Jordan Beswick, C.S.A.

City of Lights, City of Angels Fest to Celebrate French Cinema in L.A. (by Brian Brooks, March 11, 2004)

The eighth annual City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival will open Monday, March 29th with the U.S. premiere of “Tais-toi” (”Ruby & Quentin”) at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles. Writer-director Francis Veber will
join the event, introducing the film and participating in a Q&A session following the screening. This year’s City of Lights, City of Angels fest, an annual event spotlighting French films, will be the inaugural year for its new festival director, Claudia Durgnat, who created and produced the Festival of the Five Senses and served as P.R. director for the Montreux Jazz Festival. Also coming on board is Francois Truffart, who was formerly the director of La Cinefondation at the Cannes Film Festival and head of the film department at the French Consulate in Los Angeles. He will now serve as the festival’s program director.

Fifteen features are set to screen during the event, which concludes on April 3rdm including the world premiere of Nicolas Boukhrief’s noir-style film, “Le Convoyeur” (Cash Truck). Also screening are Jacques Demy’s “Peau d’ane”
(Donkey Skin), a U.S. premiere, starring Catherine Deneuve and the U.S. premiere of Jan Kounen’s comic book adaptation, “Blueberry.”

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Just a quick update to fill you all in on what’s going on in my professional life. Filming commenced on FORTY SHADES OF BLUE at the end of February and I can only imagine that it’s going well. I just returned from another extremely successful workshop in Paris and will return to do another Master workshop on March 26th. My play the F word will be presented in the PLAYSPOTTING festival in Melbourne, Australia later this year. NO LONGER HIM, the screenplay I was commissioned to write, has been read and enthusiastically responded to by CAA. AL ROACH: PRIVATE INSECTIGATOR, the short animated pilot I cast (and co-wrote) last summer has been picked up by Turner Classic Movies for thirteen episodes. THE MOONLIGHT ROOM, Tristine Skyler’s extraordinary play that I was casting consultant on in NYC has been moved uptown to the Samuel Beckett theatre. There’s talk about my doing an acting workshop in Barcelona. That would certainly be nice! And I appreciate it all! Patience, perserverence, trust, faith, HARD work, extremely deep breaths, respect, appreciation and love, love, love! My own personal secret recipe for success.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan Talks About The Truths of “Distant”
(by Howard Feinstein, March 8, 2004)

A conflicted intellectual is the main protagonist in “Distant,” Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s third feature, winner of both the grand jury prize and best actor accolades for its two leads at this past Cannes Film Festival. In one of the few funny scenes in this otherwise earnest film, he puts on a tape of a Tarkovsky film. “He loses patience in the middle,” says Ceylan. “So he puts on porno.”

Like his earlier films, “The Small Town” and “Clouds of May,” “Distant” is autobiographical. Mahmut (Muzaffer Ozdemir) is a successful, middle-aged photographer in Istanbul who has fallen into the chasm between youthful idealism and a state of quiet resignation. He isolates himself. His sporadic contacts are with women, who quietly glide in and quickly out of his home, and a few pals, who badger him about his withdrawal from life. He channels his energies into repetitive rituals like a beer at the same time in the same cafe every day and an obsession with neatness in his apartment. Everything there is
so ordered that he even sprays the inside of his shoes daily and places them in just the right spot in a cupboard.

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Full Frame Sets Full Slate of Docs for April Fest
(by Brian Brooks, March 8, 2004)
Documentary coverage presented by AFI / SilverDocs

North Carolina’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival has released its 2004 slate of 97 titles to be screened during the event’s five day run, taking place April 1-4. Among the films, 67 will be shown in competition in addition to 30 others taking part in the fest as curated programs. Sundance favorites such as Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me” as well as Catherine Tambini & Carlos Sandoval’s “Farmingville” are set for the program, in addition to Ross Kauffman & Zana Briski’s “Born into Brothels,” Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky’s
“Metallica: Some Kind of Monster” and others. In all, 51 world, North American, U.S., East Soast, and Southeast premieres are set for the event which will take place at the Carolina Theater and other venues in Durham.

“Alone Across Australia” by Jon Muir and Ian Darling will be among the world premieres. The film focuses on Muir’s perilous trek through Australia on foot and his reliance on instinct for survival. Polish doc “Bar at Victoria Station” by Leszek Dawid follows two 30 year-old men who go to London in search
of work after giving up on any home prospects. John Sullivan’s “Home of the Brave - Land of the Free” (North American premiere) takes a look at how the US Special Forces operate in Afghanistan, through the lenses of a Norwegian film crew, while the world premiere of Curtis Levy’s “The President vs.
David Hicks” examines the conflict from a different viewpoint, focusing on the case of a young Australian who traveled to Afghanistan to study under the Taliban, only to be captured by American forces and sent to Guantanamo Bay for imprisonment, where he remains today.

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A Blanket of Loneliness Covers Istanbul; Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Small Masterpiece “Distant” (by Peter Brunette, March 3, 2004)

I’m now more convinced than ever that a film festival is the worst possible place to see a film. Especially a serious art film. When I first saw Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Uzak” (Distant) at Cannes last year, where it was part of the competition, I didn’t like it at all. Slow, pretentious, inscrutable, a travesty (or even parody) of an art film: that’s what it seemed to me at the time, exhausted as I was by too few hours of sleep, and too many movies and deadlines. What a difference a change of context can make! I now see it as a small masterpiece, the kind of ultra-subtle film that amply rewards the patient and makes the impatient tear their hair and rend their garments. Though it’s actually quite
funny, it will separate the real art-film men and women from the boys and girls.

It goes with saying that little happens, and that the plot is more minimalist than a 30-second TV commercial. Mahmut (Muzaffer

+ BIZ: MPAA and “Passion” Talk Dominate Awards Weekend
(by Eugene Hernandez, March 1, 2004)

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of The Christ” and the infamous screener ban were among the hot topics on the Los Angeles party circuit this weekend as independents and Hollywood honored their favorite films and filmmakers of 2003.

Over at the Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica on Saturday afternoon, Jack Valenti made a surprise appearance on stage at the start of the show. As host John Waters told a story about a recent prison sentence for letting a screener copy fall into the hands of bootleggers, MPAA head Valenti walked on stage to apprehend the host and escorted him away in handcuffs as the audience roared with applause and laughter.

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