The 2010 Berlin International Film Festival begins tomorrow, and unfortunately I'm not going. I did, however, look through the complete line-up to find some of the more exciting films playing this year. One can only hope Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to
Margot at the Wedding,
Greenberg starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans and Baumbach's wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, is better than
Margot, but we'll see...
Jud Süß - Film ohne Gewissen, a biopic of the actor Ferdinand Marian, is the latest from German director Oskar Roehler (
Agnes and His Brothers), starring Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck. Belgian directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave de Kervern (
Aaltra,
Louise-Michel) return with their dryly humorous blend of comedy with
Mammuth, which stars Gérard Depardieu (with long, golden hair), Isabelle Adjani, Yolande Moreau and Anna Mouglalis.
Four years after she won the Golden Bear for the film
Grbavica, Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić comes to the Berlinale with
On the Path [
Na putu] about a couple in an unhappy relationship. Yoji Yamada’s (
The Twilight Samurai)
About Her Brother concerns a family who take over the family pharmaceutical business after the patriarch dies.
Writer/director Nicole Holofcener (
Walking & Talking,
Friends with Money) once again teams up with actress Catherine Keener for
Please Give, a comedy about a husband and wife who own a furniture store. Rebecca Hall, Amanda Peet and Oliver Platt also star.
Please Give premiered at Sundance. A director I often confuse with Holofcener, Lisa Cholodenko (
High Art,
Laurel Canyon), will also be in Berlin with her latest,
The Kids Are All Right, with Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo.
Always the envelope-pusher (though seldom with good results), Michael Winterbottom adapts a novel by Jim Thompson (
The Grifters,
This World, Then the Fireworks) into the graphically violent
The Killer Inside Me, starring Casey Affleck and (groan) Kate Hudson and (double groan) Jessica Alba. IFC picked up the US rights to this after it premiered at Sundance. Kristen Stewart plays a teenage stripper/runaway in music video director Jake Scott’s (
Plunkett & Macleane)
Welcome to the Rileys. Also starring James Gandolfni and Melissa Leo.
Hong Kong filmmaker Scud offers the second part of his unnamed trilogy,
Amphetamine, which began with
Permanent Residence last year. If you’re curious, take a look at the
bizarre lengths some Wikipedia user has gone to in describing the nudity in
Permanent Residence. Sample: “As the Chinese actors' full-frontal nudity and unobscured private parts are shown many times, both Sean Li's and Osman Hung's glans penises (penis heads) are visible in every full-frontal nude scene (whether in a room, on a beach, water-platform, shower, etc), revealing that they have both been fully circumcised.”
Both Sébastien Lifshitz and Anahí Berneri are previous Teddy winners (for
Wild Side and
Un año sin amor respectively), and they both will be presenting their latest films,
Plein sud [
Going South] and
Por tu culpa [
It’s Your Fault], in the Panorama section. German queer filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, Teddy winner in 1990 for
Die Aids-Trilogie, will bring the sequel to his
Überleben in New York,
New York Memories, to Berlin this year.
Canadian director John Greyson has won 3 Teddys, for his feature
Pissoir, his short
The Making of Monsters and his documentary
Fig Trees; his short
Covered, an experimental film paying tribute to the organizers of the ill-fated Queer Sarajevo Festival in 2008, will play at Berlin this year. Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, who won a Teddy Jury Prize for
The Adventures of Félix [
Drôle de Félix] in 2000, will premiere their latest,
Family Tree [
L’arbre et la fôret], to Berlin after winning the Prix Jean Vigo.
Family Tree stars Guy Marchand, Françoise Fabian, Yannick Renier and Sabrina Seyvecou.
2010 is already a busy year for James Franco. After a hilarious guest role on
30 Rock last month, he is playing Allen Ginsberg in
Howl from directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (
Paragraph 175), which also stars Jon Hamm (another former
30 Rock guest star), Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels, David Strathairn, Treat Wiliams, Bob Balaban and Alessandro Nivola.
Howl premiered at Sundance and will screen in the Competition section, while two shorts directed by Franco,
Herbert White and
The Feast of Stephen (the former starring Michael Shannon), will play in the Panorama section.
More
30 Rock connections (it’s all I’ve cared to think about lately): Cheyenne Jackson is featured in Crayton Robey’s documentary
Making the Boys, about the legacy of the play
The Boys in the Band which was made into a film by William Friedkin.
Making the Boys premiered at Outfest last year. Filmmaker Cheryl Dunye (
The Watermelon Woman) directs a thriller entitled
The Owls in which she and actress Guinevere Turner play aging lesbians.
The latest from Finnish director Aleksi Salmenperä (
Producing Adults),
Bad Family [
Paha perhe], sounds wonderfully naughty. A brother and sister meet again as teenagers after their parents separate and fall in love. Following the German, New York and Tel Aviv editions of the series,
Fucking Different: São Paulo is an omnibus of queer shorts from a group of young Brazilian filmmakers.
Postcard to Daddy is a highly personal documentary by Michael Stock, director/star of
Prince in Hell, addressing his own molestation by his father as a child. Sadly underrated director Ira Sachs (
Married Life,
The Delta) will present his short,
Last Address, this year, which is dedicated to the many, many NYC artists we’ve lost to the AIDS virus.
German filmmaker Angela Schanelec (
Marseilles,
Nachmittag) will debut her latest,
Orly, in the Forum section. Bruno Todeschini and Natacha Régnier co-star in the German/French production. Constantin Popescu, one of the directors of
Tales from the Golden Age, will make his feature debut with
Portait of the Fighter As a Young Man [
Portretul luptătorului la tinereţe], which follows a Romanian group of anti-Communists hiding in the Carpathian Mountains.
Hanna Schygulla will receive an Honorary Golden Bear for her contributions to both German and international cinema. Schygulla will also present four films she directed:
Ein Traumprotokoll,
Hanna Hannah,
Moi et mon double and
Alicia Bustamente. In addition to the films she directed, four of her most memorable performances will also play: Fatih Akin’s
The Edge of Heaven [
Auf der anderen Seite], Marco Ferreri’s
The Story of Piera [
Storia di Piera] for which she won the Best Actress prize at Cannes and two collaborations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Lili Marleen and
Rio das Mortes.
Other new films:
Submarino, d. Thomas Vinterberg (
The Celebration);
Shekarchi [
The Hunter], d. Rafi Pitts (
It’s Winter);
Loose Cannons [
Mine vaganti], d. Ferzan Ozpetek (
Steam: The Turkish Bath,
Saturn in Opposition), w. Riccardo Scamarcio.
The South by Southwest [SXSW] Film Festival also announced its line-up. The film portion of the festival begins on 12 March and runs until the 20th, while the music portion, arguably the raison d’être of the fest, begins on the 17th and goes to the 21st.
The Duplass brothers’
Cyrus, starring John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, Marisa Tomei (with an awful haircut) and Jonah Hill, is among the Headliners, as well as the U.S. premieres of two Sony Pictures Classics titles, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s
Micmacs [
Micmacs à tire-larigot] and Aaron Schneider’s
Get Low.
Mr. Nice, a biopic of criminal Howard Marks, directed by Bernard Rose (
The Kreutzer Sonata, the
Anna Karenina adaptation with Sophie Marceau), is also a part of the Headliners and stars Rhys Ifans, Chloë Sevigny, David Thewlis, Luis Tosar, Christian McKay and (!) Ken Russell.
Sevigny also stars in
Barry Munday, co-starring Patrick Wilson, Mae Whitman (Anne Veal from
Arrested Development), Judy Greer (Kitty Sanchez from
Arrested Development), Malcolm McDowell, Cybill Shepherd, Jean Smart, Billy Dee Williams and Colin Hanks. James Franco will redirect his party to Austin, Texas to premiere his documentary
Saturday Night which looks at all the behind-the-scenes action of
Saturday Night Live. Carla Gugino plays a retired porn actress in her boyfriend Sebastian Gutierrez’s
Elektra Luxx; also with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Timothy Olyphant, Malin Akerman, Alicia Silverstone (!), Justin Kirk and Marley Shelton.
Easily the most exciting thing playing at this year’s SXSW Film Festival is the new film from Aaron Katz (
Dance Party USA,
Quiet City), entitled
Cold Weather. Cold Weather again stars Cris Lankenau of
Quiet City and sounds vaguely thriller-ish. It’ll be the one I’m keeping my eye on. The other title that has me enticed is Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara’s documentary on Stephin Merritt called
Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields. The doc is ten years in the making (starting around the time of
69 Love Songs, I’d imagine). The Magnetic Fields’ new album,
Realism, is also pretty outstanding if you haven’t picked it up yet.
Other films playing that premiered elsewhere: Harmony Korine’s
Trash Humpers, Michel Gondry’s
The Thorn in the Heart [
L’épine dans le cœur], Bryan Poyser’s
Lovers of Hate, Daniel Barber’s
Harry Brown, Dagur Kári’s
The Good Heart, Niels Arden Oplev’s
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [
Män som hatar kvinnor], Giorgos Lanthimos’
Dogtooth, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s
Amer, Gaspar Noé’s
Enter the Void, Sean Byrne’s
The Loved Ones, Bahman Ghobadi’s
No One Knows About Persian Cats and Steven Soderbergh’s documentary about Spalding Gray,
And Everything Is Going Fine.
Following in the traditions of both the Berlinale and Venice International Film Festival, the very first Queer Palm will be handed out at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Though in its first year, the award isn't yet an "official" prize... but it will be given to any film screening across the panels (the Official selection, Un Certain Regard, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Semaine de la Critique). The Teddy Award in Berlin has been around since 1987, formed by German filmmakers Wieland Speck and Manfred Salzgeber; the first Teddy's were given to Pedro Almodóvar's Law of Desire [La ley del deseo] in the feature category and Gus Van Sant's Five Ways to Kill Yourself and My New Friend in the shorts section. The Queer Lion of the Venice Film Festival has only been around for three years, with the first prize going to Edward Radtke's The Speed of Life in 2007; Tom Ford's A Single Man won last year. "Fathered" by directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Jeanne et le garçon formidable, Crustacés et coquillages), the Queer Palm will be announced at a ceremony on the 22nd. For more information, here's an interview with the organizer, Franck Finance-Madureira, with English subtitles. Ducastel and Martineau won a Teddy Jury Award in 2000 for The Adventures of Félix [Drôle de Félix].
Unfortunately, the official Queer Palm site doesn't mention which titles are eligible for the award, but with three notable queer cinéastes presenting their latest films this year, I'd imagine they'll have their pick of Gregg Araki's Kaboom! (which played out of competition at a midnight screening), Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats [Les amours imaginaires] (which has gotten a lot of great feedback and was just acquired by IFC Films) and (possibly) Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (which hasn't screened yet and may not be as queer as, say, Tropical Malady). I suppose there's a possibility in Cam Archer's Shit Year (like Weerasethakul's, it may lack the queerness of the director's previous Wild Tigers I Have Known), but gauging a film's queerness is a challenge (for those reading synopses and reviews just as much, I'd imagine, as those who've actually seen the films).
Looking at the Semaine de la Critique line-up today, I just now noticed that another (queer) short directed by James Franco, The Clerk's Tale, will be closing the Court-Métrange section of the Semaine (along with a short directed by Kirsten Dunst called Bastard, with Juno Temple, Brian Geraghty, Lukas Haas, Lee Thompson Young and L.M. Kit Carson). A little over a year after acting in a Gus Van Sant film (Milk, of course), Franco seems to be carrying on the queer cinema torch. Another short he directed called Feast of Stephen, about a teenage boy's black-and-white fantasies, took home the Teddy for Short Film earlier this year; Franco also played that homo Allen Ginsberg in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl, also part of the 2010 Berlinale. If no other Queer Palm information surfaces in the next few days, you'll hear back from me when the jury hands out their prize. Until then, check out the charming, smutty interview BUTT magazine conducted with Dolan back in April.
