Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968) was a monumental figure in the history of cinema, making only a few films which transformed the medium. The National Film Theatre in London is gearing up for an extensive retrospective of his work, ranging from the silent era (The President, Leaves from Satan’s Book, Once Upon a Time, The Parson’s Widow, Love One Another, Michael, Master of the House, The Bride of Glomdal, and The Passion of Joan of Arc) to his rarely-screened, state-sponsored shorts and documentaries to his sound features (Vampyr, Day of Wrath, Two People, Ordet, and Gertrud). If you’re in London between June 1st and 29th or in Edinburgh between June 20th and July 6th, don’t miss it. We can only hope the series will travel internationally.

For those of us in the rest of the world, the Criterion Collection offers a DVD box set of several of Dreyer’s sound films (sans Vampyr, which is distributed by Image Entertainment, and the minor Two People) as well as The Passion of Joan of Arc. The Danish Film Institute recently released Once Upon a Time on DVD. For more information, check out my friend Nick Wrigley’s site, www.carldreyer.com.

While snooping around the Facets Multi-Media website, I stumbled across an announcement for their August 19 special edition video rerelease of The Decalogue (1987), Krzysztof Kieslowski‘s masterly film series originally made for Polish TV and subsequently made famous through its appearances at film festivals around the world. It’s a collection of ten, one-hour films based loosely on the ethical precepts of the Ten Commandments, and the films are noted for their striking cinematography, nuanced performances, and gripping dramaturgy.

The original DVD/VHS from Facets (released in 2001) has been out-of-print for some time and regularly sells for high prices on internet auctions. In addition to a better video transfer and improved subtitles, the 3-disc reissue promises to include:

ïAn onscreen preface by Roger Ebert
ïAn extensive interview with Kieslowski
ïA visit to the set
ïAn appreciation of Kieslowski by colleagues and collaborators
ïAn accompanying booklet with notes by Kieslowski
ïA recent interview with co-screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz

Facets has set up a fairly extensive website for the release, so even though we’ve got a couple months before its debut, I thought I’d pass the info along.

The last few weeks have offered a slew of notable documentaries: Rivers and Tides, The Stone Reader, Stevie, and Winged Migration.

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing the highly entertaining documentary, Spellbound (2002), which follows eight children as they compete in regional spelling bees and culminates with their face-off at the 1999 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. The film manages to sketch their individual personalities and their relationship with their families while offering some cultural analysis along the way. America has been obsessed with the concept of the spelling bee — the personal competition, the social ladder, the apparent combination of will and success, the illusion of control. The film hits on these themes with a light touch but showcases its admirable adolescents at their most awkward and endearing.

Spellbound reminded me of another recent documentary involving children, Nicolas Philibert‘s wonderful To Be and To Have (2002), which New Yorker Films has acquired and plans to release in August. The film records the interactions between a retiring teacher and his various students in a one-room schoolhouse in rural France. Philibert is a French filmmaker whose observant and heartfelt work (including 1992′s In the Land of the Deaf and 1996′s Every Little Thing) has garnered notoriety in the last few years. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston just completed a retrospective of his films and the Museum of Modern Art in New York is currently exhibiting the series with another one planned for Chicago in June. Keep an eye out for the series in your area. In the Land of the Deaf is available on video in the US. Francophiles who can play European DVDs can check out the Philibert box set from France (Region 2).

Documentaries have a difficult time getting distribution in the US, particularly ones which attempt to explore new forms or methods of inquiry. But non-fiction films offer a wide diversity of subjects and styles — from third-person historical overviews to filmic records to first-person personal essays. Some films (like Kiarostami‘s Close-Up or Mani Kaul‘s Siddheshwari) offer a tantalizing combination of fiction and non-fiction, creating a dissonance which encourages the viewer to reflect on the nature of truth and the filmmaking process itself. I’ve recently created a new page on the site showcasing the documentary genre with a list of key works. I’ll be updating the page with capsule reviews, so let me know what you think and feel free to suggest additional titles.

Seen any good documentaries lately? Click Recent Discussion and tell us about them.

So the world’s most highly-profiled film event, the Cannes Film Festival, is currently underway and Roger Ebert is complaining that most of the films this year depress him. “Where is the Cannes of the past?” he writes, “The Cannes of great joyous movies and silly starlets and larger-than-life characters and long, lazy lunches on the beach?”

He goes on to wax nostalgically about the good ol’ days of Federico Fellini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Akira Kurosawa, and claims to miss the “audacious experiments” of Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, and the Coen brothers.

This is strange to me on two counts: 1) Ebert is obviously forgetting the Michelangelo Antonionis and Ingmar Bergmans and the occasional L’Argent (1983) in the sunny days of yore, and 2) I would lay any charge of cynicism in contemporary film squarely at the feet of such pessimistic hipsters as Tarantino and the Coens.

But Ebert saves his venom for two of the most acclaimed filmmakers of our day, Theo Angelopoulos from Greece and Abbas Kiarostami from Iran “with their fashionably dead films in which shots last forever, and grim middle-aged men with mustaches sit and look and think and smoke and think and look and sit and smoke and shout and drive around and smoke until finally there is a closing shot that lasts forever and has no point.”

It is no coincidence that the only films in the past 18 years Ebert has reviewed by either filmmaker is Angelopoulos’ weakest (Ulysses’ Gaze) and Kiarostami’s darkest (Taste of Cherry) and most recent (Ten). How he’s able to criticize these two filmmakers without even having seen Angelopoulos’ accomplished Landscape in the Mist (1988) or Eternity and a Day (1998), or warmly humanistic masterpieces by Kiarostami such as Where Is the Friend’s Home? (1987), Close-Up (1990), Through the Olive Trees (1994), or The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) is beyond my powers of speculation. And since neither filmmaker is screening a film at Cannes this year, Ebert’s comments are downright baffling.

Maybe the problem is that Angelopoulos and Kiarostami do not make larger-than-life films meant to be consumed while vacationing in the Riviera?

I grew up reading Roger Ebert and think he’s one of the most intelligent reviewers working for a mainstream newspaper. But increasingly over the years, his critical faculties seem shaped by emotional whims and a desire for a good yarn and less by any commitment to introduce his readers to a diversity of films. Where is the Ebert of the past? The Ebert of great joyous cinephilia and larger-than-life imagination and long, perceptive reviews?

This is the beginning of a new film blog and educational resource. It compiles sites to learn about the art of film and coincides with comments on recent eclectic viewing. Enjoy!