Festivals

A little party never killed nobody. from the Great Gatsby The word party may not be French, but it might as well have been invented for the Cannes Festival.

With Venice, Cannes is the grande dame of film festivals one of the last bastions of pure cinema in its original form: an art form made to be seen in a theater. But even these last bastions of cinematic purity there are intimations of growing pains.

BAFICI (the independent film festival of Buenos Aires) wrapped its19th edition leaving a great impression. Boasting a wide selection of over 400 titles from all over the world, the festival showed quality and diversity in its international, national and Latin American sections.

Here we go again! For the 21st time ColCoa French Film Festival, the biggest showcase of French Cinema outside of France, will open at Directors Guild of America’s complex on April 24, 2017 with the North American premiere of Everyone’s Life by French Film legend and Golden Globe winner Claude Lelouch. The festival will feature a record 82 films, television series and, for the first time in its history, web series, and will run until May 2, 2017.

The Locarno Film Festival comes to Los Angeles with a three-day public event (April 21-23, 2017) which will feature a selection from the 69th edition of one of the longest running European Film Festivals, including ten L. A.

The 70th Cannes Film Festival has all the elements to become, quietly and efficiently, a landmark - and not just because it marks a Platinum Jubilee. The festival’s official selection, announced today in Paris, presents some important signs of change in the overall scope of the most respected international film competition:Women, in front and behind the cameras, abound.

The TCM Classic Film Festival, launched in 2010, was held for the eighth year in Hollywood, April 6 to 9, 2017. Crowds of movie lovers of all ages lined up to watch their favorites films on the big screen at the Chinese, Egyptian and Arclight theaters and they gathered for social events at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

The Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles (IFFLA, April 5-9 at LA Live) has become “a teenager with all the good and the bad” that teens come with, chuckled the founder Christina Marouda during her opening speech, on Wednesday night. For those who have visited the festival in the past, this year’s growth is evident: It has moved to the slick LA Live Cinemas downtown, boasting greater capacity, state-of-the-art screening quality, and a youthful crowd as colorful and eclectic as ever.

Sundance is that rare festival that does not shy away from opening with a documentary. This year was no exception, and Al Gore’s urgent wake-up call with An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power was just the beginning of a series that spanned every topic from Hulk Hogan to Jonbenet Ramsey, from law enforcement to water heist, protests, labor rights and kill safaris, from dancing to surfing to doping and gut wrenching war stories.