By The Global Film Initiative, on May 8th, 2012
On the eve of its world premiere, Pardon My Hindi gives Un Certain Regard star MISS LOVELY a seductive new look for the red carpet at Cannes….
 <– You saw it here—first! Designer Chiraag Bhakta’s cheeky-cum-risque rendering of Ashim Ahluwalia’s much-anticipated second feature, MISS LOVELY, just before it hits the fabled French Riviera at Cannes.
We can’t tell you where to get the poster, because it’s only a few hours old. But, we can show you a trailer for MISS LOVELY–because who doesn’t love a film about the Bollywood underground (certainly, we do—see credits).
As for Chiraag, some of you may remember him as the graphic hand behind GFI’s education experiment site, Bluescreen. And the rest of you might know him as iconic eye behind Pardon My Hindi (which words can’t describe—so visit the site).
And as for Cannes… You know who’s got our vote.
Continue reading Lovely MISS LOVELY!
By Emma Rae Lierley, on May 4th, 2012
After an eventful April, GFI knows what it wants, needs and can’t live without…
For a nonprofit international arts organization with a full-time staff of only five, we are used to being frugal, lean and mean fighting machines. The eventful month of April gave us a chance to take a good hard look into our wants and needs: What is necessary in running GFI, and what is just really, really nice to have. Turns out, GFI is lucky enough to often be blessed with both.
Let’s start with the wants:
 Oday Rasheed speaks with a student at the Berkeley High School screening of QARANTINA GUESTS OF HONOR: We love when friends stop by for long visits, as director Oday Rasheed (QARANTINA, Global Lens 2012) did at the beginning of the month, gracing the Bay with his cool charm for a full two weeks while he participated in the San Francisco Film Society’s Artist in Residence program. While in San Francisco, GFI co-presented a screening of his film Qarantina with the SF Film Society, bringing in the imbedded journalist-extraordinaire Terry McCarthy, who spent several tours in Iraq as a U.S. news correspondent, to lead the Q&A afterward.
A CANNES-DO ATTITUDE: There’s only so much that can be done from our office—sometimes we have to take to the road. In a few weeks, GFI founder and Board Chair Susan Weeks Coulter will attend the 65th Cannes Film Festival, where she’ll meet with filmmakers, producers and sales agents to talk distribution and funding. (She’ll be sure to pack some extra energy and stamina for the notoriously intense pace of the festival!)
 The ladies of Moya (Photo: Urban Solutions) AUDITING OUR AUDIT: It’s tax season, and we want to pay our taxes, we promise. Not only because we would like to stay on the good side of the Internal Revenue Service, but also because it provides us with a chance to literally take stock of the work we have done in the past year—to see what we have accomplished, where we could improve, and what we want to do in the next (tax) year.
THE SPICE OF LIFE: If we are what we eat, we’ve been particularly worldly lately, thanks to a vegan taco and salsa extravaganza (delivered by bike) and an Ethiopian feast at Moya, GFI’s new neighbor across the street. After all, if you can use film to change the way you see the world, why not use food to change the way you taste the world?
By Santhosh Daniel, on May 4th, 2012
Because in an empathic civilization, ‘monkey see, monkey do’ isn’t such a bad thing
 WATCH: The Empathic Civilization (courtesy of RSA Animate and Jonathan Rifkin) Not long ago, Emma Rae Lierley, Administrative Coordinator at GFI, sent me a link to a video on “The Empathic Civilization” (right). Her rationale in sending it was that she felt it encapsulated the basic premise upon which Global Lens was founded: that in our most sympathetic state of human existence, we are all connected.
Of course, nowadays, we hear such things all the time. Technological evolution has certainly connected us with the world outside our physical boundaries. Intellectual curiosity has always found a way to merge minds above borders. And then, without doubt, there is religion.
All are valid points of connection, connectivity. But the video makes a much more basic point. It says that we, as humans, are predisposed to having shared feelings and emotions, or an “empathic” relationship with one another that intuitively draws us together, as a people (see the video’s example of ‘monkey see, monkey do’).
Continue reading SUPPORT: Change the Way You See the World
By Jeremy Quist, on May 2nd, 2012
 I swear it was just February, but then I blinked and suddenly realized that we’re already in May! Time seems to be marching on faster and faster these days, but for now it’s spring and hopefully that means, wherever you may be, that flowers are blooming, daylight is sticking around longer, and the weather is warming up a bit (we here in San Francisco will have to continue to keep our fingers crossed, it seems). And for Global Lens, springtime also means a flurry of familiar faces, as several of our longtime screening partners host the new 2012 film series!
At the beginning of last month, the Port Townsend Film Institute kicked things off with Albania’s AMNESTY at their beautiful Rosebud Cinema, and will continue to showcase films from the series throughout the year. Meanwhile, the hardworking folks over at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival are wrapping things up tonight, Global Lens having played an integral part of their annual programming now for the fourth year in a row.
Continue reading It’s Springtime for Global Lens!
By The Global Film Initiative, on May 1st, 2012
Bad boys and bad medicine: Urban thriller THE TENANTS and junkie chronicle STREET DAYS to release on DVD May 15th
The DVD release of new films from playwright-cum-filmmaker Sérgio Bianchi and Georgian auteur Levan Koguashvili take audiences from the neo-noir nights of São Paulo to the mean streets of Tbilisi:
 THE TENANTS (OS INQUILINOS), dir. Sérgio Bianchi, Brazil, 2009, 103 minutes, Portuguese, with subtitles in English
After three mysterious men move into a smoky São Paulo suburb, a neighboring couple becomes obsessed with the men’s clandestine activities and the ozone of violence that descends upon their once-tranquil neighborhood. Best Screenplay, Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival; Official Selection, Vancouver International Film Festival.
“Bianchi’s richly detailed film excavates society’s fear of and fascination with violence—from television’s constant stream of near-pornographic mayhem to venomous suspicion between neighbors, petty feuds within married couples, and quarreling among children—in an indictment of the lowest human impulses.” –Museum of Modern Art
“Stunning performances….A tour-de-force of cinematic tension.” –The Santa Barbara Independent
 STREET DAYS (QUCHIS DGEEBI), dir. Levan Koguashvili, Georgia, 2010, 86 minutes, Georgian, with subtitles in English
A well-meaning heroin addict whose life and status seem to worsen by the day, finds himself caught between serving a prison sentence and selling out the son of his former classmate. Official Georgia Submission, Best Foreign Language Film category of the 83rd Academy Awards; Official Selection, International Film Festival Rotterdam.
“Drop Koguashvili anywhere in the world and he’ll probably shoot an elegantly composed frame….I can’t help but compare Street Days to Scorsese’s Mean Streets—film lovers everywhere should watch [it].” –Film Threat
“A well-crafted, hard-edged look at life in contemporary Tbilisi.” –Screen Daily
Continue reading NEW ON DVD: The Tenants and Street Days!
By Angelica Dongallo, on April 30th, 2012
Staffer Angelica Dongallo, coordinator of GFI’s educational screening programs, explains why world cinema deserves a place in the classroom…and vice versa
 Angelica Dongallo speaks to students and teachers attending our first-ever World Cinema Week screening @ Ninth Street! Pencils down!
Before you naysayers say nay—just as the parents described in this post did—about screening films to students in the classroom, hear me out. I’m not referring to the Hollywood blockbusters used by many teachers (we’ve all encountered at least one during our school days) as mindless background noise at pizza parties or as a last-minute time-filler on days with no lesson plans. Rather, I speak of cinema (particularly independent world cinema) and its unique value when shown with an intent, a lesson plan, critical discussion questions, the works.
Yes, contrary to popular belief, it can and should be done. But first, some context…
Continue reading EDUCATION: All Eyes on the Screen!
By The Global Film Initiative, on April 30th, 2012
Introducing GFI’s new Director of Business Development, and the 2.0 of the Global Film Initiative…
 Pat Guerra, GFI Director of Business Development It’s spring, Global Lens is in full bloom, and GFI is growing a new root: Pat Guerra, Director of Business Development.
Pat joins the current band of genius in our San Francisco office, and brings with him a depth and diversity in social enterprise and operations management, and a generous helping of that entrepreneurial spirit we love so much at the Initiative (he is a current member of the venture investment organization, Band of Angels, and also co-founder of the Global Social Benefit Incubator at Santa Clara University–created to help socially-minded entrepreneurs, worldwide, build sustainable, scalable organizations).
The addition of Pat to our staff couldn’t come at a better time, as 2012 is the Global Film Initiative’s tenth anniversary and the year in which we make some interesting, evolutionary changes. So, look for a new website this fall, and before that time, a few new partners–both within the film industry, and nationally and internationally. Also, keep your eye out for an upcoming announcement about Global Lens streaming (Hulu!).
All good changes. And, at the heart of it all, the same Global Film Initiative and Global Lens. Just with a few improvements 
Continue reading Pat Guerra Joins the Global Film Initiative
By The Global Film Initiative, on April 30th, 2012
Bruno Bettati examines Latin American independents from the angle of producer, festival director and de facto industry historian…
 Director of the Valdivia International Film Festival Bruno Bettati (left) and GFI Director of Programs Santhosh Daniel at the 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam Five years ago I had the serendipity to meet Santhosh Daniel and establish a relationship between the Global Film Initiative and Valdivia International Film Festival (FICValdivia). Over that course of time, our institutions have both witnessed and contributed to the steady rise of the Latin American film industry. GFI eventually became a sponsor of FICValdivia activities for film professionals. Recently we met by chance on a distribution and production workshop while in Gijon, Spain—after which i felt compeled to say a few words about the evolution of Latin American film and our joint contribution to the production and distribution of these films. – Bruno Bettati
Against all odds, Latin American film producers continue to show a vitality to get their movies done. Perseverance and adaptation are key; with 36 months the average time it takes from the start of development until the festival première of a fiction feature film, the endurance of the producer is at permanent stake.
Continue reading 3 on 1: Adapt, Persevere and Thou Shalt Premiere
By The Global Film Initiative, on April 23rd, 2012
 “From despair, art…. Acutely probing.“ -The New York Times
“[Ruhorahoza's] brilliant ending distills the paradoxes of a false normalcy into a single, stinging shot.“ -The New Yorker
The story: After government officials decline to support his project, a determined filmmaker enlists the support of a loan shark to finance his trenchant drama about the aftermath and impact of genocide on a brother and sister.
By The Global Film Initiative, on April 19th, 2012
Alejandro A. Riera, of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, on giving Latin American cinema the respect it deserves, and working with GFI to bring new Global Lens films to the Windy City
As we celebrate our third year with GFI, Global Lens Series Manager Jeremy Quist asked me to reflect on the state of Latin American film distribution in the United States. And the more I thought about the subject, I found myself asking: When will Latin American cinema get the respect it deserves?
Yes, our cinema has an illustrious history that dates back to the silent era and includes such high points as the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema; the rise of Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement in the 50s and 60s; the emergence of post-Revolutionary Cuban cinema in the 60s and 70s; and, more recently, what some critics describe as the “New Argentinean Cinema.” And yet, even when countries such as Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela — not exactly film production powerhouses — are coming out with powerfully moving visual narratives, Latin America cinema keeps getting short shrift by media, critics and film distributors alike in this country, even though the growth of the Latino population outpaced any and all estimates.
Case in point: Miss Bala, Gerardo Naranjo’s extraordinary film about a beauty pageant contestant who unwittingly finds herself caught in the middle of a bloody war between a Mexican drug cartel and the DEA. In Chicago, Fox Searchlight unceremoniously, and with very little advertising, dropped the film at a suburban theater, showing it for only a week even though Chicago has the second largest Mexican population in the country — a community concerned about the high cost their home country is paying in that drug war. A film that, with the right marketing campaign, and the right amount of Latino (and non-Latino media coverage), would have earned Fox Searchlight a pretty penny or two. But, since it lost its chance at an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film this year, they figured that by releasing it at least for a week they were fulfilling whatever contractual duties they had. In other words, a lost opportunity.
Continue reading OPEN MIC: An Antidote to Lost Opportunities
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<– You saw it here—first! Designer Chiraag Bhakta’s cheeky-cum-risque rendering of Ashim Ahluwalia’s much-anticipated second feature, MISS LOVELY, just before it hits the fabled French Riviera at Cannes.
