Watch Fish Tank, which opened at the Screen on Friday, March 12, and you might think: “Wow, that lead actress is great.” Seventeen-year-old Katie Jarvis plays Mia, an unruly 15-year-old living in a claustrophobic flat with her mother and sister in a seedy neighborhood in England. As she head-butts other girls in the face, screams at her mother and slathers on pounds of eye makeup each morning, you love her and hate her at the same time—she’s loud, rude, spirited and you can practically see the conflict bubbling under the surface.

If you think the actress has done a great job with the character of Mia, you’re right. But the truth is, Mia’s not a character.

Jarvis was discovered by casting agents while she was arguing with her boyfriend on a train platform in Essex. During shooting, Jarvis was no longer living in her parents’ house and spent nights sleeping on her sister’s couch; when she slept, that is. She was said to go out drinking most of the time that she wasn’t on the set. She had no interest in being an actress or living up her newfound fame (In advance of Cannes Film Festival, where the film won the Jury Prize, director Andrea Arnold said of Jarvis: “I don’t think she really understands what this means. Festivals and things are not really part of her life”), and while the film was making a splash in critical and festival circles, Jarvis was at home taking care of her one-week-old baby (fathered by the boyfriend whom she was yelling at on the train platform). She does not plan to seriously pursue acting, despite winning the “Most Promising Newcomer” designation at the 2009 British Independent Film Awards. How’s that for irony? Continue reading »

By Tyler Arp, SFR intern

The White Ribbon is a stark new film written and directed by Austrian director Michael Haneke (Funny Games, Caché). Opening Friday, Feb. 19 at the CCA, it is the winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and has been nominated for both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography at this year’s Academy Awards.

Haneke’s directorial career, which includes 22 films over the last 36 years, has granted him a generous opportunity for experimentation through which he has notably refined the art of storytelling; lacking the traditional plot structure, the White Ribbon’s delicate narrative chronicles the events of a small town while avoiding Hollywood-style sensationalism. There is no magical event which fixes the world and provides closure, emotionally or otherwise.

In this new film, Haneke has created a subtle composition which de-emphasizes virtually every convention of mainstream film-making: The film is presented in black and white; the characters are not beautiful people; the story is slow and subtle; the film mirrors reality rather than providing a fantastical escape for the audience. The result is an effective piece that is at once emotionally vibrant, shockingly real, and tragically nihilist.

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What’s new with the Video Library? Parking spaces, for starters.

After 21 years at its Marcy Street location, the Video Library has moved to its new (and improved) spot next to Travel Bug in the Harvey Building on Paseo de Peralta. The move, which took place during the snowstorm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week, was the first time Video Library has been closed for a day in over 26 years, according to Video Library’s owner Lisa Harris. Continue reading »

The Realities of Low-Budget Movie-Making and Distribution
with Jon Moritsugu

10 am-5 pm
Saturday, Jan. 16

$50

Warehouse 21
1614 Paseo de Peralta
989-4423

Movie-making, at the risk of being Captain Obvious, is not easy. Anyone can get a camcorder at Best Buy, enlist a few friends who agree to be paid in pizza and beer, and go out into the woods with a script written on Microsoft Word. But it takes a lot more to really get into legit filmmaking. Of course, this isn’t to say that the Best Buy-pizza-Microsoft movie won’t be awesome, but if you’re really serious about what you’re doing, you may want to invest a little more time, effort and—yes—money. Continue reading »

The Santa Fe Film Festival is a pretty big deal. It receives film submissions from all over the country and the world, not to mention presents Santa Feans with the unique opportunity to see award-winning independent and off-the-beaten-path films. This year’s SFFF, the 10th for our little mountain town, has upped it standards, reducing the total number of films screened by over 100 (from last year’s 250 to fewer than 150).

Perhaps as a result of those upped standards, or perhaps just because one can never have too many film festivals, two new festivals have cropped up and will run simultaneously with the Santa Fe Film Festival.

The first-ever Santa Fe Independent Film Festival runs from Thursday to Sunday at various locations in the Railyard district, and features independent films from international sources. The indie fest also features lectures and a party from DJ Dynamite Sol. The festival’s organizers, David Moore and Jacques Paisner, hope to make the SFIFF a year-round event with screenings at the Santa Fe Complex. The fest features gems from locals Gary Farmer, Joe Ray Sandoval, Wes Studi and more.

Santa Fe Independent Film Festival

Various times
Thursday-Sunday, Dec. 3-6

$6 for one day; $10 for all-access pass
Students, seniors and veterans free

Station Coffeehouse, Warehouse 21 and Santa Fe Complex;
for a full schedule, check out the rest of this post, or visit the website.

Another brand-new film fest making its debut this weekend is Attention Span, an event put together by IAIA students Keith Grosbeck and Dylan McLaughlin. The film festival caters to those with sub-par attention spans, and only features films less than 30 seconds in length. The students first conceived of the notion to provide a venue for their friends from IAIA to showcase their short-short-short movies, but the festival has attracted submissions from all over the place. The festival is one night only (because it sure would take a trillion 30-seconds-or-less movies to fill more than one evening) at the CCA.

Attention Span: A 30-Second Film Festival

8 pm
Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009

$5

Center for Contemporary Arts
1050 Old Pecos Trail
982-1338

Below the jump, get the full schedule for the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. The folks at the SFIFF say that they’ll  be adding new films all the time, so there’s even more where this came from.

Continue reading »