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.

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.

Hollywood Elite turns out for premiere of documentary Mary Pickford, Muse of the Movies which pays tribute to the legendary film star.

Watch the gala here – Documentary Honors Film Legend Mary Pickford

Presented in part at the Turkish Pavilion reception at the Cannes Film Festival, LOST SONGS OF ANATOLIA, on a background of clips of peasant musicians from Eastern Turkey featured a modern rock quartet accompanying beautiful authentic shots taken on the spot.

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.

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.

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.

The teaser for Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited WWII epic, Inglourious Basterds, comes out today. You can catch it before the new Friday the 13th remake, which is appropriate enough given that Basterds (the misspelling is Tarantino's doing, not mine) looks like it's going to be a splatter-fest.

For an ode to pretentious, up-your-own-ass, "artistic" indie shit, there's nothing quite like the opening minutes of Baghead. The protagonists are at a film festival, where the film "We Are Naked" is having its world premiere. It's shot in grainy black-and-white, the dialogue is ludicrous, and just before the end-credits roll, the lead couple take off all their clothes and have sex. On their feet. In the front yard.

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.

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.

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.

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.