Fests and events, 2/18.

By David Hudson on 02/18/2009

"Like some unholy combination of 'The Man with a Movie Camera' (1929) and 'The Day of the Locust' (1975), 'The Savage Eye' (1959) is a kino-essay on American desolation penned by three directors (Joseph Strick, Sidney Meyers and blacklisted Ben Maddow) and as many cinematographers (Jack Couffer, Helen Levitt and a young Haskell Wexler)," writes Max Goldberg. More from Dennis Harvey at SF360. Tonight at 7:30 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Back in the Bay Guardian: Cheryl Eddy on Stacy Peralta's "Crips and Bloods: Made in America," opening at the Roxie on Friday.

In his overview of the 10th edition of "Film Comment Selects," Nick Pinkerton highlights Guy Debord (the "marathon screening is a harangue-gauntlet that every moviegoer should run"), Fassbinder's "The Third Generation" and Robert Aldrich's "The Killing of Sister George." The series, running Friday through March 5, opens with Michael Almereyda's "Paradise"; Vadim Rizov interviews the director.

"You won't find a funnier, or more invigorating, dive into high-school life on film this year than in the hard-to-see documentary classic 'Seventeen,' part of a must-see double revival," writes Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine. Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines's other film in the series is "Demon Lover Diary," which "shares a working-class purview with Muncie-set Seventeen and is maybe more influential as part of a reflexive lineage leading through 'Sherman's March' and 'American Movie.'"

Back in the Voice: Nicolas Rapold's overview of "Shinjuku Ecstasy," running today through March 1 at the Japan Society: "[S]ex and revolution energize the slate." More from Mark Asch in the L Magazine. And Nick Pinkerton again, briefly, on "Ventana al Sur: An Evening of Argentine Experimental Films." Saturday at Anthology Film Archives.

"SXSW Presents Fantastic Fest at Midnight" is lined up. Meanwhile, at the SpoutBlog, Karina Longworth interviews brothers Turner and Bill Ross, whose documentary "45365" will be screening at SXSW. Also: David Lowery takes questions on "St Nick" (site). And at Hollywood Bitchslap, Erik Childress talks with Alex Karpovsky about "Trust Us, This Is All Made Up."

Films by the Otolith Group are on view at Gaswarks in London through April 5; and they'll be back again in June.

"Looking back at Godard's career, '2 or 3 Things on 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her' comes at a pivotal transitional period for the filmmaker," writes Meseret Haddis in the Tisch Film Review. At Film Forum through Tuesday.

Looks like we've got the first confirmed Cannes screening: "The Ingmar Bergman Foundation presents 'Images from the Playground' (2009), a new compilation film containing unique and never before seen material from nine of Ingmar Bergman's behind-the-screen films, from 'Sawdust and Tinsel' to 'Persona.'"

In the New York Times, Michael Cieply has more on Geoff Gilmore's move from Sundance to Tribeca. Peter Scarlet will likely stay on as Tribeca's artistic director; "Brooks Addicott, a spokeswoman for Sundance, said the organization, having just wrapped its 25th festival in January, might take some time to decide on its next step.... 'We're in a contemplative place,' Ms Addicott said. 'We don't have a sense of urgency.'" Evidently not. As the New York Post's Lou Lumenick reports, Sundance won't be going to Brooklyn this year. Addicott tells him "the decision to 'take a break from' the popular Sundance at BAM program - held for the past three years, it grew to include theater and music performances as well as film - was less related to the economy than the workload it created for Sundance programmers."

For PopMatters, Josh Timmermann looks back on the Victoria Film Festival.

The New York Times's Sewell Chan reports on Saturday's screening of "Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project" at MoMA.

When frieze co-editor Jörg Heiser attended a screening of Sharon Lockhart's "Lunch Break" at the Berlinale, among those in the audience were Michael Snow, Tacita Dean, "while Lockhart herself was present for an audience Q&A.... One might at first think of Bill Viola's super slow-motion pieces, attributing historical weight and painterly gravitas to the ordinary, but that association quickly gives way to something much less pathos-driven.... Here, the 'allegorical' is all in the methodology itself: the super slow-motion echoes and exaggerates the workers' break from busy production, but it also manifests the desire to grasp intensively that this kind of classical workmanship - as well as its attendant habits - is on the retreat."

[Photos: "The Savage Eye," City Film Corporation, 1960; "Funeral Parade of Roses," Art Theatre Guild, 1969; "Images from the Playground," Svensk Filmindustri, 2009]

Tags: Geoff Gilmore, Guy Debord, Ingmar Bergman, Sharon Lockhart, SXSW 2009, The Savage Eye