Category: Talent

BY ANDRE SOARES, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA (CINEMA MINIMA)

At the Alternative Film Guide, I’ve posted a Q&A with director Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, whose THE AMAZING TRUTH ABOUT QUEEN RAQUELA opened in New York City and Los Angeles this past Friday.

The winner of the Teddy Award for best film with a gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered theme, QUEEN RAQUELA depicts the day-to-day life of a Filipino male-to-female transsexual working the streets of Cebu City while dreaming of one day traveling the world to meet Mr. Right.

Olaf de Fleur Johannesson Interview

BY ANDRE SOARES, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA (CINEMA MINIMA)

At the Alternative Film Guide, I’ve posted a q&a I did with actor-filmmaker Brian Pera, in which we discuss his highly impressive film debut, THE WAY I SEE THINGS.

THE WAY I SEE THINGS has been screened at US festivals, including Outfest in Los Angeles.

Brian Pera interview

BY ANDRE SOARES, LOS ANGELES, USA (CINEMA MINIMA)

Several weeks ago, I chatted with actor-director-screenwriter Guillaume Canet, who was in the US promoting his 2006 romantic thriller NE LE DIS A PERSONNE | TELL NO ONE, which opens in Los Angeles and New York City tomorrow. I posted the Guillaume Canet interview here.

Based on Harlan Coben’s bestseller, NE LE DIS A PERSONNE follows a pediatrician trying to prove to the police that he did not kill his wife eight years earlier, while at the same time attempting to find out if his wife is actually still living.

The nearly flawless cast features François Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, Kristin Scott Thomas, Nathalie Baye, François Berléand, Jean Rochefort, Jean-Pierre Lorit, and Philippe Lefebvre, with whom Canet co-wrote the screenplay.

NE LE DIS A PERSONNE received 9 César nominations in 2006, winning four awards. Additionally, the film won two Étoiles d’Or voted by French film critics, and received best foreign-language film nominations from the London Critics Circle and the British Independent Film Awards.

Guillaume Canet interview

BY OGOVA ONDEGO. NAIROBI, KENYA (CINEMA MINIMA) —.

Lola Kenya Screen, the annual international audiovisual media platform—festival, production workshop and market—for children and youth in eastern Africa held in Nairobi every second week of August, has changed its festival dates from August 4-9, 2008 to August 11-16, 2008.

In a Press Statement released in Germany on June 3, 2008, Lola Kenya Screen explained the change has been ocassioned by ‘unscheduled change in the holiday calendar of public schools in Kenya. Lola Kenya Screen regrets this change but cannot help it as our primary target audience are holidaying school-going children and youth.’

Lola Kenya Screen is represented at the bi-annual Prix Jeunesse festival in Munich, Germany. It is one of various projects of Prix Jeunesse and the only one from Africa in 2008. Also presented at this world’s leading television programmes for children and youth is AFRICAN FOLK TALES ANIMATED, the DVD compilation of short films made by children during the annual Lola Kenya Screen film production workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2007.

Lola Kenya Screen has also announced the short-listing of applicants to its various skill-development programmes and selected films from 52 nations. The organisation will release its festival line up to the media in Nairobi on June 10, 2008.