Fests and events, 2/14.

By David Hudson on 02/14/2009

To begin with an online viewing tip: "This Friday we [opened] Agnès Varda's 'Lions Love' as part of our '69' series," notes Adam at the Northwest Film Forum blog, Hot Splice. "A film rarely seen in the US, it did however screen at the New York Film Festival in 1969. Also screening in the festival and as part of our program was Susan Sontag's 'Duet for Cannibals.' Varda and Sontag were interviewed together for New York television by Jack Kroll."

At indieWIRE, Peter Knegt has the lineup for this year's edition of New Directors / New Films, running March 25 through April 5.

SXSW unveils its shorts lineup and adds a few features as well.

Tomorrow, "Bainbridge Island's Historic Lynwood Theater presents, 'The Son of the Sheik' and Buster Keaton in 'One Week (1920) with live musical accompaniment performed by the busiest silent film theater organist in the business, Dennis James," notes David Jeffers at the Siffblog.

"[T]his month SIFF Cinema offers a number of opportunities to forget about the angst and loudly cheer the demise of the modern newspaper - or, at least, lament the demise a little less - with Noir City, a series of dark films about newspaper life, most of them from the 1940s and 50s." An overview from Eli Sanders in the Stranger. More from Vince Keenan.

"The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival schedule is now available," and Brian Darr's got recommendations for you. March 12 through 22.

"Ladies perched on spike heels outside the door were saying into their mobiles, 'Roman Polanski is arriving!' At the top of the stairs attendees were greeted by a fake commercial, directed by none other than Polanski himself, in which Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams engage in a burlesque fracas over a bottle of the fictional perfume 'Greed.'" Cathryn Drake reports on the opening of Francesco Vezzoli's new show at the Gagosian gallery in Rome for Artforum.

Also, Melissa Gronlund on Jane and Louise Wilson's "Unfolding the Aryan Papers," an exhibition contemplating a project abandoned by Stanley Kubrick and "the transformation of still photographs into moving images." It's on view at BFI Southbank through April 26; and a shortened version is viewable online at Animate Projects.

Tags: Agnès Varda, Susan Sontag