To cushion the fright of how fast March crept up on us, the 2012 AV Festival: As Slow as Possible has arrived. Since I previewed it back in January, its film programme has been an attraction overriding the more formal commitments of study and so on. Click on the image surmounting this piece to see the films I plan to attend (add Eternity to the 25th and Independicia to the 28th) Exceptions are Stalker on the 4th, which I watched again last night to compensate for the work shift with which it clashes; The Turin Horse on the 10th, which screens at the same time as Lav Diaz's Melancholia (read Srini's review of the Béla Tarr film here); Exhaustion on the 11th, which clashes with Century of a Birthing; Finisterrae on the 18th, which clashes with work; and Syndromes and a Century on the 26th, which clashes with a campus screening of Police, Adjective that I'm introducing.
Speaking of introductions, I'm co-hosting the AV's March 7 screening of Five with filmmaker and lecturer Mark Chapman, whose latest short is currently in production. (Read articles by him, on Haneke's The Piano Teacher and Denis's Trouble Every Day, here and here.) Five is Abbas Kiarostami's minimalist "tribute" to Ozu, and when approached by the Festival to choose a film to introduce, Mark opted for it on the grounds that it's the slowest film of a bunch of slow films. It screens at Newcastle's Star & Shadow Cinema at 7.30pm and is followed by an informal discussion; the venue opens an hour earlier and pre-film pizza is promised. Do come along.
