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Model, actress, director and author Elisa Sednaoui has been a regular on the Lido red carpet for years, even hosting the Venice Festival’s opening and closing ceremonies in 2015.

As a model, she’s been a muse for Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Louboutin and the face of numerous campaigns for Chanel, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Roberto Cavalli, Ermanno Scervino, Bucellati, and Lacôme, among others. Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino directed her in a commercial for Missoni perfume and she’s one of only a handful of models to appear in two editions of the Pirelli calendar (in 2011 and 2013).

Off the runway, she’s appeared in such features as Sharunas Bartas’s drug smuggling drama Eastward Drift (2010), alongside Vincent Gallo, in Davide Manuli’s sci-fi western The Legend of Kaspar Hauser (2012) and in the 2014 Italian comedy Soap Opera from director Alessandro Genovesi. Behind the camera, she co-directed, with Martina Gill, the 2012 documentary...

The cult film VOD platform Spamflix has launched a new worldwide app, available now for mobile and smart TV compatible. Via the app users can browse, rent and stream from the full catalog, which includes a wide range of feature and short films from around the globe.

Visit spamflix.com/app.do for more information, or available directly on Google Play and the Apple Store.

Spamflix was founded in 2018 by Markus Duffner, a project manager at the Locarno Film Festival and Julia Duarte, former producer of São Paulo International Film Festival. Called ‘Netflix for Cult Film Fans’ by Geek Spin the bulk of Spamflix’s library consists of hard to find and lesser-seen genre titles, many of which garnered acclaim on the festival circuit only to land without significant distribution.

A treasure trove for cult film enthusiasts that has a specialty focus on black comedy and adult animation, the new...

Davide Manuli’s new take on the historical Kaspar Hauser story previously adapted by Werner Herzog (The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser) features Vincent Gallo as both an English-speaking The Sheriff and an Italian-speaking bell-bottomed The Pusher. I’m a huge fan of Herzog’s film, but Manuli’s second film The Legend Of Kaspar Hauser (La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser), weird as hell, is a quirky Techno Western depicting surreal humor from obscure scenes. The mysterious titular character is played by a flat-chested stage actress Silvia Calderoni, while Claudia Gerini stars as The Duchess, Fabrizio Gifuni as The Priest, and Elisa Sednaoui as The Psychic. Gallo delivers a solid performance,...

Click to continue reading Trailers For The Legend Of Kaspar Hauser, Starring Vincent Gallo on http://www.filmofilia.com...

What's better than one Vincent Gallo? Apparently, two Vincent Gallos. Yep, fans of the mercurial, eccentric actor can start getting prepared for a double dose of the actor in the upcoming "The Legend Of Kaspar Hauser," which is as appropriately zany as you might expect a movie starring Gallo can be. Dude just doesn't do normal. Directed by Davide Manuli, the film is some kind of modern western riff on the strange but true story about the titular man who showed up randomly in Nuremberg in the early 1800s, saying he had been raised and educated in a dungeon, but never saw the outside world. Stage actress Silvia Calderoni takes the role of Kaspar, with Gallo as The Sheriff (speaking English) and The Pusher (speaking Italian), Claudia Gerini as the Duchess, Fabrizio Gifuni as the Priest, and Elisa Sednaoui as the Psychic. The result? Well, two new trailers that reveal...

What is “4:44 Last Day on Earth” writer-director Abel Ferrara doing in a silent Italian film? Only filmmaker Davide Manuli can say for sure. “It’s a gamble, an experiment,” Manuli told Indiewire recently about his new project, “Haiku,” which is currently being crowdfunded on Indiegogo. “After ‘[The Legend of] Kaspar Hauser’ I was so tired that I couldn’t really sit down and write a conventional, dialogue-based screenplay. I have already worked with Abel as an assistant, but I believe that he is also a great actor and I have always wanted to work with him.” As funding opportunities shrink by the day in a Europe ravaged by the financial crisis, austerity threatens to become a new aesthetic movement as well as the ruling economic imperative. Perhaps this is just the environment in which Manuli should thrive. A creative anomaly, a beacon of visual insolvency in a sea of aesthetic compliance,...

Held back on Sept. 21-29, the 5th annual Arizona Underground Film Festival was a major blow-out event of extreme underground greatness. And, to top it all off, they handed out a gaggle of awards to both feature films and shorts alike.

The big winner was the Best of Fest award that went to Michael Melamedoff’s sly drama The Exhibitionists, about a bunch of hedonists gathered on New Year’s Eve. Meanwhile, the Audience Award went to the reality TV parody Ghosts With Shit Jobs by Chris McCawley, Jim Morrison, Jim Munroe and Tate Young; and Kenton Bartlett’s torture flick Missing Pieces won the Director’s Award.

Some other winners include Spencer Parsons’ Saturday Morning Massacre for Best Horror Feature, a film that while not reviewed yet on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film we’ve seen it and easily declare one of the best horror movies of the last few years.

Montreal’s Festival Du Nouveau Cinema (10.10 – 10.21) announced their line-up today for their 41st edition and among the smorgasbord of subtitle offerings dating back to this year’s Rotterdam, Berlin, Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Tiff editions, we’re knee-deep in avant-garde world cinema from the established auteurs Assayas, Vinterberg, Ozon, Sang-Soo, Joao Pedro Rodriguez, Larrain, Loach, Reygadas, Ghobadi, Mungiu and Miguel Gomes. Heavy on offerings from Quebec and France, the fest also manages to offer a stellar snapshot of the up-and-comers from all corners of the globe. Among the notable titles in the (Competition category) International Selection we’ve got Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves, Ursula Meier’s Sister, Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky’s Francine (which received its theatrical release earlier this month) and Rodrigo Plá’s La Demora. Loaded in Cannes items, the Special Presentations is the fest’s A-list selections (see filmmakers named above) and the one pic...

To celebrate their 5th anniversary, the Arizona Underground Film Festival has expanded to a whopping nine nights on Sept. 21-29 for a cinematic event the likes of Tucson has never seen before!

The shenanigans kick off with the opening night film The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, an experimental Italian feature directed by Davide Manuli and starring Vincent Gallo as the hero and the villain to a strange young boy, then end with the closing night film Jason M. Solomon’s nostalgic documentary 7 Years Underground: A 60′s Tale, which profiles the legendary Cafe Au Go Go in NYC that hosted such up-and-coming acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin and more.

In between those two films lies a twisted carnage of movie mayhem, including Spencer Parsons’ demented homage to ’70s mystery cartoons Saturday Morning Massacre; Michael Melamedoff exploitative semi-doc The Exhibitionists; Stephen Amis’ Australian WWII sci-fi...

The 5th annual Arizona Underground Film Festival, which will run on Sept. 21-29 at various venues around Tucson, Arizona, has officially released the titles of six of the films that will be screening at this year’s event.

It’s clear from this half-dozen batch of movies that the fest will be sticking to its successful formula that has allowed it to grow by leaps and bounds since 2008. That formula consists of offering up a diverse batch of fun genre fare, controversial exploitation films, crowd-pleasing music documentaries and somewhat unclassifiable cinematic oddities.

The titles and brief descriptions are below. The full lineup will be available on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film in early September.

The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, dir. Davide Manuli. In this Italian update of the Werner Herzog classic film, which was based on a true story, controversial American actor Vincent Gallo tackles the dual roles...

I can't remember a time I went to the Seattle International Film Festival (Siff) press launch and looked over the list of films and saw so many I was interested in seeing. The claim to fame for over the years is to call it the largest and most-highly attended festival in the United States. This is a fact I've often taken issue with as I don't equate quantity with quality. Granted, there has been a large number of quality features to play the fest over the years, including Golden Space Needle (Best Film) winners such as Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), My Life as a Dog (1987), Trainspotting (1996), Run Lola Run (1999), Whale Rider (2003) and even recent Best Director winner, Michel Hazanavicius's Oss 117: Nest of Spies in 2006. That said, looking over this year's crop of films I see a lot of films I will be doing my absolute best to see.

Disco, flying saucers, long-haired Sheriffs who speak in the lilting accents of American southerners on Italian beaches. You can’t fault director Davide Manuli for trying. He throws everything at the wall that is his update of “The Legend of Kaspar Hauser” and if only a tiny fraction of its sticks than so be it. I admire him for trying. Not that there’s much else to admire. It’s hard to know who’s responsible when a film goes as deeply, terribly wrong as this one. Based on the German urban legend of sorts about a teenage boy that appeared in the streets of Nuremberg in the 1820s and was quickly taken to be of royal lineage despite the fact that he claimed to have been isolated in a darkened cell for much of his development, it is the scandal of this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, where...

"Where's "Trailers 1'?" you might be asking. That roundup's built right into the entry on the lineup for the Bright Future program, where I've embedded 18 trailers. This batch gathers trailers for features in the Tiger Awards Competition and the main Spectrum program.

First, this from the International Film Festival Rotterdam: "José Luis Torres Leiva made this year's leader for the Hubert Bals Fund. Copia imperfecta is a beautiful homage to Raúl Ruiz, the great Chilean filmmaker who died last summer."

Tiger Awards Competition

Orhan Eskiköy and Zeynel Dogan's Voice of my Father (Babamin sesi)

Huang Ji's Egg and Stone (Jidan he shitou)

Maja Miloš's Clip (Klip)

Óskar Thor Axelsson's Black's Game (Svartur á leik)

Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal's It Looks Pretty from a Distance (Z daleka widok jest piękny)

Park Hong-Min's A Fish (Mulgogi)

Midi Z's Return to Burma

Babis Makridis's L

Okuda Yosuke's Tokyo Playboy...

In his 30-plus years in cinema, Vincent Gallo has been both hero and villain, winning wide acclaim for his directorial debut Buffalo '66 (1998) but intense derision from critics for The Brown Bunny (2003) because of a scene depicting explicit unsimulated oral sex between Gallo and actress Chloë Sevigny. It's hard to tell what sort of reaction Gallo's latest movie, writer-director Davide Manuli's The Legend Of Kaspar Hauser, will generate because we're not even quite sure what to make of it. Presumably, the movie has something to do with Kaspar Hauser, the German youth whose mysterious upbringing has baffled historians for centuries, but based on the bizarre teaser trailer that was just released, it appears Legend has more in common with desert raves and ... aliens.

Next Showing:

Link | Posted 1/17/2012 by BrentJS

Vincent Gallo | Davide Manuli | The Legend of Kaspar Hauser...

Vincent Gallo has shocked us before, most notably with his on-screen erotic exercises with Chloe Sevigny in 2003′s Brown Bunny. Gallo has been busy in the ten years since Bunny, appearing in/producing/writing 13 films, continuing a streak of brave artistry that has him standing firmly outside the Hollywood establishment. His latest on-screen effort is director Davide Manuli’s La Leggenda Di Kaspar Hauser (The Legend Of Kasper Hauser), where the silver-eyed thespian plays a nameless character referred to as “The Pusher/The Sheriff.” Claudia Gerini, Elisa Sedaoui, Fabrizio Gifuni, and Claudia Gerini, Elisa Sedaoui, Fabrizio Gifunialso star.

Synopsis (courtesy Blue Film):

“A mysterious young man suddenly appears in Nuremberg in 1828. Barely able to walk or speak, a benefactor looks to integrate him into society.”

The trailer is uniformly perplexing, and every bit a Gallo project. Tune in and trip out!

Via Cargo co-editor Ekkehard Knörer, the trailer for Davide Manuli's The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, described by the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the film will see its world premiere, simply as "a post-modern Western with Vincent Gallo."

In the Hollywood Reporter, Eric J Lyman notes that the story is to be "transplanted to the Italian island of Sardinia. Gallo will speak Italian as The Pusher and English as The Sherriff. Other cast members include Italian Claudia Gerini, best known for her role in The Passion of the Christ, Fabrizio Gifuni, Elisa Sednaoui, and theatre actress Silvia Calderoni, who will play a man in the title role."

For news and tips throughout the day every day, follow @thedailyMUBI on Twitter and/or the RSS feed....

I’ll just fess up: Despite the fact that it’s in its 41st year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam is something I’ve kind of never heard about until today. (Let’s blame it on a slip in my geography skills.) This ignorance on my part notwithstanding, taking a look at their initial lineup for this year — when the event runs from January 25th to February 5th — has left me mightily impressed.

The biggest world premieres come from two directors on opposite ends of at least a few spectrum: Takashi Miike and James Franco. (Discounting the fact that they’ve both depicted amputations onscreen, in one way or the other.) The former is debuting his adaptation of the popular Nintendo DS game, Ace Attorney, while the latter will be exhibiting Francophrenia (Or: Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is). A movie based on a kid’s...

The 41st International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 25 - February 5) has released their full Spectrum lineup. Of the 72 features and documentaries, 16 will be world premieres, including new works from Takashi Miike, James Franco and one starring Vincent Gallo. Franco's film, "Francophrenia (Or: Don't Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is)," co-directed by Ian Olds, uses footage shot by Franco during his brief stint on "General Hostpital." It's described as a "humorous psycho-thriller." "Ace Attorney" by Miike, is a film adaptation of the Nintendo game about the legal battle between a defense attorney and his rival prosecutor. Italian director Davide Manuli will also be world premiering his latest, "The Legend of Kaspar Hauser," described as a "post-modern Western" starring Gallo. Iffr 2012 Spectrum: list of films making their world premieres. Go here for full Spectrum lineup. ...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has announced the lineup for its main section, Spectrum: 72 features and documentaries from 32 countries, with descriptions from the Festival, running January 25 through February 5:

World premieres

Cornelia frente al espejo (Cornelia at Her Mirror) - Daniel Rosenfeld, Argentina, Hubert Bals Fund-supported film. A "meticulous and stylish film based on the story by Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993)." Roman Diary - Michael Pilz, Austria. A "meditative film featuring images of a park in Rome." Rua Aperana 52 - Júlio Bressane, Brazil. A "musical film about a street corner in Rio, edited together from old photos and the maker’s own films from the period 1957-2005." Lacan Palestine - Mike Hoolboom, Canada. A "found-footage essay on a complex country and its love-struck inhabitants." 38 témoins (38 Witnesses) - Lucas Belvaux, France, Belgium. Opening Film Iffr 2012. Le reste du monde (The Rest of the World) - Damien Odoul, France. A "family considers issues of identity and relationships.

Davide Manuli‘s forthcoming The Legend of Kaspar Hauser will take on the strange historical case of Kaspar Hauser – which was tackled previously, and brilliantly by Werner Herzog – and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Vincent Gallo has just been cast in two roles. For the first, called The Pusher, he’ll be speaking Italian. For the second, called The Sheriff, he’ll be speaking English. The names are an odd indication of how arthouse this project might be, but the story of Hauser isn’t exactly a mainstream one. It’s essentially a real-life, 19th century European version of Blast From the Past, where a man named Kaspar Hauser came to Nuremberg claiming that he was raised in a dungeon that he’s never left. The cast also features Claudia Gerini (The Passion of the Christ), Fabrizio Gifuni, Elisa Sednaoui, and Silvia Calderoni. It sounds like a fascinating project that will hopefully steer away from Herzog but...

We'll say this: Vincent Gallo surely doesn't like to shy away from a challenge. In his last film, Jerzy Skolimowski's "Essential Killing," Gallo played Mohammed, a Taliban-like figure on the run from the American army--who doesn't speak a single word for the entire runtime of the film. Well, for his next project, you won't be able to shut him the fuck up. Gallo is set to take on two roles--and speak two languages--in "The Legend of Kaspar Hauser," an Italian production that isn't a remake of the Werner Herzog film, but is a retelling of the familiar legend. Davide Manuli…...

[Editor's note: Beket had it's world premier at Locarno and just had it's North American premier]

Year: 2008

Release date: Unknown

Directors: Davide Manuli

Writers: Davide Manuli

IMDb: link

Trailer: link

Review by: Bob Doto

Rating: 7 out of 10

Davide Manuli's Beket is a black-and-white film from Italy about… hmm… “about”… funny word. Longing? Sort of. Waiting? For sure. Well-dressed Itailan men? Some what. Floating buses? Doesn’t hurt to mention it. Idleness? Is the playground of the devil. Trance music? I’m becoming more sympathetic to it. The search? Definitely! Beket is about the search, and what happens when you get to the one woman who can lead you to what it is you are searching for.

Sort of.

Before the film began I wondered what version of Becket I would encounter. Would it be Krapp, Endgame, Happy Days, Godot? The opening two scenes, first a man walking alone over an expanse of dried earth, followed by him being greeted by a man on a horse lead by a servant,...