The Cannes Film Festival Reports

"Are you a war correspondent, or wife in my bed?" - Ernest Hemingway 

*LISTEN TO CANNES CLOSING NIGHT CEREMONY REPORT

Ken Loach, upon winning the Jury Prize at Cannes, for a drama about the struggles of unemployed Glasgow youth: This award signifies that cinema "is not just entertainment, it shows us who we are." 

In the first of a series of on location reports, Annette Insdorf is our correspondent at this year's Cannes Film Festival 2012. We are honored to feature her coverage, which will also include breaking news announcing the winners at the end of the Festival.

Annette Insdorf returns to the Cannes Film Festival, providing coverage of the films and events, May 16-27th. Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University, and author of the recently-published Philip Kaufman, she tells us about the most anticipated offerings of the world's most celebrated film festival-from American selections Hemingway & Gellhorn, Moonrise Kingdom and Lawless to European titles from masters Bernardo Bertolucci, Alain Resnais, Michael Haneke and Jacques Audiard. She gives a preview of Sean Penn's benefit for Haiti; the large number of documentaries in the Official Selection; and the question of female representation.

LISTEN TO CANNES FILM FESTIVAL REPORT HERE

            Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn


"I hated Vietnam the most, because I felt personally responsible. It was my own country doing this abomination. I am talking about what was done in South Vietnam to the people whom we, supposedly, had come to save. I'm seeing napalmed children in the hospital, seeing old women with a piece of white sulphur burning away inside of them, seeing the destroyed villages, seeing people dropping of hunger and dying in the streets. My complete horror remains with me as a source of grief and anger and shame that surpasses all the others."

Martha Gellhorn, Atlantic Monthly
 

Professor Insdorf is an internationally renowned educator, and her works are hailed as the definitive texts on their subjects. She has also been a jury member of numerous international film festivals. Professor Insdorf is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle

Reporting from Cannes for over a quarter century, Annette Insdorf previously co-anchored the Festival with Roger Ebert for Bravo and The Independent Film Channel. Her knowledge and insight about cinema, past and present, is a veritable treasure trove of film history and culture. And we're extremely proud to have her as our correspondent reporting from Cannes again this year.

 Stay tuned for continuing features of Arts Express: Expression In The Arts. Airing On WBAI Radio's Pacifica Network and Affiliate Stations. And if you'd like to Express yourself too, you can write to: ArtsExpressradio@gmail.com

READ CANNES FILM FESTIVAL ON LOCATION REPORT HERE

He Said, She Said...Hysteria

  
He Said...

"...When I spoke to native New Yorker (from the lower eastside of Manhattan) Maggie Gyllenhaal on what attracted her to this film project she replied, "sex is most times explored as unreal....the film gives of a subtle feminism of real sexuality..."

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase

She Said...

**Suffragettes And Sexuality: A tale of two movie topics, in Hysteria, A conversation with actress Maggie Gyllenhaal and director Tanya Wexler about this feminist satire playing out in Victorian England. And at a time when both female activism and sexual desire were considered forms of mental illness within an establishment medicalizing sexuality. Topics on the table include the birth of the vibrator as a medical device, how dishwashers and ankles factor in, and Maggie's portrayal of a suffragette too busy changing the world to ponder any of this.

LISTEN TO ARTS EXPRESS RADIO HERE

**The Cannes Film Festival Reports: In the first of a series of on location reports, Annette Insdorf is our correspondent at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Her coverage will also include breaking news announcing the winnersl. Professor Insdorf, Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University and co-anchoring from Cannes for decades with Roger Ebert, reports on American selections Hemingway & Gellhorn, Moonrise Kingdom and Lawless, to titles from Bernardo Bertolucci, Alain Resnais and Michael Haneke. And she presents a preview of Sean Penn's benefit for Haiti, along with examining the question of female representation at the Festival.

**Best Of The Net Hotspot: A look at the Displaced Films free online Film Festival, showcasing essential documentaries about GI and veterans resistance to criminal wars. And broadcasting online in conjunction with Occupy Chicago in May, and 'Armed Forces/Armed Farces Day' through the Memorial Day weekend.

Stay tuned for continuing features of Arts Express: Expression In The Arts. Airing On WBAI Radio's Pacifica National Network and Affiliate Stations.

Girls: Sex And The City In A Sea Of Uncertainty

By Winnie Bonelli
 
“Sex and the City” was a fantasy, clothed in designer rags, wealthy boyfriends, and high-profiled, lucrative careers. Taking off the rose colored glasses, HBO’s Girls introduces viewers to an entirely different breed of post-college graduate, one more akin to present reality, on Sunday at 10:30 p.m.
          
Hannah and her trio of best friends are floundering in a sea of uncertainty. Their career goals are battered by economical rough times and a scarcity of job opportunities. And instead of Mr. Big, Hannah’s “friend with benefits” is an eccentric wannabe actor (Adam Driver), who won’t answer her texts, until she’s standing underneath her window.. 
 
Even for viewers who can’t identify with Hannah’s dilemmas, humiliations, and sometimes-bad choices, Girls is a slice of life that generously delivers an equal portion of comedy and angst, laced with graphic sex scenes that bypass filmdom’s discretionary gimmicks.
        
Now meet Hannah’s alter ego – creator/star/writer/director Lena Dunham. Disarmingly real, Dunham still seems a bit befuddled by the attention notoriety brings.
        
Candid in her answers and appearing younger than her 24 years, Dunham confessed, “It’s (Girls) is closely based on my own experience of getting out of college in 2008 and not having a sense of whether I would ever get to do the thing I wanted to do, creative writing, and I was really miserable.

“I was working in a baby clothes store and just excited that I got free cookies in the afternoon. It was a really kind of confusing, frustrating time, and I saw a lot of my friends going through the same thing,” said Dunham, who was supplementing her income by babysitting.

And yes, the Manhattan-born, Brooklyn-reared actress concedes that she grew up watching Sex and the City. Dunham even bought into the propaganda that if she moved to Manhattan she’d have “a really elegant boyfriend and a really incredible shoe closet.” What greeted her instead was a harsh case of reality.

Following that sage advice of writing about what one knows best, the Oberlin College graduate Dunham penned an autobiographic screenplay titled Tiny Furniture. Raised $25,000 by begging and borrowing from family members and friends, with the exception of her grandmother. She continued,

“I was working with a great group of kids, who had gone to NYU. Film kids are really scrappy and sort of have this understanding of how to make a movie by the skin of their teeth. You feel like you have taken a ship hostage, like ‘Everyone’s coming with me,” she laughed. Artist/photographer Laurie Simmons was one of those “hostages” portraying Lena’s mother both on screen and in real life.

Tiny Furniture went on to become the film festival circuit’s darling and pivoted Dunham to indie icon status. It also attracted the attention of Judd Apatow, whose features credits include The Bridemaids. Apatow and Dunham’s friend, Jenni Konner, are now executive producers for Girls.

A little too short and pear-shaped to fit the stereotypical image of a starlet, Dunham swears she quit acting at age 11 after being cast as a bouncing ball in Alice in Wonderland. That changed when she started writing screenplays and the characters were essentially versions of herself. Then she rationed, “I don’t know who else is gonna want to do this. I guess I’ll play it.”

Filming Girls brought her face-to-face with the truth. “I realized that I do get something out of acting that I don’t get out of the rest of the process. It’s cathartic. It’s connected. It’s an adrenaline rush,” she admitted.

So what was grandma’s reaction when she finally saw Tiny Furniture and the first three episodes of Girls?  “My mom said, ‘Dottie,’ she’s like 93, ‘What do you think of the sex scenes?’ She went, ‘Oh, you know, that’s just what they do these days.”

Winnie Bonelli writes for Life & Style Magazine, The Independent [Hamptons], New Jersey Monthly and The Herald News. She is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle.

He Said, She Said...Girls On the Edge

He Said...

By Gerald Wright

'...Damsels In Distress follows a trio of beautiful girls who set out to revolutionize life at a grungy East Coast College known as Seven Oaks...They set out to change all that, as well as rescue their fellow students from depression, grunge and low standards of every kind...'

CONTINUE TO READ ARTICLE HERE

Gerald Wright
National Association of Black Journalists
HDfest.com
Film Showcase


She Said...

By Amy Biancolli

'...The cold Orwellian architecture and cruel Swiftian message (kids slaying kids is a more-than-modest proposal) would indicate satire, while the nutty fluorescent hairdos suggest it's all goof - a chance to play dress-up with the bold aesthetic cues of sci-fi fascism. As for the romance at the center, well, teens will be teens. At least when they aren't busy killing each other...'

CONTINUE TO READ REVIEW HERE

Amy Biancolli
San Francisco Chronicla
Houston Chronicle
San Antonio Express-News
Hearst Newspapers

WFCC On The Air: Lisa Collins Hosts Chicken & Egg Pictures Radio Roundtable

Arts Express Radio: Sexually Speaking Edition

**Chicken & Egg Pictures Radio Roundtable: What's new and different in women's voices on screen. Guest host Lisa Collins, director of the black cinema icon Oscar Micheaux work in progress documentary, Oscar's Comeback, moderates.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

**Bullhead: A conversation with Belgian director Michael Roskam about his psychological thriller delving into masculinity self-esteem issues, toxic testosterone cocktails, Occupy Brussels uprising of firefighters packing hoses, and something called the underground bovine hormone mafia.

**Julian Assange infiltrates the Murdoch Media Empire: Or at least phones in as himself, to The Simpsons 500th episode Anniversary Special on the Fox Channel.

Stay tuned for continuing features of Arts Express: Expression In The Arts. Airing On WBAI Radio's Pacifica Network and Affiliate Stations, including WPRR: Public Reality Radio. And if you'd like to Express yourself too, you can write to: ArtsExpressradio@gmail.com

Lisa Collins is an independent filmmaker and journalist, and she is a member of The Women Film Critics Circle. Lisa was named by Filmmaker Magazine: 'One of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film.' She was invited to workshop her feature-length script, The Grass Is Greener at the Sundance Writers, Filmmakers and Producers Labs, respectively. The project was also invited to participate in the IFFM / IFP’s No Borders Feature Project program.

Lisa is currently in post-production with her feature documentary, Oscar's Comeback, in which 2 worlds collide at a unique annual festival in all-white town that celebrates their black native son, early 1900s homesteader-turned-film-pioneer, Oscar Micheaux. Controversial and largely forgotten, Micheaux is known to some as the Godfather of Independent Cinema. In addition to receiving support and mentorship from prestigious organization, Oscar's Comeback is proud to have been awarded repeated support from Chicken & Egg Pictures, in the form of an I Believe In You grant.

With her film partner, Mark Schwartzburt, Lisa continues fundraising and is looking forward to completing their film in fall 2012. You can check out and Oscar's Comeback on Facebook.