The Daily Notebook

"There's a broodingly meditative tone to Chad Freidrichs's Pruitt-Igoe Myth, a film whose deceptively simple, by-the-books documentary template serves dual purposes," begins Ernest Hardy in the Voice. "Freidrichs's main goal, which is fully realized, is the painstaking illustration of how racism, classism, and government serving the interests of big business all shaped the now-myth-like horrors of St Louis's notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing project. The massive complex, which at one time housed roughly 12,000 people in 33 buildings, was launched with much fanfare in the mid 1950s and touted as a solution to the city's many crime-ridden slums. It was demolished with even more fanfare in 1972 after being allowed to slide from a state-of-the-art planned community to a hellhole of violence and despair."

"Blisteringly high-res interviews with the now-grown children of Pruitt-Igoe, as well as urban planning students who studied the complexes firsthand, offer testimonial evidence to the germs of neighborhood pride that lived on there though surrounded by fear, ignorance, and insurmountable penury," writes Joseph Jon Lanthier in Slant. "Most haunting, however, is the relentless interweaving of archival footage with these talking heads — newsreels, photographs, and home movies, some of each repeated more than once in disparate contexts, which form a multimedia-driven collage of interlocking symbols not just about Pruitt-Igoe-the-historical-event, but Pruitt-Igoe-the-idea."

Rachel Saltz in the New York Times: "The film puts Pruitt-Igoe's history in the broader context of American cities after World War II, as they lost jobs and population — especially white residents — with the growth of the suburbs. And it shows how projects like Pruitt-Igoe were built, then left to struggle in declining cities with shrinking tax bases."

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History is "a heartbreaking alarm call for a society that desperately needs to learn from its worst mistakes," writes Eric Hynes in Time Out New York.

At the IFC Center through Thursday.

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It's an annual event as well as a browse that could suck up an entire weekend: Senses of Cinema's worldwide poll of…  well, they're not all critics, so let's just call them friends of cinema. You'll want to scroll up and down the whole thing, but take a look, too, at the best of 2011 according to Notebook editor Daniel Kasman and contributors Celluloid Liberation Front, Christoph Huber, Olaf Möller and Dan Sallitt as well as a major presence here in the Forum and elsewhere, David Ehrenstein.

London. This is the year we'll be seeing the results of Sight & Sound's poll of more friends of cinema regarding the greatest films of all time. It happens only once every ten years and in the magazine's pages, Graham Fuller argues a mighty case for the return of Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934) to the top ten. The film's opening today for an extended run at BFI Southbank, so you'll find more on it from Peter Bradshaw (Guardian, 5/5), Eithne Farry (Electric Sheep), Tom Huddleston (Time Out London, 5/5) and Jack Jones (Little White Lies).

Elsewhere. UCLA Film & Television Archive and the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies present an evening with Marina Goldovskaya, "the leading documentary chronicler of the wrenching changes that have gripped the Soviet Union and modern-day Russia beginning in the late 20th century." SIFF Cinema at the Uptown in Seattle is screening the Best Documentaries of 2011 through Thursday. The Boston Festival of Films From Iran opens today and runs through January 29. And the Chicago Reader's JR Jones survey's "This week's movie action" in the Second City.

Reading. Film culture is alive and well, J Hoberman assures New York Times critics Manohla Dargis and AO Scott: "Over the past 15 years the photographic basis of the medium has been eroded by digital image making, the traditional delivery system is changing, not just for cinema but for criticism, the audience is dwarfed by the audience for video games, and yet great things continue to be made…. [T]here’s still room for novelty and potential for debate. Look at the fracas over The Tree of Life and Melancholia. It just goes to show that, although a great filmmaker like the Soviet master Andrei Tarkovsky was a minority taste at best among the critics of the 80s (check out his reviews), his epigones have succeeded in creating significant cine-scandals."

And more reading. Selections from the January issue of Electric Sheep are up: "We start off the year with the real truths behind fake documentaries to mark the Blu-ray release of Peter Watkins's incendiary Punishment Park, whose denunciation of the US government's repression of dissent remains powerfully relevant 40 years later." … Charles Simic for the New York Review of Books on growing up with the movies … And if you can't read Japanese, Art Theatre Guild pamphlet #87 is still fun to leaf through; Nihon Cine Art's just made it available.

In other news. The full program and schedule for the International Film Festival Rotterdam, opening Wednesday and running through February 5, is now online.

Nanni Moretti will be President of the Jury of the 65th edition of Cannes, running May 16 through 27.

Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister will open the Seattle International Film Festival on May 17, reports Moira Macdonald of the Seattle Times. SIFF, of course, runs forever, this year through June 10.

"The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (April 12-15) has chosen to highlight the career of Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders, A Place of Our Own) for its annual Full Frame Tribute," reports Nigel M Smith at indieWIRE. Nelson is also among several documentary filmmakers (including Barbara Kopple, Jessica Yu, Steve James, Joe Berlinger and on and on) who'll be taking part in Focus Forward, "a new series of 30 three-minute stories about innovative people who are reshaping the world through act or invention." Here's the trailer.

Awards. "Fresh off its Golden Globes' win earlier this week, Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist came up trumps at the London Film Critics' Circle Awards, winning best film, director and actor for Jean Dujardin," reports Diana Lodderhose for Variety. "Asghar Farhadi's A Separation won foreign language pic, screenwriter of the year for Farhadi and supporting actress for Sareh Bayat." Peter Knegt has the full list of winners at indieWIRE, where he also reports that the Costume Designers Guild "have announced nominees in three separate film categories — contemporary, fantasy and period — for its 14th annual awards ceremony." Deadline has the nominations from the Motion Picture Sound Editors. And the nominations for the GLAAD Media Awards are out.

Lists. TCM's "10 Most Influential Silent Films" and the Independent's "10 best silent films."

In the works. "Sion Sono is following up Himizu, which he rewrote to include the March tsunami, with Land of Hope, a family drama set after a huge earthquake and Fukushima-type nuclear accident." Gavin J Blair has more in the Hollywood Reporter.

Two items on Kristen Wiig at the Playlist. Instead of sleepwalking into a Bridesmaids sequel, she'll join Sean Penn and Robert De Niro in The Comedian, with Penn directing, as Simon Dang reports, and she may join Ben Stiller and Shirley MacLaine in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, as Kevin Jagernauth reports.

Jon S Baird will direct an adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel Filth with a cast featuring James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Joanne Froggatt, Jim Broadbent and Imogen Poots, reports James Wallace at FirstShowing.

"It was a pretty big deal when George Clooney agreed to perform in Dustin Lance Black's play 8," writes Joshua L Weinstein for TheWrap. "It just got bigger. Jane Lynch, Matthew Morrison, Rob Reiner, Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Campbell Brown, Matt Bomer, Cleve Jones, Christine Lahti, Rory O'Malley, Yeardley Smith and George Takei also will star, the producers said Thursday. 8 is about the trial in a San Francisco federal court that overturned California's Proposition 8, which banned gays and lesbians from marrying."

Eye candy. "2012 marks the 20th anniversary of BFI Film Classics, the British Film Institute's renowned series of books on landmarks in world cinema. To celebrate, [Creative Review] and BFI Publishing are giving one student the chance to design the cover of a special edition of one of these renowned books." Above: Mark Swan's cover for Went the Day Well? by Penelope Houston.

Birthdays. David Lynch is 66. Fellini would have been 92 today.

Obits. "Etta James, the earthy blues and R&B singer whose anguished vocals convinced generations of listeners that she would rather go blind than see her love leave, then communicated her joy upon finding that love at last, died Friday morning," reports Randy Lewis for the Los Angeles Times. She was 73. "As a teen, James formed a trio called the Peaches, which was discovered by R&B musician and promoter Johnny Otis (who, coincidentally, died Tuesday at age 90)."

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Billing itself (with more than a little justification, too) as "the world's most popular film noir festival," Noir City opens today in San Francisco and runs through January 29. The star of this tenth edition, as Matt Sussman notes in his overview for the Bay Guardian, will be "Angie Dickinson, who will be feted and interviewed in person at a double bill of two of her best: The Killers (1964) and Point Blank (1967). Whereas Ava Gardner simmered her way through Robert Siodmak's 1946 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story, the temperature of Dickinson's Killers mob girl is harder to take in Don Siegel's remarkably brutal remake: a Monroe in harsher lines with nothing of the little girl lost about her. So too in Point Blank — which re-teams Dickinson with her Killers costar Lee Marvin — does she put up a good fight, even as she brandishes her sexuality like a semi-automatic."

Michael Guillén's not only got a Dickinson roundup but also a collection of autographed photos and a gallery of posters for The Killers and Point Blank.

The other star of this year's edition is Dashiell Hammett. "In fact," writes G Allen Johnson in the Chronicle, "the closing day is all-Hammett, all the time. Six films either written by Hammett or based on his writings will be shown, including the original Maltese Falcon from 1931." John Huston's 1941 version will be screened as well. At any rate, Johnson's met festival founder Eddie Muller in the apartment where Hammett lived in 20s: "Here, at 891 Post St, Hammett, a struggling writer who worked at Samuel's Jewelers on Market Street, wrote his first three novels: Red Harvest, The Dain Curse and, of course, The Maltese Falcon, in which Sam Spade's living quarters and office in the novel was based on Hammett's apartment." Which Muller and Noir City festival announcer Bill Arney are in the process of renovating.

For Fandor, Beth Lisick talks with Muller as well and finds him to be an adamant advocate of preservation — naturally, but rather than digital restoration, he insists, "If it was made on film, it should continue to exist on film" — and this year, the festival's saved Jean Negulesco's Three Strangers (1946): "It's a totally grassroots thing. Let's get 1,200 people to pay $25 each; knock out the cost of the theater rental. That's a print of a film. I can see: We paid for this. When we show this film Three Strangers on the 28th of January, it's like a calculator in my head. We've paid for this print. In this one day. Then it resides at UCLA forevermore, we hope."

San Francisco Sentinel editor Sean Martinfield talks with Muller, too.

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There hasn't been a whole lot of previewing in the run-up to today's opening of Slamdance 2012 but I've come across one truly terrific story in, of all places, Entertainment Weekly. On Monday, Final Curtain, a long-lost 22-minute film from 1957 that Ed Wood hoped would be the pilot episode of a TV series he wanted to call Portraits of Terror, will essentially be seeing its world premiere in Park City. Clark Collis tells the story of its rediscovery and restoration but also that of the actors involved, particularly Paul Marco. Great stuff.

Otherwise, I can point you to two previews of the lineup and, as notable reviews come in, I'll make a note of them here. IndieWIRE's Eric Kohn picks six films to keep an eye on and reminds us that Slamdance doesn't really deserve to be overlooked as much as it has been so far this year: "Last year's premiere Without went on to play festivals around the world and announced the promising talent of director Mark Jackson, while previous Slamdance breakouts have included Paranormal Activity and King of Kong."

And then there's Paul Sbrizzi's more extensive overview at Hammer to Nail; then again, he's one of the festival's programmers.

Trailers. You can watch the trailer for Peter McLarnan's The Sound of Small Things at indieWIRE, and the one for Frank Rinaldi's Sundowning at the film's site; and here's a brief one for Andrew Kavanagh's short At the Formal, via Simon de Bruyn at Twitch:

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In his second film Voy a explotar (I'm Going to Explode, which premiered at Venice Mostra in 2009) Gerardo Naranjo paid a double, vibrant homage to Godard and to Mexican melodrama through a teenagers-road-movie that moved with freedom, constant invention and rebellious spirit. Miss Bala, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, often shows the same free-style qualities but with a further approach that goes deeper  into the question of corruption and the fate of non-rebellious "normal people."

Set in Ciudad Juarez, the film tells of Laura (Stephanie Sigman), an ordinary lower middle-class family girl. She dreams of a TV beauty-singing contest as a way to get some money for the family and herself, but the woman in charge of casting does not hire her. That same evening, an ordinary girl's dream will change into a multi-episode nightmare as Laura witnesses a gangland killing raid. Enter the Cartel—and a charismatically ferocious gang boss (Noe Hernández). When the girl out seeks help from the police, she is simply "delivered" to the mob. Enter collusion and corruption. From then on, Laura will go through almost all the possible episodes a hostage can experience in the hands of a Cartel boss. Something like a fatally logical chain of events transform her into the powerless puppet of the boss, a witness and accomplice, a victim and accessory. Her reward is an arranged victory at the TV contest. Yet Laura's story does not end on this ironical note—she is then used as a bait in a mob plot to kill a police general  Even if she finds her own way to rebellion, a final twist in the story shows that justice definitely has not prevailed, and that corruption and violence are just "the way things are."

Naranjo gives here what could be called a "neo-melo," or even a Mexican-society-cartel-plague version of, say, Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu. Even if one could criticize the somehow too mechanical narrative arc, and find some flaws in the Stephanie Sigman's acting, Naranjo finds his way brilliantly in many scenes, including action scenes, with neither pomposity nor sordid realism, yet with an energetic political standpoint, and quite some style. He draws a very striking image of gang methods and their "work" and routine, to which his excellent casting for the boss and his sicarios is a major asset.

Here is the relentless portrait of a society of violence and corruption, with an interesting and original study on "normality" and "passivity."

 

This review is adapted from a piece that originally appeared in our coverage for the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

"Haywire reunites director Steven Soderbergh with screenwriter Lem Dobbs," begins Josef Braun. "Though not as revelatory or formally engaged as The Limey, the pair's 1999 sleeper, which marked a comeback for its star, Terrence Stamp, Haywire is nevertheless, like The Limey, a smart, playful vamp on old tropes: lone wolf hired muscle takes a gig that turns out to be a double-cross; she becomes a loose end; corrupt former employer now seeks to eliminate her... you know the tune. Like The Limey, Haywire is also a film unusually concerned with geographical coherence, thus we get chase scenes that work up quite a sweat ensuring that we understand exactly how we got onto the fourth floor of this particular building or down that particular alleyway — there's even a pair of demonstrative scenes in which our heroine, Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), carefully consults a covert GPS device. Soderbergh, as always, operating as his own cinematographer, knows that one of the problems with modern action flicks is that they're disorienting in all the wrong ways. In a film that's all about escape, pursuit, concealment and ambush, identification is dependent on knowing where the hell we are."

At one point in Haywire, Mallory Kane "takes a fall while scaling down a drainpipe and hits the ground with a crunch that knocks the wind out of you," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. "It's a short drop, but that landing hurts. As cartoonish live-action and photorealistic cartoons reign at the multiplex, all but obsoleting the laws of gravity, Haywire puts the impact back into screen violence, brings it back to earth."

"Carano is obviously not a natural born actor," notes Paul Constant in the Stranger. "When called upon to emote, she generally bites her lip, and whole sentences occasionally fall, stillborn, out of her mouth. But she attacks acting the way she fights: instinctually and with a lot of passion. She's on the same acting scale as Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Sylvester Stallone, only further up on the believable human end. She'll never win an Oscar, but she could become a decent Bruce Willis – type action star in three good movies or less."

In Slant, R Kurt Osenlund suggests that Haywire "aims to avoid charges of misogyny and fetishism by putting a feminist spin on the Bond formula, surrounding an ultra-cool female agent with pretty, disposable male heartthrobs (among them: Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, and Ewan McGregor). Regardless of whether the whole thing works or not, the problem with Haywire is its overall lack of importance, as putting a Maxim model through a somewhat novel wringer doesn't quite constitute essential viewing."

"Politically, the film conceals its hand until late in the game," argues Vadim Rizov at Box Office. "Mallory's military background (and her father's mustachioed presence) hint at anti-government, off-the-grid libertarian paranoia, but the final explanation of what's behind all the chaos is, to use current conservative vernacular, anti-job-creators. 'I'm assuming the motives of everyone involved are strictly professional,' asks Fassbender's Paul. 'The motive is money,' answers his contractor, 'The motive is always money.' Combine this with grumbling from government official Coblenz (Michael Douglas) about the private sector's combined unaccountability and inefficiency, and there's more than enough material here to inflame conservative websites. The critique's as laconically pungent as anything else in the film, but no matter: at heart, Haywire is about the simple joys of action film virtuosity, and Soderbergh delivers."

More from Peter Bradshaw (Guardian, 2/5), Richard Corliss (Time), AA Dowd (Time Out Chicago, 4/5), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times, 3/4), Kurt Halfyard (Twitch), Glenn Heath Jr (SanDiego.com), Robert Horton (Herald), David Jenkins (Time Out London, 4/5), Trevor Link, Wesley Morris (Boston Globe, 3/4), Andrew O'Hehir (Salon), Ray Pride (Newcity Film), Nathaniel Rogers (Towleroad), AO Scott (New York Times), Dana Stevens (Slate), Scott Tobias (AV Club, A-), Keith Uhlich (Time Out New York, 2/5), Adam Woodward (Little White Lies), Neil Young (4/10) and Stephanie Zacharek (Movieline, 8.5/10). Alt Screen's got a roundup and in November I gathered a batch of initial reactions from the AFI Fest.

Interviews with Soderbergh: Kaleem Aftab (Independent), Ben Kenigsberg (Time Out Chicago), R Kurt Osenlund (Slate), the Playlist, Nigel M Smith (indieWIRE), Scott Tobias (AV Club) and Jennifer Vineyard (Vulture). And with Carano: Jessica Grose (Slate), Joshua Rothkopf (TONY), Jennifer Vineyard (Vulture) and Jen Yamato (Movieline). Karina Longworth talks with Carano and Tatum for the Voice and the Playlist interviews Fassbender.

And finally for now, Ryland Walker Knight's selected this excerpt from Vineyard's interview with Soderbergh:

I wish movies mattered more. I wish they were more influential. I mean, they do influence things, but only things that are not that important, such as how people talk, how they dress. But in terms of having a real role in the ongoing debate about how everything should work, how lives should work, they're not influential. There was a period where I felt that the movies coming out were as good as any novel, as any form of serious art that you could look at, and I'm particularly frustrated by my inability to create something at that level. I watch older movies regularly, depending what I'm working on, for inspiration. But I'm just not that inspired right now.

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Shadow Dancer

It's been a good week for festival news junkies. Sundance has opened, Rotterdam's full schedule is now online, Cannes has named Nanni Moretti as President of the Jury for the 65th edition in May, and the Berlinale's been rolling out lineup after lineup. Today's addition: "With seven more films, the Competition program of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival is nearing completion. To date it includes 22 films, of which 17 are vying for the Golden and Silver Bears. 18 films will celebrate their world premieres in the Competition of the Berlinale 2012."

So, the story so far:

À moi seule (Coming Home). France. By Frédéric Videau (Le fils de Jean-Claude Videau, Variéte Francaise). With Agathe Bonitzer and Reda Kateb. World premiere.

Bel Ami. Great Britain. By Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod (feature debut). With Robert Pattinson, Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci. World premiere / Out of Competition.

En kongelig affære (A Royal Affair). Denmark/Czech Republic/Germany/Sweden. By Nikolaj Arcel (Islands of Lost Souls, Sandheden om mænd, Königspatience – Intrige im Parlament). With Mads Mikkelsen, Alicia Vikander, Trine Dyrholm, David Dencik, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard. World premiere.

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. Hong Kong, China. By Hark Tsui (Once Upon a Time in China, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Time and Tide). With Jet Li, Zhou Xun, Chen Kun, Kwai Lun Mei. European premiere / Out of Competition – 3D. Leads the nominations for the Asian Film Awards.

Rebelle. Canada. By Kim Nguyen (La citė, Truffe, Le Marais). With Rachel Mwanza, Alain Bastien and Serge Kanyinda. World premiere.

Shadow Dancer. Great Britain/Ireland. By James Marsh (Project Nim, The King, Man on Wire). With Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough and Gillian Anderson. European premiere / Out of Competition

Special screening in the Berlinale Palast: Steven Soderbergh's Haywire. Today's roundup.

Films already announced:

Aujourd'hui by Alain Gomis, France/Senegal - WP
Barbara by Christian Petzold, Germany - WP
Captive by Brillante Mendoza, France/Philippines/Germany/Great Britain - WP
Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die) by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Italy - WP
Csak a szél (Just the Wind) by Bence Fliegauf, Hungary/Germany/ France - WP
Dictado (Childish Games) by Antonio Chavarrías, Spain - WP
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Stephen Daldry, USA – IP (out of competition)
Gnade (Mercy) by Matthias Glasner, Germany/Norway - WP
Jayne Mansfield’s Car by Billy Bob Thornton, Russian Federation/USA - WP
Jin líng Shí San Chai (The Flowers of War) by Zhang Yimou, People’s Republic of China – EP (out of competition)
Kebun binatang (Postcards from the Zoo) by Edwin, Indonesia/Germany/Hong Kong, China - WP
L'enfant d'en haut (Sister) by Ursula Meier, Switzerland/France - WP
Les Adieux à la reine by Benoît Jacquot, France/Spain - WP
Metéora (Meteora) by Spiros Stathoulopoulos, Germany/Greece - WP
Tabu by Miguel Gomes, Portugal/Germany/Brazil/ France - WP
Was bleibt (Home for the Weekend) by Hans-Christian Schmid, Germany - WP

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Two of my favorite new posters right now, for two films opening within the next few weeks in New York, are both designed by one of my favorite designers, Scott Meola. I wrote about Scott’s work before when I featured his poster for On the Bowery back in 2010.  Come Back, Africa, which Milestone Film is opening in New York next Friday, was Lionel Rogosin’s follow-up to Bowery, a film shot clandestinely in the townships of Johannesburg, South Africa in 1959. The film’s pointed condemnation of apartheid and joyful celebration of township culture is hinted at in the accidental split-screen image of the poster’s photograph, with its busking children below scornful onlookers (I love how Meola zeroes in on the prime representative of this police state within the middle C of the title).

The poster for Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse, which opens on February 10th, (and which, incidentally, was my favorite film of last year) also uses a monochrome photograph and some perfectly chosen and impeccably placed lettering. One only has to look at other versions of this concept to see how elegantly Meola uses type (though I am also a fan of the dramatic Mexican poster for the film). I like how the girl in the poster is being swallowed up in the grey mist of her surroundings, and how the title is the only source of white light in the whole poster (which makes even more sense when you see the teaser trailer for the film).

The two posters make a beautiful pair, both with their vintage-looking photographs, their billing blocks placed unconventionally up top, and both centering, quite coincidentally, on a figure in mid-step. Here they are in all their glory.

Back in November we posted the first trailer for one of two films we'll be seeing from Koji Wakamatsu this year. At the time, we thought the title would be Kaien Hotel Blue; turns out the title will be Petrel Hotel Blue and it'll be seeing its world premiere at New York's Japan Society as part of Love Will Tear Us Apart, "a series of twisted, obsessive, heart-blazing love stories from Japan and Korea."

The series opens on March 2 with the US premiere of Shinya Tsukamoto's KOTOKO, winner of the Orizzonti Jury Award in Venice last fall. Just yesterday, Todd Brown posted the first trailer at Twitch.

The schedule for the films that follow:

March 3. Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll (2009), Lee Yoon-ki's My Dear Enemy (2008), Tsukamoto's Vital (2004) and A Snake of June (2003).

March 4. Hiroki Ryuichi's Vibrator (2003) and M (2006).

March 7. Wakamatsu's Petrel Hotel Blue and Running in Madness, Dying in Love (1969).

March 8. Hong Sang-Soo's Tale of Cinema (2005) and Wakamatsu's The Woman Who Wanted to Die (1970).

March 9. Lee Sang-il's Villain (2010).

March 10. Kim Ki-duk's Time (2006), Bad Guy (2002) and Dream (2008) and Jung Ji-woo's Happy End (1999).

March 16. Yukio Ninagawa's Snakes and Earrings (2008) and Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses (1976).

March 17. Hideo Nakata's Chaos (2000) and Lim Woo-seong's Vegetarian (2009).

March 18. Mochizuki Rokuro's Minazuki (1999) and Lee Chang-Dong's Oasis (2002).

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"27 films from 22 countries will be competing for the Golden Bear and Silver Bear Jury Prize, the DAAD Short Film Award and a short film nomination for the European Film Prize," the Berlinale's announced today. The International Jury will be comprised of German actress Sandra Hüller, Palestinian artist Emily Jacir and Irish-American filmmaker David O'Reilly. We'll get to the lineup in a moment, but first, this:

"Due to the political events in Hungary, the Berlinale Shorts is presenting a special screening on February 18, 2012 at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele: Magyarország 2011 (Hungary 2011) – an omnibus film, which reflects also in its aesthetics, the radical political and social developments in this crisis-ridden country. The directors of the work are Ágnes Kocsis, Márta Mészáros, Bence Fliegauf, Miklós Jancsó, and others [András Jeles, Ferenc Török, Simon Szabó, Péter Forgács, László Siroki, György Pálfi and András Salamon]. Following the screening, Béla Tarr will conduct a discussion on the current situation in Hungary."

On to the main program, with a few descriptions from the festival:

Ad balloon, Lee Woo-jung, Republic of Korea, 24’ (International Premiere). "Memories of those who were different than everyone else at school is the point of departure."
An das Morgengrauen, Mariola Brillowska, Germany, 3’ (World Premiere).
Ein Mädchen Namens Yssabeau, Rosana Cuellar, Germany / Mexico, 18’ (German Premiere).
Enakkum Oru Per, Suba Sivakumaran, USA / Sri Lanka, 12’ (WP).
Erotic Fragments No. 1, 2, 3, Anucha Boonyawatana, Thailand, 7’ (IP).
Gurehto Rabitto, Atsushi Wada, France, 7’ (WP).
impossible exchange, Mahmoud Hojeij, Lebanon, 10’ (WP).
Karrabing! Low Tide Turning, Liza Johnson, Elizabeth A Povinelli, Australia, 14’ (WP).
La Santa, Mauricio López Fernández, Chile, 14’ (WP).
LI.LI.TA.AL., Akihito Izuhara, Japan, 8’ (WP).
Licuri Surf, Guile Martins, Brazil, 15’ (IP).
Loxoro, Claudia Llosa, Spain / Peru / Argentina / USA, 19’ (IP). "Accompanies the search of a mother for her daughter into the milieu of transsexuals in Peru – Loxoro is their language, their longing to find a place for themselves."
Mah-Chui, Kim Souk-young, Republic of Korea, 23’ (IP). "Tells a universal story about hierarchical pressures and the need to reinforce one’s moral stance through one’s actions."
Nostalgia, Gustavo Rondón Córdova, Venezuela, 30’ (WP).
Panchabhuta, Mohan Kumar Valasala, India, 16’ (WP).
PUSONG WAZAK! Isa Na Namang Kwento Ng Pag-ibig Sa Pagitan Ng Isang Kriminal at Isang Puta, Khavn De La Cruz, Philippines, 15’ (WP). "Explores in fleeting images the likelihood of dying too early from the violence so omnipresent in the Philippines today."
Rafa, João Salaviza, Portugal / France, 25’ (WP).
Say Goodbye to the Story (ATT 1/11), Christoph Schlingensief, Germany, 23’ (WP). "Schlingensief has his cast repeat a scene in the shower so often, and without breaks, until they are completely exhausted. Domination and desperation — a dance: explosive and ecstatic."
Shi Luo Zhi Di, Zhou Yan, People’s Republic of China, 25’ (WP).
Strauß.ok, Jeanne Faust, Germany, 5’ (WP).
The End, Barcelo, France, 17’ (WP).
The Man that Got Away, Trevor Anderson, Canada, 25’ (WP).
Utsikter, Marcus Harrling, Moa Geistrand, Sweden, 12’ (WP).
Uzushio, Naoto Kawamoto, Japan, 6’ (WP).
Vilaine Fille Mauvais Garçon, Justine Triet, France, 30’ (IP).
Yi chang ge ming zhong hai wei lai de ji ding yi de xing wei, Sun Xun, People’s Republic of China, 12’ (WP).
zounk!, Billy Roisz, Austria, 6’ (WP).

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Die Lage (Condition)

For many, myself included, this is the Berlinale lineup we anticipate most each year: "The 42nd Berlinale Forum will be showing 38 films in its main program, including 26 world premieres and 8 international premieres." There'll be special screenings, too, which we'll be hearing about later, but for now, the main program with synopses from the festival:

Al Juma Al Akheira (The Last Friday) by Yahya Alabdallah, Jordan/United Arab Emirates - International Premiere. "Taxi driver Yousef is forced to bring some order into his failed existence. This lovingly photographed film casts a laconic and occasionally humorous gaze on daily life in the Jordanian capital Amman."

Ang Babae sa Septic Tank (The Woman in the Septic Tank) by Marlon N Rivera, the Philippines. "In this biting satire, three young filmmakers do everything in their power to obtain international fame. They are all too aware of foreign audiences' expectations of Philippine cinema: prostitution, abuse, rubbish heaps and slums."

Avalon by Axel Petersén, Sweden. "Realistic and bizarre in equal measure, Avalon follows a group of aging party people in Swedish tennis Mecca Båstad. Although they are well practised at using money, drugs and alcohol to sidestep the aging process, the opening of a new club turns out to be a more difficult proposition."

Bagrut Lochamim (Soldier / Citizen) by Silvina Landsmann, Israel - World Premiere. "In a citizenship course organised by the military, young Israeli soldiers discuss the complex nature of the Jewish state and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with some shockingly uncompromising views emerging in the process. "

Bestiaire by Denis Côté, Canada/France. "Our relationship to animals and the fences we place around them are explored in a series of sober visual observations. The film's carefully composed shots allow time for reflection on beauty and the unfamiliar, about domesticated wildernesses in the midst of civilization." Premieres this weekend at Sundance.

Beziehungsweisen (Negotiating Love) by Calle Overweg, Germany - WP. "Three couples in crisis seek help at counselling sessions, whereby the therapists play themselves and the clients are played by actors. Despite the inherent artificiality of the set-up, surprisingly authentic emotions come to the fore."

La demora (The Wait) by Rodrigo Plá, Uruguay/Mexico/France - WP. "La demora uses restraint and subtlety to depict the harsh reality of a single mother of three who also has to care for her senile father. Overworked and underpaid, she is eventually driven to abandon him on the street."

Escuela normal (Normal School) by Celina Murga, Argentina - WP. "By observing the student council elections at an elite school in Buenos Aries, Escuela normal creates a subtle exploration of the contrast between political ideas, institutional ideologies and their implementation in everyday life."

Espoir voyage by Michel K Zongo, France/Burkina Faso - IP. "Burkinian filmmaker Michel Zongo sets off to the Ivory Coast to find out what happened to his lost brother. Joanny left to go there many years ago and never returned, searching like so many others for work in the more affluent neighboring country."

For Ellen by So Yong Kim, USA - IP. "It is only the threat of having visiting rights for his young daughter withdrawn that makes rock musician Joby realize there's something missing in his life. He now desperately tries to build a relationship with the little girl after a long absence." With Paul Dano, Jon Heder and Jena Malone. Premiering at Sundance.

Formentera by Ann-Kristin Reyels, Germany - WP. "Ben and Nina are on holiday in Formentera, having left their three-year-old daughter at home for the first time. It quickly becomes clear that their expectations of the days to be spent on the island are as different their respective ideas for the future."

Francine by Brian M Cassidy/Melanie Shatzky, USA/Canada - WP. "Following her release from prison, the shy Francine tries her hand at various jobs without ever really being able to cope with her obligations. Her only source of strength stems from the rapidly growing flock of animals she gathers around her." With Melissa Leo.

friends after 3.11 by Iwai Shunji, Japan - IP. "In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power station, director Iwai Shunji discusses with friends and experts the political, economic and social situation of a country in a state of dependence."

Habiter / Construire (Living / Building) by Clémence Ancelin, France - WP. "Taking the construction of a tarmac road through the desert as its starting point, Habiter / Construire takes a precise look at different daily realities and living conditions in Chad: nomads, villagers as well as the different workers segregated according to where they are from."

Hemel by Sacha Polak, the Netherlands/Spain - WP. "Hemel changes her sexual partners in rapid succession. The film of the same name takes a painfully precise, empathetic look at the life of this troubled young woman, who deploys her sexuality as a means of provocation."

Hiver nomade (Winter Nomads) by Manuel von Stürler, Switzerland - WP. "For the first time, an experienced shepherd is accompanied by a young colleague on his yearly trek across French-speaking Switzerland. The film tenderly documents the arduous daily existence of these two nomads in the deep Swiss winter."

Jaurès by Vincent Dieutre, France - WP. "In an extended conversation with Eva Truffaut, the director reflects upon his broken relationship with Simon, from whose flat he filmed the outside world over a longer period of time, capturing the daily struggle for survival of the refugees gathered in front of Paris metro station Jaurès."

Kashi (Choked) by Kim Joong-hyun, Republic of Korea - IP. "After his insolvent mother flees from her creditors, her son Sohn Youn-ho is expected to honour her debts. Choked presents the complex interrelationships between creditors, debtors and their relations in highly moving fashion."

Kazoku no kuni (Our Homeland) by Yang Yonghi, Japan - WP. "Sonho returns to Japan from North Korea to receive treatment for a brain tumour, having been sent to Pyongyang as a teenager by his father, a loyal supporter of the political system there. His brief visit brings the emotions of the past back to the surface."

Kid-Thing by David and Nathan Zellner, USA - IP. "Neglected by her parents, 10-year-old Annie roams through forest and meadow leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. When she discovers a mysterious hole in the ground from which a woman's voice can be heard calling for help, she is shaken to the core however." Premiering at Sundance.

Koi ni itaru yamai (The End of Puberty) by Kimura Shoko, Japan - IP. "Shy teacher Madoka is the object of desire of his eccentric pupil Tsubura. When their sexual organs are miraculously switched during sex, the question arises as to whether gender roles are biologically determined."

Die Lage (Condition) by Thomas Heise, Germany - WP. "Thomas Heise documents the preparations for the Pope's 2011 visit to Thüringen in laconic black and white images: the meticulous rehearsal of the reception, the huge police presence, a whole region in the grip of exceptional circumstances."

No Man's Zone (Mujin chitai) by Fujiwara Toshi, Japan/France - IP. "Like a Tarkowskyian Stalker, director Fujiwara Toshi advances into the contaminated zone around the Fukushima nuclear reactors following the meltdown and conjures up images of an invisible apocalypse."

Nuclear Nation by Funahashi Atsushi, Japan - WP. "Following the Fukushima catastrophe, a mayor whose town no longer exists tries to hold together a community scattered across different Toyko emergency shelters and starts questioning old certainties in the process."

Parabeton - Pier Luigi Nervi und römischer Beton (Parabeton - Pier Luigi Nervi and Roman Concrete) by Heinz Emigholz, Germany - WP. "To conclude his Architecture as Autobiography series, Heinz Emigholz visits the buildings of Roman architect Pier Luigi Nervi as well as those of his role models from the Ancient world, putting together an impressive visual catalogue of Nervi's work."

Paziraie Sadeh (Modest Reception) by Mani Haghighi, Iran - WP. "A rich couple finds the task of distributing bags of money to the allegedly needy surprisingly difficult. Their plan quickly enters the realm of the absurd, developing into a parable about debasement, morality and false charity."

Příliš mladá noc (A Night Too Young) by Olmo Omerzu, Czech Republic/Slovenia - WP. "After becoming the unexpected guests at a strangely charged New Year's day party, two barely adolescent boys take their first glimpse at the confusing sexual dynamics of the adult world."

Revision by Philip Scheffner, Germany - WP. "Revision reconstructs the circumstances that led to the death of two men in a field near the German-Polish border in 1992. Scheffner weaves together a web of landscapes, recollections, case files and German political sentiment all of an increasingly oppressive complexity."

Salsipuedes by Mariano Luque, Argentina - WP. "It's high summer in the wooded region near the town of Salsipuedes in Northern Argentina, where Rafa and Carmen are on a camping holiday. Yet Carmen's black eye darkens the summer mood and casts a pall over the whole proceedings."

Sekret (Secret) by Przemysław Wojcieszek, Poland - WP. "When a Jewish friend demands to know the truth about Kwasery's beloved grandfather, the gay performer is forced to wrestle both with the relationship to his relative as well as his own identity."

Sleepless Knights by Stefan Butzmühlen/Cristina Diz, Germany - WP. "Two men meet in the bucolic atmosphere of a late Extremadurian summer, as the traditional customs of the area and the older generation's re-enactments in full knight's garb come again and again to the fore."

Le sommeil d'or (Golden Slumbers) by Davy Chou, France/Cambodia. "Little more than a handful of films from the Golden Age of Cambodian cinema in the 1960s and 70s survived the regime of the Khmer Rouge. Davy Chou's documentary reconstructs the lost cinematographic legacy of his country."

Spanien (Spain) by Anja Salomonowitz, Austria - WP. "In a series of cleverly intertwined stories, a man stranded in Austria is trying to get to his desired destination and meets Magdalena, who is seeking to heal the wounds left by her marriage. Meanwhile, a crane driver and gambling addict is not willing to give up on happiness."

Tepenin Ardı (Beyond the Hill) by Emin Alper, Turkey/Greece - WP. "A family reunion at the grandfather's village is overshadowed by an escalating conflict over land and property rights. With the austere beauty of the local landscape as a backdrop, the men eventually set out on a crusade against an unseen enemy."

Tiens moi droite (Keep Me Upright) by Zoé Chantre, France - WP. "In this intimate essay film, director Zoé Chantre makes use of animated pencil sketches, a self-built dosage machine and a pile of old hard drives in order to document her long-term experience with scoliosis."

Toată lumea din familia noastră (Everybody in Our Family) by Radu Jude, Romania/The Netherlands - WP. "When the longed-for outing with his young daughter risks being cancelled, Marius pulls out all the stops. The futile arguments with his ex-wife and her family eventually lead him to take drastic measures."

What Is Love by Ruth Mader, Austria - WP. "Five stringently composed, documentary-like vignettes from the Austrian provinces explore different manifestations of love, all of which threatened by the suffocating routines of the everyday."

Zavtra (Tomorrow) by Andrey Gryazev, Russia - WP. "The Voina group's radical political performance art aims to mobilise opposition to the Russian system. The film follows the group at their protests, which often continue into their private lives, and shows the toll taken by political persecution and the constant threat of arrest."

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Ménilmontant (1926) was written, directed, produced, edited and co-photographed in Paris by Dimitri Kirsanoff. And it is, on any terms, a remarkable piece of writing, direction, production, editing and cinematography.

I'm not sure why Marcel L'Herbier and Jean Epstein seem to be regarded as almost marginal figures in cinema, important, but somehow off the beaten path. I think they're as major as you can get. But Kirsanoff is even more neglected: he barely has a toehold in film history at all. And he seems to me to be in their league, though as yet I've seen only a little of his work. I'd even say that for Ménilmontant alone he should be in the highest ranks of French silent filmmakers. His career includes short, experimental films, as well as low-life melodramas and a German mountain film with Dita Parlo. His last film dates from 1957, the year of his death.

Ménilmontant falls into the low-life melodrama category: two sisters move into the slum area of the title, and romantic entanglements nearly destroy their relationship and their lives. Kirsanoff tells the whole story with no intertitles whatsoever (that's one less than Murnau managed in The Last Laugh). Like Epstein, Kirsanoff jettisons any notion of narrative economy in order to wallow in the moment, employing lingering close-ups and multiple views of the same action, exulting in impressionistic lighting effects and expressionistic angles, distending time and hyping emotion to operatic heights of indulgence.

He also serves up lengthy, abstract montages in which the film aspires to become a city symphony, melting through the Paris streets in long double exposures, while tying the scenery to character psychology so that the cityscape seems to emote: travelogue as pathetic fallacy. Some of the lap dissolve meshing of streets and bodies can properly be called Lynchian, particularly when he films one girl nude, her body both divided by patterned shadows and overlain with handheld shots of pavements and automobiles.

And yet, while reveling in long, distended reveries of mood and light, he can also truncate or fragment time, as with the film's opening, a traumatic and unexplained murder which propels the protagonists from countryside to city. A flurry of close-ups: lace curtains torn down by flailing hands; anguished faces; a raised axe bitten into by searing sunlight, and then, abruptly, playing children, unaware that their prelapsarian idyll is about to disintegrate.

Focussing on the youngest, Kirsanoff films her reaction to the crowd of onlookers assembled around her parents' bodies with a series of ever-tightening close-ups, jolting straight in on her wide-eyed face as the truth comes home to her. Just as James Whale introduced the Frankenstein monster, actually: but Whale used jump-cuts to produce shock in the audience, while Kirsanoff uses it to evoke the character's own trauma. The next shot plants her in medium shot in an avenue of trees, and the focus is on the background, leaving the ostensible subject of the shot a grey smear, utterly lost.

In Nadia Sibirskaia, his first wife, he has a face to photograph as profound, beautiful and expressive as Lillian Gish's.

You'll be hearing more from me about Kirsanoff, who fits the profile of a great, forgotten filmmaker better than anyone I've yet encountered in the years I've been writing this column. And I hope you can tell me something about the guy.

***

The Forgotten is a regular Thursday column by David Cairns, author of Shadowplay.

Hellion

Today's the day Sundance 2012 opens and Salon's Andrew O'Hehir pretty well sums up why those who've written the festival off completely might want to reconsider:

If Robert Redford's annual celebration of independent film is no longer the cutting-edge cultural phenomenon it appeared to be in the 1990s, it also isn't the wretched-excess Sundance of the early 2000s, when the overly precious downtown of Park City, Utah, was bedecked with 'gifting lounges' that attracted all kinds of entertainment and sports celebrities who had no plausible connection to the independent-film business. Current festival director John Cooper took the reins from longtime director Geoff Gilmore (a charismatic and polarizing figure) two and a half years ago, just as the national economy was going south. Whether by coincidence, strategy or an inevitable consequence of structural change, Cooper's first two festivals have felt leaner and more focused on actual films and filmmakers — and a lot less possessed by paparazzi and B-plus Hollywood stars modeling ski fashions.

He's "picked 15 movies I'm most excited about seeing in the coming days," and of course, there are a lot of similar lists out there from, for example, Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay, FirstShowing, Flavorwire, the Guardian, HitFix and Vulture, where Kyle Buchanan chats with Parker Posey about how the festival's changed over the years (she's been a Park City staple since 1995 and Party Girl).

Notable articles posted at the festival's own site include Holly Willis on three docs that call the American Dream into question (Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Detropia, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush's Finding North and Eugene Jarecki's The House I Live In) and her interview with Terence Nance, whose Oversimplification of Her Beauty will also be screening in Rotterdam; Bridgette Bates on docs capturing the spirit of protest (Mark Kitchell's A Fierce Green Fire, David France's How to Survive a Plague, Alison Klayman's Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Omar Shargawi and Karim El Hakim's ½ Revolution and Karin Hayes and Victoria Bruce's We're Not Broke); Nate von Zumwalt on the expansion of the festival's music program; and Jon Korn on a slew of shorts.

Speaking of shorts, at indieWIRE, Kim Adelman writes up ten to see and, at Twitch, Chase Whale talks with Kat Candler about her short, Hellion. The Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov talks with her as well.

Updates: I've added a few trailers to the two roundups: the Competitions and all the other programs. More previewing: David D'Arcy (National), Movies.com, Noel Murray (AV Club), Dan Nuxoll (Rooftop Films), Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times) and Twitch.

Listening (31'24"). On KCRW, Elvis Mitchell talks with Cooper and programmer Trevor Groth.

A Separation

Awards. "Nine films out of 63 qualified submissions are moving on in the race for the Oscar for Foreign Language Film," reports Anne Thompson. The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:

    Belgium, Bullhead (Michael R Roskam)
    Canada, Monsieur Lazhar (Philippe Falardeau)
    Denmark, Superclásico (Ole Christian Madsen)
    Germany, Pina (Wim Wenders)
    Iran, A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
    Israel, Footnote (Joseph Cedar)
    Morocco, Omar Killed Me (Roschdy Zem)
    Poland, In Darkness (Agnieszka Holland)
    Taiwan, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Wei Te-sheng)

The Gay & Lesbian Critics' Association has named Andrew Haigh's Weekend the LGBT-Themed Film of the Year, reports Guy Lodge at In Contention.

DVDs to read about. First, for Criterion, Kent Jones on Jean-Pierre Gorin's Poto and Cabengo (1978), Routine Pleasures (1986) and My Crasy Life (1992) — more from Steve Erickson at Press Play — and Melissa Anderson on Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour (1967). Sean Axmaker reviews Raro's release of Alberto Lattuada's Il Cappotto (The Overcoat, 1952) at the Parallax View and Music Box's Blu-ray package for Raúl Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) for MSN. And Kevin B Lee's first piece for Roger Ebert is on Manoel de Oliveira's The Strange Case of Angelica (2010).

New York. Nick Pinkerton in the Voice: "Deserved praise for [Andrei Ujică's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu] has inspired Anthology Film Archives to unite the film's predecessors under the rubric of The Compilation Film: assemblages of footage acquired through exhaustive archive-dredging. Taken together, this series gives a good vantage of the major political currents of the 20th century — as mediated by anonymous cameramen and filmmakers, at least — currents represented, time and again, by images of humanity moving en masse." Through January 26.

Vienna. The Austrian Film Museum's series Hall of Mirrors. Hollywood on Hollywood, 1950-62 opens today and runs through February 9.

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Breathing

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art have announced the first seven titles lined up for the 2012 New Directors/New Films Festival, running March 21 through April 1. And, with descriptions from the FSLC and MoMA, they are:

Breathing (Atmen, 2011). "The remarkably assured directorial debut from veteran Austrian actor Karl Markovics (The  Counterfeiters) creates a slipstream between the perilousness of youth and the inevitability of death. Roman (Thomas Schubert) is an inmate at a juvenile detention center whose last hope of parole rests on his ability to hold down a job as a morgue assistant. Remorse, horror and ultimately a glimmer of illumination are cultivated through his work and his attempts to connect with a life hanging in the balance. Breathing is a Kino Lorber release." See the Cannes roundup.
 
Crulic: The Path to Beyond (2011). "When Claudiu Crulic, a young Romanian in Poland, is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, he becomes a pawn in a Kafkaesque miscarriage of justice and goes on a hunger strike to protest his treatment in jail. Filmmaker Anca Damian’s documentary is by turns chilling and heartbreaking, but also ironic, with a bit of black humor thrown in for good measure. What makes her extraordinary documentary even more compelling is its strong visual style: Damian uses hand drawn, cutout and collage animation techniques to create a strikingly memorable film."
 
Found Memories (Historias Que So Existem Quando Lembradas, 2011). "The original title, which translates as 'stories that only exist when remembered,' beautifully expresses the theme and core sentiment of Julia Murat's film. Found Memories is a poetic rendering of the fictive town of Jotuomba. A magical confluence of generations and cultures is occasioned by the visit of Julia, a young photographer, to this place where time has seemingly stood still and life is rooted in the fixed roles of tradition soon to be rendered obsolete. Found Memories is a Film Movement release."
 
Las Acacias (2011). "A road movie with a difference, Las Acacias takes a 900-mile trip from Asunción, Paraguay to Buenos Aires, with a gruff, taciturn truck driver and the two illegal immigrants — a young woman, and her newborn daughter — he is reluctantly transporting. Largely confined to the cramped confines of the truck’s cab, [Pablo] Giorgelli’s camera observes the miles passing, and the quiet, subtly evolving interaction of the trio, while borders are crossed (in more than one sense) and the driver gradually lowers his defenses and finds himself becoming unexpectedly attached to his passengers."
 
Oslo, August 31st (2011) "Daylight lingers at the end of August in Oslo, but sunlight is not a friend to Anders, a semi-recovered addict, facing a new life which may not be appealing without former habits. Joachim Trier's first feature, Reprise, was a critical highlight of New Directors/New Films 2007, and while that antic fiction was about friendship and hope, his second is quite different, bearing traces of Robert Bresson. Adapted from the same novel as Louis Malle's The Fire Within (1963), this subtle and haunting film follows Anders, as he tries to adjust — making love, wandering through Oslo, having a job interview, seeing old friends, and trying to get comfortable with his situation." See Dan Sallitt's review and the Cannes roundup.
 
Porfirio (2011). "Paralyzed from the waist down by a stray police bullet, the title character in Alejandro Landes's remarkable film spends his days selling minutes on his cell phone when not flirting with his comely neighbor, and secretly plotting his revenge. Landes worked on the film for five years, creating a tale that joined the most intimate details of Porfirio's day-to-day life with an astonishing re-creation of his attempt to hijack an airplane." Read Dan Sallitt's review and see the Cannes roundup.
 
Twilight Portrait (2011). "Twilight Portrait is a powerhouse collaboration co-written and co-produced by Angelina Nikonova, who directed, and Olga Dihovichnaya, who stars in this very dark, provocative and constantly surprising debut feature film. In a modern Russian city where corruption, apathy and class warfare are the norm, a woman is raped, rather casually by the police. What follows explodes the conventions of sexual politics — and will certainly have film-goers talking. This staggering film features great performances and an unvarnished view of life in the age of Putin." See Dan Sallitt's review.

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Another day, another trio of announcements from the Berlin International Film Festival (February 9 through 19). First off, this year's Berlinale Camera has been presented to Haro Senft, "one of the pioneers of New German Cinema as well as a tireless advocate of German children films... He was the initiator of DOC 59, a group based in Munich at the end of the 1950s; many of its members went on to sign the Oberhausen Manifesto in 1962." His 1961 documentary short Kahl was nominated for an Oscar and Bruno Ganz gave his first performance in a major role in Senft's first narrative feature, Der sanfte Lauf (1967).

"In 1971 he resigned from all his positions related to film policy and devoted himself unlike anyone else to developing a culture of children's films. With his films Ein Tag mit dem Wind (1978) and Jacob hinter der blauen Tür (1987) he set the standard for the genre." Because Senft can no longer travel, festival director Dieter Kosslick's already presented the Berlinale Camera to him in Munich. Still, the festival will screen Ein Tag mit dem Wind (image up there to the left) on February 15.

Vito

With 19 titles confirmed, the lineup for Panorama Dokumente, the program of documentaries within the Panorama program, is almost complete. The series will open on February 10 with Sean McAllister's The Reluctant Revolutionary, "about a Yemenite tourist guide who slowly abandons his professional distance towards the political “spring” in his country. His experiences with a customer, one of the last tourists in these turbulent times, politicize him."

The other films, with descriptions from the festival:

Anak-Anak Srikandi (Children of Srikandi) by the Children of Srikandi Collective, Germany/Indonesia - World Premiere. On "what it means to be a queer woman in Muslim Indonesia."

Angriff auf die Demokratie - Eine Intervention (Democracy Under Attack - An Intervention) by Romuald Karmakar, Germany - WP.

Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 by Dagmar Schultz, Germany - WP. "Focuses on this self-defined 'black, lesbian, feminist, mother, warrior, poet' and her years in Berlin. It recounts how she inspired the development of an Afro-German movement and became a mentor for an entire generation of young women students."

Brötzmann - Da gehört die Welt mal mir (Brötzmann – That’s When The World Is Mine) by Uli M Schueppel, Germany - WP. With Caspar Brötzmann, Eduardo Delgado Lopez and Danny Lommen.

Call Me Kuchu by Malika Zouhali-Worrall, Katherine Fairfax Wright, USA - WP. "Examines the brutal murder on the Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato in 2009, and its pre-meditation for political and Christian-religious reasons, also in the media."

Detlef by Stefan Westerwelle, Jan Rothstein, Germany - WP. With Detlef Stoffel, Anneliese Stoffel, Gustav-Peter Wöhler, Lilo Wanders and Corny Littmann.

Herr Wichmann aus der dritten Reihe (Henryk from the Back Row) by Andreas Dresen, Germany - WP.

In the Shadow of a Man by Hanan Abdalla, Egypt - WP. In Cairo, "women eloquently portray their views of events and take a crucial look at the long years of pre-revolutionary times without which present-day uprisings are not understandable: then as now, it’s about the equal distribution of power and this cannot be achieved without gender empowerment, as revealed by slogans such as: 'my silence makes me lose my rights,' 'divorce is freedom' or 'my patience has reached its end.'"

König des Comics (King of Comics) by Rosa von Praunheim, Germany - WP. With Ralf König, Joachim Król, Hella von Sinnen and Ralph Morgenstern. A portrait of König, "one of Germany’s greatest cartoonist and comic book creators."

La Vierge, les Coptes et Moi (The Virgin, the Copts and Me) by Namir Abdel Messeeh, France/Qatar/Egypt. "Presents events following a Marian apparition in a Coptic village – the only proof of the miracle is a rather unconvincing VHS recording. Here, too, the women are strong, whether in their new French homeland or their native villages in Egypt."

Marina Abramović The Artist Is Present by Matthew Akers, USA.

Olhe pra mim de novo (Look at Me Again) by Kiko Goifman, Claudia Priscilla, Brazil.

The Summit by Franco Fracassi, Massimo Lauria, Italy - WP. On the G8 Summit in Genoa in 2001. "It gives the backdrop and exposes the web of lies related to the death of the demonstrator Carlo Giuliani. It also tells how neo-fascist provocateurs were involved in escalating the violence, and gives insight into the development of the brutality of the state at previous demonstrations, from Brokdorf to Naples, Gothenburg and Seattle."

Ulrike Ottinger - die Nomadin vom See (Ulrike Ottinger - Nomad from the Lake) by Brigitte Kramer, Germany - WP. With Ulrike Ottinger, Ingvild Goetz, Irm Hermann and Ulrich Gregor.

Unter Männern - Schwul in der DDR (Among Men – Gay in East Germany) by Markus Stein, Rösener Ringo, Germany - WP. With Eduard Stapel, Frank Schäfer, Jürgen Wittdorf, John Zinner and Helwin Leuschner.

Vito by Jeffrey Schwarz, USA. A portrait of film historian Vito Russo, who "gave his famous lecture 'The Celluloid Closet' during the Panorama in 1983, when it was still called the Info-Schau. The book that expanded this lecture became a standard work of queer film history. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman made a film of the same name, which won the Berlinale’s TEDDY Award in 1996."

Words of Witness by Mai Iskander, USA - WP. In Cairo, "a 22-year-old woman journalist questions people on the streets about parliamentary elections and democracy, and so conveys the picture of a well-informed public whose goals often turn into clearly formulated demands on this new era."

New feature films added to the Panorama lineup:

Diaz - Don’t Clean Up This Blood by Daniele Vicari, Italy/Romania/ France - WP. With Elio Germano, Alessandro Roja and Claudio Santamaria. "Aattempts to show from a number of perspectives what happened when the authorities lost all self-control and overstepped the law" during the G8 Summit in Genoa in 2001. "The film presents the ugly face of New Europe so vividly that the events are experienced as an urgent warning for what threatens today."

Sharqiya (Central Station) by Ami Livne, Israel/France/Germany - WP. With Adnan Abuwadi and Naisa Abel El Haidi. "Israeli Bedouins are losing the ancestral lands where they rove and are supposed to settle in brand new villages."

The third batch of items out of Berlin today focuses on the Berlinale Talent Campus, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The Campus has a new main partner in the Robert Bosch Stiftung, support from Focus Forward, a documentary initiative in New York, and a round of high-profile participants who'll be speaking, conducting masterclasses and so on: Juliette Binoche, Gaston Kaboré, Volker Schlöndorff, Victor Kossakovsky, Sophie Fiennes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, cinematographer Ed Lachman, novelist and screenwriter Yan Geling, costume designer Sandy Powell, Andie MacDowell, Christine Vachon and Ted Hope.

Also: "Directors Guy Maddin (Keyhole) and Jasmila Žbanić (Grbavica) and cinematographer Judith Kaufmann (When We Leave, Four Minutes) form the jury of the Berlin Today Award 2012 'Every Step You Take,' the Campus short film competition."

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Not every English-speaker hopping over to Wikipedia for a quick look-up today will have heard about the 24-hour blackout or what's prompted it, which is partly what makes the action so effective. As Wikipedia Executive Director Sue Gardner explains, this "blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the US Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia." As to why the protest has to be taken global and has to go forward now, even as the White House threatens a veto and "some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat," she adds: "The reality is that we don't think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we're seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone."

Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow explains why one of the most popular blogs anywhere is joining Wikipedia, Reddit and other sites in the blackout: "Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren't in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits."

Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation presents a sharp and succinct primer on the threats SOPA and PIPA pose to free speech and innovation, and if you're itching to take action yourself, e-flux has a guide to the steps you might take.

In other news. Touchstones in Zoe Beloff's essay "Bodies Against Time" are her own installation The Infernal Dream of Mutt and Jeff, Walter Benjamin, Etienne-Jules Marey, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Chaplin and Keaton. And the New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones interviews the editors of Triple Canopy.

In the works. Cormac McCarthy has written and already sold his first screenplay, reports Deadline's Mike Fleming.

For Only God Forgives, a project that "centers on a Thai police lieutenant whose rivalry with a gangster sees the two settling their differences in a Thai boxing match," according to the Playlist's Kevin Jagernauth, Nicolas Winding Refn is re-teaming not only with Ryan Gosling but also with Cliff Martinez, who scored Drive. Earlier: Danny Kasman's interview with Martinez.

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In the new Winter 2012 issue of Filmmaker, editor Scott Macaulay talks with Joachim Trier about Oslo, August 31, Joshua Marston (The Forgiveness of Blood) and Braden King (Here) talk about shooting in eastern Europe, Stephen Garrett offers advice on making a winning trailer and Lance Weiler: "Within a few years, most things — from cars to appliances to toys — will be able to wirelessly interface with the Internet. Think of them as objects in search of a story."

Birthdays and anniversaries. In the Guardian, Henry K Miller suggests that you might well consider today the 100th anniversary of film criticism — at least in the UK. Referring to a 1937 piece by Alistair Cooke, he notes that "the not entirely reliable consensus had it that WG Faulkner, of the London Evening News, was author of the 'first regular criticisms of films in any British newspaper.' Faulkner, the paper's local government correspondent, had found himself covering Charles Urban's Kinemacolor films, shown at Fitzrovia's Scala theatre during 1911, before beginning a weekly column on 17 January 1912. 'The picture theatre has taken a firm place in the social enjoyment of the people,' he announced. 'It is no longer a matter of wonder; it has become an everyday part of the national life.'"

As noted in an earlier Briefing, the Oberhausen Manifesto turns 50 this year. Christoph Hochhäusler points us to a new site marking the occasion, a fine browse.

Muhammad Ali is 70 today. Newmanology recommends galleries at Life and Time. And Betty White is 90 today; and Time's got another gallery.

In other news. "The International Film Festival Rotterdam welcomes 78 young film producers taking part in the 12th edition of the Rotterdam Lab."

Awards. The American Cinema Editors present their nominations for the 62nd annual ACE Eddie Awards.

Obits. "Screenwriter Robert Dozier, who worked both in film and television, penning Otto Preminger's The Cardinal and working as a writer and producer on David Janssen TV series Harry O, died Jan 6," reports Variety. "He was 81. Dozier began work as a screenwriter during the golden age of television. His first big success came with the 1955 script for Deal a Blow, the semi-autobiographical story of a conflicted relationship between an overbearing father and his son that aired live on CBS. He adapted that script into director John Frankenheimer's 1957 film The Young Stranger."

Also: "Richard Bruno, who designed costumes for films including Heaven Can Wait, Raging Bull, The Color of Money and Goodfellas, died Jan 11." He was 87. "Bruno won a BAFTA Film Award in 1990 for his work on Goodfellas."

Browsing. From Flyer Goodness: "Peter Strain is an illustrator from Belfast who uses a unique hand-lettered style in his signature posters and prints."

Viewing. If you haven't seen it yet, take 4'48" and watch the way the Regal Union Square in NYC severely botched a screening of Martin Scorsese's Hugo. It's all pretty amusing at the beginning of the clip (in a Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz sort of way), but it becomes increasingly infuriating as the minutes roll by. Which is why you need to stick it out through to the end. The Gothamist's tipster: "This occurred after the film broke twice during the screening and we had been sitting in the theater for 3.5 hours. It's quite the mashup. Considering the movie is a tribute to film and film preservation, it was especially hysterical and at the same time a total travesty."

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A flurry of press releases from the Berlinale today, and the one you may find most interesting isn't the newsiest. You already knew that the Retrospective, The Red Dream Factory, will be featuring Eisenstein's October (Oktjabr, 1928), but today's announcement has details on the new restoration and the presentation on February 10: "Conducted by Frank Strobel, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra will perform the original score as composed by Edmund Meisel."

The second release of the day reveals that 12 titles have been added to the lineup of the Berlinale Special program, in addition to the six previously announced (here and here). Seems we can assume the first three events will be happening on Potsdamer Platz:

• To celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the film journal Positif: Volker Schlöndorff's Der Fangschuss (Le coup de grâce, 1975) with Matthias Habich, Margarethe von Trotta, Rüdiger Kirschtein, Mathieu Carrière and Valeska Gert.
   
• The European premiere of Mark Cousins's documentary series The Story of Film: An Odyssey.
   
• A special screening of Ulrike Schamoni's documentary Abschied von den Fröschen (Farewell to the Frogs) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Oberhausen Manifesto. Just today, Christoph Hochhäusler posted news of a new site dedicated to events marking the occasion.

Screenings at the Kino International:

• Glück (Bliss). Germany. By Doris Dörrie (Naked, Am I Beautiful?, Cherry Blossoms, The Hairdresser). With Alba Rohrwacher, Vinzenz Kiefer, Matthias Brandt, Oliver Nägele. World premiere.
   
• I, Anna. Great Britain/Germany/France. By Barnaby Southcombe (Feature debut). With Charlotte Rampling, Gabriel Byrne, Hayley Atwell, Eddie Marsan. World premiere.
   
• A matineé screening of the newly restored version of  Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) with Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr and Anton Walbrook.
   
• Already announced: Keyhole (Canada) by Guy Maddin.

At the Friedrichstadt-Palast:

• The German premiere of Jason Reitman's  Young Adult, with Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson and Elisabeth Reaser.
   
• Previously announced: Don – The King Is Back (India/Germany) by Farhan Akhtar, Marley, the Bob Marley documentary by Kevin Macdonald, and La chispa de la vida by Álex de la Iglesia.

And at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele:

• The international premiere of Alison Klayman's documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. Trailer.
   
• The international premiere of Bassam Mortada's documentary Althawra… Khabar (Reporting … A Revolution). Egypt.
   
• The world premiere of Klaartje Quirijns's documentary Anton Corbijn Inside Out. Netherlands.
   
• The world premiere of Alvaro Longoria's documentary Hijo de las nubes, La última colonia (Sons of the Clouds, The Last Colony). Spain.
   
• The world premiere of Chris Kenneally's documentary Side by Side. US.
   
• Already announced: Death Row (USA), the documentary series by Werner Herzog, and Angelina Jolie's In the Land of Blood and Honey.

And finally today (at least so far), a list of the 39 new projects seeking to seal the deal at the Berlinale Co-Production Market 2012.

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Nominations for the 6th annual Asian Film Awards were announced in Hong Kong today:

Best Film

• A Separation (Iran)
• Postcard (Japan)
• The Flowers of War (Mainland China)
• Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (Hong Kong/Mainland China)
• Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Taiwan)
• You Don’t Get Life a Second Time (India)

Best Director

• Asghar Farhadi, A Separation
• Teddy Soeriaatmadja, Lovely Man
• Sono Sion, Guilty of Romance
• Tsui Hark, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
• Wei Te-sheng, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
• Zhang Yimou, The Flowers of War

Best Actor

• Chen Kun, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
• Donny Damara, Lovely Man
• Andy Lau, A Simple Life
• Park Hae Il, War of the Arrows
• Yakusho Koji, Chronicle of My Mother

Best Actress

• Vidya Balan, The Dirty Picture
• Michelle Chen, You Are the Apple of My Eye
• Eugene Domingo, The Woman in the Septic Tank
• Leila Hatami, A Separation
• Deanie Ip, A Simple Life

Best Newcomer

• Ko Chen-tung, You Are the Apple of My Eye
• Eric Lin Hui-min, Starry Starry Night
• Maeda Ohshiro, I Wish
• Ni Ni, The Flowers of War
• Gita Novalista, The Mirror Never Lies

Best Supporting Actor

• Umin Boya, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
• Lawrence Ko, Jump! Ashin
• Lee Je-hoon, The Front Line
• Mario Maurer, The Outrage

Best Supporting Actress

• Shamaine Buencamino, Niño
• Gwei Lun-mei, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
• Cris Horwang, Headshot
• Mitsushima Hikari, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
• Yan Ni, 11 Flowers

Best Screenwriter

• Asghar Farhadi, A Separation
• Shindô Kaneto, Postcard
• Liu Heng, Yan Geling, The Flowers of War
• Alan Mak, Felix Chong, Overheard 2
• Chris Martinez, The Woman in the Septic Tank

Best Cinematographer

• Chin Ting-chang, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
• Vishvajith Karunarathna, Flying Fish
• Kim Woo-hyung, The Front Line
• Jake Pollock, Lai Yiu-fai, Wu Xia
• Rahmat Syaiful, The Mirror Never Lies

Best Production Designer

• Suzanne Caplan Merwanji, You Don’t Get Life a Second Time
• Ryu Seong-hee, The Front Line
• Taneda Yohei, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
• Yee Chung-man, Ben Lau, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
• Yee Chung-man, Sun Li, Wu Xia

Best Composer

• Chan Kwong-wing, Peter Kam, Chatchai Pongprapaphan, Wu Xia
• Chen Qigang, The Flowers of War
• Ricky Ho, Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
• AR Rahman, Rockstar
• Sakamoto Ryuichi, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

Best Editor

• Curran Pang, Overheard 2
• Nelly Quettier, 11 Flowers
• Hayedeh Safiyari, A Separation
• Anand Subaya, You Don’t Get Life a Second Time
• Tang Man-to, White Vengeance

Best Visual Effects

• Ritesh Aggarwal, Ra. One
• Kamiya Makoto, Gantz
• Wook Kim, Josh Cole, Frankie Chung, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
• Xiao Yang, Chang Song, A Law, Li Ming-hsung, Li Jin-hui, Starry Starry Night
• Yung Kwok-yin, Andy Kang, Wu Xia

Best Costume Designer

• Amano Kyoko, Emura Kouichi, Milocrorze: A Love Story
• William Chang Suk-ping, The Flowers of War
• Mok Kwan-kit, Wong Ming-ha, White Vengeance
• Noppadol Techo, The Outrage
• Yee Chung-man, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate

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The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced its nominations for the awards it'll be presenting on February 12.

Best Film

The Artist
The Descendants
Drive
The Help
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Outstanding British Film

My Week with Marilyn
Senna
Shame
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
We Need to Talk About Kevin

Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer

Attack the Block - Joe Cornish (Director/Writer)
Black Pond - Will Sharpe (Director/Writer), Tom Kingsley (Director), Sarah Brocklehurst (Producer)
Coriolanus - Ralph Fiennes (Director)
Submarine - Richard Ayoade (Director/Writer)
Tyrannosaur - Paddy Considine (Director), Diarmid Scrimshaw (Producer)

Director

The Artist - Michel Hazanavicius
Drive - Nicolas Winding Refn
Hugo - Martin Scorsese
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Tomas Alfredson
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lynne Ramsay

Documentary

George Harrison: Living in the Material World
Project Nim
Senna

Original Screenplay

The Artist - Michel Hazanavicius
Bridesmaids - Annie Mumolo, Kristen Wiig
The Guard - John Michael McDonagh
The Iron Lady - Abi Morgan
Midnight in Paris - Woody Allen

Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants - Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
The Help - Tate Taylor
The Ides of March - George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon
Moneyball - Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan

Film Not in the English Language

Incendies
Pina
Potiche
A Separation
The Skin I Live In

Animated Film

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Arthur Christmas
Rango

Leading Actor

Brad Pitt (Billy Beane) - Moneyball
Gary Oldman (George Smiley) - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
George Clooney (Matt King) - The Descendants
Jean Dujardin (George Valentin) - The Artist
Michael Fassbender (Brandon) - Shame

Leading Actress

Bérénice Bejo (Peppy Miller) – The Artist
Meryl Streep (Margaret Thatcher) – The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams (Marilyn Monroe) – My Week with Marilyn
Tilda Swinton (Eva) – We Need to Talk About Kevin
Viola Davis (Aibileen Clark) – The Help

Supporting Actor

Christopher Plummer (Hal) – Beginners
Jim Broadbent (Denis Thatcher) – The Iron Lady
Jonah Hill (Peter Brand) – Moneyball
Kenneth Branagh (Sir Laurence Olivier) – My Week with Marilyn
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Paul Zara) – The Ides of March

Supporting Actress

Carey Mulligan (Irene) – Drive
Jessica Chastain (Celia Foote) – The Help
Judi Dench (Dame Sybil Thorndike) – My Week with Marilyn
Melissa McCarthy (Megan) – Bridesmaids
Octavia Spencer (Minny Jackson) – The Help

Original Music

The Artist - Ludovic Bource
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
Hugo - Howard Shore
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Alberto Iglesias
War Horse - John Williams

Cinematography

The Artist - Guillaume Schiffman
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Jeff Cronenweth
Hugo - Robert Richardson
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Hoyte van Hoytema
War Horse - Janusz Kaminski

Editing

The Artist - Anne-Sophie Bion, Michel Hazanavicius
Drive - Matthew Newman
Hugo - Thelma Schoonmaker
Senna - Gregers Sall, Chris King
Tinker Tailor Solider Spy - Dino Jonsäter

Production Design

The Artist - Laurence Bennett, Robert Gould
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan
Hugo - Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Maria Djurkovic, Tatiana MacDonald
War Horse - Rick Carter, Lee Sandales

Costume Design

The Artist - Mark Bridges
Hugo - Sandy Powell
Jane Eyre - Michael O'Connor
My Week with Marilyn - Jill Taylor
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Jacqueline Durran

Sound

The Artist - Nadine Muse, Gérard Lamps, Michael Krikorian
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - James Mather, Stuart Wilson, Stuart Hilliker, Mike Dowson, Adam Scrivener
Hugo - Philip Stockton, Eugene Gearty, Tom Fleischman, John Midgley
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Casali, Howard Bargroff, Doug Cooper, Stephen Griffiths, Andy Shelley
War Horse - Stuart Wilson, Gary Rydstrom, Andy Nelson, Tom Johnson, Richard Hymns

Special Visual Effects

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn - Joe Letteri
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - Tim Burke, John Richardson, Greg Butler, David Vickery
Hugo - Rob Legato, Ben Grossman, Joss Williams
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R Christopher White
X-Men: First Class - Ben Morris, Neil Corbould

Make Up and Hair

The Artist - Julie Hewett, Cydney Cornell
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - Amanda Knight, Lisa Tomblin
Hugo - Morag Ross, Jan Archibald
The Iron Lady - Marese Langan
My Week with Marilyn - Jenny Shircore

Short Animation

Abuelas - Afarin Eghbal, Kasia Malipan, Francesca Gardiner
Bobby Yeah - Robert Morgan
A Morning Stroll - Grant Orchard, Sue Goffe

Short Film

Chalk - Martina Amati, Gavin Emerson, James Bolton, Ilaria Bernardini
Mwansa the Great - Rungano Nyoni, Gabriel Gauchet
Only Sound Remains - Arash Ashtiani, Anshu Poddar
Pitch Black Heist - John Maclean, Gerardine O'Flynn
Two and Two - Babak Anvari, Kit Fraser, Gavin Cullen

Orange Wednesdays Rising Star Award

Adam Deacon
Chris Hemsworth
Tom Hiddleston
Chris O'Dowd
Eddie Redmayne

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