La Dolce Vita

This Week in Film: June 13th 2008


This Week in Film is quite a nice one due to gorgeous summery weather (of which relaxing in an air conditioned theatre is a great part of) film festivals and gorgeous retrospective cinema. Read on for more recommendations from the Worldwide Short Film Festival, an introduction to the summer openers for the Cinematheque Ontario and a glimpse of two interesting films that will be screening as a part of the NXNE Film Festival.

While I've already done a short preview of the Worldwide Short Film Festival, there's still more to see and enjoy. One of the major screenings tonight would have to be Scene Not Herd, a programme dedicated to music videos featuring among others, the Canadian premiere of Bjork's video for Wanderlust, a project which was nine months in the making. The programme will be screened at 7pm and again at 9:30 at the Royal Cinema. Another great option would be the Japanese Spotlight: Emerging Auteur Animators, featuring 16 short films from some of the best new Japanese animators. Emerging Auteurs can be seen tonight at 7:30 at the Cumberland.

Another notable programme to see this weekend would be one of my favourites, the Crime and Punishment programme. Some of my favourite selections from this screening were The Second Line, about two young men who pick up a job demolishing a house in New Orleans, Terminus, which contains the best use of the Montreal Metro in a film ever, and Chief, a lush film set in Hawaii about a Samoan chief running away from his past. Crime and Punishment can be seen at 4pm on Saturday at the Cumberland.

The Cinematheque Ontario opens their Summer programme tonight with my favourite Fellini film La Dolce Vita, an episodic film set in the excessive postwar days of Rome, following conflicted journalist Marcello Rubini as he stumbles through events that make up the seven deadly sins. Featuring one of the most famous pieces of film imagery of all time, (Sylvia in the fountain, seen above) if you haven't seen it, you must and if you have? See it again. La Dolce Vita will be screened tonight at 7pm.

The screening of La Dolce Vita is part of a series of films dedicated to Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. The series will continue throughout the summer with other post-war Italian films such as another Fellini classic, 8 1/2 and Yesterday Today and Tomorrow which also features the divine Sophia Loren.

The NXNE Film Festival is also taking place this weekend and one interesting film is Queens of Sound: A Herstory of Reggae and Dancehall. Screening tomorrow at 3:30, the film is a documentary about the history of female musicians in Jamaica and the current situations that female artists are experiencing. My recommendation for Sunday would be Rolling Like a Stone, where a reel of Super 8 film is found of the Rolling Stones at a Swedish house party in the 60's and the partygoers are tracked down and interviewed forty years later. Rolling Like a Stone will be screened on Sunday at 3:30.

Image: La Dolce Vita from Moviewallpapers.net


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