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The Festival de Cannes has announced the lineup for the official selection, including the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, as well as special screenings, for the 69th edition of the festival:COMPETITIONOpening Night: Café Society (Woody Allen) [Out of Competition]Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar)American Honey (Andrea Arnold)Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)La Fille Inconnue (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne)Juste La Fin du Monde (Xavier Dolan)Ma Loute (Bruno Dumont)Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)Rester Vertical (Alain Guiraudie)Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)Mal de Pierres (Nicole Garcia)I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)Ma' Rosa (Brillante Mendoza)Bacalaureat (Cristian Mungiu)Loving (Jeff Nichols)Agassi (Park Chan-Wook)The Last Face (Sean Penn)Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)Elle (Paul Verhoeven)The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding-Refn)The Salesman (Asgha Farhadi)Un Certain REGARDOpening Film: Clash (Mohamed Diab)Varoonegi (Behnam Behzadi)Apprentice (Boo Junfeng)Voir du Pays (Delphine Coulin & Muriel Coulin)La Danseuse (Stéphanie Di Giusto)La...

Section to include world premiere of Bertrand Tavernier doc; a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin and a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman.

Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).

The revered French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”

Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.

As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored prints of 20 international classics including rare gems...

Section to include a cinema masterclass with William Friedkin, the 70th anniversary of the Fipresci prize, a tribute to documentary giants Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman and the double Palme d’Or of 1966.

Bertrand Tavernier’s documentary about French cinema Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français will receive a world premiere at the Cannes Classic section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 11-22).

The legendary French filmmaker has described his latest work as an expression of “gratitude to all the filmmakers, writers, actors and musicians that have appeared suddenly in my life.”

Voyage à Travers le Cinéma Français is a Little Bear-Gaumont-Pathé co-production and was made in participation with Canal+, Cine+ and the Sacem, with the support of Région Ile-de-France and Cnc. Gaumont will handle international sales and Pathé have distribution in France. The film will be released in theaters in October 2016.

As in previous years, Cannes Classic will also feature nine documentaries about cinema and restored...

Now that most of the Cannes Film Festival 2016 line-up has been settled when it comes to new premieres, their Cannes Classics sidebar of restored films is not only a treat for those attending, but a hint at what we can expect to arrive at repertory theaters and labels like Criterion in the coming years.

Today they’ve unveiled their line-up, which is toplined by Bertrand Tavernier‘s new 3-hour and 15-minute documentary about French cinema, Voyage à travers le cinéma français. They will also be screening William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer following his masterclass. Along with various documentaries, both classics in the genre and ones about films, they will also premiere new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Masculin féminin, two episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s The Decalogue, as well as films from Kenji Mizoguchi, Marlon Brando, Jacques Becker, Mario Bava, and more.

Check out the line-up below.

Omar Sharif in 'Doctor Zhivago.' Egyptian star Omar Sharif, 'The Karate Kid' producer Jerry Weintraub: Brief career recaps A little late in the game – and following the longish Theodore Bikel article posted yesterday – below are brief career recaps of a couple of film veterans who died in July 2015: actor Omar Sharif and producer Jerry Weintraub. A follow-up post will offer an overview of the career of peplum (sword-and-sandal movie) actor Jacques Sernas, whose passing earlier this month has been all but ignored by the myopic English-language media. Omar Sharif: Film career beginnings in North Africa The death of Egyptian film actor Omar Sharif at age 83 following a heart attack on July 10 would have been ignored by the English-language media (especially in the U.S.) as well had Sharif remained a star within the Arabic-speaking world. After all, an "international" star is only worth remembering...

It’s lucky 13 — as in 13th annual edition — for Switzerland’s Lausanne Underground Film Festival, an epic celebration of cinematic weirdness, violence, filth and everything else that makes life worth living. The wild debauchery runs October 15-19.

The fest opens on Oct. 15 with the feature film debut by Leah Meyerhoff, I Believe in Unicorns, which tells the story of a troubled teenage girl who runs away with an aggressive older boy.

Other new films include the misanthropic comedy Buzzard by Joel Potrykus; the deep woods psychological thriller Mother Nature by Johan Liedgren; the complex Japanese drama Kept by Maki Mizui; and more.

Luff this year is really stuffed with great retrospectives beginning with a tribute to Beth B, who has been churning out controversial, thought-provoking flicks since the New York No Wave era to know. There will be screenings of her classic films, such as The Offenders and Salvation!, and her latest documentary,...

A still from “Charulata”

Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (The Lonely Wife) is one among the twenty feature films to be presented at Cannes Classics, as part of the Official Selection.

Based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore about a lonely housewife, the film features Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee and Shailen Mukherjee. It won Satyajit Ray a Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin international film festival in 1965.

Cannes Classics was created in 2004 to present old films and masterpieces from cinematographic history that have been carefully restored. It is also a way to pay tribute to the essential work being down by copyrightholders, film libraries, production companies and national archives throughout the world.

This year’s programme of Cannes Classics is made up of twenty feature-length films and three documentaries.

Restored Prints

Borom Sarret (1963, 20’) by Ousmane Sembène

Charulata (Charluta: The Lonely Wife) (1964, 1:57) by Satyajit Ray

Cleopatra (1963, 4:03) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz...

The 2013 Cannes Film Festival lineup continues to grow, today with the announcement of the films playing in the Cannes Classics selection as well as the titles playing on the beach at night as part of the Cinema de la Plage selection. It was already announced Kim Novak would be in attendance to present the restored version of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, but the restorations that will be screening don't end there. In addition to Vertigo a restored print of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Cleopatra will screen along with restorations of Billy Wilder's Fedora, Yasujir? Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon, Hal Ashby's The Last Detail starring Jack Nicholson and a 3-D conversion of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. Additional notable names include films from Alain Resnais, Marco Ferreri, Chris Marker and Rene Clement. In addition to those titles a special presentation of Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete...

The Cannes Film Festival today announced the 23 film screening in the tenth edition of its Cannes Classics sidebar, which screens restored films that the festival deems essential to the history of the medium. Highlights include Satyajit Ray's "Charulata: The Lonely Wife," Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor 3D," and Billy Wilder's "Fedora." The festival previously announced that Kim Novak will present a new restoration of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo." The full Cannes Classics lineup can be found below. Restored Prints Borom Sarret (1963, 20’) by Ousmane Sembène Charulata (Charluta: The Lonely Wife) (1964, 1:57) by Satyajit Ray Cleopatra (1963, 4:03) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz Fedora (1978, 1:50) by Billy Wilder Goha (1957, 1:18) by Jacques Baratier Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959, 1:32) by Alain Resnais Il Deserto Dei Tartari (The Desert Of Tartars) (1976, 2:20) by Valerio Zurlini La Grande Abbuffata (La Grande Bouffe) (1973, 2h05) de Marco Ferreri La Reine Margot (1994, 2:39)...

Above: Larry Rivers’ poster for the first New York Film Festival.

With the New York Film Festival celebrating its 50th edition next week I thought I’d look back on the very first festival, 49 years ago, in 1963. Whereas this year’s festival has a main slate of 33 films (as well as abundant sidebars) the inaugural event, programmed by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel, had only 21 features and a selection of shorts. The festival opened—on a Tuesday evening, September 10th, 1963—with a now-classic but then ill-received Buñuel, The Extermining Angel, and closed with a film and a director that have been all but forgotten: Dragées au poivre (Sweet and Sour), a French-Italian comedy with an all-star cast, directed by one Jacques Baratier.

Of the 21 selections—handpicked by Roud and Vogel as the year’s best—only six (masterpieces by Buñuel, Ozu, Olmi, Kobayashi, Polanski and Resnais) are currently available on DVD in the Us,...

Idiosyncratic French film director and Cannes prizewinner

At the Cannes film festival in 1958, the jury prize was awarded to Goha, the first Tunisian film (albeit a co-production with France) to be nominated for the Palme d'Or. There were other important firsts connected with the film. Goha was the first feature directed by Jacques Baratier, who has died aged 91. It featured the 20-year-old Tunisian-born beauty Claudia Cardinale in her screen debut and starred a handsome 25-year-old Egyptian actor billed as Omar Chérif (later Sharif), in the role that launched his international career and eventually caught the attention of the producers of Lawrence of Arabia. The film's screenplay was the only one written by the celebrated Egyptian-born playwright and poet Georges Schehadé, and it featured the first screen score by the Moroccan-born composer Maurice Ohana.

Goha, based on an Arab folktale, told of a clever young man (Sharif) who, under the guise of stupidity,...