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A significant cultural exchange is set to unfold in Spain as the Korean National Opera Company embarks on a special tour as part of the ongoing Korea Season program. This initiative, supported by Kofice and the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, aims to showcase the richness of Korean arts globally.

This year’s Korea Season holds particular importance, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and Spain. The artistic tour serves as a vibrant celebration of this historical bond, featuring both a Gala Concert and a performance of the contemporary Korean opera Soul Mate. These events are designed to highlight Korea’s operatic tradition and foster cultural dialogue between the two nations.

The Gala Concert, a musical celebration of the diplomatic anniversary, is scheduled to take place in Barcelona. The program will feature a selection of familiar classical opera arias alongside traditional Korean songs, offering...

Atom Egoyan, director of the Seven Veils, surrounded by his admirers at the Quad Cinema Photo: Ed Bahlman

On Saturday, March 8, an audience member in the packed theater U of the Quad Cinema after my conversation with Atom Egoyan on Seven Veils asked him: “Which film should I put on when I get home?” Atom responded: “I would play [Michael Powell’s] Peeping Tom backwards maybe. Maybe [Alfred Hitchcock’s] Rebecca, actually some Hitchcock. Carmen is pretty interesting, the Carlos Saura film. Does anyone else have a double bill idea?” Suggestions rang out from Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls and Brian de Palma’s Passion, to Todd Field’s Tár, and of course, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann.

Atom Egoyan on Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried) at the Salome tech rehearsal: “There’s no one she can communicate with, she is really on her own.

Atom Egoyan, director of the Seven Veils, surrounded by his admirers at the Quad Cinema Photo: Ed Bahlman

On Saturday, March 8, an audience member in the packed theater U of the Quad Cinema after my conversation with Atom Egoyan on Seven Veils asked him: “Which film should I put on when I get home?” Atom responded: “I would play [Michael Powell’s] Peeping Tom backwards maybe. Maybe [Alfred Hitchcock’s] Rebecca, actually some Hitchcock. Carmen is pretty interesting, the Carlos Saura film. Does anyone else have a double bill idea?” Suggestions rang out from Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls and Brian de Palma’s Passion, to Todd Field’s Tár, and of course, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann.

Atom Egoyan on Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried) at the Salome tech rehearsal: “There’s no one she can communicate with, she is really on her own.

Rank Film (origin) Distributor Jan 17-19 gross Total Week 1 A Complete Unknown(US)

Disney £2.6m £2.6m 1 2 Mufasa: The Lion King (US) Disney £1.6m £26.1m 5 3 Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (US)

Paramount £1.1m £22.3m 4 4 Nosferatu (US)

Universal £1.1m £10.9m 3 5 We Live In Time (UK-Fr) Studiocanal £860,881 £6.8m 3

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.22

Disney’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown opened to £2.6m this weekend across the UK-Ireland, landing in the top spot.

With just shy of 700 sites reporting, and a few still to report, the film has a location average of £3,714.

Timothee Chalamet plays the AmericanBlowin’ In The Wind singer from his early...

Rank Film (origin) Distributor Jan 17-19 gross Total Week 1 A Complete Unknown(US)

Disney £2.6m £2.6m 1 2 Mufasa: The Lion King (US) Disney £1.6m £26.1m 5 3 Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (US)

Paramount £1.1m £22.3m 4 4 Nosferatu (US)

Universal £1.1m £10.9m 3 5 We Live In Time (UK-Fr) Studiocanal £860,881 £6.8m 3

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.22

Disney’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown opened to £2.6m this weekend across the UK-Ireland, landing in the top spot.

With just shy of 700 sites reporting, and a few still to report, the film has a location average of £3,714.

Timothee Chalamet plays the AmericanBlowin’ In The Wind singer from his early...

Disney’sBob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown,opens wide in around 700 sites across the UK and Ireland this weekend.

Timothee Chalamet plays the US musician from 1961, when the Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door singer was an unknown 19-year-old, freshly landed in New York from Minnesota. James Mangold directs the Searchlight title, with Elle Fanning and Edward Norton also in the cast.

Music biopics have – for the most part – performed robustly at the UK-Ireland box office of late. Studiocanal’s Amy Winehouse film Back To Black opened to £2.7m in April of last year and finished on £12.3m. Paramount’s Bob Marley: One Love...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

Claire Denis’ monumental No Fear, No Die begins screening in a new restoration.

Museum of the Moving Image

A new 70mm print of The Searchers plays this weekend.

Japan Society

A restoration of Shinji Sōmai’s Moving and Toshiharu Ikeda’s Mermaid Legend play on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

Film Forum

New restorations of Ann Hui’s July Rhapsody (watch our exclusive trailer debut), Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams, and Fitzcarraldo begin screening; Seven Samurai and Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room continue.

Anthology Film Archives

Enrique Gómez Vadillo’s rarely screened Death on the Beach shows in a new restoration this Friday; Stan Brakhage plays in “Essential Cinema.”

Museum of Modern Art

A career-spanning Powell and Pressburger retrospective continues, including A Matter of Life and Death and The Tales of Hoffmann.

Nitehawk Cinema

Lucio Fulci...

David Hinton’s thoroughly captivating Made In England: The Films Of Powell And Pressburger (a highlight of the 23rd edition of the Tribeca Festival) has Martin Scorsese (who is also an executive producer) as our personal guide into the wonderful world of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which includes production designers Alfred Junge and Hein Heckroth, cinematographer Jack Cardiff, and art director Arthur Lawson.

Starting with The Thief Of Baghdad (co-directed by Powell with Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan) and The Tales Of Hoffmann on a black and white TV, little Marty was already “bewitched.” Later, The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp’s influence is vast on Scorsese, with the duel between Clive Candy (Roger Livesey) and Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook) inspiring the way he shot (cinematography by Michael Chapman) and cut (by Thelma Schoonmaker) the fight scene in Raging Bull, and with...

David Hinton with Anne-Katrin Titze (holding up her Mansur Gavriel Square Toe Ballerinas) on Moira Shearer starring in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes: “She was a ballerina, she wasn’t an actress. And Michael insisted, we must have a ballerina!”

David Hinton’s thoroughly captivating Made In England: The Films Of Powell And Pressburger (a highlight of the 23rd edition of the Tribeca Festival) has Martin Scorsese (who is also an executive producer) as our personal guide into the wonderful world of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which includes production designers Alfred Junge and Hein Heckroth, cinematographer Jack Cardiff, and art director Arthur Lawson.

David Hinton on casting Karlheinz Böhm in Peeping Tom: “It seems such an extraordinarily strange thing to do but it works so perfectly, doesn’t it?”

Starting with The Thief Of Baghdad (co-directed by Powell with Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan...

David Hinton with Anne-Katrin Titze (holding up her Mansur Gavriel Square Toe Ballerinas) on Moira Shearer starring in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes: “She was a ballerina, she wasn’t an actress. And Michael insisted, we must have a ballerina!”

David Hinton’s thoroughly captivating Made In England: The Films Of Powell And Pressburger (a highlight of the 23rd edition of the Tribeca Festival) has Martin Scorsese (who is also an executive producer) as our personal guide into the wonderful world of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which includes production designers Alfred Junge and Hein Heckroth, cinematographer Jack Cardiff, and art director Arthur Lawson.

David Hinton on casting Karlheinz Böhm in Peeping Tom: “It seems such an extraordinarily strange thing to do but it works so perfectly, doesn’t it?”

Starting with The Thief Of Baghdad (co-directed by Powell with Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan...

Made in England: The Films of Powell and PressburgerImage: Cohen Media Group

Michael Powell was born in the coastal English county of Kent. He started in the silent-era film industry of the 1920s, working countless studio odd jobs before he was promoted, in the 1930s, to directing low-budget “quota quickies,...

The Spy in Black.Michael Powell knew where he was going. From the first day he set foot in a movie studio at nineteen and was put to work sweeping the floor, he had no doubts about his life’s purpose. “I just knew I was a director, and couldn’t understand why people didn’t stand in line to offer me a film,” Powell wrote of his presumptuous younger self. By 1938, he was a rising young filmmaker under contract to producer Alexander Korda, with the prospect of directing the great German star Conrad Veidt in a World War I thriller, The Spy in Black (1939), set against the mist-shrouded cliffs and basalt columns of the Orkney Islands. On reading the original script, however, he found it flat and lackluster, full of the “pleasant British dialogue scenes” he despised. Then, at a story conference arranged by Korda, he listened to a...

There’s an argument to be made that the single image which best exemplifies pure cinematic wonder is the Archers logo. The introductory title reel belonged to the production company of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, a guarantee that whatever film followed would whisk the viewer away to a world of ecstatic imagination. The British filmmaking duo delivered sweeping, epic tales on a vibrant cinematic canvas painted with a style uniquely their own, and often found themselves on the periphery of their country’s popular cinema during their careers. While they came to be appreciated in the decades that followed the peak of their creative output, they have long passed, so David Hinton’s riveting new documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger brings the most qualified voice possible to speak on their contributions to the medium: Martin Scorsese.

Considering Scorsese’s close connection to their work, from...

Martin Scorsese’s voiceover narration and on-camera presence foregrounds the personal nature of “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger,” an irresistible documentary survey about the formative movies of mid-century British writer/director Michael Powell and his co-writer Emeric Pressburger.

Scorsese didn’t direct “Made in England,” but his insights and relationship with Powell and Pressburger’s movies serve as the clothesline that director David Hinton hangs his movie’s footage on, including clips from both his title subjects’ movies as well as some charming archival interview footage (both Powell and Pressburger are now dead). Even Hinton’s tendency of focusing on Powell over Pressburger makes sense when you consider Scorsese’s presence as the lightly held lens through which the movie presents formative Powell and Pressburger dramas like “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” “The Red Shoes,” and “The Tales of Hoffmann.”

“Made in England” begins...

It’s been decades since they’ve passed, but this summer is shaping up to be the season of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Alongside MoMA’s massive retrospective of their work, Annie Baker will introduce The Tales of Hoffmann at Film at Lincoln Center next weekend, the Martin Scorsese-narrated documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger will arrive later this summer, and a new 4K restoration of their underseen gem The Small Back Room will be coming to Film Forum at the end of the month courtesy of Rialto Pictures.

In their classically romantic suspense thriller The Small Back Room, David Farrar stars as a bomb disposal expert Sammy Rice, embittered by a tin leg courtesy of an on-the-job snafu and battling addiction (giving Powell and Pressburger the opportunity for a bizarre Dt fantasy sequence), until faced with the ultimate explosive challenge: a German bomb sporting an unbeatable booby trap.

David Niven and Kim Hunter of the set of A Matter Of Life And Death (1946). Photo: courtesy of Altitude

Director David Hinton's Made In England: The Films Of Powell And Pressburger draws on a rich array of archival material to craft a captivating celebration of one of cinema's great collaborative partnerships. Together, the English Michael Powell and Hungarian Emeric Pressburger were the creative forces behind some of British cinema's most memorable films: The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter Of Life And Death, The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp and The Tales Of Hoffmann.

Martin Scorsese narrates and hearing him express his love for these films makes it feel like Made In England is a meeting with destiny. He was the only choice, not only because of his personal and professional relationships with Powell and his longtime editor, and Powell's widow Thelma Schoonmaker, but because of his enthusiastic energy,...

Legendary film editor Thelma Schoonmaker is honoring the films of filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger with an upcoming retrospective at MoMA.

Titled “Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger,” the screening series is presented in collaboration with the BFI and will take place from June 21 to July 31. The program includes more than 50 films — many of which are new restorations — and was curated by conservation experts, archivists, and curators at the BFI National Archive.

Oscar-winning editor Schoonmaker will open the series on June 21 with an introduction to the new digital restoration of “Black Narcissus” (1947). Schoonmaker was married to British director Powell from 1984 until his death in 1990.

Powell and Pressburger’s cultural legacy is most notably recognized in their film “The Red Shoes” (1948), which has inspired sequences in films such as Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” and Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” which Schoonmaker edited.

Following the best movie of last year, 2024 brings a lesson in cinema history from Martin Scorsese. He’s narrated a new documentary on two of the greatest directors of all time, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the duo responsible for The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Considering Scorsese’s close connection to their work, from being captivated at a young age and much later becoming friends with Michael Powell (who was married to Scorsese’s long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker), he’s the perfect guide through their filmography.

Following the Berlinale premiere of David Hinton’s Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, it’ll now get a U.K. and Ireland release on May 10 from Altitude and the first trailer has arrived. With U.S. distribution coming from Cohen Media Group, Mubi has also...

The 74th Berlin International Film Festival announced the winners of the fest at the awards ceremony held at the Berlinale Palast on February 24.

20 films competed for the awards in this year’s competition with Lupita Nyong’o heading the International Jury alongside Ann Hui, Christian Petzold, Albert Serra, Jasmine Trinca and Oksana Zabuzhko. The Encounters Jury, Lisandro Alonso, Denis Côté and Tizza Covi choose the winners for Best Film, Best Director and the Special Jury Award.

The Golden Bear for Best Film was awarded to Dahomey by Mati Diop. Emily Watson won The Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance for her role in Small Things Like These, while Sebastian Stan received The Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance in A Different Man. Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias was honored with The Silver Bear for Best Director for his film Pepe, and the Silver Bear Jury Prize went to Bruno Dumont for Empire.

Martin Scorsese, who helped rescue the British film-makers’ work from obscurity, is the perfect person to discuss their unique and now beloved work

The work of film-makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is discussed with passion and authority by Martin Scorsese in this richly enjoyable documentary, for which he presents his thoughts and recollections directly to camera. When the British establishment shamed itself by turning its back on these homegrown masters, it took this Italian American film-maker to rediscover them in the 1970s – and now the Powell/Pressburger films almost cannot be seen except through the medium of Scorsese’s glorious evangelism; their movies and his have virtually become intertextual events.

As he takes us through the great Powell/Pressburger films such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I’m Going!, Black Narcissus, Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann, Scorsese also plays clips of his own films,...

Tôn Thất An is a Parisian born Vietnamese composer now based in Taipei, and has been writing for contemporary dance, theatre, film and art projects, and composing instrumental music as well as songs.

In the past four years, he has scored for a string of indie Vietnamese films: ‘The Third Wife’ (2018) and ‘Between Shadow and Soul’ (2019) by Ash Mayfair, ‘Song Lang’ (2018) by Leon Le, ‘Goodbye Mother’ (2019) by Trịnh Đình Lê Minh and ‘Ròm’ (2019) by Trần Thanh Huy. He has also contributed to Naomi Kawase’s ‘True Mothers’ (2020).

He significantly collaborated with Japanese choreographer Jo Kanamori: ‘Nina – materialize sacrifice’ (2005), ‘Play 2 Play’ (2007), ‘Les Contes d’Hoffmann’ (2010), ‘The Dream of the Swan’ (2017) and with Taiwanese dance wunderkind Huang Yi: ‘Symphony Project’ (2010), ‘Double Yellow Line’ (2012) and ‘Special Order’ (2014).

His work as a composer also brought him to the Philharmonie Hall in Berlin where he premiered ‘The Legend of Thánh Gióng’ (2013), a symphonic tale commissioned by The Berlin Symphony Orchestra.

Sierra Leone-born ballerina Michaela DePrince stars as the titular heroine.

US-based Shout! Studios, the multi-platform filmed entertainment distribution and production arm of Shout! Factory, has acquired North American rights to animation and live-action hybrid production Coppelia.

The deal handled by Paris-based sales agent Urban Distribution International (Udi) encompasses digital, video-on-demand, broadcast, theatrical, and home entertainment for cross-platform releases in the US and Canada.

Shout! Studios is planning a strategic launch of the feature across all major entertainment platforms in 2021.

A contemporary retelling of The Tales of Hoffmann-inspired classic ballet, this new version of Coppelia stars rising Sierra Leone-born ballerina Michaela DePrince.

Based on a ’70s manga by Japanese master Osamu Tezuka, a bored writer’s affair with his beguiling young muse gets the live-action treatment in “Tezuka’s Barbara.” Primarily concerned with the story’s excursions into erotic surrealism and the occult while playing down its social and political themes, this handsomely packaged item isn’t deep or meaningful but does present a visually arresting account of middle-aged male ennui colliding with uninhibited and irresistible female energy. Sure to be welcomed by Tezuka’s large fan base in Japan, “Barbara” has enjoyed a lengthy festival run since bowing in competition at the Tokyo Film Festival.

One of several adults-only tales by the legendary creator of children’s classics “Astro Boy” and “Kimba the White Lion,” “Barbara” first appeared in Big Comic magazine in 1973 and was long considered unfilmable. It has finally been adapted by Tezuka’s eldest son, Macoto Tezka, a highly...

The weird and wonderful comic book Barbara, by Manga Maestro Osamu Tezuka is finally a live action film, directed by the author’s son Macoto Tezka who has been looking after the father’s legacy for a long time. Now “Tezuka’s Barbara” has been selected to participate in the Official Competition of the 32nd Tokyo International Film Festival.

Recently interviewed by Amp, Macoto Tezka disclosed some trivia about “Barbara”: “There were a few more other projects that I really wanted to do out of my father’s mangas, but one producer was interested in making “Barbara”, so that’s why we decided to make the film. But that was years back and we couldn’t find a suitable cast or anything, so we took Barbara aside for a bit while we were making the new version of “Stardust Brothers”. After it, I went back to “Barbara” and then...

Two Japanese films, “Tezuka’s Barbara” and “A Beloved Wife” have been selected for the main competition section of next month’s Tokyo International Film Festival.

The festival will reveal the remainder of the competition and the bulk of its other selections later this month. To date the Japanese festival has only revealed its opening film a gala screening of Japanese film “Talking The Pictures,” directed by Masayuki Suo, and Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” as its closing event.

“Barbara” is an adult-oriented fantasy tale, directed by Makoto Tezka who adapts his father Osamu Tezka’s famous novel, itself a reimagining of “The Tales of Hoffmann.” The story deals with the erotic and bizarre experiences of a novelist whose life is turned upside down by a mysterious girl named Barbara, and touches on taboos including forbidden love, eroticism, scandal and the occult.

Tokyo festival selector Yoshi Yatabe called it: “extremely luxurious and fortunate filmmaking,...

Japan’s The Fool (“River’s Edge”) the U.K.’s Third Window Films (“Lowlife Love”) and Germany’s Rapid Eye Movies (“Ruined Heart”) have joined forces to back “Barbara,” a live action adaptation of the 1970s erotic manga by Osamu Tezuka.

“Barbara” Osamu Tezuka’s reimagining of ‘The Tales of Hoffmann’ as an adult-orientated fantasy tale. Its story deals with the erotic and bizarre experiences of a famous novelist whose life is tossed upside down by a mysterious girl. It touches on taboos including forbidden love, mystery, art, Eros, scandal and occultism.

“Barbara” was originally serialized in Big Comic from July 1973 to May 1974. It was recently published in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German. That inspired the crowdfunded English re-release of the manga.

The new film is directed by Macoto Tezka, the son of Tezuka, who would have been 90 this year. It stars Fumi Nikaido (“Himizu”) and Goro Inagaki...

“The first filmization of the forbidden erotic cartoon by Osamu Tezuka”

One of Osamu Tezuka’s most adult and sexually-charged works, Barbara (1973-74) was originally serialized as a follow-up to Ayako (1972-73) in Big Comic from July 1973 to May 1974. It was recently published in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German, garnering enthusiastic fans around the world, including hundreds who made history by crowdfunding a recent English re-release of the manga in a limited edition format.

Barbara is an adult-orientated fantasy tale filled with love and the occult from Osamu Tezuka’s reimagining of “The Tales of Hoffmann (French: Les contes d’Hoffmann)”. Its story deals with the erotic and bizarre experiences of a famous novelist called Yosuke Mikura whose life is tossed upside down by a mysterious girl named “Barbara”.

The controversial story, dealing with various taboos such as forbidden love, mystery, art, Eros, scandal and occultism, was said to...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Beach Rats (Eliza Hittman)

Burgeoning sexuality is the basis for nearly all coming-of-age films, but with her specific eye, Eliza Hittman makes it feel like we’re watching this genre unfold for the first time. With only two features to her name, she’s captured the experience with a sensuality and intimacy nearly unprecedented in American independent filmmaking. Following 2013’s It Felt Like Love, the writer-director follows it with...

Mubi is showing Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Small Back Room (1949), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) in November and December, 2017 in the United States in the series Powell & Pressburger: Together and Apart.The story goes that when they were casting their first flat-out masterpiece together, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger sent a letter to an actress outlining a manifesto of their production company, called "the Archers." At the time, the Archers was freshly incorporated, with Powell and Pressburger sharing all credit for writing, directing, and producing, and their manifesto had five points. Point one was to ensure that they provided their financial backers with "a profit, not a loss," which may raise eyebrows among those who are used to manifestos burning with anti-capitalist fire—but then, in a system like commercial cinema, profitability buys freedom.

“Pour out the wine for drinking is divine!”

Tales Of Hoffmann (1951) screens Friday September 1st through Sunday September 3rd at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). The movie starts each evening at 7:30pm.

This a film version of the 1881 opera by Jacques Offenbach “The Tales of Hoffmann”, however it is Not just a film of a staged performance. ‘Michael Powell’ & Emeric Pressburger work their usual magic here. The opera dramatizes the three great romances in the life of the poet-hero presented in a series of flashbacks. Hoffmann’s tales depict the struggle between human love and the artist’s dedication to his work. Hoffmann loses each of the women he loves but gains instead poetic inspiration — the ability to transform painful experiences into art.

Tales Of Hoffmann is an anthology of fantastic and romantic adventures, recounted by the fableist Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville) and featuring Moira Shearer (The Red Shoes), Ludmilla Tchérina,...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Dan Sallitt has published his extensive companion on the films of Mikio Naruse.

A lost Marx Brothers musical has found its way back on stage, The New Yorker reports.

Watch a video on Pedro Almodóvar‘s obsession with the color red:

Los Angeles Plays Itself director Thom Andersen names his 10 favorite films of the last 10 years at Grasshopper Film.

Vox‘s Aja Romano on the strange story of how a machine was trained to “watch” Blade Runner:

Broad’s goal was to apply “deep learning” — a fundamental piece of artificial intelligence that uses algorithmic machine learning — to video; he wanted to discover what kinds of creations a...

It was Michael Powell who proposed the idea of the composed film, in which movement, color and framing are all synchronized to music to create a seamless work of art, and he began putting it into practice in Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, before going all-out with Tales of Hoffmann and Bluebeard's Castle. Few have followed in his steps. One who did was the late Andrzej Żuławski, whose filmed opera (music by Mussorgsky, lyrics by Pushkin) Boris Godunov (1989) is one of the most relentlessly and astonishingly beautiful cinematic artifacts I have ever seen.It is in the nature of these things that when watching the film it is quite impossible to think of anything which comes close. After the end titles have rolled, one may begin putting things in perspective, but while you're looking at Żuławski's images, nothing finer can be imagined.Shamelessly theatrical in its design, the film...

Magazines are returning from their summer breaks. The new Artforum features Melissa Anderson on Todd Haynes's Carol and Alice Echols on Giorgio Moroder, The new frieze features Tom Newth on the newish restoration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), and there's a whopping new issue of desistfilm celebrating the 50th years of Super 8. Also in today's roundup: Jonathan Rosenbaum on Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Martha, Alain Resnais and Claude Chabrol; Adrian Martin on Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie; Girish Shambu on Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night; Stuart Klawans on Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution and F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton—and more. » - David Hudson...

Magazines are returning from their summer breaks. The new Artforum features Melissa Anderson on Todd Haynes's Carol and Alice Echols on Giorgio Moroder, The new frieze features Tom Newth on the newish restoration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), and there's a whopping new issue of desistfilm celebrating the 50th years of Super 8. Also in today's roundup: Jonathan Rosenbaum on Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Martha, Alain Resnais and Claude Chabrol; Adrian Martin on Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie; Girish Shambu on Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night; Stuart Klawans on Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution and F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton—and more. » - David Hudson...

Imagine Martin Scorsese directing a script by John Hughes and you've pretty much landed on the best teen movie of 2015, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.

A moving and funny coming-of-age story about a high-schooler's friendship with his terminally ill classmate, it exploded out of Sundance earlier this year, bagging both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. The filmmaker has some movie pedigree; he got his start in the industry working as Martin Scorsese's assistant on '90s classic Casino.

Gomez-Rejon is still firm friends with Scorsese, with the pair even sitting down for a filmed discussion on Me and Earl. Scorsese's visual style, all swooping cameras and extended tracking shots, is very much present in Gomez-Rejon's direction, and he told Digital Spy how the legendary filmmaker has been a constant inspiration on his life and art.

"I was on Casino from when...

Director/producer Ron Howard, Teamsters Local 817 President Thomas J. O’Donnell, director Tyler Perry, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and film editor/Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker will be honored at the 2015 DGA Honors, to be held at the Directors Guild of America Theater in New York City on Thursday, October 15, 2015. The red-carpet event fetes individuals and institutions that have made distinguished contributions to American culture through film and television, while recognizing the diversity required to produce entertainment. Past DGA Honors recipients have included Nora Ephron, Robert Altman, Jonathan Demme, Milos Forman, Curtis Hanson, Spike Lee, Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn, Sydney Pollack, and Martin Scorsese. Read More: How Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker Restored the Luster of Michael Powell and 'The Tales of Hoffmann'...

One of the most diverting new flourishes introduced to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for its 50th incarnation this week, is a brand new sidebar in which six international directors were invited to present their favorite films not from their own oeuvres. Dubbed "Six Close Encounters" it gave us Mark Cousins presenting underseen Iranian jewel "A Moment of Innocence"; Michael Roskam ("Bullhead," "The Drop") presenting Jules Dassin's anointed classic "Rififi"; Kim Ki-Duk presenting Lee Chang-dong's immaculate "Poetry"; Sergei Loznitsa ("Maidan") presenting raw Russian epic "The Asthenic Syndrome"; and, in an oddly apropos choice, Sion Sono ("Tokyo Tribe") presenting "Babe." The first one, not the weird dark second one. Rounding out the line-up, however, was George Romero, who introduced Powell & Pressburger's "The Tales of Hoffmann" in its pristine new 4K...

George A Romero in Karlovy Vary: 'I am afraid of people and what they do to each other' Photo: Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary Night Of The Living Dead director George A Romero says his nightmares lurk in reality rather than anything supernatural. He’s one of many special guests appearing at this year’s 50th anniversary edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Romero, 75, who gave a master class and, introduced a packed screening of his own film The Crazies as well as a screening of the newly restored version of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Tales Of Hoffmann, said: “I’m afraid of people. I’m afraid of what people do to each other. Can you imagine the concept of genocide? How can somebody do that to somebody else? There must be at least two kinds of people. People who won’t hurt a fly...

Celluloid crusader Martin Scorsese's preservation nonprofit Film Foundation has resurrected classics since 1990, including the recent restoration of Powell and Pressburger's "Tales of Hoffmann." MoMA's ongoing Scorsese presentation centers around a rare, billboard-sized poster of that 1951 operatic fantasy, along with over 30 other marvelous spreads from the director's collection. Check out highlights below — courtesy of Quartz — including rare international posters for "On the Waterfront," "I Walked with a Zombie," "Sullivan's Travels" and a four-panel for "The Searchers." The MoMA exhibit accompanies a major screening series of Scorsese's handpicked favorites, and Film Foundation restorations of "Hoffmann," "On the Waterfront" and "The Red Shoes." Read More: How Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker Restored the Luster of Michael Powell and "The Tales of Hoffmann"...

David Stratton is the curator and patron of the inaugural Great Britain Retro Film Festival. Nineteen classic British films, rarely seen on the big screen, will feature in the festival from August 6-19 at the Hayden Orpheum Cremorne, Melbourne's Cinema Nova and the Windsor in Perth. Stratton says there will be many highlights, not least the opportunity to see some of these classic films painstakingly digitally restored and presented for the first time in Australia in the 4K format. .I.m really excited about this retrospective film festival, particularly as I spent my first twenty years in Britain and have always been very fond of British movies. To see this collection of films, on the big screen, as they were intended to be seen, is indeed a rare pleasure," he says. Highlights of the inaugural Great Britain Retro Film Festival include:

. Australian premiere screenings of The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), the...

A new 4K restoration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) has been traveling around the country and this weekend arrives in Austin and Nashville. More goings on: In New York, Glorious Technicolor and 35mm prints, Martin Scorsese's poster collection and Brunello Rondi's The Demon (1963). In London, an Abderrahmane Sissako season occasions a primer and, as the BFI has it, "Sci-Fi-London opens with The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened?, Jon Schnepp’s documentary on a 1998 superhero film that never was, and closes with SuperBob, Jon Drever’s action romcom rejoinder to the conventional superhero flick." » - David Hudson...

A new 4K restoration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) has been traveling around the country and this weekend arrives in Austin and Nashville. More goings on: In New York, Glorious Technicolor and 35mm prints, Martin Scorsese's poster collection and Brunello Rondi's The Demon (1963). In London, an Abderrahmane Sissako season occasions a primer and, as the BFI has it, "Sci-Fi-London opens with The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened?, Jon Schnepp’s documentary on a 1998 superhero film that never was, and closes with SuperBob, Jon Drever’s action romcom rejoinder to the conventional superhero flick." » - David Hudson...

Based on Shūsaku Endō's 1966 novel that follows Portuguese Jesuits who face violence and persecution while on a mission to remote 17th century Japan, "Silence" began shooting in January in Taiwan, which Ang Lee suggested as a location for Scorsese, and has now wrapped filming. The real work now begins for Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker. “I’ve wanted to make “Silence” for almost two decades, and it is finally a reality," said Martin Scorsese, whose film will be domestically distributed by Paramount, with foreign markets handled by AI Films/Im Global. "Silence,"one of our most anticipated films of the year, has now been slated for a 2016 release. Read More: How Scorsese and Schoonmaker Restored "The Tales of Hoffmann" "It’s a lifetime that the character of Father Rodrigues goes through that we witness," said Garfield at a press conference in Taiwan (video below). "It’s such an agonizing lifetime that he has to live.

By Mark Cerulli

The 1951 film The Tales of Hoffmann, the acclaimed British adaptation of the opera by Jaques Offenbach, was an early influence on major directors like Cecil B. DeMille, George Romero (who said it was “the movie that made me want to make movies”) and Martin Scorsese. They were drawn to co-directors, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger’s inventive camera work, vibrant color palette (each of the three acts has its own primary color) and smooth blending of film, dance and music. According to an interview found on Powell-Pressburger.org, Powell wanted to do a “composed film” – shot entirely to a pre-recorded music track, in this case, Offenbach’s opera. Not having to worry about sound meant he could remove the cumbersome padding that encased every Technicolor camera and really move it around production designer Hein Heckroth’s soaring sets. (Heckroth’s work on the film earned him two 1952 Oscar nominations.

Certain varietals of grandly gestured cinema inspire mad, inexplicable devotion among cinephiles: The films of Welles, Ophüls, Sirk, Leone, Scorsese, and Wong, for example, tend to magnetize our nerve endings more than our frontal lobes, and such infatuations often last a lifetime. Of course Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger belong on the list; it's not a question of whether you're in love with a Powell/Pressburger film, but which one.

Cultists stake their ground all over the duo's peculiarly mysterious and rhapsodic filmography, but the team was never as grand or wildly sensual as in The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), in a new 4K restoration at Film Forum. A hellzapoppin' filmization of the Offenbach opera, with stops pulled out by P&P's resident design team a...

Over the past decade, Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese's editor and Michael Powell's widow, has overseen the restoration of many of her husband's classic films. The latest is Powell and Pressburger's vibrant 1951 adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's opera of the same name, which can be seen in UK cinemas from 27 February

• The Tales of Hoffmann is being re-released by Park Circus and opens at the BFI Southbank and selected cinemas nationwide. It was restored by The Film Foundation and the BFI National Archive in association with Studiocanal Continue reading...

While We’re Young (Noah Baumbach)

The full line-up has been announced for this year’s Glasgow Film Festival, which runs from Wednesday 18th February to Sunday 1st March, and it features over 150 UK, Scottish or European premieres, as well as multiple rep screenings and special events.

The festival opens with the European premiere of While We’re Young, Noah Baumbach’s comedy follow-up to Frances Ha, starring Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried and Charles Grodin. The closing night gala on 1st March will be the UK premiere of Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s already much-vaunted darkly comic relationship drama Force Majeure.

Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund)

Additional UK premiere highlights include awards season darling Still Alice, Wim Wenders’ recently Oscar-nominated documentary The Salt of the Earth, Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart, and legendary Swedish director Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon...

In today's roundup of news and views: Chris Marker's photographs taken in North Korea, David Lynch's depiction of Los Angeles, a discussion of the work of Claire Denis, a Martin Scorsese symposium, revisiting Michael Powell's The Tales of Hoffmann, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Jean-Luc Godard's Notre musique, a collection of writing by George Kuchar, an interview with Abdellah Taïa, Christopher Hitchens on John Wayne, reviews of David Cronenberg's first novel, Tom Tykwer's plans for a television series set in Berlin in the 1920s, Joe Sarno Day at DC's and more. » - David Hudson...

In today's roundup of news and views: Chris Marker's photographs taken in North Korea, David Lynch's depiction of Los Angeles, a discussion of the work of Claire Denis, a Martin Scorsese symposium, revisiting Michael Powell's The Tales of Hoffmann, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Jean-Luc Godard's Notre musique, a collection of writing by George Kuchar, an interview with Abdellah Taïa, Christopher Hitchens on John Wayne, reviews of David Cronenberg's first novel, Tom Tykwer's plans for a television series set in Berlin in the 1920s, Joe Sarno Day at DC's and more. » - David Hudson...

Cinematography festival to present retrospective on the innovative British film-making duo, attended by Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

Camerimage (Nov 15-22) is to host a special retrospective around the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The film festival that celebrates cinematography, held in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, will be attended by Powell’s wife and three-time Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker as well as film scholars and Powell-Pressburger experts Erich Sargeant and Ian Christie.

Films of the due set to be screened at Camerimage include:

The Edge Of The World; 1937; cin. Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly, Ernest Palmer

One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing; 1942; cin. Ronald Neame

The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp; 1943; cin. Georges Périnal

A Canterbury Tale; 1944; cin. Erwin Hillier

‘I Know Where I’m Going!’; 1945; cin. Erwin Hillier

A Matter Of Life And Death; 1946; cin. Jack Cardiff

Black Narcissus; 1947; cin. Jack Cardiff

The Red Shoes; 1948; cin. Jack Cardiff

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