Film Festivals
Sydney Film Festival 2009—Part 1: Courage and audacity sadly lacking
By Richard Phillips, July 9, 2009
The quality of new work screened at this year’s Sydney Film Festival was patchy and generally undemanding, with critical human issues largely unexplored.
San Francisco International Film Festival 2009
An interview with He Jianjun, director of River People
By David Walsh, June 25, 2009
He Jianjun’s River People from China is a serious and honest work about young fishermen on the Yellow River. The film depicts a harsh, almost entirely joyless existence. The WSWS conducted an e-mail...
San Francisco International Film Festival 2009
Part 5: Personal anxiety, but social complacency
By David Walsh, June 3, 2009
This is the fifth of a series of articles on the 2009 San Francisco International Film Festival, held April 23-May 7. Part 1 was posted May 20; Part 2 was posted May 22; Part 3 was posted May 25; Part...
San Francisco International Film Festival 2009
Part 4: The ongoing impact of the USSR’s collapse and other facts of modern life
By Joanne Laurier, June 1, 2009
This is the fourth of a series of articles on the 2009 San Francisco International Film Festival, held April 23-May 7. Part 1 was posted May 20; Part 2 was posted May 22;Part 3 was posted May 25.
2009 San Francisco International Film Festival Part 3: The trauma produced by events
By Joanne Laurier, May 25, 2009
The recent San Francisco film festival, its 52nd, presented 151 films from 55 countries to a combined audience of some 82,000 people. This is the third article in a series.
San Francisco International Film Festival 2009
Part 2: Human drama, partially treated
By David Walsh, May 22, 2009
The recent San Francisco film festival, its 52nd, presented 151 films from 55 countries to a combined audience of some 82,000 people. This is the second article in a series
San Francisco International Film Festival 2009
Part 1: Painful truths
By David Walsh, May 20, 2009
The recent San Francisco film festival, its 52nd, presented 151 films from 55 countries to a combined audience of some 82,000 people.
The 59th Berlinale—Part 4
Jadup and Boel: The last banned film from the former East Germany
By Bernd Reinhardt, April 29, 2009
The Berlin film festival’s series of special feature films commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago, “Goodbye to Winter: Cinematic portents of the collapse of Stalinism,” featu...
The 59th Berlinale–Part 3
Intimations of changes to come—but nothing more
On the film series: After Winter Comes Spring—Films presaging the fall of the Berlin Wall
By Bernd Reinhardt, March 19, 2009
The German Kinemathek at this year’s Berlinale showed a retrospective series of Eastern European films made between 1977 and 1989: dramas, documentaries, experimental films and animated films from t...
The 59th Berlinale—Part 2
A few healthy shoots
By Stefan Steinberg, February 26, 2009
A small number of films featured in the main competition section of the 59th Berlinale were able to integrate pressing social themes into a convincing and moving narrative.
The 59th Berlinale—Part 1
Lagging alarmingly behind the times
By Stefan Steinberg, February 19, 2009
Perhaps most striking about the latest Berlinale was the absence of any comprehension of the urgency of the current crisis. None of the burning issues at the end of the first decade of the twenty-firs...
An interview with Azharr Rudin, director of This Longing
By David Walsh, October 27, 2008
The WSWS commented on This Longing, directed by Malaysian filmmaker Azharr Rudin, in the first part of the series on the Vancouver film festival. The movie takes place in Johor Baharu, in southern Mal...
