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(Variety Magazine-Ronnie Scheib) Starring: Melvin Van Peebles , Stephanie Weeks, Mario Van Peebles , Glen Turner, Teddy Hayes, Alfred Preisser.

Melvin Van Peebles strikes back. The seminal multi-hyphenate auteur of "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song ," who has chalked up more careers in his 75-year life than most folks could fit into several reincarnations, has just reinvented himself --- cleverly, as it happens --- as a video artiste. Not that his digital techniques are even slightly groundbreaking, technically, but they mesh perfectly with the homemade illustrative nature of "Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha." Spinning a wry, tall-tale version of his autobiography, the septuagenarian audaciously plays himself at [...]

Dir: Walter Salles , Daniela Thomas. Brazil-France. 2008. 108 mins.

Solid and involving, if hardly ground-breaking, Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas's Linha de Passe is a complex and gritty drama about a working-class family's struggles in the streets and on the football fields of soccer-crazy Sao Paolo. Reunited with his co-director on 1996's Foreign Land, Salles offers a well-knit multi-strander that vividly evokes the rigours of keeping body and soul together in Brazil's biggest city, while offering a down-to-earth alternative to the more romantic and stylistically flashy films (City of God, Lower City, Berlin winner Elite Squad) with which Brazilian cinema has been identified lately.

Very much in the mode of Salles' 1998 breakthrough Central Station, Linha de Passe offers a compelling cast [...]

(from Screen Africa) A group of South African film professionals have formed a collaborative called Filmmakers Against Racism to produce a series of anti-xenophobia public service announcements (PSAs) in response to the horrific xenophobic attacks that have been raging in Gauteng’s informal settlements for more than 10 days.

The group consists of Rehad Desai of Uhuru , Neil Brandt of Luma Films , Desiree Markgraaff of the Bombshelter , Eve Rantseli of Women of the Son , Born Free Media and actor/director, Xoliswa Sithole**.

According to Brandt, more and more filmmakers and companies are offering their services. “The three local broadcasters, M-Net, SABC and e.tv, have all offered air time for the PSAs, while Grey Advertising will come up with the concepts for the PSAs.


Curious [...]

Directors of color worldwide are up against the directorial typecast that originated with American director, Spike Lee; a yoke he's finally pulled off--now appreciated by Hollywood as a trailblazer and a bona fide cinema auteur. Spike is truly a survivor, having withstood the "controversy" subtext always applied when describing his work and artistic vision.

So those coming after him are conveniently labeled "urban, gritty, and controversial because they "deal with race" thus the market abides and if their films survive major film festivals, they will surely end up at the very "urban" Magic Johnson Theatre or in an "urban/inner-city" demographic market or straight to DVD.

But the market has shifted a bit due partly to the recognition that hip-hop is a global youth movement--and an insanely lucrative one--that defines [...]

In an ever-increasing vein of war/death/corruption cinema stories that come "Out of Africa" (no pun intended),



Produced by BetaCinema , Luigia Farloni's film Heart of Fire ("Feuerherz" in Italian) is the true story of Senait Mehari, who came of age as a young girl soldier during the Eritrean Civil War . Set in the early 1980s, the film charts the recruitment of Awet (played by Letekidan Micael) and her older sister into a militia battling a rival faction also opposed to Ethiopian occupation.

A European director telling the story of African liberation struggle based on a memoir that "inspired" the story is a recipe for disaster given that the eyewitness account and memory is also controversial. The memoir, Heart of Fire: From Child Soldier to Soul SingerFormer the child soldier and Eritrean [...]

"Pray the Devil Back to Hell," a documentary about the role women played in ending civil war in Liberia, won the top doc at the Seventh Annual (2008) Tribeca Film Festival . 


Directed by the American filmmaker Gini Reticker of Fork Films Production, chronicles the story of how thousands of women helped turned the tide of violence in Liberia through sit-ins and other peaceful protests. After years of war that killed 250,000, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected president in 2005.

Said the festival jury: "In a relentless pursuit of peace, the women of Liberia show us how community, motherly love and perseverance can change the fate of a society. Pray the Devil Back to Hell is a reminder that we have the power to say `Enough!' to the atrocities of the world."

This documentary will one day [...]