Actualités

With 2010 only a week over, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we liked the fantasy double features we did last year and for our 3rd Writers Poll we thought we'd do it again.

I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.

Pairon Talle

Sidharth Srinivasan’s Pairon Talle will be screened in The Bright Future program at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2011. The 40th edition of the festival will take place from Jan 26-Feb 6, 2011.

Bright Future is the section in which the festival presents debut or second feature films, which it finds ‘important, idiosyncratic and adventurous’.

The section this year will screen eighteen world premières, ten international premières and eleven European premières. In total, this year’s Bright Future is made up of eighty films selected from thirty-eight countries. Fifteen of these films, including Pairon Talle, received support from Iffr’s Hubert Bals Fund.

Pairon Talle will be presented as part of European premiere in Bright Future:

Fortune Teller, Xu Tong, China

The Old Donkey, Li Ruijun, China (Hubert Bals Fund supported film)

Tape, Li Ning, China

Piano In A Factory, Zhang Meng, China

Soul Of Sand, Sidharth Srinivasan, India...

You may think you've never heard of Li Ning. But assuming you were one of the 4 billion or so people watching the opening ceremony of last year's Beijing Olympics, you've seen him. Remember the guy who lit the Olympic flame? The one who, as if by some superhuman power, levitated more than 100 feet and ran that mesmerizing aerial lap around the Bird's Nest stadium before setting the Olympic cauldron ablaze? That was Li Ning. And if he has his way, you won't be forgetting him again.

Li Ning, the man, is a hero in China -- the gymnast who snagged six medals, including three gold, at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and thus helped launch a national surge that reached its height last summer when China won more gold than any other country. (Before Li's Olympic debut, China hadn't appeared at a summer Games since Helsinki in 1952, when it failed to take home a single medal.