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Our friend Cis Bierinckx has been appointed general and artistic director of the Brussels-based interdisciplinary arts centre with the –to the non-Dutch speaking-- unpronounceable name, the Beursschouwburg.

On January 4th Otok is releasing Olivier Assayas's Clean in the Slovene art house cinema network.
The film tells the story of Emily, the widow of a rock star killed by an overdose, who is trying to rebuild her life. When she gets out of prison where she was being held on drugs charges, Emily is determined to get her son back from her parents-in-law. “She discovers herself when she frees herself of everything that is imagined about her,” explains the director. "If there is one overriding idea for this film, it comes from the desire to show that change is possible, that one can become a new person, and that we are not forever chained to our past.”

Yep, it's true. There are still many known and unknown unknowns related to the next Isola Cinema film festival edition (lurking mainly for the festival crew that is!), but as of recently, the time of the festival is no more one of them! Isola Cinema 2007 will take place from May 31st - June 4th 2007! Ok, we said it, now it's out in the open - so you have a lot of time, more than enough in our humble opinion, to reschedule everything you had planned and to come to Izola and enjoy yourselves on sooo many levels! See you all then!

With bitter sweetness we realize that our festival is over, we've done it again. For a while, this means a stop to our daily projections in Izola and nightly gatherings at the town's lighthouse...We would like to thank all of you, who've been with us during these days. We have all especially enjoyed the company of our guests(on the pic). You can find a little bit of what went on in the Isola Cinema web gallery. See you on Isola Cinema 2007!

This years audience award winner is the film Full or empty by the festival guest Abolfazl Jalili. Some of his thoughts on the genesis of his film, shared on the festival press conference in Art kino Odeon in Izola, are available in the text below.

for isolacinema.org by Oana Stopariu

With her latest film Valeska Grisebach moved further from clichés somehow expected from a young director. A second film that still avoids mainstream entertainment, a judgement already stated about her work and artisitic vision. Longing developed again the ability of thinking and breathing, as the director herself is creating strong images instead of usual kynestezic emotions.

for isolacinema.org by Oana Stopariu

Creativity by appropiation of an entire atmosphere created around a subject, this is how William E. Jones is not only presenting and reinventing the subject of his films, but chunks down from elitist concepts to simple principles as values of life. Maybe this is why for a while his work might have seemed “simple videoish”.

for isolacinema.org by Oana Stupariu

Each scene of his films could be excellent photo, black and white format which simply takes art in the most unexpected places. And as it has been proved that 80% of human kind is strongly visual and thinks in images, by instinct Bill Daniel is interested both in the traditional accuracy of the documentary photography and inner pictures of his characteres. Who is Bozo Texino? leads to inner strengh and freedom, losing prejudice and artificial conventions, but independence has a price to be paid and gets its followers to marginal contexts.

Now it's official. The festival has been launched and if there's one thing we can't complain about, it's the weather. It was actually warm, can you believe it? No blankets or any other stuff, to make up for the dropping degrees. As the preparations have taken place in the last several days, it's probably best you visit our web gallery (it's on the Slovene page, but we'll let the pics speak for themselves) to check the happenings and the team effort yourselves.

by Noel Vera

I first encountered Lav Diaz's rather unique sensibility in Joey Gosengfiao and Lily Monteverde's Good Harvest Film Festival, in 1998. The film was Serafin Geronimo: Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion, starring Raymond Bagatsing, a minor Filipino-Indian actor (his surname is derived from "Baghat-Singh") who plays Geronimo as a kind of Raskolnikov figure, haunted by guilt for his part in a kidnapping gone horribly wrong.