“Monsieur Lazhar,” Canada’s official entry for the 2011 Best Foreign Film Oscar, concerns an Algerian immigrant that finds work in Montreal standing in for an elementary school teacher who recently committed suicide. It sounds straightforward enough, but nothing is as it appears on the surface–and yet the story does not play out like a mystery [...]
“Sleeping Beauty,” which played in a discreet 9:30 slot on Saturday night at the 12th Annual Santa Fe Film Festival, has already gained a reputation for being erotic, insipid, brave, disappointing, groundbreaking, regressive and a host of other contradictions. It’s no wonder. A young woman consents to being drugged for the purpose of complete submission [...]
I had the pleasure of attending one of the 2011 Santa Fe Film Festival’s panel discussions Friday afternoon at Zane Bennett Gallery. Brent Kliewer, this year’s program director for the festival, hosted the conversation. The audience was made up of hungry local film lovers like me and guest filmmakers, from various parts in and outside [...]
“A Useful Life” by Federico Vieroj is a 67 minute mini-feature that focuses on a major turning point in the life of Jorge, the curator of a small art house cinema in Montevideo, Uruguay. Vieroj’s movie is about the fate of film in a digital world and an adoring ode to the days before the [...]
SPOTLIGHT ON NEW MEXICO FILMMAKERS – SHORTS LOBSTER Is there a heaven for crustaceans? Could the cuisine on your stove top have attained a higher spiritual station? Relax, sit back and discover what one young couple learns. An age-old controversy is resolved after relational tensions come to a boil over whether the main course in [...]
Why make a full-length black-&-white, silent movie these days and what prompts Santa Fe Film Festival to program it on their opening night? Good questions deserve thoughtful answers. I’m going to guess right off that it’s not a nostalgia trip. Writer and director of “The Artist”, Michel Hazanavicius, made a name for himself in France [...]
If this evening’s event at the Screen hosted by the Santa Fe Film Festival is any indication, we’re in for a great time at the movies this October. I was treated—along with a couple hundred other movie lovers—to an advanced viewing of The Way, written, directed by, and featuring Emilio Estevez. His real life father, [...]
Thinking of coming to Santa Fe this fall for the 12th Annual Santa Fe Film Festival? Visitors are surprised to learn New Mexico has been host to over 150 feature films, and they don’t all star John Wayne, either. In fact, the history of motion pictures in New Mexico dates to the very beginning. Oh [...]
It’s great news that the Santa Fe Film Festival has engaged Brent Kliewer as Director of Programming for this year’s Festival October 20-23. Brent loves the movies and knows more about them than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s the guiding force behind The Screen, Santa Fe’s premiere art, classic, and foreign film venue and has [...]
