By The Global Film Initiative, on May 31st, 2013%
THE PARADE (Global Lens 2013) plays The Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York this June
THE PARADE, STUDENT and the rest of Global Lens 2013 soak up the summer screen…
Global Lens 2013 is heating up screens across the country all through the summer! This month in the spotlight:
Srdjan Dragojević’s THE PARADE is set to screen at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival this month (June 13-23) in New York City. Through its humane and shrewdly comedic story, this powerful film exposes us to gay rights issues that many face in Serbia today.
Continue reading Now Playing: Global Lens Dives Into Summer
By The Global Film Initiative, on February 19th, 2013%
This month, The Carter Center will be screening CAIRO 678, from Global Lens 2013, at their “Winter Weekend” in San Diego—a four-day event featuring guests such as former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, and a town hall with former U.S. President and Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter, and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
This is our first time working with the Center, and so we asked Ahna B. Machan, Senior Associate Director of Development, and organizer of the event, to discuss why this particular film was selected for the Winter Weekend, and how it fits with The Carter Center’s mission and vision:
Continue reading SPOTLIGHT: CAIRO 678 and The Carter Center
By The Global Film Initiative, on February 13th, 2013%
“Cairo 678 is an important film — one all women should watch and all men should pay attention to.” – The Huffington Post
Global Lens 2013 is full-steam ahead, wrapping up at the Santa Barbara IFF and Portland IFF, and this month we’re putting the spotlight on CAIRO 678.
Continue reading NOW PLAYING: Right on Time with CAIRO 678
By The Global Film Initiative, on January 28th, 2013%
SF Film Society announces its newest Artist in Residence and it happens to be one of our filmmakers. How LOVELY…
After what seems to be the longest drum-roll ever, we’re pleased to announce that Indian director (and GFI grantee) Ashim Ahluwalia will be visiting the Bay Area next month as part of the San Francisco Film Society’s Artist in Residence program, February 23rd-March 9th!
The residency will feature the Bay Area premiere of MISS LOVELY-Ashim’s second feature, post Cannes, currently in Rotterdam, big stuff—on Thursday, January 28th (co-presented by GFI-tickets here), and a post-screening discussion moderated by Ivan Jaigirdar (of 3rdi). Also included in the residency will be visits to schools and universities, and in-classroom screenings of Ashim’s first film, JOHN & JANE (students only).
Continue reading NEWS: Ashim Ahluwalia @ San Francisco Film Society, February 23rd-March 9th
By The Global Film Initiative, on January 25th, 2013%
Ringing in the New Year with fresh films and packed houses…
A new year means a whole new slate of incredible films from Global Lens! Oh, you haven’t seen the 2013 lineup yet? Not to worry—you can check it out here! The series just wrapped its two-week premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and next month will begin playing at select venues throughout the United States and Canada.
Which means, if you’re a festival, theater or other venue, Global Lens 2013 is now open for booking! And you may want to get a jump on a particularly popular new title, Mani Haghighi’s Iranian MODEST RECEPTION, which has been playing everywhere recently—MoMA, Palm Springs IFF, Santa Barbara IFF, MFA Boston, MFA Houston, Smithsonian, Portland IFF… You get the idea.
In MODEST RECEPTION, a mysterious pair of urban sophisticates from Tehran travel the countryside in their Lexus coupe with the bizarre, inexplicable mission of pushing big bags of cash onto the locals they pass along the way. Something like Bonnie and Clyde in reverse, the couple (or are they siblings?) find that their job isn’t quite as simple as it should be, and their increasingly distressing encounters are alternately hilarious and alarming—sometimes existing somewhere in between.
Continue reading NOW PLAYING: A (Not-so) MODEST RECEPTION for Global Lens 2013
By The Global Film Initiative, on January 17th, 2013%
Following its January premiere at MoMA, Global Lens 2013 heads to Tampa and marks GFI’s sixth year working with Gasparilla…
Every January, without fail, we premiere a brand new Global Lens film series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, before it begins its yearlong tour of the country the following month. And this February, the fine folks at the Gasparilla International Film Festival (GIFF) will bring Global Lens to Tampa, FL, for its sixth consecutive year! Starting with Zhang Yuan’s wonderful BEIJING FLICKERS (the opening-night film at the MoMA premiere), GIFF will present two screenings each of all ten films at the Tampa Museum of Art throughout 2013, and most of the series will also be included in the festival proper, which runs from March 19th to the 24th.
Continue reading SPOTLIGHT: A Taste of Gasparilla
By Santhosh Daniel, on December 27th, 2012%
Global Lens 2013: Change the Way You See the World
Our tenth anniversary opens with China’s Sixth Generation, Sebastián Silva, the biggest film you’ve ever seen from Brazil (literally), and a host of Global Lens alumnus.…
It’s our tenth year and we’re kicking off Global Lens 2013, January 10th-26th, with ten films at the Museum of Modern Art! It’s going to be some celebration…
BEIJING FLICKERS will open the series on January 10th with a week-run at MoMA and director Zhang Yuan and actor Li Xinjun in attendance, to launch the festivities (a must see: Zhang is the acclaimed director of Beijing Bastards, and part of the gritty Sixth Generation ethos—who in the ‘90s, pushed Chinese filmmaking out of an overly-romanticized lens into the alter-reality of its edgy, urban psyche).
Also in New York for the GL13 opening: Suman Ghosh for the North American premiere of SHYAMAL UNCLE TURNS OFF THE LIGHTS, on January 11th. This film is something to indeed be experienced with the director, as he runs his fingers through the tangled hair of Kolkata’s bureaucracy; an inspired and insightful work that carries a subtle charm, similar to another Global Lens standout.
Continue reading NEWS: Global Lens 2013 @ MoMA!
By The Global Film Initiative, on October 29th, 2012%
UT San Antonio Professor Steven G. Kellman (and former HuffPo contributor) on fighting off the ‘the toxins of cultural provincialism’ with QARANTINA…
A scene from QARANTINA (dir. Oday Rasheed, Iraq)
Though it is the seventh largest city in the United States, San Antonio is, like all but a few other areas in the country, virtually quarantined against foreign cinema. When an imported film does get screened in a local commercial theater, it is almost always from Britain, since, according to the industry’s conventional wisdom, Americans are monolingual, and they do not go to the movies to read; box-office receipts for inferior remakes of The Vanishing, The Debt, and The Seven Samurai exceed those for the subtitled originals. Film is the most portable of the arts, but national aversion to foreign film reflects widespread indifference to anything beyond our borders but violence.
As an antidote to the toxins of cultural provincialism, the San Antonio Museum of Art has scheduled monthly public screenings of works – twice each – provided by the Global Film Initiative. I was invited by SAMA to introduce the films and lead post-screening discussions.
October’s offering, Qarantina, written and directed by Oday Rasheed, is an outstanding demonstration of foreign cinema’s power to bring fresh perspectives to worlds that many hardly knew existed. Set in contemporary Baghdad, Qarantina is a film by Iraqis, about
Continue reading FEATURE: From Baghdad to San Antonio, QARANTINA Comes to South Texas
By The Global Film Initiative, on October 23rd, 2012%
Karen Hewitt at University of Illinois’s Center for Global Studies on the importance of bringing a “Global Lens” to campus…
Ann Rasmus, Art @ the Y Program Director, University YMCA (left) and Karen Hewitt, Outreach Coordinator, Center for Global Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2012 marks the fourth consecutive year that Global Lens has been showcased at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, organized by Karen Hewitt, Outreach Coordinator for the University’s Center for Global Studies. From the very beginning, it was clear that the venue was a natural fit for the film series, and every subsequent year has continued to demonstrate this. We recently touched base with Karen to ask some questions about the Center for Global Studies and the role of Global Lens in her community.
Karen, we first spoke in June 2009 when I approached you about working with the Center for Global Studies to bring the Global Lens film series to the University of Illinois. Had the Center ever sponsored any film screenings previously?
The Center for Global Studies is a National Resource Center for International and Area Studies funded by a Title VI grant through the US Department of Education. One of the primary purposes of these grants is training in “Less Commonly Taught Languages.” In the past, we have co-sponsored film series organized
Continue reading SPOTLIGHT: A Natural Fit in Champaign-Urbana
By The Global Film Initiative, on October 15th, 2012%
 “A gentle political satire set in a remote pueblo in 1980s Argentina…an engaging, often amusing portrait of a community on the cusp of change….” -Variety
“Sergio Teubal’s hilarious satire proves its capacity for both belly laughs and observant political barbs.” -Wines of Argentina
Not many political elections involve a severed finger in a jar, but then, this is not your typical election. Far from the debates and attack ads of Romney and Obama’s current race—but still based on actual events—Sergio Teubal’s THE FINGER concerns a moody shopkeeper bent on ensuring his brother’s mayoral victory, even after the beloved candidate turns up dead just weeks before the election. A guaranteed charmer, this dramatic comedy spins a tale of mystery, village life, revenge, and leadership, suggesting that sometimes a dismembered digit can point the way to a better future than an actual, living candidate!
Programmers and curators: View the 2012 lineup now on Vimeo or Festival Scope and email us at [email protected] to schedule the films today!
Film fans and enthusiasts: Read the list below and click on the map to find out where you can catch these fantastic films!
Continue reading NOW PLAYING: Let THE FINGER Point You Toward Global Lens!
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