Film Festivals

THE Cannes Film Festival generates plenty of publicity, paparazzi and starlets parading in the skimpiest of bikinis -- some even leave their swimwear at home. The Sundance Film Festival has Robert Redford plus practically every major star, studio or distributor gallivanting around Park City, Utah. But the Los Angeles area is the go-to place for film festivals.

Some filmmakers want to show you their heart, while others are content to train their cameras on their navels. Director-writer-star Kevin Hamedani opts for the latter category with his quasi-autobiographical buddy comedy "Junk," an insular, fitfully amusing look at the film festival world from the perspective of two novice screenwriters. Hamedani and his co-writer and costar Ramon Isao made the political B-movie "Zombies of Mass Destruction. " In "Junk," they play fictionalized versions of themselves - Kaveh and Raul, feuding writing partners who collaborated on the political B-movie "Islama-Rama 2: Mustafa Lives" and need to produce another screenplay on the quick to impress a powerful Japanese genre producer Yukio Tai (James Hong)

The 2014 edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival will run April 10-13. The festival, in its fifth year, will coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Turner Classic Movies cable channel. Passes for the 2013 TCM Classic Film Fest will go on sale in November at prices from $249 to $1,599. TCM's Robert Osborne will again serve as official host of the festival, with Ben Mankiewicz also introducing various events. FULL COVERAGE: Film festivals The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel will again serve as the festival's official hotel and central gathering point, with screenings and events held at the TCL Chinese Theatre and Chinese 6 Theatres, as well as the Egyptian Theatre.

The Los Angeles edition of the Architecture & Design Film Festival kicks off its five-day salute to art, architecture, design, fashion and urban planning Wednesday with showings of "If You Build It," "Design Is One: Massimo & Leila Vignelli" and "16 Acres. " The L.A. film festival, running through Sunday, will feature 30 recent feature-length and short films from around the world. "There is something for everyone who likes design at the festival," said the festival's founder and director, architect Kyle Bergman.

Several film festivals are gracing the Southland this weekend, including the Hola Mexico Film Festival, which opens Thursday at the ArcLight Cinema in Hollywood. The festival is said to be the largest tribute to Mexican film in the world. The opening presentation is the U.S. premiere of " Bala Mordida." The closing night event on Tuesday is the L.A. premiere of "Alamar." http://www.holamexicoff.com European festival Also beginning Thursday is the South East European Film Festival, which opens at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles with the 1989 documentary vignette " The Wall ," as well as the U.S. premiere of the Serbian documentary " Goodbye, How Are You?"

A diverse quartet of film festivals open this weekend celebrating Spanish cinema, women directors,  horror films and international films. The American Cinematheque's Recent Spanish Cinema XVIII opens at the Egyptian Theatre on Thursday evening with 2012's “Blancanieves,” Pablo Berger's black-and-white silent version of the Snow White story that pays homage to the 1920s European silent film. Berger and actress Angelina Molina will appear at the event. The film is Spain's official Oscar entry in the foreign language film derby.

With 40 foreign-language Oscar contenders, a 15-hour movie about the history of movies, and appearances by Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Michelle Williams, this year's Palm Springs International Film Festival will cater to a wide spectrum of cinema fans. The 23rd annual festival opens Thursday with a screening of "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen," a British romantic comedy starring Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor. Other highlights include a showcase of Middle Eastern films, a tribute to Glenn Close and a photography exhibit of Marilyn Monroe portraits.

With a minute left before the deadline, Mike Cahill raced along Burbank's Providencia Avenue to get to Media City Church on time. He was rushing to get his short film, "In the Company of Sinners," into the 168 Film Festival, the culmination of a faith-based competition that helps Christian filmmakers break into the mainstream movie business. "I made it. Yes!" Cahill yelled, raising his clipboard above his head. Seconds later, Adekunle Ilori, who had fought traffic all the way from Lancaster, became the last of 73 competitors to qualify.

The third annual Method Fest Independent Film Festival is seeking feature and short film entries for the June 15-22 event, taking place at Laemmle Playhouse 7 Theaters in Pasadena. The festival--which emphasizes "breakout acting performances," will screen works in 16 millimeter, 35 millimeter, Beta SP and digital. The initial entry deadline is Feb. 20, with late entries accepted through April 1. Information: (310) 535-9230, or http://www.methodfest.com.

Look at the lineup for AFI Fest, which gets underway in Hollywood on Thursday, and you'll find a handful of award season hopefuls. It's a list that includes "The Artist," a black-and-white silent movie paying homage to the beginnings of cinema's Golden Age; "My Week With Marilyn," in which Michelle Williams takes on tragic icon Marilyn Monroe; and "Shame," an NC-17 rated film about a sex addict played by Michael Fassbender. While none of those movies has opened in theaters, they have all unspooled at high-profile festivals earlier in the year including in Cannes, Toronto and New York.

BEIJING -- Director-producer John Woo will head up the jury at the fourth annual Beijing International Film Festival , which kicks off April 16, organizers said. Woo, 67, is the Hong Kong helmer of films including "Mission: Impossible II," "A Better Tomorrow," "Red Cliff" and "Face/Off. " The weeklong festival will hold screenings at some 30 theaters throughout China's capital. The international jury will hand out the Tiantan Awards in 10 categories, including best feature, director, actor, actress, cinematography and screenplay.

A certain fatigue had set in for the multiplatinum-selling electronic dance music act Swedish House Mafia in 2012. By the three members' own estimate, they had partied hard five days a week for six years straight, consuming mass quantities of booze and chemical stimulation, living the hedonistic life associated with superstar DJs while traveling the globe to deliver their four-on-the-floor dance delirium to packed arenas. But just as EDM was becoming an increasingly mainstream concern - with the group selling out Madison Square Garden in nine-minutes flat and its smash single "Don't You Worry Child" moving millions of copies to top pop charts around the world - Swedish House Mafia made a controversial decision: to call it quits at the peak of the group's success.

The Tribeca Film Festival will feature a number of celebrities in front of and behind the camera when it kicks off its 13th edition next month. Chris Messina directs “Alex of Venice,” a marital drama that stars the filmmaker and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his wife, with a resurgent Don Johnson co-starring. Courtney Cox, meanwhile, will unveil “Just Before I Go,” about a hard-luck man (Sean William Scott) who returns to his hometown to try to settle some scores. Also premiering at the festival, organizers said Thursday, will be Victor Levin's “5 to 7,” a transatlantic romance starring Anton Yelchin, who mined similar territory in Sundance sensation “Like Crazy” a few years back; Susanna Fogel's “Life Partners,” the Millennial friendship dramedy that stars real-life partners Leighton Meester and Adam Brody as well as Gillian Jacobs and Gabourey Sidibe; the Nicole Holofcener-penned “Every Secret Thing,” a mystery involving disappearing children; the Joss Whedon-penned “In Your Eyes,” a metaphysical romance starring Zoe Kazan; and Jesse Zwick's “About Alex,” a dramatic comedy starring Aubrey Plaza, Max Greenfield and Maggie Grace that's described as a “Big Chill for our current social media moment.” BEST MOVIES OF 2013: Turan | Sharkey | Olsen Among the newly announced nonfiction films are the Ann Richards' doc “All About Ann” from Keith Patterson and Phillip Schopper, as well as “Bachelor”...

Not many first-time filmmakers get invited to the White House to show their work, but on Friday a group of K-12 auteurs will do just that at the inaugural White House Student Film Festival.  Hosted by President Obama, the festival will showcase student-created films about how technology is used in their classrooms and what role technology will play in education in the future. More than 2,000 videos were submitted after the festival was announced in November, and the finalists, as well as their parents and teachers, have been invited to have their movies screened in the White House's East Room.

Chelsea McInturff and Samantha Curley were eager for a public conversation about film, gay sexuality and Christian life, but they weren't sure whether it was the right time - or the right place. They stood nervously inside an auditorium at Pasadena's evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary last spring, worried the drama they were about to screen - - about a teen coming out as lesbian - would end up offending an audience of students and professors who didn't necessarily approve of its story line.

Romanian new-wave director Calin Peter Netzer ("Medal of Honor") and screenwriter Razvan Radulescu ("The Death of Mr. Lazarescu") were bouncing around ideas for a film about a dysfunctional family when they began talking about their own relationships with their parents. "We discovered we both have some kind of domineering mother," said Netzer over the phone from his home in Bucharest. The result, "Child's Pose," which opens Friday, is an Oedipal tale in the guise of a psychological thriller about a domineering mother and her obsessive love for her now-adult son. BEST MOVIES OF 2013: Turan | Sharkey | Olsen "Child's Pose," which won the Golden Bear last year at the Berlin Film Festival and was Romania's Oscar submission for foreign language films, derives its title from the well-known yoga pose.

How's this for the title of a film festival: Wild Walls. Pique your interest? If you're at all intrigued by the intersection of architecture and cinema, make a point to visit an unusual 10-day film festival being staged by the USC School of Fine Arts and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. Called "Wild Walls: Berlin/Los Angeles Film Festival of Architecture and Urbanism," the festival will begin at 7 p.m.

Behind concrete blast walls and battling a flickering power supply, Baghdad's international film festival opened in a hotel on Wednesday in another sign of how improved security is bringing life back to the city. There was even a red carpet rolled out, but guests to the event last held in 2005 had to be body-searched three times before they were allowed to walk down it. Despite a sharp drop in violence in Iraq since June, the directors of the 40 foreign films at the festival stayed away.

The Tribeca Film Festival is getting “Illmatic,” opening its annual springtime confab with “Time Is Illmatic,” a look at the influence of the classic Nas album 20 years after its release. Directed by artist One9 and written by Erik Parker, the film “traces Nas's influences and the insurmountable odds he faced in creating the greatest work of music from hip-hop's second golden era,” Tribeca organizers said in a statement. Nas said that he and other filmmakers “wanted this film to represent the real, from the storyline all the way down to the directors and producers.”  BEST MOVIES OF 2013: Turan | Sharkey | Olsen The rapper will perform the entire album after the world-premiere screening on April 16. Tribeca organizers said.