Something like five years ago I optioned a feature script from writer James Hancock that I really liked, it took the teen slasher format and gave it a more European feel mixing up a bunch of horror essentials without cheese and with a psychological edge that just completely entertained. James and I spent quite a while developing it further, tried to get it funded, unsurprisingly failed with just a couple of tiny low budget shorts to our name and decided to come back to it a bit later in our careers.

" The Scent Of Oak " spearheads 1st Travalling Carribbean Film Showcase : April 14-18 at Unesco, Paris.

This new travelling film showcase from the Caribbean region, chaired by Cuban filmmaker, Rigoberto Lopez, at Unesco, recently showed a selection of features and shorts chosen among 21 participating Caribbean countries.

Even though the vintage reels shown of Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova spooled three weeks ago in Pordenone, the aura of the dancer, her interminable legs, her precision on tip-toe and her incredible grace and femininity tinged with mystery, linger in the minds of all festival-goers who viewed them.

Jean Darling, child prodigy of the silent film era, now a sprightly 84, is present as Guest of Honour at this year's Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone to introduce the restored copy of OUR GANG films she starred in during the '20s. As a child star, her colleagues included Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Jean Harlow, Hal Raoch, Fatty Arbuckle, Marion Davies, Greta Garbo and Clark Gable. She is one of the few remaining actors of the silent film period left to witness the scene as she did in her autobiography a peek in the past, published in 1995.

The Rose of Rhodesia (1918), one of the earliest feature films made in South Africa, presented at this year's Giornate del Cinema Muto is a five-reel romance cantered on a stolen diamond, an interracial friendship, and an anti-colonial uprising, The Rose of Rhodesia impressed contemporary reviewers with its daring realism, spectacular outdoor locations, and casting of African actors in prominent roles. Considered lost for most of the last century, the film may claim to be the first fictional treatment of Zimbabwe in cinema.

Francesca Bertini was one of the most successful silent film divas of Italy. Born 1892, she played in films as a child in Naples and in Rome.

The Merry Widow (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, US 1925)is the opening night film at the 2009 Giornate de Cinema Muto 200,

The Music
When I first accompanied The Merry Widow years ago, I was totally struck by this highly creative and inventive film adaptation of the operetta, directed by the genius Erich von Stroheim. Immediately I realized that my "one" piano + singer accompaniment wasn't at all enough to serve this brilliant film. I started a serious quest to develop a score for the film, and at the same time to promote this relatively unknown von Stroheim film wherever I possibly could.

Nicholas Eliopoulos – Producer/Director/Editor "Director's Statement" on Mary Pickford :

Like most of us, I never got to meet Mary Pickford. I did have the privilege of knowing and interviewing her late husband Buddy Rogers. Buddy starred in the first motion picture to ever win a "Best Picture" Oscar…William Wellman's 1927 Silent Classic Wings.

Alright! Back to basics! The basis of our physical life as humans, it seems, is to grow through experience or to just simply die without sensorial pleasures and conversely, discomforts, whether plainly in the mind or purely in the body. All events in one's life are present in the moment to be experienced and it is up to the perceiver to create, learn, and grow from these experiences. We exist as sponges to any and all conscious or unconscious experience through all of our senses; these are things that cannot be denied simply because all the tools we have to detect reality are channeled through our vehicle in this outer world filtered through the mind. We believe things to exist, therefore we experience them as closely as possible, or not. The philosophical flipside to that coin is that we experience things firstly, and then determine their reality. Either way, we must experience something, no?

I made it! We’ve all heard that typically American colloquialism. I know what that saying may mean to actors out there or to those of you hoping to be successful in this nearly impossible career to sustain when not “working”, but maybe you haven’t taken the first few scary steps yet. I’ll try and deflate whatever fears you may have about the outer world of the craft which is all business and not entirely “just” your business. The only business one as an actor should consider is the world we create for our portrayals. When I refer to the outer world, I mean the world the character will live in during our portrayal. Whether in a theatre or in front of the camera, you and your character must become one being, in order to know the outer world of the character, the one that has nothing to do with the business you’re attempting to break into. Let’s say you haven’t even thought about auditioning or let alone gotten your head shots done and printed… what to do as an actor? Study, read, learn, research the history and find the clues that will lead you to the source of it all, the craft of the craft. Look for the masters of acting, directing, and theatre and find their works: Shakespeare, Stanislavsky, Uta Hagen, Strasberg, Meisner, Meyerhold, Grotowski, even the Knight Sir Lawrence Olivier has such books of uncanny first-hand relations of stories in the world of acting. The history of theatre and acting is abound in all its glory, from the contemporary Western world of theatre and film to the dramatic leaps and bounds of the ancient Greeks, it is all still out there. From the many histories we get the many teachers, those who pushed the envelope with new content, new directions, and new destinations for the art.

I am now in LA, my future here much like the economy, is uncertain. But it is Los Angeles, the Mecca for actors on the lam from their respective hometowns forced to work hard to not defer their dreams. But as fate shall have its way, that’s the way it is and I’m not suffering for it. The full knowledge I had of this before I moved out here was the only proverbial brass pair I had to tug on in hopes that it would keep me confident. When I mean that I knew actors out in LA work hard, I mean I know actors who left Tinsel Town penniless and defeated, running back home with their tales so far up their asses they spit fur as they panted gaining speed towards mommy. But the working hard comes from a different place, a place that comes way before we are ever even ready to go meet with agents to one day hopefully book castings. Working hard means something different to everyone but I will attempt to clear the air as to what actually works for me as an actor.

"Why does one constantly mimic herself in front of the lens all the time? In any case, her image will appear as someone else. Photograph seems like a mirror with memory. What happens if herself never coincides with her image…"

Right after Mao, in Communist China early 1980s, director Buming XU recalls the situation in most households where a standard toilet was a luxury and people used "potties". A young Chinese girl Dan, lives in a stifling environment with her family in a house without toilet and has to empty her obnoxious younger brother's waste after he spends most of the day sitting on the loo.

BEHIND THE FORBIDDEN DOOR

Indonesian Cinema was supposed to be dead ! After a flourishing of interesting films in the sixties in that country, little has been known about the sector, but the presence of several NEW WAVE filmakers in their 30s at Udine FarEast Festival

Frozen Flower, an epic blockbuster of a love triangle involving the King and Queen of the Goryeo Dynasty with a General, directed by young Korean, Yoo Ha, takes you into a world of betrayal, honour and feudalism in ancient Korea, at war with China.

Academy-Award Winner For Best Foreign Film 2009

It was full house yesterday at the 1200-seater Teatro Giovanni Theatre in Udine for the European premiere of Departures.

One of the most significant Asian "New Wave" film directors, Hong Kong filmaker, Ann Hui, is present this year, at Udine Far East Festival to talk about her beginnings in the cinema industry of that country. Commissioned by the national broadcaster and ICAC, the anti-corruption entity to create a series of shows on various aspects crime prevalent in the 1970's such as bribery of government officials, kickbacks, corruption of innocents and minors etc..the fledgling filmmaker laid the basis for a rich career as director of author's films which portrayordinary people at throes with the complex issues in life.

Only 12 men in history have walked on the moon and yet there is no personal account of how these historical missions affected each man personally. The Wonder of it All recounts the narrative of their journeys from childhood to the present. The story unfolds as each astronaut talks candidly about his adventure, with never heard statements until now.

Yatterman(Yattaman) from the celebrated cartoon, comes the live action film, of the greatest pop-robot adventure in the world!

…a film already destined to become a cult…

The European Premiere of the highly anticipated blockbuster, directed by the legendary Miike Takashi, will close the eleventh edition of Far East Film.

Valiant French actress Rosine Deréan - from "Douce France to Ravensbrück

On April 25th, 2009, in the tiny village of Genillé (Indre-et-Loire), where she lived and died, a tribute will be held to the stylish '30's French actress and several films she starred in will be shown in 8 mm.

Brought to you by the creative minds behind Pencil Fighting: The Life and Times of Team Balderdash, the 20-minute short Inventing Kin is a dramedy about missed opportunities and life's second chances. It's close in spirit to Zach Braff's Garden State, which was also about a lost soul returning home to make peace with the past. This new film lacks the broad characterizations that made Pencil Fighting so memorable, but it displays some of the quirkiness that sets the films of Fro Rojas apart. (Full disclosure: Rojas and I both went to Miami International University of Art & Design, where we made a film together.)

The prolific Cuban filmmaker, Humberto Solás, founder and conceptor of the Festival Internacional del Cine Pobre, inaugurated at the end of the year 2000, in the picturesque port of Gibara, CUBA, which has matured to become an original and successful film event for young talents, passed away on September 18th, in his residence in Miraflores, Havana, after a short bout with cancer.

One of Solas' colleagues described the cause of his death as "sadness from seeing CUBA develop in a way he would not have liked it to".

Gibara, Cuba

Over a Hundred Films Will Compete at the International Non-Budget Movie Festival. As always, the Festival will be held at the small, beautiful northeastern city of Gibara.

The Late Humberto Solas, Founder & Creator Humberto Solás. Photo Archive. Mildrey Ponce.

The Hottest Latin Film School: International School of Film and Television San Antonio de los Baños- CUBA

As a filmmaker, deciding what film school to go to is quite a difficult task. You want to pick the best place possible to prepare you for your career, and then several other things go into play, like your budget and your family situation. When I was in the process of choosing an undergrad film school, it all came down to four schools for me: USC, NYU, U of Miami and EICTV. USC was crossed out because California seemed too far from my family in NY and South America. NYU I excluded because I wanted to try living in a new place from where I had grown up, so my last two choices were

University of Miami and EICTV in Cuba.

Festival de cinema do Brasil in Paris.

The first week of this 9th two-prong event (feature competition and then documentaries) has ended at the L'Arlequin Cinema in Paris 'trendy Quartier Latin with the presence of top-knotch Brazilian filmmakers, actors and producers, flown over for the event to present each of the two dozen films in competition.

Big names of Brazil's 'cinema novo' period such as Miguel Farias, Carlos (Caca) Diegues, Sergio Rezende, Joao Batista de Andrade boasted a vigorous older-generation slate of works to compete with talented newercomers like Tata Amoral, the only female feature director, Heitor Dhalia, Karim Ainouz and Cao Hamburger.

No, silly, not Pedro Almodóvar. Even though my last two Blogs were about master filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, this CineBlog is about a completely different Pedro. MTV's Pedro Zamorra.

Last night I attended a screening of PEDRO at the Colony Theater in South Beach. This film opened the line-up for the 2009 Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival to a sold-out crowd and a standing ovation. PEDRO is the life story of the young AIDS activist Pedro Zamorra, Miami's own Cuban American, who was part of the cast of MTV's The Real World: San Francisco, and died at the age of 22, soon after the show finished airing its last episode in 1994.

I'm writing this Cineblog about the new film by one of my all-time favorite directors, Pedro Almodóvar, whom I had the honor of meeting the week before he won an Academy Award for All about My Mother back in 2000.

Los Abrazos Rotos, or Broken Embraces, is the name of his new film. It premieres on March 18, and there is already buzz that it will play at Cannes. The teaser is very short, but leaves no doubt that this is a film by the one and only Almodóvar.

Alright, so you're a decently trained and young inexperienced actor and you finally got headshots you can live with. Then you got some more done. Now you got an entire book filled with a face only a mother could love and you even went so far as to land a reputable SAG licensed agent who also has the same taste as your mother. You are ready to be sold on the open market, but your agent hasn't had the time to give you the entire run-down. Well here it is. Most people in the biz will tell you never to listen to other actors... this is true, but there are some things that are a part of the starter set you should know. Before you start going out on the castings you've been so fortunate enough to be called on (thanks to those wonderful pictures), there are some necessary things you must have in your bag and in your car (or whatever transport you got) at ALL times. In your bag, you should have:

If you're an actor, I think it's in your best interest to know this, especially if you're about to leave your hometown to take a shot at the big time. Let's say you live in Michigan... never mind, let's just say you live anywhere else in the country, anywhere but New York and Los Angeles, and you're an actor who's going out into the city or the ‘burbs, or what-have-you, and you're looking for any type of work. You know, the everyday type of job: waiter, bartender, gas station attendant, Don of the Mob, etc. When you mention that you're an actor, it usually illicits the most surprised of responses, like "Wow, we have a star in the making here," or it may even garner the old "let me tell you my story" kind of dialogue with whoever's doing the hiring... and that's nice. Yeah, it's nice and everything that you have the same chances as anyone else of getting that position, and you may very well get hired... God bless America, right? But were you to mention that in NY or L.A., all you'll be getting out of that interaction is a "thank you but we're not hiring right now" as they flip the Now Hiring sign over.

The 81st Annual Academy Awards are two days away. Going in, I'm fairly ambivalent about the outcome. Unlike last year, when There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men duked it out for the top prize, there are no masterpieces. I deeply admired Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Andrew Stanton's WALL-E and Gus Van Sant's Milk. These would have been my nominees for Best Director and Best Picture, but many of them got gypped.

Still, I'll definitely be tuning in. I've watched every awards show since 1990, when I was 9 going on 10. All 9-year-olds who watch the Oscars naturally assume they'll be making it to the podium someday. I'm sure if I looked hard enough I'd find a few acceptance speeches, written in chicken-scratch and tucked away for safekeeping. I'm more cynical and realistic about all that now - instead of 30, now I'm giving myself until 40 to win an Oscar. Now and then I'm forced to look away to avoid being blinded by all the Great and Important People basking in their own sense of self-worth. But mostly the Oscars give me a giddy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Latinos in the 2009 Award Season

The only quasi Latino thing to celebrate on the Oscar nomination list is Penelope Cruz's performance as best supporting actress in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, as you can read about in my previous blog, "Will Penelope Be Wearing Gold?" But even though Cruz is the only Hispanic name on the list, we come to consider if the Academy is being a bit racist in not nominating any more Latino talent in the recent year's Latin cinema. Is it because there is no other Latin talent out there? Nope, because talent there sure is! The Sundance Awards were recently announced, giving six Awards to Latino filmmakers and Latino films! How come none of these were recognized by the Academy?

El Patio de mi Carcel - My Prison Yard This film is somewhat indifferent. The storyline is not very deep, but the performances are quite good. Veronica Echegui's performance is the only thing that saved this movie, perhaps the best role of her career that gives her a more promising future.

The plot: A petty thief and her pals attempt to adapt to life outside jail. But there is not much more depth to the overall story. Perhaps first-time director Belén Macías will get it right in her upcoming films.

So you want to be an actor? You heard of the term "shoot", right? Photographers, Directors, Cinematographers, Cowboys – they all use this term. Now, to get the term right, when it comes to acting it means you need to know that without having your head shot in the right way you are D-E-A-D in this town (or any other town, for that matter). I mean, shot like it matters, the actor's attitude matters, their hair and make-up matters, the clothes matter, the colors matter, why even the manner in which you get it to the right agent or manager or casting director MATTERS. Alright, so I had a small head-start, I've had headshots done by four other photographers before and only two out of a million shots were chosen to be what my then agents in Miami thought could actually sell me. After showing my manager out here in LA the headshots that had gotten me decent work over the years on the east coast, he laughed, burped, farted, and then asked me to burn them. Which after much suffering... I did. Suffering from the gaseous response, I mean.

It really has been a complicated and difficult year for Spanish film, without any blockbuster success in the billboards, different than in 2007 when The Orphanage or [REC] made box office smash numbers very close to Hollywood super productions.

A list of Spanish movies were added in the first quarter of 2008, international productions like Asterix at the Olympic Games and The Oxford Crimes that made some waves and increased the number of spectators attending premieres.

Following this wake some co-produced films were added as national films like Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Che, the Argentine, Transsiberian or El Greco, but their box office figures turned out to be really regrettable. These are not 100% Spanish produced, so they don't really count as exclusively Spanish films in my Opinion. Anyway, as 2008 is just past us, I made a couple of lists of 5- 100% Spanish films that, in my opinion, represent the best and the worst films of 2008. In this Cineblog you will read the Best and in the next Cineblog I will bring you the Worst.

In the beginning there was the word, and the word was made flesh. In the middle there was this person named an agent and/or a manager... and they told you what the word was and how it was being used or who was using them, and how you should use these words... and then in the end, the Hollywood Films Casting machine was made whole. So I arrived in Los Angeles with an awesome, almost too-good-to-be-true sounding but entirely legitimate program called The Pinnacle Actor's Group, headed by a wise old man by the name of Lawrence Folgo, who brought 45 years of experience and connections to the program. The program is great in that it offers the determined actor to arrive in Tinsel town with all the opportunities to hit the ground running. It lasted an entire month, and in that month we rehearsed previously found scenes, found new ones, and trained and perfected our craft for the potential agents, managers, and casting directors who came to see our three showcases.

How many times has this happened to you? You're watching a movie or a TV show and you know exactly where they're shooting... but you know that it may have been shot better somewhere else? Or you're watching something and now you have ideas of your own to shoot something but you don't know where to go to get the shot? Have you ever needed the perfect place to shoot a scene but can't afford to hire a location scout because you're a student or you're broke? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you should probably read this in case you're hoping to shoot in the Magic City... Miami, FL.

What are the three most important things in setting up business in the filmmaking business? Survey says: Location, Location, Location... Okay, now that we've got that down, you know that without it you'll be shooting in your mother's kitchen and in your father's garage, which per say is not a bad thing, unless that is... you have a lot of "on-location" type of shooting to do, then you need to get out and find it, Fast. First: Where does the story take place, what time of year, season? Do I need permits to shoot outside in public? Do you need seclusion, privacy in public? Do you need to stop a busy road but can't afford it? Well, I'm going to make this blog interactive by taking all specified questions you may have and answering them to the best of my knowledge. To boot, I know of thousands of different streets, alleys, bars, clubs, hotels, motels, houses, tourist traps, historical info, from who to grease for the shot and who not to, what places are camera crazy, I'm talking about anything about a location you need I might be able to help.

After many years spent in my bed dreaming as a child, the only walk in life that could suffer me was the entertainment business. I studied, worked, ate, drank, and slept theatre, photography, art, and film all the live long day while growing up and now that I'm in it... I'm not content... I'm not fully satisfied with my work up until now, which reminds me of a famous quote I was given once by a dear professor of mine in college. It comes from a letter written by Martha Graham to Agnes De Mille:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all Time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine: how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open ... no artist is pleased...there is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

Why did I want to become a filmmaker in the first place? These days I can barely remember, and that makes me kind of sad. When I graduated from film school, I had a director's demo reel ready to go and all the confidence in the world that it was good enough to get me that first directing gig. I must have sent my reel to almost 200 companies, but all anyone ever needed was a PA for a day or two. Money started getting tight and before I knew it, my focus turned from creating to surviving. Fast forward seven years and a bunch of reality TV sets later and here I sit asking myself what happened to all my so-called dreams. Or, more to the point, what happened to my dreams coming true?

When it comes time to hand out the best-of-the-year awards, movies released in December get all the love. This is partly due to the fact that studios have been saving some of their best products for the holiday season, but sometimes it seems like movie critics and members of the Academy Awards of Arts and Sciences suffer from memory loss. So I thought it might be fun to see what the first 11 months of the year had to offer and make a best-of-the-year list from that. Keep in mind that I still haven’t seen some of the most anticipated films of the season, including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon and Milk. I’ll write about those movies in future blogs. For now, here’s my nowhere-near definitive look at the best movies of 2008, listed in order of preference:

We all know filmmaking is a team effort. Nowadays almost everybody's seen the DVD features and the behind-the-scenes of their favorite movies and perhaps been overwhelmed by the number of people who are involved in the filmmaking process. Camera teams, lighting teams, post-production teams, stunt teams, wardrobe teams, animal wranglers and so on, we are all aware of the seemingly infinite amount of names and titles that keep scrolling up during the credits. Unfortunately, most people choose this time to stop sucking on those unpopped-popcorn seeds and start walking out of the theater (or turn the TV off, if you were already home), even though it's probably the only real public moment of acknowledgement that the "rigging gaffer" or the "second-second-second-assistant director" will get!

I started working in projection booths in 1999, the year Fight Club came out. As FC fans know, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) has a night job as a projectionist, which he uses as an opportunity to splice frames of pornography into Disney flicks.

CINEMAD is the cinematic brother of FESTIMAD. Born at the same time, in 1994, in Madrid’s Revolver Theater. Since then CINEMAD has never failed in its annual appointment with the Independent and Cult Film Festival. Cines Renoir Film Festival is involved promoting and exhibiting short films. Genres such as gore and animation, and successful filmmakers such as Santiago Segura, Álex de la Iglesia and Alejandro Amenábar, have found CINEMAD to be their launching platform. Other filmmakers have had similar success.

BOO-enas Noches, guys and ghouls. Welcome to the first-ever Halloween edition of Jr’s Cineblog, where we will be dissecting the best terror films to watch if you want to get spooked… en Español!!! In this list, we will bring to you the top horror, thriller and suspense films produced in Spanish. So grab your chili con carne popcorn… and cuddle up next to that special Mamasita or Papacito, and grant them the protection and tranquility they need from oh-so-terrifying Spanish celluloid horror.

The Japanese are building robots, holograms are appearing on the cable news, and Barack Obama is going to be the forty-forth President of the United States. Are we living in the future? Dunno, but what I do know is that pop culture has helped pave the way for the election of America's first Black president.

More than 700 people came out to the Aventura Mall on Thursday, Oct. 23, to attend the premiere of Director, a low-budget action movie shot in Miami.

It was a real coup for filmmaker Aleks Rosenberg, who both directed and served as the director of photography on the film. The maker of one previous feature, 2001's award-winning Zelimo, Rosenberg now teaches in the film department of Miami International University of Art & Design. He said he'd spent the last week-and-a-half working round-the-clock in the editing suite, making last-minute tweaks to prepare the film for its world premiere. The producers sent out invitations to more than 200 journalists, and the response was so enormous they had to rent out a second screen to show the film on.

Noticia de un Secuestro or News of a Kidnapping, from the renowned author and credited Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, will be embodied in a film version next year and reach cinemas in 2010. This is not the first work of Garcia Marquez (or Gabo, as he is popularly known) to be brought to the cinema. Of Love and Other Demons and Love in the Time of Cholera also had their big-screen adaptations.

It's happening again. After 10 years of carefully collecting more than 500 of my favorite movies on DVD, the home-video format is changing. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have duked it out, and the latter has emerged victorious. It's the beginning of the end for my DVD collection.

In honor of all hardworking, ballbusting P.A.'s whom without the film and video industry would crumble. They are the unsung warriors of film sets, the psychics of the walkie talkies, the krazy glue of "Jenga-like" productions, samurais of lockdowns, peacekeepers with lunch orders... for these and the many more thankless efforts that P.A.'s tackle on a daily basis, I salute you my friends. P.A. proudly!

Welcome one, and Bienvenidos Todos(Welcome All) to the most original Spanglish Cine Blog, exclusively on Openfilm.com. This CineBlog is called "Junior's CineBlog", Junior being yours truly, Me!...... and "...CineBlog" meaning "...FilmBlog" in our neighboring tougue, and second official language of the United States, Spanglish! That is right. This unique bilingual film blog is going to bring you the latest scoops on the hottest topics in the Hispanic film industry, bringing you stories on film releases, Latin film personalities as well as film events all over the world, all with the particular thread of the Spanish/Latin/Hispanic inclination.