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Writer-director talks about his talented cast and shooting in Chile for Magic, Magic, debuting on DVD August 6

Chilean director Sebasti&#225n Silva first made his presence known stateside with the 2009 dramatic comedy The Maid, which he followed up the next year with Old Cats. Three years later, the filmmaker returns with not one, but two movies, both starring Michael Cera. Crystal Fairy was released earlier this summer, and the second, Magic, Magic, debuts on DVD August 6. The story follows a young American named Alicia (Juno Temple) who visits her cousin (Emily Browning) in Chile, and has to deal with her cousin's strange friends (Michael Cera, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Agust&#237n Silva) while trying to maintain her own sanity. I recently had the chance to speak with Sebasti&#225n Silva over the phone to discuss shooting in his homeland of Chile, working with the talented cast, and much more. Here's what he had to say.

Movies don't get more alternative than this. "Crystal Fairy" is drug-fueled road movie that, like both kinds of trips, has its highs, lows and mundane moments. That one ends up enjoying the journey is both a credit to terrific performances by stars Michael Cera and Gabby Hoffman and Chilean director-screenwriter Sebastian Silva's careful and yet freehanded guidance. (Silva's previous movies include "The Maid" and "Old Cats.) Cera plays Jamie, a self-involved, inconsiderate, twentysomething American spending time in Chile hanging out and sampling local narcotics. At a party one night, he meets a...

The comedic styles of Chilean director Sebastián Silva and Michael Cera couldn't have less in common. Silva, whose talent for dark humor became evident with 2009's Sundance award winner "The Maid" and further solidified with 2010's "Old Cats," probes the shadowy regions of domestic life and elevates them to absurd heights. For Cera, whose understated delivery has been ingrained in American pop culture since the advent of "Arrested Development," every aside comes across like a punchline. Silva unearths humor where appearances would suggest none exist; Cera always seems on the brink of delivering a neurotic joke. "Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus and 2012" -- or, if you prefer, just "Crystal Fairy" -- one of two collaborations between the filmmaker and star that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January (the other being "Magic Magic," which still has no U.S. distribution), showcases this inherent dissonance: While sometimes quite funny,...

Chilean director Sebastián Silva (The Maid, Old Cats, Life Kills Me) makes his English language debut with this psychological thriller featuring intimidation, hypnosis and maybe just a bit of overwrought villainy on the part of Michael Cera. Maria Full of Grace star Catalina Sandino and Emily "Babydoll" Browning also appear in supporting roles. The film played (quietly) at Sundance this year, and while it never secured a theatrical release, it is coming to DVD/VOD in August.  Personally, I'm still waiting for Juno Temple to become a bonafide star, as the right part has eluded her even as she brings a significant freshness to whatever project she turns up in. None of these (Killer Joe, Cracks, The Brass Teapot, Dirty Girl, Mr. Nobody) got any mainstream notice. While I...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Chile's new enfant terrible seems to have grown up overnight. Sebastian Silva did come to prominence with The Maid and has other films under his hat, but with two films at Sundance (Magic Magic and Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus), and Magic Magic in Berlin this year, he is unusually visible to all. We had a wonderful intense hour of conversation about his films during Sundance and I am playing back to my readers here.

Sebastian uses his three brothers Juan Andres, Jose Miguel and Augustin as foils in his creations and they bring a real life feel to his films. The brothers are earnest, have a natural interest in life around them. They are not actors. One is a psychologist, one is a sociologist and the other just graduated high school and has just moved to New York (where Sebastian lives) and wants to get involved in the film business. Sebastian's previous breakout hit, The Maid (Isa: Shoreline), cast this younger brother, Agustín Silva, who is also in Crystal Fairy and Magic Magic. He even has offers for representation now.

All Sebastian’ films deal with cross-cultural incompetence, in a comic-tragic way.

The films, especially Crystal Fairy seem so casual but as I spoke with Sebastian at Sundance where his two films premiered, I discovered how carefully he thinks out every detail. The actors themselves are quite easy going about the preparation and working time; Crystal Fairy was more an improvisation based on a trip to find and take the cactus which produces mescaline. The enchantment of the film unfolds easily, as if without effort. Sebastian notes that the film is about experiencing compassion and the character played by Michael Cera, so self-centered and so maladroit, does finally experience compassion, but he does not grow miraculously after that. Similarly, Crystal who provides the revelation of the trip grows into her own person but not totally or immediately. She finally says her real name – but to a stranger; she goes off on her own in the end out of a sort of embarrassment. Michael’s character also feels compassion for the first time but in the end he still fails to appreciate her great sadness. Her attempts to resuscitate a dead rabbit are the most pathetic signs of her fantasy life and Jamie is correct in telling her to see beauty in things as they are.The foil to these two naïve lost gringos in Chile are the three brothers who take life as it comes and do not trouble themselves too much about the curves and bumps in their paths.

Sebastian was a pictorial artist of sorts and a musician, but he spent 6 months in a small film school in Chile and afterward he filmed everything. He began writing and discovered that storytelling is the most difficult of all the arts; he read Sy Fields to learn the structure of the narrative and wrote 3 screenplays which went into a drawer. The 4th was Life Kills Me which just showed January 16 at Moma and was funded in part by Global Film Initiative. He took Crystal Fairy to Fabula and Pablo Lorrain (No) said yes. Sebastian did have a reputation in Chile for his music and had an art show as well, so the Lorrain brothers knew he could get things done and they helped him produce. As he directed, he realized this was his métier. When he is with good people in good surroundings, with fun sets, he cares about the experience of making the film. It is exhausting to deal with one story so long, so the story must have many layers with strong details, private fetishes. He quoted Tennessee Williams who said that whenever he wrote something, he had to have a sexual desire for one of his characters. While Sebastian does not share that he does need many layers to work with. Therefore he can’t do others’ material. He spends at least two years with his own material and subject matter. He finds filmmaking is therapeutic for him and in the case of The Maid, for his entire family. In Old Cats, an Alzheimer story, it was important for him to deal with aging and deterioration. When he went to the Golden Globes for The Maid, he was on a panel with Michael Haneke and both were working on projects on aging.

Magic Magic is his 5th movie. Except for a cash prize he won in Poland for The Maid, no money has ever come back to him from his movies. But he does get directors fees and for that, if no backend ever comes, he can still get along. Never has he received government funding for his films. He has been living in Brooklyn for 12 years.

Sebastian considers himself a sort of false mystic and making the films brings him closer (hopefully) to a sort of enlightenment. Cultural dissonances seem to attract him as can be seen in The Maid, Crystal Fairy and Magic Magic in which the fragile Alicia played by Juno Temple so totally misconstrues the foreign world she is immersed in, and so little regard for her comfort is shown by people acting as if no foreign element has entered their world that she is perhaps totally obliterated…

You can read more about Sebastian’s views in the Sundance interview : http://www.sundance.org/festival/article/a-conversation-with-sebastian-silva/

Or watch and learn here on YouTube.

I am looking forward to seeing how these two films take on life in distribution, and to seeing what Sebastian comes up with next.

Magic Magic, produced by Silva’s Braven Films and Christine Vachon’s Killer Films along with Mike White and David Bernad’s L.A. company Rip Torn Films, will be in Berlin and is being sold by 6 Sales. UTA is repping U.S. rights to both films.

It's always something of a gamble when filmmakers operate outside of their safety nets, but Sebastián Silva's movies have never played it safe. Both "Old Cats" and "The Maid" took the mold of family dramas and transcended them with a mixture of dark humor, physical violence and miscommunication. The tricky balance paid off, but with "Magic Magic," Silva hits a wall. More formally ambitious than "Crystal Fairy," one of two movies directed by Silva and co-starring Cera that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, "Magic Magic" takes the form of a serious-minded thriller but lacks a reason to care for any of its characters. Cera, playing against type in a stony-faced role, sends this project further out of whack, a shame given the caliber of talent associated with its creators. But that's not to say the movie is entirely devoid of intrigue. The story revolves around a group of Americans and Chileans heading out.

Magic Magic

Directed by Sebastián Silva

Written by Sebastián Silva

Chili 2013

Sundance alum Sebastián Silva (The Maid, Old Cats) returns to this year’s festival with two offerings, each as similar as they are different. Magic Magic, Silva’s entry into the genre oriented Midnight category, revolves around an ill-fated road trip to a remote location off the coast of Chile. Along the way reluctant tag along Alicia (Juno Temple), begins a decent into hysteria, and unfortunately for her, when her companions aren’t fueling her sleep deprived paranoia, they’re generally ignoring her pleas for help.

Temple channels her inner damsel in distress, in a harrowing and skin-crawling performance, as the off kilter Alicia. Silva stated during the Q&A that one of the ideas that intrigued him while writing the script was the horrific notion that a person with a propensity for schizophrenia, would go unnoticed in their time of need.

Today I finally felt like I was hitting my stride. I found a parking place on the street this early Sunday morning and made my 8:30am screening of What They Don't Talk About When They Talk About Love which takes place in a special school for the mute, deaf and blind in Indonesia. A series of love stories told with a gentleness most easily summarized by one of its characters, Boys love what they see and girls love what they hear. The film is a sweet look — not always innocent — at love inside this special school, told with a narrative style and rhythm dictated by its actors being mostly blind, deaf or mute. Kiril Razlogov, Artistic Director of the Moscow Film Festival, and I had a great long talk about Russia, the new Ministry of Culture and how film fits into its political system and what is happening today with Russian films as we walked to the Glbt annual brunch at the Grub Steak (I can no longer recall who sponsors this I have been going to it for such a long time) I had thought it started at 10am but at 10:30am the line to get in was down the block and no one was going in until 11am, so we made our own party greeting those in line whom we knew. It was great to see Marie from Wolfe Releasing along with her colleague and to hear about the great response they have been getting internationally to their online movies. Kiril and she discussed Russian films and digital delivery. She is still deciding whether to go to Berlin as she is so busy at the home office. I looked for Jenny Olsen whom I always see there if no where else but she was not there yet. We visited with a few other friends and acquaintances and then Kiril and I parted ways as he went to see a film (he's concentrating on seeing the U.S. Films and I'm concentrating on international and particularly Latino and Eastern European films). I went to interview director Sebastian Silva whose Old Cats was in Sundance 2009 and The Maid which won the Dramatic Jury Award here in 2011 and whose film Crystal Fairy so impressed me this year. I will write about this wonderful interview after I have seen the second film he has here, Magic Magic, produced by Frida Torresblanco and Christine Vachon. My discussion after the interview with producer rep and publicist, Stephen Raphael of Required Viewing, who also happens to have been born in Chile, about the film's producers, Fabula, the company of Pablo and Claude Lorrain (No, Tony Manero) and the line producer who also line produced Il Futuro, the Chile-Italian coproduction film I also saw today verged on the weird for the number of coincidences and inter-relationships. The oddest coincidence was that while Stephen was awaiting his two Chilean clients to arrive at Sundance from Santiago, his luggage was lost and they discovered it had been sent mistakenly to Santiago! Between films I went to parties: UCLA / The Wrap party where I did not see Teri Schwartz, Dean of the UCLA film school or Sharon Waxman of The Wrap, Texas Party, but I was unable to squeeze in the Ida cocktail to which Laurie Ann Schag of Netflix and the the Ida Treasurer invited me as I had to run back to the Holiday Village to see The World According to Dick Cheney, a 110 minute life saga of this man who ran our government into the ground as told by himself, a man unable to think of a single fault in his own character when asked the question along with other questions about himself, all of which he could answer with a flawless alacrity – except for that one. He could only conclude that his only fault was not being able to name one. I went to see the Serbian film Circles at the urging of my friend Geno Lechner who played the wife of the protagonist. The fault of this film was in identifying characters 12 years after a horrible incident that took place among the characters which determined the story. I still do not know who was who and yet I understood the relevance of the story very much, especially because I was just in Sarajevo for the Festival and Talent Campus this summer and loved it so very much. This played out the tragedy of a man whose good deed in saving a Muslim cigarette vendor in Croatia during the Serbian Croatia War created circles of greater import like a stone which is dropped in the water. Finally, I changed my mind from seeing Wajma to going with the flow and seeing Escape from Tomorrow which is receiving lots of press because of possible copyright infringement of Walt Disney's IP. This surreal comedy of a man going insane at Disneyland or Disney World left me feeling dizzy and surreal myself. I think it is good as a work of art but without any commercial potential. I think, like the Barbie Doll enactment of the Karen Carpenter Story so many years ago, Sundance may be the only chance for anyone to see this film. With that as my finale for the evening, I drove home feeling disoriented to meet a depressed Harlan who had been unable to procure any tickets for the evening screenings. For having done a full day's work without a flaw, the evening's films and lack thereof left the two of us out of sorts. Oh well, there's always tomorrow, but I'm already undecided about whether to attend Acme PR's inaugural breakfast or go to see The Lifeguard. I've had enough docs on political issues and so will skip 99% The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film. There is always so much to do that no matter what you choose, you wonder if you should be somewhere else; that is the dilemma of these festivals with so many choices! See you tomorrow!

The comedic stylings of Chilean director Sebastián Silva and Michael Cera couldn't have less in common. Silva, whose talent for dark humor became evident with 2009's Sundance award winner "The Maid" and further solidified with 2010's "Old Cats," probes the shadowy regions of domestic life and elevates them to absurd heights. For Cera, whose understated delivery has been ingrained in American pop culture since the advent of "Arrested Development," every aside comes across like a punchline. Silva unearths humor where appearances would suggest none exist; Cera always seems on the brink of delivering a neurotic joke. "Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus and 2012," one of two collaborations between the filmmaker and star premiering at the Sundance Film Festival (the other being "Magic Magic"), showcases this inherent dissonance: While sometimes quite funny, the movie ultimately features a losing battle between two...

Park City, Utah — Film festivals can get off to a slow start. All that planning, all that travel booking for stars coming to pillage the gift suites, then everyone stands around waiting for a single movie, that big opening-night premiere, to get things rolling.

It's a lot to ask of one movie to set a tone for scores of films to follow over a week and a half. The Cannes Film Festival practically put itself on suicide watch in 2008 by opening with the bleak plague drama "Blindness." A year later, Cannes organizers lightened up and started with the warm-hearted animated tale "Up."

The Sundance Film Festival, which begins Thursday, used to face a similar dilemma. How do you pick that one film to stand as torchbearer for the 120 movies to come?

Three years ago, Sundance founder Robert Redford and festival director John Cooper scrapped the glitzy opening-night premiere and jumped right into the competition lineup,...

Thanks to Sebastian Silva’s output/frequent visits to Park City, the country of Chile has been well repped at the festival, so after the World Cinema Jury Prize Dramatic winning The Maid (Sundance ’09) and Old Cats (Sundance ’11), his patronage should continue once again with his first English language and genre film Magic Magic starring Juno Temple, Emily Browning, Michael Cera, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Agustín Silva and on the tech side the film is equipped with Cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Editor Alex Rodríguez (Children of Men) and Composers Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans (Martha Marcy May Marlene).

Gist: While vacationing with a friend in the spectacular Chilean lake district, young American traveler Alicia (Temple) begins seeing disturbing images visible only to her. Her best friend Sarah (Browning) suddenly returns to Santiago, leaving Alicia in an unfamiliar country surrounded by strangers (Cera and Sandino Moreno). More and more she unravels, seeing...

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Completing his triptych of films set during Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet’s rule (Tony Manero, Post Mortem), Pablo Larrain’s No examines the inner-machinations of one particularly tricky advertising campaign, as Pinochet’s opposition desperately seeks to expose his horrific human rights abuses. Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal) is the savvy advertising exec tasked with heading up the tricky task, fleeting as he does between confidence, cynicism, fear and self-doubt throughout the tumultuous creative period.

Shot on the U-matic used by TV stations of the period, No is presented in a 4:3 screen ratio, and absolutely won’t look great on Blu-Ray; Larrain’s images, somewhat aptly, are peppered with garish artifacts and trails that only accentuate and further immerse us in the late-80s feel. At once a bizarre and brilliant conceit, Larrain free-wheels between a committed verite style and scenes which are quite obviously camera set-ups,...

#71. Magic, Magic Director/Writer: Sebastián SilvaProducers: Killer Films' Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, David Bernad, Frida Torresblanco (Rudo y Cursi) and actor/scribe Mike WhiteDistributor: Rights Available The Gist: This is the story of a girl on vacation in Chile with some friends, Alicia begins to lose her mind when she starts seeing disturbing images which seem to be visible only to her...(more) Cast: Emily Browning, Michael Cera, Juno Temple and Catalina Sandino Moreno List Worthy Reasons...: Rooted in his backdrop of his native Chile, I'm curious in seeing how Sebastián Silva's might move into a genre item that we normally associate to the Guillermo del Toro's of the business especially after work on minimalist portraits of The Maid and Old Cats. We like three of the actresses he has managed to package in this horror thriller. Release Date/Status?: We look forward to...

Michael Cera ('Superbad') is one lucky fella. The actor gets to share screentime with not one, not two, but three hotties on the set of new Sebastian Silva ('The Maid', 'Old Cats') helmed horror flick 'Magic Magic'. Shock Till You Drop have spotted the first piece of promotional art for the movie and warns us to 'Beware of the Unseen'. The teaser also features the credits for the trio of beauties thatare Emily Browning -below ('Sucker Punch', 'The Uninvited'), Juno Temple ('Year One') and Catalina Sandino Moreno ('The Twilight Saga: Eclipse'). Sadly we've got quite a wait on this one which is set to shoot in Chile next year from a script penned by Silva himself....

Today starts the 16th edition of Ibero-Latin-American Film Festival of Montreal, Festivalissimo, with the Canadian premiere of La Vida De Los Peces (The Life of Fish), by Chilean filmmaker Matías Bize, presented tonight, at Cinema Impérial (1430 de Bleury Street, Montreal).

Right after its opening ceremony, the 16th edition of Festivalissimo will be continuing at Nfb Cinema (1564 St-Denis) with the presentation of major movie premieres of films that have participated to the most important film festivals in the world, such as Cannes, Venice, Locarno, Berlin, Guadalajara and San Sebastián.

During the first days of its new edition, Festivalissimo will therefore host the Canadian premieres of La Mirada Invisible (The Invisible Eye) of Argentinean filmmaker Diego Lerman, presented in 2010 at the Directors Fortnight.

There will also be a screening of Post Mortem, by Pablo Larraín, sacred Best Latin American film at the 2011 Guadalajara Film Festival for its daring and terrifying replay Chilean...

It's always a good day when not one, not two but three(!) hotties all sign up to a horror project! And today is that very day as we see Emily Browning ('Sucker Punch', 'The Uninvited'), Juno Temple ('Year One') and Catalina Sandino Moreno ('The Twilight Saga: Eclipse') all join the cast of new Chile based thriller 'Magic, Magic'. The new indie horror from Chilean helmer Sebastian Silva ('The Maid', 'Old Cats') is a long way off from shooting I would imagine due to it's cast members, including the already cast Michael Cera ('Arrested Development'), and their busy upcoming schedules. But we shall see. Why not take a peek and the hottie threesome below....

In an intriguing collision of talents, it has been announced that Chilean director Sebastian Silva - director of critical hits La Nana (The Maid) and Old Cats - will be making his English language debut with the Michael Cera starring thriller Magic, Magic.Though Cera is the first name attached to the picture it appears that he may not technically be the lead, with the story revolving around a girl vacationing with friends in a remote area of Chile when she starts undergoing a mental breakdown. My assumption is that the female role - as yet uncast - will be the true lead of the picture with Cera as the most prominent male role.What makes this such an intriguing match is not so much the...

The 16th annual Festivalissimo, the Ibero-Latin-American film festival of Montreal, opens May 18th and runs until June 5 with a selection of thirty films culled from the international festival circuit. The competition for the El Sol prize for best feature film, best actor and actress will open with Matías Bize’s La Vida De Los Peces (The Life of Fish, and closes with Federico Vieroj’s La Vida Util (A Useful Life). In addition to the Official Selection films in competition, Festivalissimo also presents a series of films out of competition which represent Latin-American society of the past and present, and a selection of the most commercially successful films at the Latin American box office.

A few must-see films from this year’s lineup:

La Vida Util (A Useful Life) Federico Vieroj, Uruguay-Spain, 2010

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Synopsis:

After twenty-five years, Cinemateca Uruguaya’s most devoted employee, Jorge (real-life Uruguayan film critic Jorge Jellinek...

As they say, you can pick your nose but not your family. Old Cats, Sebastian Silva’s farcical yet all-too-real examination of one dysfunctional family in Chile, stars Claudia Celedón and Catalina Saavedra as girlfriends Rosario and Hugo, who attempt to swindle Rosario’s ailing mother, Isadora, to fund their harebrained business ventures and Rosario’s appetite for nose candy.

Isadora, expertly portrayed by Belgica Castro, is suffering from dementia. One moment she stares into space, forgetting who and where she is, and the next, she snaps back into a lucid state, horrified that her once-sharp mind is unraveling. When Rosario and Hugo arrive, though, Isadora makes an extra effort to remain aware of her surroundings. After all, the only reason Rosario would visit would be to borrow – or outright steal – her money.

Rosario barges into Isadora’s apartment, histrionically babbling about her cat allergies before disappearing into the bathroom...

People who complain that Michael Cera always plays the same character haven't seen his last two films. In Miguel Arteta's Youth in Revolt, Cera played a dual role that included an evil, uber-confident asshole named Francois Dillinger an in Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Cera was a legitimate bad-ass, literally fighting for the girl he loved. While both roles toy with Cera's quiet, everyman appeal, he's obviously trying be more expansive with each movie. Case in point, he's currently learning Spanish to star in the next film by indie-darling Sebastian Silva. Read more after the break. In an interview with The Playlist [1], Miguel Artera, who is promoting his latest film Cedar Rapids, said the following of his Youth in Revolt star. [Cera's] gonna do a movie with [Silva] in Chile. He’s spending five hours a day learning Spanish. He follows his own heart. Silva is best known for The Maid,...

After announcing the 58 films in four categories that would be eligible for awards at Sundance, the film fest has now announced the next 57 movies to be screened this coming January. These 57 films are of course out of competition and will be included in Premieres, Next, Spotlight, New Frontiers and Midnight categories. Most are big name projects from already established filmmakers and some have already made their way around film festival in 2010. The list includes Kevin Smith’s Red State, Tom McCarthy’s Win Win, Morgan Spurlock’s documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Submarine, I Saw the Devil (which had plenty of buzz at Tiff) and my most anticipated film of 2011, Hobo With a Shotgun.

Here is the full list:

Premieres

To showcase the diversity of contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors as well as world premieres of highly anticipated films.

Festival Adds New Native Showcase

As Previously Announced, Slacker to Screen From the Collection

Park City, Ut – Sundance Institute announced today the lineup of films selected to screen in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival out-of-competition sections Next (<=>), Spotlight, New Frontier, Park City at Midnight, as well as a new Native Showcase. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. The complete list of films is available at http://www.sundance.org/festival/.

Trevor Groth, Director of Programming said, “The Sundance Film Festival is uniquely a festival of discovery and we are once again privileged to showcase the work of talented new artists, including a special section devoted to Native filmmakers. But it’s also exciting to see returning directors honing their skills and emerging with dazzling new films. And the Next section highlights visionary work that shows aesthetic creativity is not limited by budget.

Yes, you read that right, they are out of competition but into lesbians courtesy of the midnight lineup.

What do we have to look forward to waiting two years for? Let's see..

Hobo With a Shotgun

Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (you had me at lesbian)

Attenberg (I'm loving the coming Greek weird wave)

And many many more films, some of which we'll probably never get to see. Damn.

Full list after the break.

Next ()

Eight American films selected for their innovative and original work in low- and no-budget filmmaking. Each is a world premiere.

Bellflower / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Evan Glodell) - A ballad for every person who has ever loved and lost - with enough violence, weapons, action and sex to tell a love story with apocalyptic stakes. Cast: Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Tyler Dawson, Rebekah Brandes.

The Lie / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Leonard; Screenwriters: Jeff Feuerzeig,...

Following yesterday's announcement of the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions, the Sundance Film Festival has unveiled the second part of their lineup, which includes the more starry-eyed Premieres section, the best-of-fests Spotlight section, the sure-to-be-culty Park City at Midnight section, the low-budget Next section, and the more experimental New Frontier section (an extension of New Frontier Program, the collection of video art installations which has already been noted here for playing James Franco's dramatic multimedia examination of "Three's Company.")

In addition to the return of filmmakers like "Chuck & Buck"'s Miguel Arteta, "Clockwatchers" director Jill Sprecher, Kevin Smith and "The Station Agent"'s Thomas McCarthy to Park City, the festival will also welcome less frequent or first-time Sundance attendees such as Hollywood types Al Pacino ("Son of No One") and Tobey Maguire ("The Details") and mumblecore alums Joe Swanberg ("Uncle Kent," which announced it's been...

The Sundance Film Festival announced the in competition film line-up for the film festival running January 20th through January 30th 2011 in Park City, Utah.

Today the festival has announced the line-up for the non-competition films and there is one hell of a line-up! There are a ton of great films that will be premiering at the festival, and if you're going you have a lot of great films to choose from!

Each film has an incredible cast and a great story. These films include Cedar Rapids, about a man traveling to an insurance conference, featuring Ed Helms, John C. Reilly and Sigourney Weaver; Kevin Smith's Red State, about a group of misfits encounter extreme fundamentalism in Middle America; The Details, about domestic tensions spawned by raccoons with Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney, Ray Liotta, Dennis Haysbert; I Melt With You, starring Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven, Rob Lowe, Christian McKay,...

Yesterday, we reported the films playing in-competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Today, Sundance has announced the films playing in the out-of-competition lineups for “Next(<=>)”, Spotlight, Native Showcase, and Park City at Midnight. Among the films playing are Hobo with a Shotgun, the critically-acclaimed Submarine, Lucky McKee’s new horror film The Woman, and Meek’s Cutoff starring Michelle Williams and Paul Dano. Each lineup has its own mission statement that relates to the films selected. The festival will also be showing Richard Linklater’s Slacker at part of its “From the Collection” lineup.

Hit the jump to check out the new films announced. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 20 – 30th.

Here’s the press release and lineups:

2011 Sundance Film Festival Announces Films In Next (<=>), Spotlight, New Frontier And Park City At Midnight

Festival Adds New Native Showcase

As Previously Announced, Slacker to Screen From the Collection

Native Showcase...

Well, yesterday, we saw the full list of films in-competition; today, we get to see those titles that have been selected for Sundance 2011′s out-of-competition lineup.

And as I said with yesterday’s post, I’ll be going over the complete list, highlighting titles that need to be, taking into consideration this blog’s specific interests. The only title that immediately stands out is Brit John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses, which MsWOO positively reviewed, after seeing it at the London Film Festival in October. Read her review Here.

But look for future posts profiling any other titles I deem worthy. I’ve applied for press credentials to attend next year’s festival. I won’t know until the 23rd of this month, whether I’ve been granted press access or not. If I am, I will attend the festival; and if I’m not, well, I probably won’t.

Well, if the Competition titles at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival don't generate any early year Oscar buzz, I think it's safe to say the Out of Competition titles will. Several films that have already been seen and positively reviewed can be found in the fest's Spotlight Line-Up along with a batch of anticipated hopefuls in the Premiere Section.

Beginning with the festival's premieres, Miguel Arteta (Youth in Revolt) is bringing Cedar Rapids to Park City where it will debut before it hits theaters only a couple weeks later on February 11. "Big Love" co-producers, Jill and Karen Sprecher are bringing an impressive cast for their crime drama The Convincer. Jacob Aaron Estes's The Details, which was shot only a few miles from my house in the Queen Anne district of Seattle, arrives with Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney and Tobey Maguire in tow.

Mark Pellington (The Mothman Prophecies) will debut I Melt with You,...

Wednesday, the 2011 Sundance Film Festival announced the 58 films in four categories [1] that would be eligible for awards. Today, they've announced the next slice of their line up - 57 out of competition films in the Premieres, Next, Spotlight, New Frontiers and Midnight categories. This is generally where you get many of the bigger name projects and this year is no exception. We already knew [2] that Kevin Smith's Red State would be on the list, but there's also Tom McCarthy's new film Win Win, Morgan Spurlock's documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, the highly buzzed-about Submarine, Fantastic Fest darling I Saw the Devil as well as Hobo With a Shotgun and a whole bunch more including films with Al Pacino, Tobey Maguire, Jeremy Piven, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Paul Rudd and others. As we said yesterday, the announcement of the movies playing the 2011 Sundance Film Festival is like looking into our film futures.

Yesterday we revealed the in-competition line-up for this years Sundance Film Festival. Today the programmers have announced the second wave, the out-of-competition line-up. It includes six categories and you can check them all out below. We already knew Kevin Smith‘s Red State would be screening, as he announced on his podcast last night. The rest of this out-of-competition line-up is pretty unbelievable.

We get Cedar Rapids (from Youth In Revolt‘s Miguel Arteta), Mark Pellington‘s I Melt With You, My Idiot Brother starring Paul Rudd, Tom McCarthy‘s Win Win, as well as Dito Montiel‘s third feature The Son of No One. We also have new documentaries by Morgan Spurlock and Eugene Jarecki. Some of my favorite Tiff films are also making an appearance, including Submarine (pictured above) and Meek’s Cutoff. Check it out below.

Premieres

To showcase the diversity of contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance...

"Sebastián Silva and Pedro Peirano's Old Cats — like Silva's last directorial effort, The Maid, which Peirano co-wrote — walks a fine line between empathetic treatment of its characters and voyeuristic freakshow gazing," writes Andrew Schenker in Slant. "If it's the latter that ultimately wins out, particularly in regard to the elderly Isadora (Bélgica Castro), battling both oncoming dementia and her daughter's demands to sign over her apartment, then it's at least partially balanced by a tendency to view this principal character with a measure of non-condescending understanding."...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: The 48th annual New York Film Festival draws to a close this weekend with screenings of “Meek’s Cutoff,” Joe Dante’s “The Hole 3D,” and Sunday’s gala screening of Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” with Matt Damon in the lead.

Before the curtain falls on the Gotham fest, several New York journalists are summarizing what they saw, and what impact the festival continues to have on film’s expanding landscape.

The Wall Street Journal, for instance, encourages patrons to think outside the marquee and chase titles that lack the star power of “Hereafter” or “Cutoff.” Sebastian Silva and Pedro Peirano’s “Old Cats” gets a nod, as does the 1946 film “A Matter of Life and Death” by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which stars Roger Livesy and David Niven and screens as a tribute to cinematographer Jack Cardiff.

Film Journal International, meanwhile, predicts...

After wowing audiences and critics with the understated but nonetheless absurd "The Maid (La nana)" on last year's festival rounds, Sebastián Silva is back to the big screen with his new film, "Old Cats (Gatos viejos)," co-directed and co-written with "The Maid" co-writer Pedro Peirano. In town for the film's Nyff World Premiere screenings on Friday and Saturday, Silva and Peirano answered questions from Nyff programmer Melissa Anderson and an enthusiastic ...

After wowing audiences and critics with the understated but nonetheless absurd "The Maid (La nana)" on last year's festival rounds, Sebastián Silva is back to the big screen with his new film, "Old Cats (Gatos viejos)," co-directed and co-written with "The Maid" co-writer Pedro Peirano. In town for the film's Nyff World Premiere screenings on Friday and Saturday, Silva and Peirano answered questions from Nyff programmer Melissa Anderson and an enthusiastic ...

The non-mentions of Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, Anthony Cordier's Happy Few, Monte Hellman's Road to Nowhere, Alex de la Iglesia's A Sad Trumpet Ballad and Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg in today's line-up announcement for the 48th New York Film Festival means these titles become prime candidates for a Tiff North American premiere and in the same measure, equates to a Nyff rich in Venice and the Cannes Film Festivals offerings but not many world premieres. A noteworthy exception worth pointing out is from the country of Chile. After the critically acclaimed indie gem, The Maid, Sebastien Silva's third film, titled Old Cats (Los Gatos Viejos) is a rare world preem that cracked the Nyff line-up. When we last interviewed Silva, he had mentioned he'd be working on Second Child and subsequently he signed a two-picture deal with Elephant Eye Films moving "Old Cats" at the top of his list.

French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche’s film centered on the story of Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, otherwise derogatorily known as the Hottentot Venus, will be screening at the New York Film Festival, which begins its run September 24th. You know I’ll be there to see it, with my thoughts on the film to follow on this blog.

Recall back in April, we alerted you to the fact that the film was being made under the title Black Venus (which will remain), claiming its spot as the first feature-length film to have Baartman as its subject – at least, that’s what my research tells me.

At the time of my initial post, I couldn’t find much info on the project; however, I did think it odd that the list of cast members on the film’s IMDb page didn’t (and still don’t) list a Saartjie Baartman (or even Hottentot Venus) as a character.

The folks over at the Film Society of Lincoln Center have announced their main program for the 48th annual New York Film Festival running from September 24th - October 10th.

In addition to the already announced open night heavy hitter that is David Fincher's The Social Network, they've added another Hollywood big gun with Clint Eastwood's supernatural tale Hereafter, starring Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard. The centerpiece film will be Julie Taymor's latest Shakespeare spectacle, The Tempest.

The real meat of the line-up *ahem* comes with Mexican cannibal feature, We Are What We Are, a film we've been pretty supportive of here at Twitch since its Cannes premiere. The complete list for the main slate is listed below with the expected bevy of Cannes holdovers and late year awards hopefuls.

Tickets go on sale to the public starting September 12th. And yes, we press hope to...

The New York Times announced the 2010 New York Film Festival lineup this morning. They even beat the festival's own website to the news. Kyle Chandler would be proud.

Anyway, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, organizers of Nyff, had already announced David Fincher's Facebook biopic "The Social Network" as their Opening Night film. Now they've added twenty-five features to their roster, plus Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter" as the Closing Night selection. The Times describes the film as the story of "the gradual connections of an American psychic (played by Matt Damon); a French journalist (Cécile de France) who has a brush with death in the 2004 tsunami; and a London schoolboy who loses his twin brother (Frankie and George McLaren)." "Hereafter," by the way, makes nine movies for Eastwood in nine years. It's like he and Woody Allen are locked in a weird game of directorial chicken or something.

As usual,...

We previously reported that David Fincher’s The Social Network would open this year’s New York Film Festival. Today, the Festival has announced that Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter will be the closing night film. The movie [via The Playlist]:

“Follows three plotlines: Matt Damon plays a psychic in San Francisco who can’t connect emotionally with his girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) and wants nothing to do with his powers; Cecile DeFrance plays a French TV journalist/talk show host who has a near death experience in the 2004 Tsunami and the third character is a young boy whose twin brother dies in an accident (played by unknowns Frankie and George McClaren). Slowly as the script evolves, their lives interconnect.”

As we reported last week, Eastwood describes the film as his first “chick flick” but one that won’t make men “want to stick a Swiss Army knife in their leg.” Hit the...

It's another "Cannes heavy" selection this year for the 48th edition of the Nyff. With the majority of the titles coming from the Croisette (look out for some personal faves in Cristi Puiu's Aurora and Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte) and the Lido (Abdellatif Kechiche's Black Venus, Kelly Reichardt's Meek’s Cutoff, Hong Sang-soo's Oki’s Movie, Pablo Larrain's Post Mortem, Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Ruins, Alexei Fedorchenko's Silent Souls, plus Raul Ruiz's miniseries Mysteries of Lisbon), I figure it be fun to take a closer look at the non-Cannes/Venice offerings. Not sure if this constitutes the film's world premiere, but with a date closer to its theatrical release than what Tiff's dates could provide, Clint Eastwood's Hereafter will be closing the festival. Before it preems on PBS in November, Michael Epstein's Lennon NYC will show --- the doc comes with...

Clint Eastwood will unveil his Peter Morgan-scripted Matt Damon-starrer Hereafter as the closing night film of the New York Film Festival. The fest previously set the David Fincher-directed Facebook film The Social Network to open the festival and Julie Taymor's The Tempest to be its centerpiece. All three figure to be players in the Oscar race this year. Here is the rest of the Nyff program: Another Year Mike Leigh, 2010, UK Aurora Cristi Puiu, 2010, Romania Black Venus (Venus noire) Abdellatif Kechiche, France Carlos Olivier Assayas, 2010, France Certified Copy (Copie conformé) Abbas Kiarostami, 2010, France/Italy Film Socialisme Jean-Luc Godard, 2010, Switzerland Inside Job Charles Ferguson, 2010, USA Le Quattro Volte Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010, Italy Lennon NYC, Michael Epstein, 2010, USA Meek's Cutoff Kelly Reichardt, 2010, USA My Joy (Schastye moe) Sergei Loznitsa, 2010, Ukraine/Germany Mysteries Of Lisbon (Misterios de Lisboa) Raul Ruiz, Portugal/France Of Gods And Men (Des homes et des dieux) Xavier Beauvois,...