Friday, February 2, 2007
Film An introduction to Cinefile (from Toulouse)
Posted by Jonathan Rosenbaum on Fri, Feb 2, 2007 at 1:51 PM
At a cybercafe in Toulouse where I've spent some idle time after a three-day conference on director's cuts at the Toulouse Cinematheque ended, I've had a chance to check out Cinefile, a new Web site devoted to alternative film events and resources in Chicago that cofounder Darnell Witt recently e-mailed me about. "Our goal," he wrote, "is to supplement resources like the Reader, connecting Chicago cinephiles to venues and screenings with limited exposure." I like their graphics--the image you see here is borrowed from one of their own (borrowed) images. It's a still from Kyle Canterbury's exciting video work, screening Saturday night at Chicago Filmmakers; Cinefile offers links to my Critic's Choice on Canterbury, plus commentary and more frame enlargements posted on Reader critic Fred Camper's Web site.
As for the conference, I found it pretty interesting, but also fairly taxing for someone who can read French a lot more easily than speak it or understand it spoken. (I read my own paper in French yesterday, but somebody else had to translate it.)
Showing 1-8 of 8
Just curious, but what's your thesis about in English?
The title says it all: "Potential Perils of the Director's Cut".
One venue they really should list on their web site that I didn't see on there is the Lasalle Bank Cinema. They offer one of the most consistently interesting moviegoing experiences in Chicago for both the relative obscurity of a lot of the film classics that they show and also for the crowd which is older and more neighborhoodish then your average Film Center or Music Box crowd. It's the kind of audience that might have actually seen the W.C. Fields film showing that night when it was originally released. All in all, a cool place and a gem of the Chicago movie scene. (I'm not the same Matt who commented originally.)
Matt - LaSalle's screenings are included on the Ocular Loci calendar, which I maintain (Google for the url).
And -- I hope it goes without saying -- the LaSalle screenings are regularly listed in the Reader.
This is Darnell of Cine-File. It's very exciting to see our brand new site discussed on the Reader Blog. Our site is in its first week, so any feedback is more than welcome. For the record, Mike King from LaSalle got in touch with me hours after we launched, and I've since added them to our directory and included a blurb about this week's film on our list. They have an amazing program, but I had trouble tracking it down at first because they don't have a website. Also, Jason - someone sent me a link to your site (Ocular Loci) yesterday. It's really great! I had no idea it existed. I'm going to find a few ways to link to your listing from ours, since they're related but different.
The conference is available in audio on the France Culture website. Part 3 with Rosenbaum at around the 1h mark. The others parts are also available in the archive. Great lecture! :)
The link didn't show up in my comment above : http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/france-culture/nouveau_prog/creation/alacarte_fiche.php?src_id=55000012&diff_id=180000101
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