Showing - Hacienda 25 Urbis Exhibition - Manchester

Showing - New Directors/New Films - NYC

New Directors/New Films is fast approaching fortieth year, and enjoys it's thirty-seventh showing this month. The festival kicks off today, and comes courtesy of The Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA. It's concept is simple; introduce New York audiences to up-and-coming filmmakers from around the globe. We're talking everywhere from Thailand to Haiti to Greece and Israel here. As such, this event boasts a pretty hot bill, one aptly packed with creativity culture.

Unsurprisingly, America features prominently, hooking up with Rwanda for ‘Munyurangabo’, a film directed by Lee Isaac Chung, set in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. While the later is described as 'fresh, immediate and utterly authentic', other movies included are more sci-fi, such as Alex Rivera’s, ‘Sleep Dealer’, a thriller that deals with global capitalism, said to have the ‘look and energy of a futuristic computer game’. Additionally, France’s 'Water Lilies', from Céline Sciamma, deals with desire and disenchantment within the world of teenage girls, while the UK's (by way of China) ‘We Went to Wonderland’, directed by Xiaolu Guo, follows a Chinese couple travelling though Europe. Now, I haven't seen the film, but I like the sound of it. The husband communicates through writing having lost his voice to cancer, while his wife is described as 'delightfully pragmatic'. Their encounters are said to be amusing with the duo being greeted by what is essentially an alien world. And I like the sound of that; it's like a The Wizard of Oz by way of La Hague, without the agro.



New Directors/New Films is taking place atthe Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center,The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1 at MoMA, from 26th March - 6th April.

Showing - Jack Pierson @ The Irish Museum of Modern Art - Dublin

Film - Fantastic Planet (La planète sauvage) @ The Barbican - London

Rene Laloux’s weird and whacky ‘Fantastic Planet’ is showing at The Barbican, this March. An adaptation of Stephan Wul’s eponymous novel, back in the day the movie picked up the several awards including Cannes Special Jury Prize 1973.

Often shown as a double bill alongside ye olde favourite ‘The Yellow Submarine’, the film lives up to its name, with action taking place on the planet Ygan, within a world habituated by bug-eyed, blue guys called Draags. These characters favour pet humans, AKA Oms (hommes, get it?); a taste that, unsurprisingly, leads to an uprising.

While this may all seem a little 'Planet of the Apes' meets evil 'ET' by way of Dali or May Ray, the movie is a classic, one relective of the times' political and economic climate. Mixing sixties notions together with seventies technologies, it's certainly got a certain something. And yes, OK, this may sound a little dated and cheesy now – but hey, laser jets, LCDs and, lipsuction, all came along in the seventies, as did the trusty cashpoint and Post It Note. Exactly.

Fantastic Planet (La planète sauvage) is showing at The Barbican, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2, on 29th March 2008.

Busted at the Biennial 2008 - Grrrr.

Undercover @ Whitney Biennial 2008