Fests and events, 2/23.

By David Hudson on 02/23/2009

"This past weekend and throughout the waning days of Black History Month, the Brooklyn Academy of Music showcases the best of last fall's New York African Diaspora Film Festival, the country's oldest festival devoted to representations of Africans and their extra continental descendants," notes Brandon Harris. "A wide range of works by both northern, middle eastern and sub-Saharan Africans are on display, along with work by such African-American notables as Charles Burnett and Giancarlo Esposito."

Reverse Shot carries on reviewing films in the "Film Comment Selects" series. Adam Nayman on "The Mugger": "The notion of the gentleman thief - the dapper, crackerjack professional who abhors violence and knows every trick in the book because he helped write it - fairly drips with romance, so credit is due to [Arturo] Goetz (a New Argentine cinema standby who has worked with Daniel Burman and Lucrecia Martel) for his terse, neutral portrayal, and also to [director Pablo] Fendrik for finding a fresh angle on a stock type."

And Chris Wisniewski: "'A Woman in Berlin' takes place in a moment and setting where ideology and ethics begin to dissolve in the face of suffering and brutality. Labels like prostitution and propriety hardly matter in the circumstances that confront Anonyme, played by [Nina] Hoss with a quiet, focused resolve; she is guided instead by a more primal survival instinct."

Meanwhile, at the filmlinc blog: Jessica Loudis on "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains" and Matt Griffin on "The Third Generation." The series runs through March 5.

Momus is headed to the Netherlands: "Last August, art digest blog VVORK embedded my 'Boring Books' video (a succession of the most interestingly-dull books I could find on Amazon, accompanied by music by Alvin Lucier). In late January Oliver Laric, an artist and coeditor at VVORK, asked me to participate in a show at Mu Eindhoven, a gallery in Holland."

Thom Ryan (Film of the Year) and Brian Darr (Hell on Frisco Bay) meet up at the Portland International Film Festival.

"Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life" is on view at C/O Berlin through May 24.

Matt Riviera at the Adelaide Film Festival: "If you were frustrated by 'The Visitor's simplistic why-can't-we-all-get-along idealism or 'Gran Torino's pushy perspective on race relations, you'd do well to check out Ramin Bahrani's simple, elegant tale of friendship and hardship 'Goodbye Solo.'" The festival runs through March 1.

Anticipating SXSW: The SpoutBlog's Karina Longworth presents "The 5 Questions We Ask Everyone" to Aron Gaudet's ("The Way We Get By"; site).

For SF360, Michael Fox talks with Kevin Epps about his doc, "The Black Rock," focusing on African American prisoners and guards at Alcatraz. At the Red Vic in San Francisco from Friday through March 5.

Neil Young looks back on three films he caught in Rotterdam, Uruphong Raksasad's "Agrarian Utopia," Edwin's "Blind Pig Who Wants To Fly" and Christian Petzold's "Jerichow."

[Photo: "Princess of Africa," Producciones Bereberia, 2008]

Tags: Film Comment Selects, Momus, Ramin Bahrani, Rotterdam 2009