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Syria doc Last Men In Aleppo will open the Copenhagen documentary festival.

Cph:dox has announced the full programme for its first spring edition (March 16-26), boasting 200 films including 75 world premieres.

The festival will open with Last Men In Aleppo [pictured], which was directed by Firas Fayyad and co-directed by Steen Johannessen.

Other highlights include a new cultural summit Cph:meetings – about the political and social role of art in society; a Vr cinema; a new children’s programme; a new science section; a focus on the rise of populism; and an 11-film programme curated by musician Anohni.

Themes to be explored include the rise of populism and a “talk show” about the alternative facts of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon.

The children’s programme will include titles such as Obscure about kids with Ptsd; Childhood about a Norwegian kindergarten in the forest, and a film about Chinese children whose parents are in prison, Waiting For The...

Even when you live in Los Angeles, as I do, if you’re not in the network of critics groups and press screening and screener DVDs it can be a challenge to keep up with everything you tell yourself you have to see before attempting an informed roundup of the year currently in the rearview mirror. And I also try to not let more than a couple of weeks of the new year go by before checking in, regardless of how many of the year’s big presents I have left to unwrap, though in past years I have not lived well by this dictum—let’s just say that if I’m still posting stuff on the year’s best after even Oscar has thoroughly chewed over the goods, as has happened in the past, well, I’ve overstayed my welcome.

2016 was, in most ways, a disaster of a year,...

The Cinema Audio Society has announced its nominees for the 53rd Annual Cas Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for 2016 in seven categories.

On the film side, strong contenders like “La La Land,” “Rogue One” and “Zootopia” picked up nods, while television series like “Game of Thrones,” “blackish” and “Stranger Things” also received nominations. For the first year, the Cas is honoring Documentary films, with nods like “O.J.: Made in America” and “13th” rounding out this inaugural category.

Missing from the film nods are more than a few surprises, including “Deepwater Horizon,” “The Jungle Book” and “Silence.”

“We are blessed this year with a rich portfolio of Cinema Audio art applied. As the creative contributions of sound mixing to modern filmmaking becomes more obvious to the world at large, these productions truly represent the talents of our community,” said Mark Ulano, Cas President, of the announcement.

Read More: 2017 Oscar...

With vinyl being a hot music commodity and back in vogue, it would seem inevitable that one of the music giants of the vinyl era would get remastered and re-released. Frank Zappa remains one of the those musical geniuses where his impact was missed by a deservedly larger fanbase while he roamed planet Earth. With a must-see documentary -- Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words (Sony Pictures Classic) -- currently in theaters and on demand, hopefully some of his genius will be discovered by a new generation of fans. Certainly the above-titled masterpiece Hot Rats, reissued by Zappa Records in August on 180gram vinyl cut directly from the original analog master tapes by Bernie Grundman, remains one of his cornerstone releases in his immense and musically varied catalog. 

Which brings us to the album itself... an album that I've purchased a few years after its initial vinyl...

Hedi won best film, while Matt Johnson won best director for Operation Avalanche.

The Tunisian-French-Belgian co-production Hedi by Mohamed Ben Attia has won the best film award, the Golden Athena, at the 22nd Athens International Film Festival (September 22-October 2).

The film was co-produced by Tanit Films, Nomadis Images and the Dardenne brothers production outlet Les Films du Fleuve.

Majd Mastoura stars in the lead role as a young man who tries to break loose from his dominant mother and some of Tunisia’s more conservative social norms.

The film debuted at Berlin Film Festival 2016, winning the best first film award and a best actor prize for Mastoura.

The Aiff awards were decided by a five-member international jury presided over by the BFI programmes curator Nicola Gallani. The jury included German film critic Julia Teichmann (Film Dienst), French producer Sylvia Perel and her compatriot film critic Bernard Nave (Jeune Cinema).

Matt Johnson won the best director trophy for [link...

Debuts The Winter and The Giant, share the special jury prize; Hong Sang-soo wins Silver Shell for best director.

The San Sebastián International Film Festival (Sept 16-24) awards ceremony had a marked Asian flavour last night [24].

Feng Xiaogang’s I Am Not Madame Bovary - the social satire about a woman seeking to restore honour after a bitter divorce - won the Golden Shell for best film at the 64th edition of the festival.

I Am Not Madame Bovary, which had previously won the fipresci prize in Toronto, also earned Chinese star Fan Bingbing the Silver Shell in San Sebastián for best actress.

South Korea’s director Hong Sang-soo won the Silver Shell for best director for the love story Yourself And Yours.

The Special Jury Prize was shared between the Argentinian-French coproduction The Winter, a contemporary western set in a remote area in Patagonia by first time director Emiliano Torres, and the Swedish-Danish...

The 64th San Sebastian Film Festival, which ran from September 16 to 24, closed out its celebrations by announcing its winners on Saturday night. The top prize, known as the Golden Shell, was awarded to Feng Xiaogang’s drama “I Am Not Madame Bovary.” Its lead, Fan Bingbing, also took home the Best Actress award that night.

“I have a lot of experience and a lot of habits. These habits can cage you. When I started this film, I tried to set these habits aside and try to work as if it were my directorial debut and do something courageous. I knew it was very risky,” Feng said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, but today the San Sebastian Film festival gave me the answer with this prize for the best film.”

Read More: Critics Pick the Best Films From the Toronto...

In 1963, a young Frank Zappa appeared on “The Steve Allen Show,” where he used drumsticks and a bicycle to create a vibrant cacophony of sounds that must have been equally aggravating and fascinating to the generally square viewers of the program. After listening to Zappa’s bicycle-based orchestra, Allen gave a short speech defending artists […]

The post ‘Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words’ Is A Doc For Fans & Newcomers Alike [Review] appeared first on The Playlist.

This documentary about the oddball musician may not satisfy completists, but it’s still a fascinating run-through of Zappa’s greatest – and weirdest – moments

My wife can handle my snoring and my tendency to forget to do the dishes, but all bets are off when I drag out my Frank Zappa albums. To the great many people who just can’t stand the man’s music, it is an antic mess of arpeggios, endless guitar solos, puerile baby noises, irritating musique concrète and vulgar lyrics. (I’ll agree to a lot of this, and that’s coming from a diehard fan.) German director Thorsten Schütte’s documentary Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words would finally, I think, get her to understand just what it is that I love about the foul-mouthed mustachioed freak. That is, if I could ever convince her to watch it.

Like Steven Soderbergh’s documentary on Spalding Gray,...