wow

Showing posts with label AFI FILM FESTIVAL. Show all posts

FILM FESTIVALS: ARAB, GERMANY, AND ISRAEL IN LOS ANGELES

Film festivals across LA starting Wednesday

By John Esther

Call the coincidence what you will, three film festivals open this week featuring with, shall we write, cultures containing components with a sometimes rather uneasy relationship toward each other.

Occasionally addressing that discord while celebrating their respective identities, they are, in alphabetical order: the Arab Film Festival; German Currents: Festival of New German Cinema; and the Israel Film Festival.

On Oct. 20 both the German Currents (GC) and Israel Film Festival (IFF) begin.

In collaboration with the American Cinemateque and German Films, the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles the fourth annual showcase of recent German films is returning this year to the Aero Theatre and other venues around Los Angeles Oct. 20-24.

Germany’s official entry for the 83rd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, When We Leave, opens the festival Oct. 20, 7:30 at the Egyptian Theater. Writer-director Feo Aladag will be present.

Further west on Wednesday night, the 25th Israel Film Festival gets off its 25th year with an award gala recognizing actor Richard Dreyfus, director Avi Lerner, producer Ryan Kavanaugh and producer Jon Landau at The Beverly Hilton.

Winner of the recent Israeli Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress, The Opening night film is Avi Nesher’s The Matchmaker, screening Oct. 21, 7:30 p.m. at the Royal in West Los Angeles. In addition to Opening Night, the festival will show films through Nov. 4 with other screenings at the Royal plus at Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood and Laemmle Fallbrook 7 in West Hills.

Making its way down from the San Francisco, Berkeley and the San Jose Arab Film Festivals, the Arab Film Festival in Los Angeles will screen Oct. 22-24 at Writers Guild of America Theater in Beverly Hills. The festival will include films from Egypt, France, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and other countries.

A small festival with an impressive beginning, AFF commences with a gala screening of Algeria’s Lyes Salem’s Masquerades. The reception begins at 6 p.m., screening at 8 p.m.

For more information on the Arab Film Festival: http://www.arabfilmfestival.org/

For more information on German Currents: http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/los/prj/ger/sch/enindex.htm

For more information on the Israeli Film Festival: http://www.israelfilmfestival.com/;1-877-966-5566.

Persian Cats: The worst crime they ever did was play some rock & roll.

Underground in Iran

By John Esther

In the woeful country of Iran, music, especially Occidental music, has been forbidden for the last 30 years. It might bring some kind of mental or physical release and who wants that? Like the sight of a woman’s hair in Iran, hearing a woman may arouse sinful thoughts about another kind of release and we just cannot have any of that either. (At least Iran has the death penalty which provides another kind of release, albeit negative.)

So in the land of rising youth, youngsters who make or support non-traditional music must go underground to play what is rather harmless pop music by Occidental standards (I can only imagine what would happen if an Iranian rock band covered the Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen” switching the gender and replacing the word “Queen” with “Ayatollah” or Gang of Four’s “To Hell with Poverty” -- death penalty?)

Offering the first depiction, accurate or otherwise, of this loud yet unspoken subversive phenomenon is co-writer/director Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows About Persian Cats (Kasi az gorbehaye irani khabar nadareh).

Winner of the Un Certain Regard at Cannes International Film Festival 2009 -- Special Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Miami Film Festival, No One Knows About Persian Cats follows a group of young musicians and their manager (Hamed Behdad) as they try to raise money to practice, perform and get passports that will get them out of the country.

With a strong blend of cinema verite and commercial license, Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses and Turtles Can Fly) and director of photographer Turaj Aslani sweep the frequently out-of-focus camera around the young underground-ers of Tehran, finding a non-superstitious generation dreaming of world where they can be what they want to be without the being hassled by the Farsi fascists. Their music is usually about youthful love and play while rarely critical of Iran, but when it is, it seems right on the mark.

Saturated with pop culture, audiences in the land of American Idol may see No One Knows About Persian Cats as otherworldly, but it is all too real, illustrating yet another unfortunate aspect of Iran’s theocratic tyranny (but I repeat myself).

Director Kirk Jones, Kate Beckinsale, Robert De Niro, and Drew Barrymore attend the AFI Fest 2009 gala screening of Everybody's Fine. Photo by Ed Rampell.

For more images of AFI Fest 2009, go to http://jestherentimages.blogspot.com/

Eric Cantona and Steve Evets star in Ken Loach's Looking for Eric.

Going postal

By Ed Rampell

The AFI Fest often premieres hard to see but nevertheless worthy films for Los Angelenos, such as Ken Loach’s stellar, stirring Looking For Eric.

In the past this great progressive British helmer has directed explicitly political features, such as 1995’s Spanish Civil War classic Land and Freedom, 1996’s pro-Sandinista Carla’s Song, 2000’s L.A.-set, pro-union Bread and Roses, 2006’s Irish Revolution drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, etc. He has also placed working class life under the movie magnifying glass in films such as 1998’s My Name is Joe.

Looking For Eric combines both Loach trends – with a dose of magical realism. The title character refers to Eric Bishop, a washed-up mailman (Steve Evets) subject to panic attacks and Eric Cantona, the real life soccer player who – like Humphrey Bogart in Woody Allen’s 1972 Play It Again, Sam – appears to advise the proletarian protagonist on how to be heroic and play it cool.

The ending to this World Cinema selection is a thinly veiled socialist solution, as mass unity and action intervene, with a mob of mailman and other UK workers singing "La Marseillaise," taking matters into their own plebian hands and going postal. The rousing finale may be a reference to Bertolt Brecht’s athletic socialist clubs in the newly re-released German classic, Kuhle Wampe. Of course, in the best tradition of Wilhelm Reich, the mass action also gives Eric the confidence to finally – after 30 freakin’ years – get the girl (Stephanie Bishop). Bravo, Loach!

(Looking For Eric is scheduled to screen Nov. 5, 7 p.m., at Mann Chinese Theater 1, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)

AFI Fest screens Hitchcock classic

By Ed Rampell

When I was attending Hunter College film school, classmates criticized me for stating that the ending of 1959’s North by Northwest symbolized Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint having sexual intercourse. The next class I brought in Francois Truffaut’s book of interviews with Hitchcock (Hitchcock/Truffaut), wherein the "Master of Suspense" confirmed my suspicions.

Part of this year's Special Presentations program this tongue-in-cheek espionage thriller is fraught with symbolism, including what is arguably screendom’s greatest chase sequence: a relentless crop duster in hot pursuit of Grant at a cornfield, hellbent on turning the pre-Don Draper (m)ad man into dust. The Mount Rushmore sequence is also immortal. Hitchcock also built replicas of the U.N., a Frank Lloyd Wright house, etc., for this classic with its quintessentially Hitchcockian theme of a wrong man being pursued. (As Hitch vacationed frequently at the Swiss Alps’ swankiest five star hotel, Badrutt’s Palace, at idyllic St. Moritz, it’s hard to comprehend how the director could have such a pessimistic outlook.)

A cinematic gem featuring one of those unforgettable Bernard Herrmann scores, AFI has a film preservation and historical mission it richly lives up to by screening North by Northwest. Don’t miss this good fun, sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat movie masterpiece – and that cheeky final shot.

(North by Northwest is scheduled to screen Nov. 2, 6:30 p.m., at Mann Chinese Theater 1, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more info: 866/I-FEST; www.afi.com)

Brenda Blethyn and Sotigui Kouyate star in London River.

Multiculturalism matters

By John Esther

From the opening moments of this 20/20, World Cinema selection you know which way London River flows. Protestant Elisabeth (Brenda Blethyn) listens to a sermon about loving your neighbor while Muslim Ousmane (Sotigui Kouyate) prays toward Mecca in solitude. Both are resigned to their fates, existing for the sake of existing.

On July 7, 2005, terrorists strike several veins of transport, killing dozens and sending both believers into panic mode. Where are there children? Elisabeth leaves Guernsey (a Channel Island) while Ousame leaves a forest in France, both heading to London. She is looking for her daughter, Jane, while he is looking for his son, Ali.

Because of the connection between Ali and Jane, Elisabeth and Ousmane continually encounter each other. She is full of mistrust of the Muslim; he is full of regret for leaving Ali when his son was 6. Although she raised her Jane and he did not raise his Ali, neither parent really knows her or his child. She is bedazzled by her daughter's choices while he fears for the worst with his son.

Directed and co-written by Rachid Bouchareb, London River packs quite a bit of drama for a 90-minute film. It is anyone's guess whether the children are still alive. Both parents must go through the horrors of visiting hospitals and morgues in the chance his or her child was a victim of the attacks. Do they really want to find them? Under these circumstances, ignorance may be bliss compared to knowledge.

Elizabeth is plenty ignorant to begin with, considering her husband a hero in "the war" of the Falkland Islands in 1982 (the undeclared war lasted 72 days and claimed an estimated 1000 casualties) and oblivious to people speaking Arabic ("Who speaks Arabic," she asks?), she is one of those bourgeois Britain's the other classes love to hate. At least she speaks French; but, then again, everybody (cop, butcher, Imam) speaks French in this film so Ousame does not have to try speaking English. Phew!

Thanks to the tremendous performances of Blethyn and Kouyate the drama has a greater impact. For what is at stake here, as Armand Amar's score aurally illustrates, is the wish by fanatics to kill the narrative of modernist multiculturalism and how terrorism -- in the long run, not the short -- assures that people from different cultures will eventually have a greater understanding of each other. After all, grief, guilt, and guile are universal languages and nobody can blow that away. (Recommended)

(London River screens Oct. 30, 7 p.m., at Mann Chinese Theater 1, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)

Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger) fight like Everyone Else.

No exit

By John Esther

Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger) should be having the loving time of their lives. Here the German couple are staying in his mother's lovely villa in Italy. The weather is lovely, he has a good job, she can ignore her job even more, and they have all the solitude for spontaneous sex any time. But instead, they focus most of their time bickering, fighting, and hurting each other emotionally -- just like everyone else?

Written and directed by Maren Ade (The Forest for the Trees) the first part of the New Lights Competition film focuses on what makes the couple work. They have a certain dynamic suggesting they feel extraordinarily hipper than everyone else, especially Chris' mother, who has these funny collections around the place. This tragically hip attitude loses altitude when Gitti, a flaky publicist with an unremarkable intellect, challenges everyone else on his or her opinions. Rather than stick it in for his wife, Chris sticks up for his friends, and rightfully so. (While I would not call it misogyny, Ade clearly likes the male characters more than her female ones in Everyone Else.)

A two-hour film feeling a lot longer, despite the gorgeous cinematography by Bernhard Keller and the solid performance by the two leads, Everyone Else putters like a poor play. Too much of the movements, actions and reactions have a staged feeling. This may be somewhat the point considering the last 30 minutes of the film where Gitti commits two or three actions so obnoxious and melodramatic it is hard not to root for Chris to kick her right out of this stage in his life. That he does not makes you wonder what she has to do to get him to exit the couple.

(Everyone Else is scheduled to screen Oct. 30, 9:30 p.m. at Mann Chinese Theater 6, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com.)

Spanish Bombs Cinema.

By Ed Rampell

The New York International Independent Film & Video Festival is screening works by emerging and established indie filmmakers and videomakers in L.A. from July 30-Aug. 6. This film and video festival may be rough around the edges compared to AFI, LAFF and some of L.A.’s other glitzier, more homespun festivals, but it does present some worthwhile work in a variety of genres from many nations that Angelenos may otherwise not be able to take a peek at.

A case in point is Catalonian director Oriol Porta’s stellar documentary, A War in Hollywood, that chronicles Tinseltown’s first cause celeb, the Spanish Civil War, which ended 70 years ago this year. The movie colony rallied to this anti-fascist “crusade,” holding star-studded fundraisers to purchase and transport ambulances to Spain’s beleaguered Loyalists, and more importantly making features and documentaries during and after the struggle against Generalissimo Francesco Franco (in the immortal words of Chevy Chase, he’s “still dead!”), who overthrew the democratically elected Spanish Republic in 1936 and was backed by Hitler and Mussolini. Indeed, one of the doc’s interview subjects is contemporary activist actress Susan Sarandon, who proves that Hollywood’s romance with these issues persists seven decades later.

Much of this documentary is told through the eyes and words of the only American screenwriter who fought for democracy in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Alvah Bessie, who wrote two books about his eyewitness experiences there and went on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Original Story for the 1945 Errol Flynn WWII actioner, Objective, Burma! In 1947 Bessie became one of the Hollywood Ten, and his 1930s exploits as a “premature anti-fascist” helped to get him blacklisted, proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.

Bessie’s fellow screenwriters, Walter Bernstein and Arthur Laurents – who both had brushes with the Hollywood Blacklist -- are interviewed in A War in Hollywood, which artfully cross-cuts between archival footage, original mostly talking head material and various movies, including clips from Bernstein’s 1976 anti-blacklist dramedy, The Front, starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel. In it, the House Un-American Activities Committee inquisitors persecute Mostel’s character, Hecky, for having signed a petition in favor of Spain’s Republicans. (Bernstein also wrote the 1988 blacklist drama, The House on Carroll Street.)

There are scenes from Laurents’ beloved 1973 romance, The Way We Were, with Barbra Streisand playing a young idealistic communist in the1930s, who makes an impassioned anti-Franco speech at a college campus, noting how the Soviet Union is the only nation coming to the aid of democratic Spain.

Scenes from the first Hollywood feature about the Spanish Civil War – John Howard Lawson’s stirring 1938 film, Blockade – starring Henry Fonda as Marco, an anti-Franco partisan are shown. In it, Soviet cargo ships try to run a Franco embargo in order to save starving Spaniards. In A War in Hollywood Marco is seen scrambling for cover during a fascist bombardment (which calls to mind the aerial bombing of Guernica), and in the grand finale he looks straight into the camera, demanding to know, “Where is the conscience of the world?” In her autobiography Jane Fonda wrote how her father’s films, such as Blockade, affected her and forged her political consciousness.

Another film released while the struggle against Franco was still taking place is Joris Ivens’ This Spanish Earth, a classic 1937 documentary narrated by Ernest Hemingway, who co-wrote the doc with John Dos Passos and Lillian Hellman. There are great clips from that doc, and also archival footage of Papa Hemingway in Spain, in Porta’s picture. Scenes from Hollywood’s 1943 adaptation of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls also appear in A War in Hollywood, and it’s interesting to note that veterans of the International Brigades, including Bessie and Moe Fishman (who is repeatedly interviewed onscreen) denounced the novel and film version.

In addition, Franco’s censorial reach extended beyond Espana’s borders, as Hollywood studios sought access to the Spanish market. Henry King’s 1952 screen adaptation of Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, starring Gregory Peck, is also criticized for the insertion of a flashback to a Spanish Civil War battle that depicts the Republicans in a negative light. However Peck, the archetypal La-La-Land liberal, “redeemed” himself in 1964’s decidedly anti-fascist film, Behold a Pale Horse, which pits Peck against Anthony Quinn’s pro-Franco commandante.

Alvah Bessie’s son, Dan Bessie, is also one of the interview subjects in A War in Hollywood, and he will be at the 10:15 p.m., Aug. 6 screening of the documentary.

Through Aug. 6 the NYIIFVF screenings are at the Regency Fairfax Theatre at 7907 Beverly Blvd. For more info visit www.nyfilmvideo.com.

Jody (Leelee Sobieski) is Finding Bliss in adult film.

Acting and truth in film

By Carlin Nguyen

The 11th annual Method Film Festival -- which focuses on the truth and realism in the world of acting -- runs now through April 2 in Calabasas, California.

MFF will host a total of 33 feature films from seven countries and the US, along with 10 short film programs and shorts preceding the features. In addition to films focusing on acting, MFF also features free youth workshops on filmmaking, screenwriting, acting, youth screening and youth bands.

Here are a few samples of what to expect at this year’s MFF.

Finding Bliss -- In director Julie Davis’ film Leelee Sobieski plays Jody Balaban, a recent award-winning film school grad, has been in Los Angeles for about a year. There’s one problem – she can’t find a job. After vast job inquiries and no callbacks, Jody has no choice but to take a high paying editor job at Grind Productions, an adult film company. A sexy romantic comedy about coping with the demands of editing porn while facing her secret past about sex, Jody must find a way to muster her ability to get by -- on the job and with her family.

Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger – The story about Esther Blueburger (Danielle Catanzariti), a shy but lonely girl looking toward her Bat Mitzvah. Esther tries to fit in at her private school while struggling to make ground with her loud parents. One day Esther meets Sunni (Keisha Castle-Hughes), an outspoken and daring girl at a neighboring public school and life for Esther changes immediately. Directo Cathy Randall’s film is a funny and witty story about life’s changing identities from one young Jewish woman.

When Life Was Good -- A comedy-drama revolving around three friends -- Brooklyn (Kristine Cofsky), an aspiring actress who arrives home from studying abroad to celebrate her boyfriend Ben’s birthday; her best friend Faith (Keri Horton) who has to confront her relationship issues while managing her ambition as a dancer; and Casey (Casey Manderson), a struggling screenwriter needing help to get his play developed from the ground up – the director Terry Miles film forms a life struggle as these three friends try to make something of themselves while dealing with conflicting emotions, unexpected intimacy and the demands of the real world.

Opening night party palace. Photo by Lynnette Gryseels.

By John Esther

The inaugural Bel Air Film Festival commenced this evening with a little party inside Lionsgate Vice Chairman and Director Mark Amin's monstrously ostentatious mansion in the namesake city.

Titled "Film Fashion Night," non-filmmakers, leisure class denizens and others swallowed sparkling wine served in plastic cups while chowing down snacks of various merit. Honorees for the evening included Anya Sarre, celebrity stylist for such banal enterprises as Entertainment Tonight, The Insider and ET on MTV.

Hosted by Genlux Magazine, opening night held screenings of the short and enlightening documentary, Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Painting with Light, about the famed photographer’s life and works. While few from those present attended that documentary, only a few remained for the second and last short documentary of the night, James Gill Full Circle, which is an autobiographical look at the American pop artist James Gill.

For more information go to www.belairfilmfestival.com

Above: A photo from the documentary Design by Light, an image far removed from opening night.

Fighting His-story

By John Esther

From the terrains of Uganda to the rings of Philadelphia, PA, Kassim "The Dream" Ouma has been fighting for various reasons throughout his entire life.

As chronicled in Kief Davidson's worthwhile documentary, Kassim the Dream, Ouma was kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda at the age of 6 and forced to kill.

(What the LRA was fighting for is not explained in the film. To put it simply, it was a military power grab in the name of God).

While kids in America were practicing shooting human beings and monsters in their imaginations, video games and play, Ouma and many other kids like him were torturing their fellow men, women, and children. Unlike American kids who may be grounded for not playing fair, failing to prey by the LRA resulted in torture and death. For a child whose only concept of resistance is tyranny a la the LRA, Ouma could not envision anything but cooperation -- something he has not entirely outgrown.

As Ouma grew older his conscious developed along with his boxing skills. At the symbolic age of 18 when Americans officially become adults, Ouma did took on a grave amount of responsibility for himself and defected to the United States. This transgression against those now in power back in Uganda resulted in the torture and murder of Ouma's father.

Homeless and unable to speak English, Ouma persevered in America. As he picked up English Ouma also rose up in the boxing ranks, eventually becoming the Junior Middleweight Champion of the World.

Yet the horrors of his childhood continued to bother Ouma. Although he managed to bring his mother and first son to America (he already had one son here), the 29-year-old Ouma wished to return to the homeland. But if he wants to do that he has many questionable obstacles to overcome, some the viewer may wish to cheer for more than others. As Ouma trains for a world title fight against Jermain Taylor in Little Rock, Arkansas, he also needs to appease the notorious government of Uganda that was responsible for his abduction and father's murder if he wants to get home.

A contradicting mixture of joviality and melancholy, courage and cowardice, insight and stupidity, Ouma is a complex character I found worth cheering for at times and sneering at during others. Ouma can crack jokes and wain reflexive on the differences between his grand life in North America and the tragic one back on the African continent. Ouma may have the heart to train heavily before the big fight, but he does not have the discipline to refrain from smoking pot and consuming alcohol (although he does manage to keep his "grease"). Ouma faces his inner demons only to turn around, and buckle to, and let himself be used by, the demonic Ugandan government.

Ouma understands the utter poverty of his homeland but embraces, without seemingly any pause, the materialism of his new one without ever noticing the two are indeed connected. That his trainer, "Uncle" Tom Morgan, a strident anti-Bush artist and politically minded American, fails to instill this in the young man warrants some inquiry .

A moving portrait of a complex character who gradually matures as the film goes by, it would be interesting to see what Ouma has done for himself, his past, and his two countries in the future.

(Kassim the Dream screens Nov. 8, 7 p.m.; Nov. 9, 12:30 p.m.)

For more information log onto http://www.afi.com/

No endgame in site

By John Esther

Banned from Slamdance Film Festival for no explicable reason, director Danny Ledonne's documentary, Playing Columbine, made its World Premiere debut at AFI Film Festival 2008 last night to a surprisingly and disappointingly small attendance.

Inspired by the awful events that took place at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, in which two demented teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, waged a murderous assault on their school, Ledonne made a video game called Supergame Columbine Massacre RPG!.

Naturally the immediate kneejerk reaction to the game was to view it as "exploitative," "obscene" and hopes that Ledonne would meet the same fatal fate as Columbine students Rachel Scott, Daniel Rohrbough, Kyle Velasquez, Cassie Bernall, Isiah Shoels, Michael Kechter, Lauren Townsend, John Tomlin, Kelly Fleming, Daniel Mause, Corey DePooter and Steve Curnow, plus teacher and coach Dave Sanders, met that day.

If critics had bothered to actually watch the game -- where it seems there is no way out but hell for the killers, victims linger onscreen longer than usual video game storyline, and an emphasis on the amount of sorrow brought on by such actions is displayed -- these conservative critics may have come to understand that this low grade, amateurish video game was breaking boundaries by using the video game medium as a form of social engagement.

Using his journey from creator to "monster" to spokesperson as the narrative arc, Ledonne chronicles his own plight against the larger social context of video games as the emerging 21st medium. Gathering interviews from critics, fans, lawyers, politicians, video game makers and players alike, the best documentary I have seen at this year's festival weighs in on the values and responsibilities that come from having and maintaining the First Amendment, video games as art, targeting new audiences that may not typically engage themselves in social issues, and historical context via previous forms of art, namely cinema. To its credit, Playing Columbine slowly and surely bares out that form and content are never inseparable.

Screening today at 3:15 at Arclight Hollywood, Ledonne's impressive debut is a worthy companion to two other films which have addressed the Columbine massacre, Michael Moore's famous documentary, Bowling for Columbine and Gus Van Sant's eloquent yet problematic film, Elephant.

For more information log onto http://www.afi.com/afifest

Cy Carter (Dax) and Mary Elizabeth Ellis (Olive) as the young married couple enduring A Quiet Little Marriage

Loud and fearful

By Don Simpson

Winner of an audience award at Austin Film Festival and my pick for the best film of the narrative feature competition (Note: I was not able to view the winner – Nobuyuki Miyake’s Lost & Found), writer-director Mo Perkins’ A Quiet Little Marriage is an improvised (a la John Cassavetes) tale of a young, fault-filled marriage. The story is brutally realistic; the dialogue and the performances are skillfully subdued and the cinematography is perfectly natural. The ending twist is a bit trite, but otherwise the only “fault” of A Quiet Little Marriage is that the writing plays second fiddle to the acting.

(A Quiet Little Marriage screens Nov. 7, 7 p.m.; Nov. 8, 3:45 p.m.)

For more AFI Film Fest 2008 info, log onto http://www.afi.com/

AFI FEST 2008: ELECTION DAY

By John Esther

The sixth day of AFI Film Festival 2008 happens to be Election Day.

After you have voted, feel free to come over to the Cinema Lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel and watch the returns roll in. If it is all too much to watch, you can distract yourself with a movie or two.

As an incentive to vote (as if one needed it) if you bring your “I Voted” sticker to the Box Office, you will get two tickets for the price of one.

FILM FESTIVALS: ARAB, GERMANY, AND ISRAEL IN LOS ANGELES

FILM REVIEW: NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS

AFI FEST 2009: IMAGES

AFI FEST 2009: LOOKING FOR ERIC

AFI FEST 2009: NORTH BY NORTHWEST

AFI FEST 2009: LONDON RIVER

AFI FEST 2009: EVERYONE ELSE

NYIIFVF 2009: A WAR IN HOLLYWOOD

METHOD FILM FESTIVAL 2009

EXCLUSIVE BEL AIR FILM FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT

AFI FEST 2008: KASSIM THE DREAM

AFI FEST 2008: PLAYING COLUMBINE

AFI FEST 2008: A QUIET LITTLE MARRIAGE

AFI FEST 2008: ELECTION DAY