played on April 8th at 7 PM only. $6 GA and $5 with a CU ID. This is a great local film, shot entirely in Denver using local people. Another super film you shouldn't miss!

For more information on all the IFS films, check out our website at www.internationalfilmseries.com

Manager Comments

2009-02-09T16:26:00.002-07:00

I've been bugging the managers to add more comments to their nightly account forms and am happy to report that they are now finally giving me more detailed views on how things went. Here's a sample:

CHOCOLATE - SAT - 2/7/9: "2 guys were so excited that digi-beta meant $4 tix that they almost vomited all over the place...Speaking of which, the encrusted vomit from last night's narcoleptic was kept warm under a carpet square and the stench was only detectable up to 2.5 feet away, though the general color -" (okay, I'm going to skip the rest of this one. Next-)..."One kid came out of the theater half-way through to tell me how funny the movie was and then went back in... And after the 2nd show half the audience hung around yammering about how bitchin' kung-fu is."

Customer comments: "What it lacked in plot it made up 4 in 12 yr olds kickin' ass" On a scale of 1-5, all people who submitted cards give it a 4 or 5.

OSCAR SHORTS - ANIMATION - 2/8/9: "Refund for the 1st show for two tickets because he thought the crowd was too intellectual because they laugh at every joke." (?!) "We're busting people pretending to be film students." Tsk, tsk, tsk!

CHOCOLATE - missing can still M.I.A.

2009-02-06T23:04:00.002-07:00

I won't bury the lead. The answer is "no."

We had hopes for a "hail-mary"-last-minute find of the missing 35mm can of CHOCOLATE for tonight (Friday). That did not happen. Still... I've had my cell phone on all night hoping that, maybe, the missing can would be located in time to give our audience the celluloid awesomeness of CHOCOLATE by tomorrow/Saturday night. But it's approaching midnight, and the film is still missing. So we're still stuck screening a DigiBeta copy this Saturday as well.

I'm tempted to post the actual emails from Technicolor, UPS, and other folks associated with shipping that are all madly trying to find the missing cannister of CHOCOLATE - but I won't. It's a long needless slog and I can sum it up in far fewer words.

There are are SEVEN prints of this film- and all are spoken for. SIX are hitting the screen. Ours is not. Two days ago we received one-of-two cannisters for the film, and the alert went out. At first, it seemed like maybe it was not a big deal and the other can was simply in Commerce City. But the next day the alarms went up a notch: the missing can with half of the 35mm film reels we needed was neither in Commerce City or in its previous scan location of California. It was missing. Lost. Lots of people were - and still are - working on the case, and they all came - and are still coming up - with zeroes.

Still: A lot of scrambling took place to make sure the show could go on tonight here in Boulder and Magnolia overnighted to us a nice DigiBeta Tape. It has way better resolution than your regular DVD, and our digital projector has 2,500 lumens to ensure a good show. We're selling tix at $4 to give you a discount and, my manager tells me, the audience for both shows this Friday (over 200 folks!) enjoyed the proceedings.

Sure... I'm still hoping my phone will ring before the Saturday screening with good news. And, if so, I'll share it with blog readers immediately. But it probably won't. And I'm hoping you'll still take a chance on the DigiBeta screening because, really, unless your home theater can compete with the large-screen you get in a theater with 400 seats, the martial arts magic will still be better at Muenzinger.

2009-02-03T14:07:00.002-07:00

NEW: PROJECTIONIST REPORTS TO BE PLACED AT CASHIER'S TABLE

Our first week was plagued with some bad prints. If we get a bad print well in advance of our screening date, we can always try to replace it (if there are enough copies). But, sometimes, as in the case of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, the print gets to us just hours before the screening - so the only person who can relay to us what kind of condition the print is in is the projectionist.

To this end, I'm going to instruct the projectionists to provide a sheet of paper that will be visible to all buying tickets at the cashier's desk. This will let people know what shape the print is in for that night. For example, this Wednesday, for THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, the print report reads as follows:

ORIGINAL PRINT FROM 1964 IN GREAT SHAPE FOR ITS AGE. DOESN’T LOOK SCRATCHED, BUT IT’S BRITTLE, WITH SOME SPLICES (NOTHING TOO JARRING).
MGM ASSURES US THAT IT’S THE BEST PRINT THEY HAVE.

(Postscript: It is ironic to me that older prints we show are often in better shape than the new prints we get stuck with. Ironic, but not surprising given how many films are now sent to platter-houses where everything is automated and there is no print condition oversight.)

Fun Video from YouTube -THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

2009-02-03T08:16:00.002-07:00

If you have a video on youtube that you would like to share leave a comment with the url and we will check it out.

Oscar Nominated Shorts

2009-01-27T09:23:00.004-07:00

We now know the Oscar Nominated Shorts for both animation and live action. The animation shorts will be played on Febuary 8th at 7 & 9:30 pm and the live action shorts come to IFS on the 15th of Febuary at 7 & 9 pm.

And the animation nominations are:

LAVATORY - LOVESTORY, by director Konstantin Bronzit, 10 min
OKTAPODI, by director Julien Bocabeille, 3 min
LE MAISON EN PETITS CUBES, by director Kunio Kato, 12 min
THIS WAY UP, by directors Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith, 9 min
PRESTO, by director Doug Sweetland, 5 min

(This nights shows will be followed with an additional 40 min of animated shorts)

The live action nominies are:

AUF DER STRECK (ON THE LINE), director Reto Caffi, 30 min
NEW BOY, director Steph Green, 11 min
TOYLAND, director Jochen Freydank, 14 min
THE PIG, directors Tivi Magnusson and Dorte Høgh, 22 minMANON ON THE ASPHALT, directors Elizabeth Marre and Olivier Pont, 15 min

These should all be great and we hope to see you all there!

First Week

2009-01-27T09:16:00.002-07:00

Just a reminder that this is week 1 for IFS. So be sure to come see this weeks amazing lineup!

On Wednesday we have RELIGULOUS at 7 & 9:15 pm

Thursday night is KNIFE IN THE WATER at 7 & 9 pm

Friday and Saturday is LET THE RIGHT ONE IN at 7 & 9:30 pm

and Sunday we are showing PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL at 7 pm only.

All showings are in the Muenzinger Auditorium on the CU Campus.

Hope to see you all there!

Mailing of Calendars Delayed

2009-01-23T11:06:00.004-07:00

I just got back from Sundance and found out that the IFS schedules that were delivered to a mailing business two weeks ago - and that should have been mailed at that time - were only dropped into the mail yesterday. This was due to the fact that this business (whose name I won't mention) will only send out the mailings upon receipt of pre-payment from the university. Unfortunately, even though I put a RUSH payment request on their invoice about a month ago, the university (unbeknownst to me) ignored that rush request, and processed payment at their usual snail's pace of three-to-four weeks.

Compounding the problem were vague communications from the mailing company: Here's the email exchange between me and the contact for the mailing business. Keep in mind that the schedules were delivered to this company on January 9th:

Jan 13 -

Hi Pablo,

We have received the calendars and we should be dropping the mail on 1/15/09.

I also needed to check on the postage.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you~~

Jan 15

Hi -

- I'm at Sundance, but feel free to call if there's any issue - otherwise I'll presume we're good to go. Thanks!
Sent from my iPhone

Jan 15 -

Hi Pablo,

We just need to check on the postage check.

Thank you

Jan 15:

Hi -

I'm unclear from your email below if what you mean is that the mailing of the IFS schedules is being held up because you have not received a check yet from the university.

To that end, I'm cc'ing (name of guy who handles our accounting) so that, if need be, you can email him directly with any inquiry into the status of the check.

Because I'm in screenings throughout the day, my cell phone is off and I can only catch-up on emails late in the evenings, so I apologize in advance for not being more accessible.

Best,

pk

Jan. 16 -

Hi Pablo.

I sent an email to (accountant) to check on the status of the postage check.

I will keep you updated.

Thank you~~

Jan 23 -

Hi Pablo,

The mailing went out yesterday, 1/22/09.

So the schedules that I gave this company two weeks ago only got mailed yesterday. That means many of you won't get it in time, and this is unacceptable. To that end I promise you this; I will take my business to a different mailing company, one that either accepts credit card payment (which would have avoided this mess) and/or accepts some other form of payment other than a check, especially since the university bureaucracy is unreliable in such matters. But, either way, I will take my business to a company that will not sit on time-sensitive mailings and also communicate effectively with the customer. For example, in this case, it would have helped to have gotten the following email: "Your schedules will not be dropped in the mail until payment is received, and we still have not gotten payment from the university." The vagueries of "We have received the calendars and we should be dropping the mail on 1/15/09. I also needed to check on the postage" is misleading and instills a false confidence that everything is fine. In reality, the situation was far from fine.

News from Sundance

2009-01-20T08:49:00.004-07:00

Here is some news from the Sundance Film Festival which was recently posted on another blog site, TCM Movie Morlocks:

"Sundance 2009

Posted by keelsetter on January 18, 2009

Today I’ll discuss my favorite film at Sundance… so far. But first:

As I mentioned last week, this year’s pilgrimage to the Sundance Film Festival was preceded by three days of round table discussions and seminars tailor-made for our nation’s Art House theaters. Upon landing in Salt Lake City I went straight to the Peery Hotel where everyone gathered, introductions were made, and then we sat down at tables for food and drink. The first special guest to take the podium was Sundance Director of Festival Programming and Creative Development, John Cooper. His speech to us was off-the-cuff, frank, humorous, and inspirational. Personally, my biggest inspiration came from knowing that he was taking time to be with us at the height of the craziness that is Sundance..." continued here.

Oscar Nominated Shorts, showing at IFS

2009-01-20T08:34:00.002-07:00

Welcome Back!

2009-01-13T08:31:00.002-07:00

Welcome back to a great new semester of films with IFS. This looks to be a great season with new and old, funny and tragic, horrifying and heartbreaking all coming together on the silver screen. I am especially looking forward to seeing some of my favorites in new 35mm prints. The outrageous BRAZIL, classic french BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and my personal favorite BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID will all be great to see on the big screen. But of course, IFS is all about seeing movies you've never seen before. I can't wait to see HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, FEAR(S) OF THE DARK, and director Francoise Truffaut in WILD CHILD. So what are you looking forward to most? Is the Apocalypse theme right up your alley? Let us know what you think of our new season at IFS by posting a comment (just hit the comment button right below this post). Thanks for all your support and I hope you are just as excited about these films as we are!

Sundance to come to IFS

2009-01-13T08:24:00.002-07:00

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE EXPANDS COLLABORATION WITH LOCAL ART HOUSE CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

Program Includes Film Tour and Sundance Film Festival Series of Short FilmsS

November 25, 2008
Park City, Utah – Sundance Institute today announced the expansion of Sundance Institute Art House Project, a partnership with art house cinemas nationwide to build audiences and develop a supportive community of theatre owners committed to independent film. This year's Art House Project includes aspecially-selected series of short films from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, a film tour of an acclaimed documentary, and a convergence of art house theaters from across the nation to be held January.... Read the rest here.

Just Something Fun

2009-01-13T08:20:00.001-07:00

What the Future holds...

2008-12-04T11:20:00.006-07:00

Right now the IFS Fall season is over, but we will be back this spring for a brand new season of great films. Next semester's new line up will soon be out but we have a sneak peek at the new schedule. On January 30 and 31, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN will be showing in the Meunzinger Auditorium. This dark tale of a bullied boy who falls in love with an unusual girl, a girl he soon finds out is a vampire. The struggle between right and wrong is played out in this twisted romance. So if your looking for a vampire romance, check out LET THE RIGHT ONE IN at the spring IFS.

Coming to a Close

2008-11-13T08:55:00.002-07:00

The University of Colorado's IFS fall series is coming to a close this week, but I think we have had a great run so far. We have had a lot of customers and a lot of good films. This week will come to a close with some great movies, BLINDSIGHT (Tonight, 7PM and 9PM), WENDY AND LUCY (Friday, Nov. 14, 7PM), NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (Nov. 14, 9PM), LORD GOD BIRD (Sunday, Nov. 16, 7PM) and IDIOTS AND ANGELS (Nov. 16, 9PM) , all playing in Muenzinger Auditorium.

Remember our next series begins in the Spring semester, so look for our new schedule due out in January.

What would you like to see next semester? What was your favorite part of the Fall series? Please let us know by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Customer Comments

2008-11-06T10:38:00.003-07:00

Looking for a place to leave a comment, question or review? Click the comment button below and post away!

Gregory's Reviews

2008-11-06T10:32:00.002-07:00

I had to talk about "Last Year at... " I've seen some wierd stuff and this is in the top shelf. I saw it as an Existential meditation on the breakdown of time and tonality. The only character that was alive was the camera. It's a comedy! And how about those sparkling earings? What cinamatography throughout. And I want to know who choreographed the match stick games?... Roman was Great! Poor guy, certainly not a child molester but he was short! Joel once showed Knife In The Water and the Thin and Fat one. They were quite beautiful as is all his films. I remember Repulsion a couple of years ago, Great! Jack and Jake, " Where'd you get the midget?" "You're a pretty nosey fella eh? You know what with do with em? We CUT off their noses."
Looking foreward to Contempt and Planet,

You Bloody Baboon!
gregory

SUNSHINE, Nov 8th --FREE FILM!

2008-11-04T17:45:00.004-07:00

Saturday, November 8th, at 7 PM only, in ATLAS 102:
A special 4K digital projector and Blu-Ray demo. On tap: SUNSHINE (2007) by director Danny Boyle.

"The initial premise of "Sunshine" -- the sun is dying and mankind has put all hope in a desperate effort to reignite our star with a nuclear payload of galactic dimensions -- is more fantasy than science fiction, powered by nonsense physics similar to such sci-fi adventures as ARMAGEDDON and THE CORE." This movie has "magnificent imagery and a gravity that pulls you in" (SEAN AXMAKER)

-Read the rest of the review at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/325262_sunshine27q.html

*Remember, this is a game night so come prepared by walking, biking or busing to the movie.

IFS: Local. Affordable. Quality.

2008-10-31T08:09:00.004-06:00

These commercials were made by some of our very own TAM students here at CU. Look no longer for a reason to come to IFS!

If you have any questions, comments or polite criticisms please leave us a comment.