2007

text by Paolo Bernardi

The countdown has already started. You have time till Saturday before the high noon train comes. While waiting you should keep your target within range and be ready to shoot. But keep your Colts in the pocket - in this case your mobile phones will be more useful, because the Man coming from far away is not Frank Miller but Christopher Coppola. The Idea of PAH-FEST is not new at all, neither original. Some years ago those young Frenchmen from Les Cahiers had already spoken about liberation from traditional cinema, labelling it »Le Cinema du Papa«. They started to »desecrate« the camera, using it as a pen, putting it on the street, making it skate - they decided to move it down from the tripod (symbol of the motionless of a shooting style, and also of the motionless of a system allowing few people to express themselves) towards »real« life. These were the foundations, but PAH-FEST goes beyond. Read more »

for Isola Cinema festival by Neil Young

The sun is shining, the water is blue, the cats are unfriendly, and here we are again at what I think of (being an old-fashioned Brit, used to old-fashioned terminology) as the Izola Film Festival. Of course, the official title is Kino Otok / Isola Cinema, these being the Slovenian and Italian equivalents of what in English we'd call »Cinema Island«. Read more »

text by Abderrahmane Sissako

Today's core missions of the Washington-based IMF and World Bank, which were created in the wake of World War II, are to regulate the international monetary system and lend money to developing countries. As many countries had difficulty repaying their debts, rich countries imposed, in the early 80's, structural adjustment policies that set the rules of the game for millions of people. International financial institution officials were granted the power to impose on the most debt-ridden countries' governments a policy supposed to balance their budgets. Most Sub-Saharan African countries are under structural adjustment programmes these days. These programmes based on neoliberal principles serve rich countries' vested interests - essentially those of the United States and of Europe. Read more »

Christopher Coppola is coming to Isola Cinema with the help of Mobitel and MMC PINA to carry out his mini-PAH-FEST workshop - a web film festival within the festival. PAH-FEST is a new form of a digital media festival, which focuses on stories and voices of common people. PAH-FEST enables them to tell their stories using professional film equipment. All the films, created during this festival will be available online on www.earsxxi.com.

In Coppola's opinion the purpose of PAH-FEST is to pull Hollywood off its pedestal in make film production accessible to everyone: I'd like to see how a plumber, a fisherman or a cab driver makes a 1-minute art work using only his cell phone digital camera.

• See Coppola explain the concept of PAH-FEST here. (You need QuickTime to see this film.)
Read more »

The young Argentinean actress Inés Efron arrived today in Slovenia after having had an exhausting but very successful week at the Cannes Film Festival. She traveled to Cannes to assist in the launch of the Argentinean-Spanish-French co-production XXY. The film –directed by 30 year old Lucía Puenzo-- just won the Critic’s Week Grand Prix. In XXY Ines plays the lead role of a young hermaphrodite.

Ines is the first Isola Cinema guest to arrive in town. On Saturday night June 2nd at 23:00 she’ll be introducing the screening of the Harvest film Glue on Izola’s Manzioli Square.

More at on XXY at Cannes here or here!