Thursday, June 12, 2008

Coming Up . . .

The new issue of Jewish Week is up on the webpage and I've got two stories in it that should be of interest to anyone who reads Cine-Journal. The first is an interview with Jan Schutte, the German director of a new film based on stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Love Comes Lately. As my piece probably makes clear, I'm very impressed by his adaptation. The film's direction is competent, but the acting and writing are something more.

The second piece is a rundown on the Jewish-themed films playing in this year's Human Rights Watch Film Festival, including a striking hour-long film, "To See If I'm Smiling," that profiles a half-dozen Israeli women who served in the IDF in the Occupied Territories. It's a brutally frank reminder of the dehumanizing nature of military service and combat. In case you haven't figured that one out already.

There's a bunch of exciting stuff in the offing here in NYC over the next couple of weeks. Anthology Film Archives is in the midst of a showcase of late films by Howard Hawks, most notably two of my favorites, Rio Bravo and El Dorado. and at the end of the month, they'll be presenting the theatrical premiere of the latest Ken Jacobs film, Razzle Dazzle, which I saw this afternoon. I'll be doing something on it for Jewish Week when it opens, so all I'll say right now is that it is quite lovely, at once both elegiac and angry.

The Museum of Modern Art will be doing a salute to Zeitgeist Films and a program on Salvador Dali's involvement with cinema, and their excellent Jazz and Film program continues as well. I'll be posting on the new Portabella in the next day or two, as promised; it opens a week-long run at MoMA on Friday and really should be seen.

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