Eric Kohn

Final Thoughts on the Amazonas Film Festival.

By Eric Kohn
|
November 16, 2010 1:56 AM
|
0 Comments

In case you missed my somewhat lengthy dispatch for indieWIRE on Friday, I spent the past week in Brazil, attending a film festival in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Of course, the Amazonas Film Festival loves to play up the exoticism of its locale, which isn't actually engulfed by trees and wild animals. The city of Manaus, two million strong, has been a pretty civilized place for decades. But the logline and the truth were always pitted against each other at this impressive gathering, which I attended thanks to a generous invitation from the state of Amazonas. Some people think that letting a festival cover your expenses immediately compromises one's ability to report the facts and speak publicly about the event in question. For a lot of festival coverage, this is probably some truth to this, but I try to work around it and carve my own path.

More:

Views from the Amazon: Some Notes from the Midpoint of the Amazonas Film Festival.

By Eric Kohn
|
November 6, 2010 6:56 AM
|
0 Comments

When you tell people you're going to the Amazonas Film Festival, located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, their eyes go wide and their imaginations go wider: Imagine the possibilities of watching movies with monkeys, crocodiles and sloths! Actually, the truth is a little subtler than that. Amazonas, currently in the midst of its seventh year, takes place in Manaus, Brazil, a lively city with close to two million residents at the heart of the country's largest state. Screenings are held in the magnificent Amazon Theater, most famous to outsiders for inspiring Klaus Kinski's character in "Fitzcarraldo" to build an opera house of his own. The theater was virtually abandoned for close to a century after the city lost its main source of revenue, the rubber industry, although it has managed to thrive ever since the government turned it into a tax-free zone. (Filmmaker magazine's Jason Guerrasio, my fellow U.S. journo/partner in crime at the festival alongside Film Journal's Sarah Sluis, provides a nice summary of the theater's history.)

More: