What's Happening

Until January 24, 2008

Herzog and Kinski

Omaha, NE

Anyone who has seen My Best Fiend, the documentary about the working relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, will appreciate just how amazing it was that the two managed not to kill each alone, let alone complete a film together. However, the tempestuous director-actor partnership ultimately led to five films made over a 15-year period, and Herzog would later admit that he and Kinski "complemented one another. I needed him, and he needed me." Film Streams' Herzog & Kinski series puts the spotlight on the troubled friendship, showing four of their five films, Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and their final collaboration, Cobra Verde (1987), with only 1979's Woyzeck not represented. These films harness Herzog and Kinski's manic energy, tension and insanity, all of which can seen up close in two of Herzog's documentaries about Kinski, the aforementioned My Best Fiend and also Burden of Dreams, about the monumental challenges involved in the making of the jungle-set Fitzcarraldo.

January 11 to 13, 2008

The Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival

Nevada City, NV

First organized by local activists six years ago, The Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival (WSEFF) invites people to spend two days sitting on their butts watching films, so that by the time they leave they'll want to get off them and make a difference. Festival director Kathy Dotson explains that for this year's theme, "Turning the Tide," films were chosen to "not only expose environmental problems and issues, but also show how so many people are taking responsibility for making changes - changes that are improving their lives and the health of the planet." With 110 films, and 70 speakers, as well as a parade of parties, workshops, concerts, and other events, the festival provides lots of energy to inspire change. Among this year's group is the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced The 11th Hour, Sundance favorite Everything's Cool and the riveting King Corn. And they don't just talk the talk, they provide the ride by posting a place on their website where people can sign up to carpool and share hotel rooms.

Until February 3, 2008

Speed-the-Plow

San Francisco, CA

Twenty years after it first played at New York's Lincoln Center (with a cast of Joe Mantegna, Ron Silver and Madonna), David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow gets a revival run at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and, in the light of current events, is possibly more relevant now than it was first time around. Like Mamet's movie State and Main (2000), it is an examination of the practices of Hollywood and, in this instance, a serious pondering of the relationship between art and commerce in Tinseltown. The play centers on producer Bobby Gould, who is torn between doing another lowbrow blockbuster and adapting a serious novel about the apocalypse. While Gould, encouraged by his secretary Karen, is tempted to take the cultural high road, he is urged to choose money over prestige by fellow producer Charlie Fox (who has the classic line, "Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting fucked.") Speed-the-Plow seems to be very much in the zeitgeist at the moment, as there are a number of other productions planned, including one at London's Old Vic theater starring Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey as Gould and Fox.

Until January 25, 2008

Cinema Latino

Columbus, OH

Spanish American cinema reached a crescendo last year with the strong presence at the Oscars of the "Three Amigos" (Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González IñÁrritu) with their films Pan's Labyrinth, The Children of Men and Babel. The Wexner Center for the Arts' current Cinema Latino season, however, focuses on the work of a group of less high-profile but equally exciting and innovative filmmakers working today, presenting double bills like Gerardo Naranjo's vibrant triptych of Acapulco tales Drama/Mex (2006) and Fernando Eimbcke's Jarmusch-esque black-and-white comedy Duck Season (2004). Also showcased is a pair of political-themed films, Chronicle of an Escape (2006), the true story of a soccer goalkeeper kidnapped and tortured after being wrongly believed to be a terrorist, and Salvador Allende, Patricio Guzmán's 2004 documentary about the former Marxist president of Chile. The series concludes with The Sugar Curtain (2005), a documentary directed by Guzmán's daughter Camila Guzmán Urzúa, which plays alongside Francisco Vargas's 2005 thriller The Violin, which has been described by Guillermo Del Toro as "Filmmaking in its purest form" and "one of the most amazing Mexican films in many a year."

January 11 to 20, 2008

Overlooked and Underrated

Los Angeles, CA

After its success last year, the American Cinematheque in Los Angles is resurrecting their Overlook and Underrated series. Throughout January, the Cinematheque will screen 13 films that deserve a second viewing, even if they were dismissed the first time around. Only two have ever received a DVD release. The films, mostly bundled as double features, go from the sublime -- an ultra chic spy double header including Anthony Mann's existential thriller A Dandy in Aspic and Sidney Lumet's cloak-and-dagger puzzler The Deadly Affair with James Mason -- to the absurd (a Peter Sellers mini-fest that includes Charles Crichton's The Battle of the Sexes, a witty comedy adapted from a James Thurber short story, and The Mouse That Roared). In addition, there are two little seen Tarzan treasures, a Joseph Losey-Elizabeth Taylor double feature, and two by Sam Fuller, as well as the 1966 An American Dream, a Warner Brothers adaptation of Norman Mailer's counterculture bestseller. How appropriate to show the last film, since the recently deceased Mailer refused to ever be overlooked or underrated.