BRUSSELS FILM FESTIVAL 2010 – PALMARES

Films in Official Competition

ALL THAT I LOVE by Jacek Borcuch ( Poland )

ALLES STROOMT by Danyael Sugawara (The Netherlands )

BIBLIOTHEQUE PASCAL by Szabolcs Hajdu ( Hungary / Germany / UK

C'EST DEJA L'ETE by Martijn Smets (The Netherlands )

CORRIDOR by Johan Lundborg & Johan Storm ( Sweden )

I 'M NOT YOUR FRIEND by György Pálfi ( Hungary )...Read more...

THE 'LUX' PRIZE 2010 OFFICIAL FILM SELECTION ANNOUNCED BY THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

The ten films pre-selected to compete for this year's European Parliament LUX Prize were unveiled on Monday 29 June 2010, at the Brussels European Film Festival. The LUX prize,established by the EP in 2007,  is given to the best European film illustrating or questioning the values of European identity, Europe's cultural diversity or bringing insights into the debate on the EU integration.The films pre-selected to compete for the 2010 LUX Prize are:...Read more...

Uddan

“Udaan” - New Indian cinema in Cannes

by Joanna Tachmintzis

It was encouraging to see new Indian cinema represented in the Official Selection in Cannes in 2010 after a 7-year absence,  with the Hindi-language  “Udaan” ('The Flight'), the first feature film of  director and screenwriter  Vikramaditya Motwane.  Screened in the 'Un Certain Regard' section of the festival (where also Murali Nair's “ Arimpara” was last screened in 2003), Read more..

Bellocchio

Italian  Director Marco Bellocchio Gives Cinema Master Class at the  Cannes Film Festival 2010

by Joanna Tachmintzis

For aspiring film makers and cinephiles, an  important and very interesting annual event at the Cannes Film Festival is  the Cinema Master Class (Leçon du Cinema), this year given by the 71-year old Italian director (and also producer and actor) Marco Bellocchio. Launched  by the Festival in 1991 with  a Master Class given by Francesco Rossi,..Read more..

The 2010 Cannes Film Festival – the great cinema show in full swing

From our own correspondent in Cannes, Joanna Tachmintzis

This year’s film festival at Cannes, though somewhat smaller than previous years, opened with the usual glamour, with the director Tim Burton as President of the Jury, which has eight more prominent members (his own 3D film ‘Alice in Wonderland ‘ has recently been released ). The cinema industry and cinephiles are  here in Cannes in great numbers, alongside many tourists, though the estimated 10.000 accredited visitors to the Festival fall short of the 16.000 two years ago, before the financial crisis.Read more

10 Stupid Mistakes  Filmmakers Make

By Elliot Grove

1. WEAK SCRIPT

A lot of the films submitted to Raindance are sub-standard - and not because the filmmaking, the editing or the acting is bad - but because there isn't a decent script. And what makes a decent script? A compelling story.
They say that paper is cheaper than film, so buy some paper. And then try to get that great idea for a movie out of your head - properly...Read More

WRITING FILM SCRIPTS–THE MOROCCAN EXPERIENCE

The latest edition of CINEMAG, the French-language Cinema and Audiovisual Magazine of Morocco (No. 10. Nov.09 – Feb 2010) devotes a Special Section to script writing in Morocco. The views and experiences of 16 personalities of Moroccan cinema are presented through articles and interviews. Writer-directors, screenwriters, cinema critics and professors explain how they approach  writing scripts, what difficulties screenwriters  face and how they see  scren writing as part of the future development of  Moroccan cinema. Joanna Tachmintzis presents below  a summary of some of the points made by  Moroccan Writer- Directors  in CINEMAG.(magazine website: www.cinemag.info)

Part 1

Part 2

Belgium hosts the 1st International 3D Stereo Film and Technology Festival – 3D Stereo MEDIA

The first edition of the "International 3D Stereo Film and Technology Festival," also called "3D Stereo MEDIA " was held in three  cities in Belgium, organized at the initiative of the e-mage technology forum, the University of Liège (ULg), and TWIST (the Cluster of the "Technologies from Wallonia for image, sound, and text"). Read more..

Interview with Michael Haneke, the Austrian director of ‘The White Ribbon’, winner of this year`s ‘Palme d`Or’ in Cannes.

‘The White Ribbon’ recounts strange happenings in a small German village on the eve of the First World War. The story is about punishment rituals on the children of the village, raised under extremely puritanical conditions. For Haneke it is a story from the past which also treats a modern problem....Read more

INTERVIEWS

Young Dutch director  makes cross-cultural documentary: Hans Groenendijk's success story

Last year the 28-year old Dutch director Hans Groenendijk made his debut as a documentary film maker  with ‘Sayed, Soccer Talent’. The 28-minute film tells the story of 9-year old Sayed Abdullah Sulaiman from Kuwait, who  dreams of becoming an international football icon. The young player's father  posts a home  video of his son's playing  on the internet on SoccerTalents.tv  and the boy gets invited at Feyenoord and FC Barcelona for a trial.

.  Cinema Workshop interviewed  Hans Groenendijk...Read More

HOME – The stunning and disturbing environmental documentary by Yann Arthus Bertrand

Most famous for his stunning aerial photos of the Earth,  the French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand turns to the cinema with  his new environmental movie HOME, released worldwide on World Environment Day, June 5, and seen by millions of people since.This visually dramatic film is well worth seeing, both for its images and its environmental message, despite its somewhat didactic voice-over in the rather  traditional  documentary style of the past. The first ever movie with 100% aerial footage, it illustrates the planet's fragile state entirely from a birds-eye view in stunning high definition. :..Read more

Belgian Directors Give Cinema Master Class at the  Cannes Film Festival 2009

How the Dardeene Brothers make great films

Amongst the bustle and hype of the Cannes Film Festival, sandwiched in between the dozens of parallel film showings, an important and very interesting annual event almost goes unnoticed at Cannes: the Cinema Master Class (Leçon du Cinema), this year given by the acclaimed French-speaking Belgian directors Jean -Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Looking very relaxed and casual, in front of a packed auditorium with many disappointed Festival participants left outside, « the Dardenne Brothers », as they are known,  ...Read more

Film Archive Reviews  -

 Reviews of feature and documentary films that have endured the test of time

« Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam » - A moving documentary still relevant today

What immediately strikes  you  on seeing Bill Couturie's 'Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam'' is how relevant this 1987 documentary still is in 2009. It gives an account of  the horror and suffering  and pointlesness of the Vietnam War in the words of the US servicemen and women who fought it, through the  letters written by them to their families and friends from the battlefronts, read while original footage from the Vietnam war is shown.The effect is both moving and disturbing. And it made me wonder what letters home the US troops are writing from Iraq and Afghanistan... Read more

EDUCATIONAL BOOK REVIEW

« Le Son au Cinéma » by Laurent Jullier,  published jointly by Cahiers du Cinéma and SCEREN-CNDP

For those who can read  French, the series « Les Petits Cahiers » published by the Cahiers du Cinéma in France, and edited by Joel Magny, are useful educational material. Simply written  and interesting to read, with many concrete  examples from movies and useful annexes with interviews and analyses, they are aimed at cinema students and teachers as well as cinema fans who want to learn about film making.

'Le Son au Cinéma' (Sound in Cinema) is one of the many booklets of the series, published in 2006 and written by Laurent Jullier, Professor of Cinema  at the University of Paris III- Sorbonne Nouvelle. It begins  by giving a historical overview of the development of sound in film, from Alan Crossland's  1927 film « The Jazz Singer », ..Read more