New Films from Bruce LaBruce, Isild Le Besco and Christophe Honoré at Locarno Film Festival

The official line-up for the 63rd annual Locarno Film Festival was announced yesterday, including new films from Bruce LaBruce, Christophe Honoré, Isild Le Besco, Aaron Katz and Denis Côté screening in competition. Katz's Cold Weather, which IFC picked up for US distribution after its premiere at SXSW, is the lone American film competing for the Golden Leopard this year. French porn star François Sagat looks to be the unexpected star of competition line-up, appearing as the lead in both LaBruce's LA Zombie and Honoré's Homme au bain [Man in Bath], the latter co-starring Honoré's muse as of late, Chiara Mastroianni. LA Zombie, a porn-ier counterpart to LaBruce's earlier Otto; or Up with Dead People, screened in Berlin earlier this year and stars a handful of gay porn stars, as well as Tony Ward (who memorably played the object of desire in LaBruce's Hustler White in 1996), pin-up boy Trevor Wayne, rapper Deadlee and Project Runaway finalist Santino Rice (hello, St Louis). In addition to presenting Bas-fonds, her latest project as a director, actress Isild Le Besco can be seen in front of the camera in Benoît Jacquot's Au fond des bois [Deep in the Woods], which marks the sixth collaboration with Jacquot. Au fond des bois also stars Nahuel Pérez Biscayart of Alexis Dos Santos' Glue and will be the opening film in the Piazza Grande section.

Other films in the International Competition: Pia Marais' Im Alter von Ellen [At Ellen's Age], with Jeanne Balibar in the title role; Morgen, the feature debut of Marian Crişan, whose short Megatron won the Palme d'Or in the courts-métrages section at Cannes in 2008; Pietro, the latest from Italian director Daniele Gaglianone (I cento passi); and Curling, from Canadian director Denis Côté who won the Directing Prize at Locarno in 2008 for Elle veut le chaos [All That She Wants]. Elle veut le chaos is available to stream (in certain territories) on MUBI.

Also in the Piazza Grande section: the Duplass' brothers Cyrus, currently in theatres across the US right now; the second directorial outing from respected editor Valdís Óskarsdóttir (The Celebration, julien donkey-boy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), entitled Kóngavegur [King's Road] which stars Daniel Brühl and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson; L'avocat [The Counsel], from director Cédric Anger–who co-wrote Xavier Beauvois' Le petit lieutenant and Selon Matthieu and Werner Schroeter's Deux–starring Benoît Magimel, Gilbert Melki, Aïssa Maïga, Eric Caravaca and Barbet Schroeder; Quentin Dupieux's killer-tire film Rubber, which premiered during the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes this year; also from Cannes, Aktan Arym Kubat's The Light Thief, which played in the Quinzaine des Réalisatuers; and restored prints of Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be and Francesco Rosi's Uomini contro [Many Wars Ago].

In the Cinema of the Present portion: Memory Lane, the "feature" debut of Mikhaël Hers, whose previous three films (Montparnasse, Primrose Hill and Charell) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival over the past few eyars and all clock-in around an hour-long; Ivory Tower, from first-time director Adam Traynor which marks the acting debut of musician Peaches; and Norberto apenas tarde [Norberto's Deadline], the directorial debut of actor Daniel Hendler, best known as Argentinean filmmaker Daniel Burman's cinematic persona.

And Out of Competition, a number of shorts from notable directors will be playing:

- Get Out of the Car - Thom Anderson (Los Angeles Plays Itself)
- Hell Roaring Creek - Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass)
- Low Cost (Claude Jutra) - Lionel Baier (Garçon stupide)
- Avant les mots - Joachim Lafosse (Nue propriété)
- Return to the Dogs - Lodge Kerrigan (Clean, Shaven)
- Where the Boys Are - Betrand Bonello (Tiresia)
- Pig Iron - James Benning (RR)
- Les lignes ennemies - Denis Côté
- Rosalinda - Matías Piñeiro (Todos mienten)
- Chef d'oeuvre? - Luc Moullet (A Girl Is a Gun)
- Toujours moins - Luc Moullet
- O somma luce - Jean-Marie Straub
- Corneille-Brecht - Jean-Marie Straub
- Joachim Gatti - Jean-Marie Straub
- Europa, 27 Octobre - Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet

I don't know exactly how Kerrigan's Return to the Dogs relates to his experimental Grace Slick feature Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs) which played in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in May. And finally, there will be a special retrospective of director Ernst Lubitsch at the festival this year, as well as a new, restored print of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's little-seen Ich will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt [I Only Want You to Love Me], which was made for German television. The 63rd Festival del film Locarno runs from 4-14 August. The full list of films in competition is below:

- Bas-fonds, d. Isild Le Besco, France
- Beli, beli svet [White White World], d. Oleg Novković, Serbia/Sweden/Germany
- Beyond the Steppes, d. Vanja d'Alcantara, Belgium/Poland
- Cold Weather, d. Aaron Katz, USA
- Curling, d. Denis Côté, Canada
- Homme au bain [Man at Bath], d. Christophe Honoré, France
- Im Alter von Ellen [At Ellen's Age], d. Pia Marais, Germany
- Karamay, d. Xu Xin, China
- LA Zombie, d. Bruce LaBruce, Germany/Canada/USA
- Luz nas Trevas, a Volta do Bandido da Luz Vermelha, d. Helena Ignez, Ícaro Martins, Brazil
- Morgen, d. Marian Crişan, Romania/France/Hungary
- Periferic, d. Bogdan George Apetri, Romania/Austria
- La petite chambre, d. Stéphanie Chuat, Véronique Reymond
- Pietro, d. Daniele Gaglianone, Italy
- Saç, d. Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, Turkey/Greece
- Songs of Love and Hate, d. Katalin Gödrös, Switzerland
- Winter Vacation, d. Li Hongqi, China
- Womb, d. Benedek Fliegauf, Germany/Hungary/France

Être Queer à Cannes

Following in the traditions of both the Berlinale and Venice International Film Festival, the very first Queer Palm will be handed out at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Though in its first year, the award isn't yet an "official" prize... but it will be given to any film screening across the panels (the Official selection, Un Certain Regard, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Semaine de la Critique). The Teddy Award in Berlin has been around since 1987, formed by German filmmakers Wieland Speck and Manfred Salzgeber; the first Teddy's were given to Pedro Almodóvar's Law of Desire [La ley del deseo] in the feature category and Gus Van Sant's Five Ways to Kill Yourself and My New Friend in the shorts section. The Queer Lion of the Venice Film Festival has only been around for three years, with the first prize going to Edward Radtke's The Speed of Life in 2007; Tom Ford's A Single Man won last year. "Fathered" by directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Jeanne et le garçon formidable, Crustacés et coquillages), the Queer Palm will be announced at a ceremony on the 22nd. For more information, here's an interview with the organizer, Franck Finance-Madureira, with English subtitles. Ducastel and Martineau won a Teddy Jury Award in 2000 for The Adventures of Félix [Drôle de Félix].

Unfortunately, the official Queer Palm site doesn't mention which titles are eligible for the award, but with three notable queer cinéastes presenting their latest films this year, I'd imagine they'll have their pick of Gregg Araki's Kaboom! (which played out of competition at a midnight screening), Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats [Les amours imaginaires] (which has gotten a lot of great feedback and was just acquired by IFC Films) and (possibly) Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (which hasn't screened yet and may not be as queer as, say, Tropical Malady). I suppose there's a possibility in Cam Archer's Shit Year (like Weerasethakul's, it may lack the queerness of the director's previous Wild Tigers I Have Known), but gauging a film's queerness is a challenge (for those reading synopses and reviews just as much, I'd imagine, as those who've actually seen the films).

Looking at the Semaine de la Critique line-up today, I just now noticed that another (queer) short directed by James Franco, The Clerk's Tale, will be closing the Court-Métrange section of the Semaine (along with a short directed by Kirsten Dunst called Bastard, with Juno Temple, Brian Geraghty, Lukas Haas, Lee Thompson Young and L.M. Kit Carson). A little over a year after acting in a Gus Van Sant film (Milk, of course), Franco seems to be carrying on the queer cinema torch. Another short he directed called Feast of Stephen, about a teenage boy's black-and-white fantasies, took home the Teddy for Short Film earlier this year; Franco also played that homo Allen Ginsberg in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl, also part of the 2010 Berlinale. If no other Queer Palm information surfaces in the next few days, you'll hear back from me when the jury hands out their prize. Until then, check out the charming, smutty interview BUTT magazine conducted with Dolan back in April.

Luther Price's Meat Screening in NYC

For those of you in the Big Apple, my friend Bradford Nordeen is presenting a video screening of queer experimental filmmaker Luther Price's super-8 Meat at Louis V E.S.P. in Brooklyn tomorrow night at 8pm (the screening starts at 9). I certainly encourage you to go if you're in the area. Here's a description of Meat from Canyon Cinema:

"Meat is viscerally consuming in its sterile, antiseptic and static giving over of the flesh. Poked, prodded, pinched and disgraced, the humiliated body is sacrificed and the metamorphosis begins ... the fly becomes the shit ... the maggot becomes the bone ... the bone becomes the food ... the food becomes shit and the body becomes the wound ... the institution becomes teeth ... throat and stomach."

Le joli mai

Yeah, yeah... I know I've pulled the post-a-photo-of-Grace-Jones-as-Mayday-on-May-1st business before, but when you've found something that works, stick with it (as my father always said). Now that the weather has improved, my mental well-being has ventured out of the red, and I'll be returning full-ish time to the blog. What you can expect from me this month: reviews of Kentucker Audley's two latest films, Holy Land and Open Five, which both premiered last month; the early stages of a new regular feature on the blog; more DVD updates (Mulholland Drive is supposedly making its way to Blu-ray this fall by the way); a rather messy criticism of Up in the Air, which started as an unsuccessful side-by-side-by-side comparison of that piece of shit, another overpraised turkey (An Education) and Andrea Arnold's magnificent Fish Tank (portions of the latter films still show up, but it really didn't work as a whole); likely some links to writings about the films screening at Cannes (as I won't be in attendance); the Cannes poster update (which is looking grim so far, but it usually isn't until halfway through the festival that the posters start showing their faces); many unnecessary references to Liz Lemon; an appreciation post for Téa Leoni; some press for a good friend's NYC show coming up; a belated 2009 music post; some of this; and hopefully plenty of other (quasi-)exciting things. Getting back into "the swing of things" is more difficult than I had imagined, but the (non-breeding-related) post-partum depression is slowly vanishing...

Warner Archive, TCM Vault, Online Streaming and the Usual DVD Update

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The 3rd Annual Saint Louis Qfest

One of the things I have been working on these past two months in assisting in putting together the local gay and lesbian film festival, otherwise known as Qfest which is now in its third year. Qfest picked up where the Saint Louis International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival left off when it ended in 1999. This year's program will feature eleven features (8 features, 3 docs) and four shorts, one of which, Heartland Transplant, was directed by my friend Cody Stokes and played at this year's Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The festival runs from 28-31 March at the Landmark Tivoli Theatre.

While I haven't seen all of the films screening this year, I can safely recommend three of the ones I have watched. Leo's Room [El cuarto de Leo], the feature debut from Enrique Buchichio, is a compelling, often quite beautiful portrait of two former primary school classmates, who run into one another in their mid-twenties. Leo (Martín Rodríguez), dumped by his "beard," cruises online chat rooms for men; Caro (Cecilia Cósero) spends most of her day in bed, downing anti-depressants. While it doesn't break a whole lot of new ground, Leo's Room does have a number of rich, expressive moments that set it apart from your average coming-out/coming-of-age tale. Leo's Room is part of the 2010 Global Lens Collection.

Haim Tabakman's exceptional Eyes Wide Open, which premiered at Cannes last year in the Un Certain Regard section, follows a taboo love/lust affair between two Orthodox Jews (Zohar Shtrauss, Ran Danker) in Jerusalem. Ella Lemhagen's Patrik, Age 1.5 [Patrik 1,5] takes a farcical premise (a gay couple looking to adopt a baby get stuck with a fifteen-year-old homophobe due to a clerical error) and gives it dramatic weight, aided by two outstanding performances from Gustaf Skarsgård (Stellan's son, Eric from True Blood's brother) and Torkel Petersson (Old Men in New Cars) as the daddies-to-be. Tickets for all the films are now available; check the Cinema Saint Louis website for more information. Hopefully, if you're in the area, I'll see you there. I'll also be posting longer reviews of the three films mentioned above (and maybe a few of the others) closer to the festival date.

Awards at Berlin, 2010

The awards for the 60th Berlin International Film Festival were delivered this afternoon (Sunday in Germany), with the most-talked about award going to Roman Polanski, who claimed a Silver Bear award for Best Director for The Ghost Writer. Like Polanski's Academy Award win, this seems incredibly suspect, something of a lifetime achievement meets "Sorry for all your legal troubles" accolade. I'll still end up watching it, though my faith in his abilities isn't strong these days (I am, however, one of the few who likes Death and the Maiden; however, both Jim Beluschi and Kim Cattrall make it hard to get too amped about this one). The Golden Bear went to Turkish director and playwright Semih Kaplanoğlu's Bal [Honey], the third part of a trilogy entitled Yusuf Üçlemesi, or Yusef's Trilogy, which began with Süt [Milk] and Yumurta [Egg]. Claudia Llosa's La teta asustada [The Milk of Sorrow], now up for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, was last year's top winner. The awards are listed below, including the main jury prizes, as well as those of the Ecumenical Jury, FIPRESCI and the Teddy Jury (given to queer films):

Golden Bear: Bal [Honey], d. Semih Kaplanoğlu, Turkey/Germany
Silver Bear, Jury Grand Prix: Eu când vreau să fluier, fluier [If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle], d. Florin Şerban, Romania
Silver Bear, Best Director: Roman Pokanski, The Ghost Writer
Silver Bear, Best Actress: Shinobu Terajima, Caterpillar
Silver Bear, Best Actor: (tie) Grigori Dobrygin, Sergei Puskepalis, How I Ended This Summer
Silver Bear, Outstanding Artistic Achievement: Pavel Kostomarov, cinematographer, How I Ended This Summer
Silver Bear, Screenplay: Wang Quan'an, Na Jin, Apart Together
Alfred Bauer Prize (given to a work of particular innovation): Eu când vreau să fluier, fluier [If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle], d. Florin Şerban
Best First Feature: Sebbe, d. Babak Najafi, Sweden


FIPRESCI Prizes


- Competition: En familie [A Family], d. Pernille Fischer Christensen, Denmark
- Panorama: Parade, d. Isao Yukisada, Japan
- Forum: El vuelco del cangrejo [Crab Trap], d. Oscar Ruiz Navia, Colombia/France


Prizes of the Ecumenical Jury


- Competition: Bal [Honey], d. Semih Kaplanoğlu
- Panorama: Kawasakiho růže [Kawasaki's Rose], d. Jan Hřebejk, Czech Republic
- Forum: Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza), d. Nicolas Wadimoff, Switzerland/Quatar


Teddy Awards


- Best Feature Film: The Kids Are All Right, d. Lisa Cholodenko, USA
- Best Documentary: La bocca del lupo [The Mouth of the Wolf], d. Pietro Marcello, Italy
- Best Short Film: The Feast of Stephen, d. James Franco, USA
- Jury Award: Open, d. Jake Yuzna, USA

Attention-Directing for Berlin and SXSW 2010

The 2010 Berlin International Film Festival begins tomorrow, and unfortunately I'm not going. I did, however, look through the complete line-up to find some of the more exciting films playing this year. One can only hope Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg starring Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans and Baumbach's wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, is better than Margot, but we'll see...

Jud Süß - Film ohne Gewissen, a biopic of the actor Ferdinand Marian, is the latest from German director Oskar Roehler (Agnes and His Brothers), starring Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck. Belgian directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave de Kervern (Aaltra, Louise-Michel) return with their dryly humorous blend of comedy with Mammuth, which stars Gérard Depardieu (with long, golden hair), Isabelle Adjani, Yolande Moreau and Anna Mouglalis.

Four years after she won the Golden Bear for the film Grbavica, Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić comes to the Berlinale with On the Path [Na putu] about a couple in an unhappy relationship. Yoji Yamada’s (The Twilight Samurai) About Her Brother concerns a family who take over the family pharmaceutical business after the patriarch dies.

Writer/director Nicole Holofcener (Walking & Talking, Friends with Money) once again teams up with actress Catherine Keener for Please Give, a comedy about a husband and wife who own a furniture store. Rebecca Hall, Amanda Peet and Oliver Platt also star. Please Give premiered at Sundance. A director I often confuse with Holofcener, Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon), will also be in Berlin with her latest, The Kids Are All Right, with Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo.

Always the envelope-pusher (though seldom with good results), Michael Winterbottom adapts a novel by Jim Thompson (The Grifters, This World, Then the Fireworks) into the graphically violent The Killer Inside Me, starring Casey Affleck and (groan) Kate Hudson and (double groan) Jessica Alba. IFC picked up the US rights to this after it premiered at Sundance. Kristen Stewart plays a teenage stripper/runaway in music video director Jake Scott’s (Plunkett & Macleane) Welcome to the Rileys. Also starring James Gandolfni and Melissa Leo.

Hong Kong filmmaker Scud offers the second part of his unnamed trilogy, Amphetamine, which began with Permanent Residence last year. If you’re curious, take a look at the bizarre lengths some Wikipedia user has gone to in describing the nudity in Permanent Residence. Sample: “As the Chinese actors' full-frontal nudity and unobscured private parts are shown many times, both Sean Li's and Osman Hung's glans penises (penis heads) are visible in every full-frontal nude scene (whether in a room, on a beach, water-platform, shower, etc), revealing that they have both been fully circumcised.”

Both Sébastien Lifshitz and Anahí Berneri are previous Teddy winners (for Wild Side and Un año sin amor respectively), and they both will be presenting their latest films, Plein sud [Going South] and Por tu culpa [It’s Your Fault], in the Panorama section. German queer filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim, Teddy winner in 1990 for Die Aids-Trilogie, will bring the sequel to his Überleben in New York, New York Memories, to Berlin this year.

Canadian director John Greyson has won 3 Teddys, for his feature Pissoir, his short The Making of Monsters and his documentary Fig Trees; his short Covered, an experimental film paying tribute to the organizers of the ill-fated Queer Sarajevo Festival in 2008, will play at Berlin this year. Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, who won a Teddy Jury Prize for The Adventures of Félix [Drôle de Félix] in 2000, will premiere their latest, Family Tree [L’arbre et la fôret], to Berlin after winning the Prix Jean Vigo. Family Tree stars Guy Marchand, Françoise Fabian, Yannick Renier and Sabrina Seyvecou.

2010 is already a busy year for James Franco. After a hilarious guest role on 30 Rock last month, he is playing Allen Ginsberg in Howl from directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Paragraph 175), which also stars Jon Hamm (another former 30 Rock guest star), Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels, David Strathairn, Treat Wiliams, Bob Balaban and Alessandro Nivola. Howl premiered at Sundance and will screen in the Competition section, while two shorts directed by Franco, Herbert White and The Feast of Stephen (the former starring Michael Shannon), will play in the Panorama section.

More 30 Rock connections (it’s all I’ve cared to think about lately): Cheyenne Jackson is featured in Crayton Robey’s documentary Making the Boys, about the legacy of the play The Boys in the Band which was made into a film by William Friedkin. Making the Boys premiered at Outfest last year. Filmmaker Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman) directs a thriller entitled The Owls in which she and actress Guinevere Turner play aging lesbians.

The latest from Finnish director Aleksi Salmenperä (Producing Adults), Bad Family [Paha perhe], sounds wonderfully naughty. A brother and sister meet again as teenagers after their parents separate and fall in love. Following the German, New York and Tel Aviv editions of the series, Fucking Different: São Paulo is an omnibus of queer shorts from a group of young Brazilian filmmakers.

Postcard to Daddy is a highly personal documentary by Michael Stock, director/star of Prince in Hell, addressing his own molestation by his father as a child. Sadly underrated director Ira Sachs (Married Life, The Delta) will present his short, Last Address, this year, which is dedicated to the many, many NYC artists we’ve lost to the AIDS virus.

German filmmaker Angela Schanelec (Marseilles, Nachmittag) will debut her latest, Orly, in the Forum section. Bruno Todeschini and Natacha Régnier co-star in the German/French production. Constantin Popescu, one of the directors of Tales from the Golden Age, will make his feature debut with Portait of the Fighter As a Young Man [Portretul luptătorului la tinereţe], which follows a Romanian group of anti-Communists hiding in the Carpathian Mountains.

Hanna Schygulla will receive an Honorary Golden Bear for her contributions to both German and international cinema. Schygulla will also present four films she directed: Ein Traumprotokoll, Hanna Hannah, Moi et mon double and Alicia Bustamente. In addition to the films she directed, four of her most memorable performances will also play: Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven [Auf der anderen Seite], Marco Ferreri’s The Story of Piera [Storia di Piera] for which she won the Best Actress prize at Cannes and two collaborations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lili Marleen and Rio das Mortes.

Other new films: Submarino, d. Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration); Shekarchi [The Hunter], d. Rafi Pitts (It’s Winter); Loose Cannons [Mine vaganti], d. Ferzan Ozpetek (Steam: The Turkish Bath, Saturn in Opposition), w. Riccardo Scamarcio.

The South by Southwest [SXSW] Film Festival also announced its line-up. The film portion of the festival begins on 12 March and runs until the 20th, while the music portion, arguably the raison d’être of the fest, begins on the 17th and goes to the 21st.

The Duplass brothers’ Cyrus, starring John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, Marisa Tomei (with an awful haircut) and Jonah Hill, is among the Headliners, as well as the U.S. premieres of two Sony Pictures Classics titles, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs [Micmacs à tire-larigot] and Aaron Schneider’s Get Low. Mr. Nice, a biopic of criminal Howard Marks, directed by Bernard Rose (The Kreutzer Sonata, the Anna Karenina adaptation with Sophie Marceau), is also a part of the Headliners and stars Rhys Ifans, Chloë Sevigny, David Thewlis, Luis Tosar, Christian McKay and (!) Ken Russell.

Sevigny also stars in Barry Munday, co-starring Patrick Wilson, Mae Whitman (Anne Veal from Arrested Development), Judy Greer (Kitty Sanchez from Arrested Development), Malcolm McDowell, Cybill Shepherd, Jean Smart, Billy Dee Williams and Colin Hanks. James Franco will redirect his party to Austin, Texas to premiere his documentary Saturday Night which looks at all the behind-the-scenes action of Saturday Night Live. Carla Gugino plays a retired porn actress in her boyfriend Sebastian Gutierrez’s Elektra Luxx; also with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Timothy Olyphant, Malin Akerman, Alicia Silverstone (!), Justin Kirk and Marley Shelton.

Easily the most exciting thing playing at this year’s SXSW Film Festival is the new film from Aaron Katz (Dance Party USA, Quiet City), entitled Cold Weather. Cold Weather again stars Cris Lankenau of Quiet City and sounds vaguely thriller-ish. It’ll be the one I’m keeping my eye on. The other title that has me enticed is Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara’s documentary on Stephin Merritt called Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields. The doc is ten years in the making (starting around the time of 69 Love Songs, I’d imagine). The Magnetic Fields’ new album, Realism, is also pretty outstanding if you haven’t picked it up yet.

Other films playing that premiered elsewhere: Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers, Michel Gondry’s The Thorn in the Heart [L’épine dans le cœur], Bryan Poyser’s Lovers of Hate, Daniel Barber’s Harry Brown, Dagur Kári’s The Good Heart, Niels Arden Oplev’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [Män som hatar kvinnor], Giorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Amer, Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, Sean Byrne’s The Loved Ones, Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows About Persian Cats and Steven Soderbergh’s documentary about Spalding Gray, And Everything Is Going Fine.

New Films from Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau, Sébastien Lifshitz, Anahí Berneri, Jan Hřebejk, Michael Stock, Others at Berlinale '10

Twenty-five titles were announced for the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival yesterday in the Main Programme, Panorama Special and Panorama Dokumente. The previous announcement included new films from Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese and Jasmila Žbanić. This round of titles includes films from Sébastien Lifshitz which I've mentioned several times previously, Anahí Berneri (Un año sin amor), Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Jeanne et le garçon formidable, Côte d'Azur), Mat Whitecross (The Road to Guantanamo, The Shock Doctrine), Peter Kern (Gossenkind), E.J. Yong (Untold Scandal), Miguel Albaladejo (Cachorro), Michael Stock (Prinz in Hölleland), Reha Erdam (Times and Winds), Lucy Walker (Devil's Playground), Jan Hřebejk (Divided We Fall) and Scud (City Without Baseball, Permanent Residence). The titles are listed below.

- The Actresses, d. E.J. Yong, South Korea
- Alle meine Stehaufmädchen: Von Frauen, die sich was trauen [All My Tumbler Girls or All About Women Who Dare To...], d. Lothar Lambert, Germany
- Amphetamine, d. Scud, Hong Kong/China
- L'arbre et le forêt [Family Tree], d. Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau, France
- Beautiful Darling: The Life And Times Of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar, d. James Rasin, USA
- Besouro, d. João Daniel Tikhomiroff, Brazil
- Blutsfreundschaft [Initiation], d. Peter Kern, Austria/Germany
- Gay Days, d. Yair Qedar, Israel
- Golden Slumber, d. Yoshihiro Nakamura, Japan
- Just Another Love Story, d. Kaushik Ganguly, Rituparno Ghosh, India
- Kawasakiho růže [Kawasaki's Rose], d. Jan Hřebejk, Czech Repblic
- Kosmos, d. Reha Erdam, Turkey/Bulgaria
- Making the Boys, d. Crayton Robey, USA
- El mal ajeno, d. Óskar Santos Gómez, Spain
- The Man Who Sold the World, d. Swel Noury, Imad Noury, Morocco
- Nacidas para sufrir [Born to Suffer], d. Miguel Albaladejo, Spain
- Parade, d. Isao Yukisada, Japan
- Phobidilia, d. Doran Paz, Yoav Paz, Israel
- Plein sud [Going South], d. Sébastien Lifshitz, France
- Por tu culpa [It's Your Fault], d. Anahí Berneri, Argentina/France
- Postcard to Daddy, d. Michael Stock, Germany
- Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, d. Mat Whitecross, UK
- Son of Babylon, d. Mohamed Al-Daradji, Iraq/UK/France/United Arab Emirates/Netherlands/Egypt/Palestine
- Waste Land, d. Lucy Walker, UK/Brazil
- Wiegenlieder [Lullaby], d. Tamara Trampe, Johann Feindt, Germany