Film Festivals in Bay Area

Hello Film Lovers,
I received information about film festivals that are happening now and will be happening in the future in Bay Area. Don't miss the great opportunities.

Arab Film Festival is happening and closing soon.
Check this website, it would be a great opportunity to know about the culture.

The mission of the Arab Film Festival (AFF) is to enhance public understanding of Arab culture and to provide alternative representations of Arabs that contradict the stereotypical images frequently encountered in the American mass media. The Arab Film Festival screens films from and about the Arab World that provide realistic perspectives on Arab people, culture, art, history and politics.

http://www.aff.org/2008/

SF Int'l Documentary Festival
October 30st to November 6th
at the Shattuck Cinemas on 2230 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley

More Info.
http://www.sfindie.com/

SF Int'l Animation Festival
Novermber 13 to November 16

Currently one of the most fertile, creative and productive forms in cinema and television, animation occupies a pressure point between artistic, experimental, commercial and industrial media. It ranges from the latest visual FX-based arthouse films to family-friendly cartoons. The four-day San Francisco International Animation Festival celebrates San Francisco’s preeminence as a hub for one of the most creative forms in cinema today.

http://www.sffs.org/events/index_series_sfiaf08.html

3rd Screening

Hello film lovers,
For our next upcoming screening on Monday, November 3rd,
we will be watching Run, Lola, Run. 6:30-8:30 PM at Room 32 at BCC (basement).



Lola receives a phone call from her boyfriend Manny. He lost 100,000 DM in a subway train that belongs to a very bad guy. Lola has 20 min to raise this amount and meet Manny. Otherwise, he will rob a store to get the money. Three different alternatives may happen depending on some minor event along Lola's run. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Trailer on youtube

SECOND SCREENING, FANTASTIC PLANET!!!

We are screening our second film next
Monday, October 20!!
LOCATION: ROOM 32
TIME: 6:30-8:20

We will still talk about LOVE, LIFE & the UNIVERSE as our first discussion topic.

The movie is once again French. Movie is approximately 1 hour 11 minutes.

FANTASTIC PLANET (La Planète sauvage) by René Laloux, 1973

René Laloux’s mesmerising psychedelic sci-fi animated feature won the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and is a landmark of European animation. Based on Stefan Wul’s novel Oms en série [Oms by the dozen], Laloux’s breathtaking vision was released in France as La Planète sauvage [The Savage Planet]; in the USA as Fantastic Planet; and immediately drew comparisons to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Planet of the Apes (both the 1968 film and Boule’s 1963 novel). Today, the film can be seen to prefigure much of the work of Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) due to its palpable political and social concerns, cultivated imagination, and memorable animation techniques.

Fantastic Planet tells the story of “Oms”, human-like creatures, kept as domesticated pets by an alien race of blue giants called “Draags”. The story takes place on the Draags’ planet Ygam, where we follow our narrator, an Om called Terr, from infancy to adulthood. He manages to escape enslavement from a Draag learning device used to educate the savage Oms — and begins to organise an Om revolt. The imagination invested in the surreal creatures, music and sound design, and eerie landscapes, is immense and unforgettable.

Article from Master of Cinema & Eureka Entertainment Ltd. website

Movie Trailer on Youtube

This movie is FANTASTIC as the title says, so please do not miss this great opportunity to watch it and talk about it in our discussion after the screening.

Thank you people!!

Thank you people for showing up for our first screening "Amelie" today.
We had a very interesting discussion about the film.

Also thank you Scott for joining us today.

We took a picture after the screening. I will post it up later.

ZEN

FIRST SCREENING! Amelie

Our first screening is this
Tuesday, October 14 at BCC Auditorium
From 6:30-9:00
The movie is approximately 122 mins.


The movie that we are going to screen is a French movie, Amélie.


Amélie is a story about a girl named Amélie whose childhood was suppressed by her Father's mistaken concerns of a heart defect. With these concerns Amélie gets hardly any real life contact with other people. This leads Amélie to resort to her own fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris as a waitress. After finding a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment, she decides to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective - she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the "ghost", a suppressed young soul, the love of her life and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. But after consuming herself with these escapades - she finds out that she is disregarding her own life and damaging her quest for love. Amélie then discovers she must become more aggressive and take a hold of her life and capture the beauty of love she has always dreamed of.

Trailer on youtube

First Meeting Recap

Hi everybody,
This is Michelle posting updates. First of all, we would like to thank everybody who made it to the meeting! We had a great first meeting and we're off to a great start. For those who couldn't make it today, here is quick recap of what we discussed today.

Themes (subject to change any time)

• comedy
• coming of age
• love
• immigration
• drugs
• gender
• family life
• environemnt
• pure aesthetics
• character development
• life and the universe
• music

Movies (the list is brief and subject to change at any time)
Click the titles, it connects to IMDb.

• Amadeus
  
• Ma Vie en Rose
  
• Hedwig and the angry inch
  
• Princess Mononoke
  
• Fantastic Planet
  
• Tekkonkincreet
  
• Science of Sleep
  
• Standing in the Shadows of Motown
• Waking Life
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

We tried to choose films that could relate to the themes. Please remember that the lists are not set in concrete and can change depending on the direction the club.

Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday in the Auditorium at BCC (basement). The meeting will start at 6:30 PM and we will be screening Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain also known as Amélie.

If you cannot make the appointed time or have any questions, please comment here on this blog or give Zen a quick email.

Thank you again!
and we hope to see you on Tuesday!

FIRST MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

I am glad to announce that we are having our first meeting this Friday instead of this Thursday.

Meeting Time: 6:30-8:30
Location: BCC Room 33

We are going to talk about topics of films. So please be prepared for it!
Also we need a video camera, so that we can record what is going on in the club meeting!
If someone can bring one, I would appreciate it. Contact me through FilmClubBcc@gmail.com, if you can bring one!!

The Statement!!!!!

WE, the Berkeley City College Film Club, provide a community where people can appreciate films from all cultures. Our intent is to study the effectiveness of film as an expressible art form by sharing individuals’ conception toward films that we are going to screen. Through this process, we shall expand our perception and pay attention to the contents and the context of films, and not to be judgmental of styles of films.

FIRST POSTING

I am glad to announce that we, the BCC Film Club, are starting this official information blog.
I am the president of the BCC Film Club Zen.

I will post up all the club information here on the blog from today.

We also have a Facebook group for BCC Film Club.
Check this out!!! But to see the page you have to log into your facebook page first.
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/#/group.php?gid=36498003125&ref=mf

Little updates about the club.
Our adviser is Dr. Laura Ruberto, an expert of film studies and she teaches humanity courses at BCC. She will be advising us throughout the semester. Also an English faculty, Scott Hoshida is helping us organizing the club.

We are having our first meeting hopefully on Thursday October 9th from 6:30.
I have been working on reserving a room for the first meeting, but I won't get the detailed information by tomorrow, so hopefully I can update this tomorrow. But please be aware of this.

BCC FILM CLUB Schedule:

Meeting and Discussion

October 9th(Thu) and 21st(Tue) Time: 6:30-8:30
November 4th(Tue) and 18th(Tue) Time: 6:30-8:30

Screening

October 14th(Tue) and 27th(Mon) Time: 6:30-9:30 at BCC Auditorium
November 10th(Mon) and 25th(Tue) Time: 6:30-9:30 at BCC Auditorium

Schedule will may change due to the room circumstances, but if there is a change I will let you know a.s.a.p.!!