The Berlin Film Festival announced the first of the movies that will compete for top honors at this coming February's festival with a raft of films from China, Brazil, Mexico, Britain, the US, Poland and Germany.
In Love We Trust (左右) from Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai (王小帥), There Will Be Blood from US director Paul Thomas Anderson and Katyn from Oscar-winning Polish director Andrzej Wajda were all included in the lineup.
Never shy of tackling highly charged international political issues, organizers have also selected Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris' new movie S.O.P. Standard Operating Procedure, which examines abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of US forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.
PHOTO: AP
Also scheduled to premier at the 2008 Berlinale will be Kirschblueten - Hanami (Cherry Blossoms - Hanami) from leading German director Doris Doerrie and Brazilian box office hit Tropa de Elite (The Elite Squad) from director Jose Padilha.
Now in its 58th year, the Berlinale is one of the world's top three festivals along with Cannes and Venice.
US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez called on China to end its annual quota on foreign film imports.
PHOTO: AP
Gutierrez, in China for trade talks, said Beijing had imposed a routine temporary suspension on foreign film imports. China generally limits foreign film imports to about 20 a year to protect domestic filmmakers.
Last week, the Hollywood trade magazine Variety reported that China was banning all Hollywood movies for three months to protect local films. It said the ban would last until the end of February, but may be extended until May.
The report did not identify its sources and was quickly denied by Zhang Pimin (張丕民), deputy director-general of China's Film Bureau and the vice president of import and export business at state-run China Film Group.
A satirical Palestinian film that reverses the roles of occupier and occupied is one of three full-length feature films, along with a few shorts, shot in Palestine this year with relatively large budgets.
Enas Muthaffar's short film, Occupazion, shows Israeli protesters angrily waving blue and white Israeli flags while they demonstrate against Palestinian rule, one of them, wearing a headscarf, parodied of Palestinians'.
"Each Palestinian film made is a miracle," said George Khleifi, co-author of a book on the subject.
There's little official support for filmmakers, but Annemarie Jacir, director of Salt of this Sea, shot in the West Bank this year, obtained European funding of US$1.2 million.
The films tell stories through Palestinian eyes, trying to get beyond the simplicity of news coverage, which the artists say often reduces Palestinians to either militants or victims.
"Humor, passion, beauty, all of it is overlooked," said director Najwa Najjar, who just completed shooting a feature-length film about a female Palestinian dancer whose husband is sent to an Israeli prison.
Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt is spending time with his family and friends before returning to work less than two weeks after being granted bail in an illegal weapons possession case, a news report said.
India's top court granted Dutt, a well-known actor, bail pending an appeal of his conviction on charges of unlawful possession of three automatic rifles and a pistol.
"I am enjoying the luxury of time before I get down to serious work," Dutt told the Times of India newspaper.
The actor said he needed to unwind before filming EMI, an acronym for easy monthly installments, in which he plays a loan recovery agent used by a bank to make defaulters pay up.
His last film was the 2006 hit Lage Raho Munnabhai (Carry on Munnabhai). A trial court sentenced Dutt to six years in prison in July for possessing weapons supplied by men subsequently convicted in the 1993 Mumbai bombings.
Dutt was acquitted in November 2006 of terrorism and conspiracy charges, but the actor has served nearly 20 months over three separate stretches in prison since he was first arrested in 1994.
"I have a strong belief in God, my loved ones, my fans, and most importantly in myself," Dutt said. "I will bounce back again."
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located