“Go Where the Film Takes You” was the motto of the first Silvan Cine School. As part of this Isola Cinema workshop “intended to cultivate thinking, talking and especially writing about film” we were taken aboard an enormous whaling ship in Matthew Barney’s film Drawing Restraint 9. IFC Films is now releasing a documentary about Barney’s artistic enterprise, titled Matthew Barney: No Restraint. IndieWire interviewed its director Alison Chernick.

The world’s first and largest co-production market, Rotterdam Film Festival’s CineMart, has recently announced its selection of forty-six independent film projects to be discussed in January 2007. Amongst the lucky directors of developing projects we can find many old guests of Isola Cinema (Pablo Trapero, Lav Diaz, Raya Martin) and certainly plenty of names that are yet to become our friends.
More info at http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/

Last November the biggest filmindustry on the planet released a remake of Umrao Jaan. Directed by J.P. Dutta and featuring an all-star cast, noteably Aishwarya Rai (of course in the leading role), this glamorous superproduction comes exactly quarter of a century after Muzaffar Ali’s intelligent, poetic and simply magnificent cinematic interpretation of the 1905 Urdu novel. » read more

Khavn de la Cruz is one of four directors receiving the ‘20K grant’ for his project MONDOMANILA: HOW I FIXED MY HAIR AFTER A RATHER LONG JOURNEY. » read more

On the occasion of the Peter Mettler retrospective that took place at the last Toronto Film Festival the Canadian-Swiss director put together what he calls a “mini website”. » read more

The final count-down to the opening of the 3rd International Animation Film Festival (aka Animateka Festival) has begun. Director and programmer Igor Prassel has again packed his festival –that is running from December 12th until 16th in the Ljubljana art-house cinema Kinodvor– with the very best contemporary animation film can offer.
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