Oscar Results

Congratulations to Pan's Labyrinth, which won three Oscars for Cinematography, Makeup, and Art Direction.
Also, congratulations to Das Leben der Anderen (Lives of Others) for Best Foreign Language Film.

Finally, a HUGE win by Martin Scorsese's The Departed


The Departed won for Editing, Screenplay based on previously published works, Best Picture of the Year, and for Best Direction by Scorsese.

Click here for the full results of this night's awards.

Read more

INNOCENCE - Francophone Finale

OFFScreen Presents
INNOCENCE
Dir. Lucile Hadzihalilovic- Belgium/France/UK
Sunday, February 25th
7 & 9:30 PM - 122 mins
Newcomb Hall Theatre
Tickets $3

Set in a sprawling forest lit by hanging outdoor electric lamps and surrounded by an impenetrable stone wall, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's debut film is an allegorical rumination on French femininity. At the center of the forest (and the film) is a secluded girls' school, where prepubescent girls are conditioned and trained for ambiguous future roles in adult society. The girls wear age-specific colored ribbon in their hair, and periodically receive new students delivered in coffins which appear in the middle of the night. "In its view of childhood as totalitarian citizenship, Hadzihalilovic's film stands, quietly, in a gender-furious class by itself." (Michael Atkinson, Village Voice)

Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes:

Abundant butterfly imagery suggests a cocoon for the metamorphosis to womanhood, the closest Lucile Hadzihalilovic's haunting and hypnotic fairy tale comes to explaining this Eden of Eves. The rest is metaphor with a distinctly European sensibility, from its fascination with the not-so-innocent acts of pettiness from children to lovely lingering scenes that cast a spell over the almost abstract story. There is no violence or violation, but it reverberates with uneasy feelings of prepubescent girls as objects of the adult gaze, in particular Hadzihalilovic's own caressing camera. "Innocent" confronts the line between the celebration and the exploitation of innocence with an uneasy tension that is discomforting at best.

Click here for the official studio site.

Read more

Today at the Francophone Film Festival

This is just a reminder that two films are playing today as part of the Francophone Film Festival.


De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (2005)
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Dir. Dir: Jacques Audiard, 107 min.
Wilson 402
5:00pm
FREE

The film stars Romain Duris ("L'Auberge Espagnole")as Tom who is torn between his deceased mother's dreams for him to be a concert pianist, and his father's career as a mafia-style property shark.
The film also stars Emmanuelle Devos, who you may remember from her eloquent role in Gilles' Wife which OFFScreen showed in our Spring 2006 Season.

Click here for the official site of The Beat that my Heart Skipped.


Après vous (2003)
After You
Dir: Pierre Salvadori, 100 min.
Wilson 402
7:30pm
FREE

Après vous Stars Daniel Auteuil and José Garcia. Autenil's character "Antoine" stumbles across Louis (Garcia) in the park about to hang himself, and begins a quest to help him fix his love life.

Read more

Venus: Now Playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre

Venus, by Dir. Roger Michell and starring Peter O'Toole, began playing at Vinegar Hill Theatre last night.

Venus has been nominated for an Academy Award for Peter O'Toole's performance. The film chronicles a formerly star-actor(O'Toole's character "Maurice") who, due to his age, has continually "typecasted" in roles of dead people on television programs. When his close friendm, Ian, becomes fearful that his own death draws near he asks his niece's daughter to come and care for him. Jessie(Jodie Whittaker) serves little in aiding Ian, but ends up giving Maurice new insight into life and he begins to deem her "Venus."

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times writes, "Told with wit, genuine poignancy and all kinds of humor, "Venus" charts the unlikely relationship between a man in his 70s and a young woman more than half a century his junior. This is a relationship unlike any we've seen, and it's a measure of the film's subtle gifts that it is easier to watch it unfolding than to precisely define what we're seeing."

Click here to read Turan's full review.

Show times are daily 4:50pm, 7:00pm, 9:10pm, plus
Saturday and Sunday at 2:40pm.

Read more

GET EXCITED: Francophone Film Fest is Here!

The Francophone Film Festival kicks off tonight. For the second year in a row, the French Department at UVA, with the help of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture (CNC), The French American Cultural Exchange (FACE) Council, and OFFScreen, are bringing contemporary French films to the Charlottesville area.

It all begins tonight at 7pm in Wilson 402 (Auditorium) with:


L'enfant
The Child (2005)
Dir: Jean Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 95 mins
With guest speaker Mr. Ari Blatt, French Department
This screening is Free

Click HERE for the official website of L'enfant.

Tomorrow (Friday):
Mondovino (2004)
6:00pm, Wilson 402 Auditorium
Dir: Jonathan Nossiter, 135 min.
Speaker: Ms. Alison Levine, French Department
FREE

Saturday:
De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (2005)
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
5:00pm, Wilson 402 Auditorium
Dir: Jacques Audiard, 107 min.
Speaker: Ms. Cheryl Krueger, French Department
FREE

Après vous (2003)
After You
7:30pm, Wilson 402 Auditorium
Dir: Pierre Salvadori, 100 min.
Speaker: Mr. Chris James, French Department
FREE

Sunday:
Innocence (2004)
7:00pm and 9:30pm, Newcomb Theater
Dir: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 115 min
Speaker: Ms. Danielle Smith, French Department (after 7:00 showing only)
Tickets $3

Read more

Hand-Made Films

Tonight, at the BRIDGE, the fourth installment of their Winter Film Series will be held. Show starts at 7pm and tickets are, as usual, $4.



HAND-MADE FILMS
Shorts by Six Contemporary Film Artists
These formally playful works will highlight the physical aspects of the medium, while exploring the task of literally constructing a film with one’s own hands. Works shown will include Martin Arnold’s PASSAGE A L’ACTE, Abigail Child’s PERILS and MAYHEM, Kurt Kren’s 15/67 TV, James Benning’s CHICAGO LOOP, Patrick Bokanowski’s LA PLAGE, and Naomi Uman’s HAND EYE COORDINATION, selected by the evening’s host, James Ford. All films will be projected in 16mm.

The Bridge Exhibition space is located at 209 Monticello Road in Belmont, beside Spudnuts.

Read more

Perf.Form

Tonight, at 7pm at Vinegar Hill Theatre, the VA Film Society is screening its second feature in their Spring Series.

Perf.Form (a Double-Projector Feature in Three Parts)
Performed by Sandra Gibson + Luis Recorder
"Both individually and in collaboration, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder are creating some of the most innovative and engaging light works of the present time. I hesitate to say "films", since their work, though it is grounded in an understanding and application of celluloid, goes beyond a general understanding of what film is, taking into consideration the architecture and circumstances of the performance / viewing situation and the physical and emotional presence of light itself. From the inventive ways that they create images on the film strip to the use of multiple projection that often incorporates live performance, Luis and Sandra are two of the most vital young artists working in the field of 'expanded cinema.'"- Mark Webber, The Times BFI London Film Festival

This event is being Cosponsored by Brown College, and there will also be a corresponding video exhibit going on at the UVA Art Museum entitled "Lights Works" by Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson. It will run Feb. 20-March 19.

As Usual, tickets are $8 for the general public and free for Film Society Members.

As for last weeks screening of Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, it is going to rescheduled since it was cancelled due to snow and ice. I'll let you know when that happens.

Everybody get ready, this is going to be a very busy film week.

Read more

Woman is the Future of Man

OFFScreen Presents
Woman is the Future of Man
Dir. Hong Sang-soo - South Korea/France, 2004 - 88 mins.
Sunday, February 18th - 7 & 9:30 PM
Newcomb Hall Theatre
Tickets $3

A sense of loss permeates this wonderfully titled South Korean film, where memory, desire and raw self-interest clash against one another with startling poignancy. A story about two men and the woman they separately possessed and then each abandoned, the film was directed by Hong Sang-soo, one of the most exciting and authentically individual filmmakers working today. Wreathed in a profound melancholy, Mr. Hong's films lyrically explore the limits of subjectivity, its pathos and its dangers.

Woman is the Future of Man was nominated for the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival when it was first released in 2004.

MANOHLA DARGIS wrote in the New York Times of the film after it screened at the 2004 New York Film Festival:

Mr. Hong has a quiet, delicate touch and what happens between Sunhwa and the men happens quietly, delicately and with enormous feeling. There are no dramatic flourishes or lofty speeches; like quite a few of Mr. Hong's film characters, the friends drink too much and flail into the night with poignant ineloquence. There is some clumsy sex (another of this filmmaker's signatures), but a melancholic lack of connection. At one point, Hunjoon shows Sunhwa photographs that he took of their old apartment. She asks why, and he says: "Because that's the place where I treated you so badly. I wanted to go back, confront the past." She doesn't really say anything in return. Unlike the men, she doesn't cling to the past, not only because it's painful, but also because she is fully in the present.

To read Dargis's full review click here.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Read more

Virginia Film Society Spring Series

The Virginia Film Society (a branch of the Virginia Film Festival) is jumpstarting its Spring 07 Series this Tuesday, February 13th. The series is titled Artists on Film, and will feature film that deal witht he colaboration of other art mediums into that of the cinema.


Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, a film by Mary Jordan, tells of underground filmmaker and performance artist Jack Smith who was a key member of the New York underground culture from the 1960's until his death in 1989. He inspired artists such as Andy Warhol, but never received commercial fame. Jordan's film pays homage to Smith's role in the development of avant-garde art, film, and theater.

For more on the film visit the official webstie here.

The film screens at Vinegar Hill Theater at 7pm
Tuesday, February 13th
Tickets are $8
Film Society Memberships are priced at $30, $25 for students and seniors.

For more information about the Virginia Film Society, click here.

Read more

Brothers of the Head

OFFScreen Presents
Brothers of the Head
A Film By Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe - UK, 2005 - 93 mins
TONIGHT Sunday, February 11th
700 & 930 pm
Newcomb Hall Theater
Tickets $3

Reinventing a worn genre, Brothers of the Head is the feverish, perception-altering tale of conjoined twins Tom and Barry Howe, whose father sold them to a former vaudeville star to be groomed into a rock band. The group's career is chronicled by an American cinéma vérité filmmaker, who creates a painfully intimate study of the band, which is also a reflection on the calculated theatricality of popular music. Smirkingly clever and dramatically complex, this film tells the story of two brothers who create a minor sensation in Britain on the eve of punk rock. "Brothers of the Head is not a freak show, or a knockoff Rocky Horror camp celebration. It's a work of powerful atmosphere and significant mystery. Plus, it rocks." (Andrew O'Hehir, Salon)

To view more wacky images and the trailer for Brothers of the Head you can check out the official website.

Additionally, the film was written by Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and features a soundtrack that displays The Bang Bang's "hits" along with other tracks contained within the film. Just to emphasize the rock-documentary nature of Brothers of the Head, a full-length music video was produced of the Bang Bang's "2-way Romeo".The video and most other music on the soundtracks can be heard here.

Read more

Tinted Love

First off, deepest apologies for the lack in posts for the last week. Sometimes things can get a little hectic.

In other news, The Bridge is hosting its third installation in their Winter Film Series. TINTED LOVE: Films and the color blue will be playing tonight, Thursday February 8th. The screening begins at 7 pm.
Featured films will include Derek Jarman’s BLUE, as well as Joseph Cornell’s ROSE HOBART and films by Kenneth Anger and Mark Street. The night will be hosted by former OFFScreen president Sarah Lawson. It should definitely be an event worth attending.
There is a $4 admittance fee. Tickets are available at the door or by contacting the Bridge at info@thebridgepai.com

Read more