The first Muslim International Film Festival (Miff) ended this weekend in London with Amjad Al Rasheed’s debut feature Inshallah A Boy taking the best feature gong while veteran documentarian Asif Kapadia picked up the festival’s honorary Trailblazer Award.
The festival ran from May 30 to June 2 in London. The festival was launched by producer Sajid Varda with a focus on highlighting international Muslim culture and faith through filmmakers of all backgrounds.
This year’s competition jury featured Claudia Yusef (Head of Development at BBC Films), Leon Oteng (Production Inclusion Manager at BFI Filmmaking Fund), Neila Butt, Tas Brooker, actor Youssef Kerkour (Channel 4’s Home).
Accepting the best feature award, Rasheed said: “I’m honored to be competing with these great films and winning Best Feature at the Muslim International Film Festival. Thank you Miff, thank you jury.
The festival ran from May 30 to June 2 in London. The festival was launched by producer Sajid Varda with a focus on highlighting international Muslim culture and faith through filmmakers of all backgrounds.
This year’s competition jury featured Claudia Yusef (Head of Development at BBC Films), Leon Oteng (Production Inclusion Manager at BFI Filmmaking Fund), Neila Butt, Tas Brooker, actor Youssef Kerkour (Channel 4’s Home).
Accepting the best feature award, Rasheed said: “I’m honored to be competing with these great films and winning Best Feature at the Muslim International Film Festival. Thank you Miff, thank you jury.
- 6/3/2024
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Sajid Varda
The first ever Muslim International Film Festival opens its doors in London on Thursday 30 May, and its director, Sajid Varda, has been speaking to Eye For Film about his hope that it can begin to break down prejudice and show other people that Muslims are not so different from them.
Having started out as an actor, Varda reflected that the sort of roles he was offered changed drastically after 9/11, and that suddenly there were negative portrayals of Muslims everywhere. "That became a real frustration for our community, not just in this country, but around the world," he said. "When we see ourselves portrayed on screen, it's never ever in a complimentary manner, it's never authentic and it's never really from our perspective. It's always from somebody else's lens. It has been a real frustration for us, those eye rolling moments. There's four key tropes: Muslims are terrorists,...
The first ever Muslim International Film Festival opens its doors in London on Thursday 30 May, and its director, Sajid Varda, has been speaking to Eye For Film about his hope that it can begin to break down prejudice and show other people that Muslims are not so different from them.
Having started out as an actor, Varda reflected that the sort of roles he was offered changed drastically after 9/11, and that suddenly there were negative portrayals of Muslims everywhere. "That became a real frustration for our community, not just in this country, but around the world," he said. "When we see ourselves portrayed on screen, it's never ever in a complimentary manner, it's never authentic and it's never really from our perspective. It's always from somebody else's lens. It has been a real frustration for us, those eye rolling moments. There's four key tropes: Muslims are terrorists,...
- 5/27/2024
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
It has been a big week for beloved musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the 1964 Palme d’Or and went on to international acclaim and five Oscar nominations and served as one of the key inspirations for Damien Chazelle’s La La Land.
The film got a special 60th anniversary Cannes Classics screening Thursday of the exquisitely new restoration at the Agnes Varda Theatre, which is named after the late director and is also wife of late Cherbourg writer-director Jacques Demy. This week also has seen the world premieres of two documentaries related to the film here. On Saturday night at the Buñuel Theatre in the Palais came the premiere of Once Upon a Time: Michel Legrand, an extensive two-hour documentary on the late great composer of Cherbourg and so much more.
Then on Wednesday night, also at the Buñuel, was the unveiling...
The film got a special 60th anniversary Cannes Classics screening Thursday of the exquisitely new restoration at the Agnes Varda Theatre, which is named after the late director and is also wife of late Cherbourg writer-director Jacques Demy. This week also has seen the world premieres of two documentaries related to the film here. On Saturday night at the Buñuel Theatre in the Palais came the premiere of Once Upon a Time: Michel Legrand, an extensive two-hour documentary on the late great composer of Cherbourg and so much more.
Then on Wednesday night, also at the Buñuel, was the unveiling...
- 5/23/2024
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
After nearly two years of planning, the digital platform “The Gleaners and I: Revisiting Agnès Varda’s Edit” is about to go live.
Supported by Martin Scorsese, the pedagogical platform will open the treasure trove of Agnès Varda’s archives, making never-before-seen footage and hours of unused rushes available to nascent filmmakers across the globe. Through “The Gleaners and I,” students at participating universities will be able to re-edit and completely rethink Varda’s 2000 documentary of the same name — pooling from 62 hours of rushes, all subtitled in English – under the proviso that each new clip edit be uploaded back on to the platform.
“Agnès would have surely loved the idea of having her work live on in this way,” says daughter and project leader Rosalie Varda. “She would want to give the students full freedom – and that’s what we’ve done. Participants can really reconceive the work however they see fit.
Supported by Martin Scorsese, the pedagogical platform will open the treasure trove of Agnès Varda’s archives, making never-before-seen footage and hours of unused rushes available to nascent filmmakers across the globe. Through “The Gleaners and I,” students at participating universities will be able to re-edit and completely rethink Varda’s 2000 documentary of the same name — pooling from 62 hours of rushes, all subtitled in English – under the proviso that each new clip edit be uploaded back on to the platform.
“Agnès would have surely loved the idea of having her work live on in this way,” says daughter and project leader Rosalie Varda. “She would want to give the students full freedom – and that’s what we’ve done. Participants can really reconceive the work however they see fit.
- 5/17/2024
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
The spooky comedy franchise may seem an unlikely place to find an ethnicity and faith adviser, but productions are increasingly aware of a duty to make sure communities are truthfully represented
The “sensitivity reader” is a well-established, if controversial, figure in the publishing world, offering advice on whether a book’s content might cause offence. The film and TV industry has also been forced to confront similar issues, with “intimacy coordinators” now widely employed to ensure that filmed sex scenes neither harm the actors nor outrage audiences. Perhaps less well-known, but now gaining ground in film and TV, is the role of a “cultural consultant” – advisers taken on by productions to help them navigate the choppy waters of sensitivities around ethnicity and faith.
Sajid Varda, founder and CEO of media charity UK Muslim Film and director of the UK’s inaugural Muslim international film festival, recently completed an assignment on Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,...
The “sensitivity reader” is a well-established, if controversial, figure in the publishing world, offering advice on whether a book’s content might cause offence. The film and TV industry has also been forced to confront similar issues, with “intimacy coordinators” now widely employed to ensure that filmed sex scenes neither harm the actors nor outrage audiences. Perhaps less well-known, but now gaining ground in film and TV, is the role of a “cultural consultant” – advisers taken on by productions to help them navigate the choppy waters of sensitivities around ethnicity and faith.
Sajid Varda, founder and CEO of media charity UK Muslim Film and director of the UK’s inaugural Muslim international film festival, recently completed an assignment on Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,...
- 5/3/2024
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
“Paradises of Diane,” which premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival, came out of an exploration of the “dark side of maternity” and the role of the mother in society, director Carmen Jaquier tells Variety.
The film, which was directed with Jan Gassmann, starts with Diane abandoning her new-born baby at a maternity clinic in Zurich, and heading to the seedy Spanish seaside resort Benidorm, without telling anyone. Here she befriends an elderly woman, Rose, and the two of them form a tentative bond.
Jaquier says the idea for the film came from a conversation with a friend, who confessed that she had become very depressed after the birth of her daughter. The woman hadn’t spoken about this to her friends or family. After Jaquier had written the first draft of the script, Gassmann joined the project and the two of them started to talk to...
The film, which was directed with Jan Gassmann, starts with Diane abandoning her new-born baby at a maternity clinic in Zurich, and heading to the seedy Spanish seaside resort Benidorm, without telling anyone. Here she befriends an elderly woman, Rose, and the two of them form a tentative bond.
Jaquier says the idea for the film came from a conversation with a friend, who confessed that she had become very depressed after the birth of her daughter. The woman hadn’t spoken about this to her friends or family. After Jaquier had written the first draft of the script, Gassmann joined the project and the two of them started to talk to...
- 2/24/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Museum of Modern Art
The year’s great series “To Save and Project” begins its 2024 edition with a slate that includes films by Varda and Warhol.
Roxy Cinema
Michael Mann’s Blackhat and Collateral screen, the latter on 35mm; Claire Donato presents a print of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me this Saturday.
Film Forum
I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Artie Shaw: Time Is All You Got begin runs, the former bringing with it a three-film program on Saturday; The Third Man continues a 75th-anniversary 35mm engagement; The Empire Strikes Back plays on Sunday.
IFC Center
Casablanca plays daily while Die Hard with a Vengeance, Donnie Darko, Spongebob Squarepants, and Goldfinger have late showings.
Anthology Film Archives
“Essential Cinema” brings two by Dreyer and three from Eisenstein.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: To Save and Project, Michael Mann,...
Museum of Modern Art
The year’s great series “To Save and Project” begins its 2024 edition with a slate that includes films by Varda and Warhol.
Roxy Cinema
Michael Mann’s Blackhat and Collateral screen, the latter on 35mm; Claire Donato presents a print of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me this Saturday.
Film Forum
I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Artie Shaw: Time Is All You Got begin runs, the former bringing with it a three-film program on Saturday; The Third Man continues a 75th-anniversary 35mm engagement; The Empire Strikes Back plays on Sunday.
IFC Center
Casablanca plays daily while Die Hard with a Vengeance, Donnie Darko, Spongebob Squarepants, and Goldfinger have late showings.
Anthology Film Archives
“Essential Cinema” brings two by Dreyer and three from Eisenstein.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: To Save and Project, Michael Mann,...
- 1/12/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSSubscribe to Notebook magazine before November 1 to receive Issue 4, which explores cinematic soundscapes in their diverse sonic forms and includes contributions from filmmakers like Pedro Costa, Garrett Bradley, and Dominga Sotomayor, pop musician Julia Holter, plus a wide range of artists, writers, and scholars. Subscribers will also receive with this issue a very special gift, a seven-inch record featuring a song by filmmaker Gus Van Sant and a field recording by sound designer Leslie Shatz.This week brought the sad, shocking news that the legendary Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien has retired from filmmaking due to illness. Hou's family confirmed in a statement that he is battling Alzheimer's, and the effects of long Covid have forced him to stop making films; they requested privacy during this time, adding that he is healthy overall, in the presence of family.
- 10/25/2023
- MUBI
Four existing central and eastern European platforms have come togethe to leverage their combined buying and marketing power.
Four streaming platforms from Central and Eastern Europe have joined forces to bring European cinema to their audiences via a service called CEEYou.
New Horizons VOD (Poland), Kviff.TV (Czech Republic and Slovakia), Cinego (Hungary) and TIFF Unlimited (Romania) have launched the service with films from directors including Michael Haneke, Agnès Varda, Eric Rohmer and Olivier Assayas. CEEYou will be available on each of the existing platforms.
“Creating the CEEYou network gives us an opportunity to expand our offer and promote our content through cross-border promotional campaigns,...
Four streaming platforms from Central and Eastern Europe have joined forces to bring European cinema to their audiences via a service called CEEYou.
New Horizons VOD (Poland), Kviff.TV (Czech Republic and Slovakia), Cinego (Hungary) and TIFF Unlimited (Romania) have launched the service with films from directors including Michael Haneke, Agnès Varda, Eric Rohmer and Olivier Assayas. CEEYou will be available on each of the existing platforms.
“Creating the CEEYou network gives us an opportunity to expand our offer and promote our content through cross-border promotional campaigns,...
- 10/24/2023
- by Martin Blaney
- ScreenDaily
Prominent Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, whose epic “Kira and El Gen” about local resistance to British occupation recently scored at the local box office, is being feted with a career award by the El Gouna Film Festival.
The Egyptian fest, running Oct. 13-20 in the Red Sea resort roughly 250 miles south of Cairo, is also paying tribute to the Sudanese Film Group, a groundbreaking collective of filmmakers, and is planning an homage to late great British-French icon Jane Birkin.
Hamed (pictured above) broke out internationally in 2006 with his bold adaptation of Alaa Aswany’s bestselling novel “The Yacoubian Building” that became a game-changer in Egytian cinema due to the way it depicted homosexuality, Islamic fundamentalism and government corruption. After “Yacoubian” become a local hit and travelled widely Hamed scored again big time with “The Blue Elephant,” a thriller with supernatural elements and its sequel “The Blue Elephant 2” that more...
The Egyptian fest, running Oct. 13-20 in the Red Sea resort roughly 250 miles south of Cairo, is also paying tribute to the Sudanese Film Group, a groundbreaking collective of filmmakers, and is planning an homage to late great British-French icon Jane Birkin.
Hamed (pictured above) broke out internationally in 2006 with his bold adaptation of Alaa Aswany’s bestselling novel “The Yacoubian Building” that became a game-changer in Egytian cinema due to the way it depicted homosexuality, Islamic fundamentalism and government corruption. After “Yacoubian” become a local hit and travelled widely Hamed scored again big time with “The Blue Elephant,” a thriller with supernatural elements and its sequel “The Blue Elephant 2” that more...
- 10/6/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
The 61st New York Film Festival opens Friday on a high note, with advance sales of passes and tickets at kickoff up 50% from last year, which was a record-breaking fest. It’s also a day of heavy rains and flooding in New York City.
“We have never seen [sales] numbers like this,” said artistic director Dennis Lim as the curtain is still planning to rise tonight at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with Todd Haynes’ May December, followed by two weeks and 111 films from 45 countries.
The opening comes on a day where many subway lines are shuttered and NYC Mayor Eric Adams has declared a state of emergency, urging New Yorkers not to travel if possible. NYFF organizers says no changes so far to the opening-night schedule.
Staffers and talent arriving for a May December press conference reported that taxis were even more scarce than usual amid the rainfall.
“We have never seen [sales] numbers like this,” said artistic director Dennis Lim as the curtain is still planning to rise tonight at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with Todd Haynes’ May December, followed by two weeks and 111 films from 45 countries.
The opening comes on a day where many subway lines are shuttered and NYC Mayor Eric Adams has declared a state of emergency, urging New Yorkers not to travel if possible. NYFF organizers says no changes so far to the opening-night schedule.
Staffers and talent arriving for a May December press conference reported that taxis were even more scarce than usual amid the rainfall.
- 9/29/2023
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
Above: 1973 New York Film Festival poster designed by Niki de Saint Phalle.The 61st edition of the New York Film Festival, which opens tonight, has 32 films in its Main Slate, fifteen films in its Spotlight section, ten films and seven collections of shorts in the Currents sidebar, and eleven revivals. That's over 60 feature films. Fifty years ago, in 1973, the 11th edition of the festival had just eighteen feature films and nineteen shorts. Just like this year’s opener—Todd Haynes’s May December—1973’s opening night film, François Truffaut’s Day for Night, had premiered four months earlier at the Cannes Film Festival. And as with this year’s festival, the 1973 edition opened, fifty years and one day ago exactly, in the shadow of an artists' strike. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians had been picketing the New York Philharmonic outside Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where the festival was taking place,...
- 9/29/2023
- MUBI
Stella Dallas.In the final scene of Stella Dallas (1925), the title character stands in a dark city street in the rain, peering through a window at her daughter’s wedding. This famous image inescapably suggests a viewer gazing at a movie screen: the lighted square of the window, framed by lace-trimmed drapes, even closely matches the aspect ratio of films from the time. This resemblance adds a subtle element of self-commentary to the scene, in which Stella is both punished and exalted. Having exiled herself from her child’s life so as not to hold her back, she gets to witness the fruit of her sacrifice while paying the bitter price, as a policeman curtly orders the bedraggled woman to move along.When I saw Stella Dallas, newly restored by the Museum of Modern Art, at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023 in Bologna, I responded to this scene exactly as I was...
- 9/20/2023
- MUBI
Toronto’s multicultural dining scene is back in force. “You can have anything you want, from anywhere in the world, by a very talented chef, any night of the week,” says executive chef Kyle Rindinella of King St. West’s Ristorante Sociale. After the pandemic’s disruptions, he’s seen many chefs returning to their culinary roots, reflecting their immigrant backgrounds or diverse inspirations. “Diners could almost play a game of ‘spin the globe’ and point somewhere and probably find a very good restaurant in the city doing that cuisine well, with passion,” says the vet restaurateur.
Embark on this global array at Miss Likklemore’s, a high energy, Caribbean-inspired dining spot with the city’s largest selection of rum. Originally a pop-up, now there’s a permanent home for Miss Likklemore’s peppery mix of island cuisines. Start with plantain chips and fried rock shrimp, savor the whole smoked...
Embark on this global array at Miss Likklemore’s, a high energy, Caribbean-inspired dining spot with the city’s largest selection of rum. Originally a pop-up, now there’s a permanent home for Miss Likklemore’s peppery mix of island cuisines. Start with plantain chips and fried rock shrimp, savor the whole smoked...
- 9/7/2023
- by Kathy A. McDonald
- Variety Film + TV
Fitting of the man who made “Faces Places,” a road trip movie alongside French New Wave icon Agnès Varda, to be chatting it up with Alfonso Cuarón, another highly regarded international filmmaker, before an interview with IndieWire at 50th Telluride Film Festival.
Seated at a coffee shop across the street from the theater currently screening his new film “Tehachapi,” one that just so happens to have one of his signature installation — a blown-up black and white photo of Varda and her hands peeking over the rooftop — staring back at him, artist and documentarian Jr can’t help but have his late friend on his mind.
“I feel she’s still with me. I feel like she prepared me for quite a journey and she took the time, those years that she taught me so much, and I knew at that time I could not process everything, but thank God it’s processing now,...
Seated at a coffee shop across the street from the theater currently screening his new film “Tehachapi,” one that just so happens to have one of his signature installation — a blown-up black and white photo of Varda and her hands peeking over the rooftop — staring back at him, artist and documentarian Jr can’t help but have his late friend on his mind.
“I feel she’s still with me. I feel like she prepared me for quite a journey and she took the time, those years that she taught me so much, and I knew at that time I could not process everything, but thank God it’s processing now,...
- 9/6/2023
- by Marcus Jones
- Indiewire
Something curious happened to Agnès Varda with her last film, the freewheeling, personality-driven road doc “Faces Places”: At the age of 88, 60-odd years and 20-odd films into her career, she suddenly and quite unexpectedly became a meme. A wave of critics that had never previously demonstrated much interest in Varda’s work took to the new film at Cannes, the Academy suddenly lavished her with a nomination and an honorary Oscar after decades of looking the other way, and the director’s wry, twinkly presence and two-tone Miyazaki-witch bob became ubiquitous on the festival and publicity circuits — inspiring a surfeit of adoring tributes, T-shirts and Twitter threads in their wake. Varda acquired a rare celebrity status for an auteur. Heading into her tenth decade, it seemed the woman was better known than her own work.
How exactly do you follow that up, given that “Faces Places” was never meant to be a watershed work?...
How exactly do you follow that up, given that “Faces Places” was never meant to be a watershed work?...
- 2/13/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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