It’s fitting, then, that the annual Bicycle Film Festival makes its return to London, Oct. 5 to 9, in various locations around the city (screenings primarily take place at the Barbican Center).

The festival, which was founded in 2001 by Brendt Barbur, after he was hit by a bus while cycling in New York City, aims to celebrate different facets of cycling culture through film, music and art. The festival now travels to more than two dozen cities internationally.

On Oct. 9, the festival will highlight cycling films made by women, about women. “Cycling, filmmaking and art are all dominated by men,” Mr. Barbur said. “This year we have a lot more content produced and directed by women, about women. I recognized that women are gaining a voice in cycling, and we are elated to be able to provide a platform for this.”

The festival will feature a short film by the acclaimed American director Spike Jonze called “Mark on Allen,” featuring the skateboarder Mark Gonzalez. In collaboration with the Barbican’s Silent Film Club, the festival will include a screening of “Wheels of Chance,” a British film from 1922, set to a live piano score.

Those looking for a bit more action should check out the roller racing event on Oct. 6, the bike messenger race on Oct. 8, and the bike polo tournament on Oct. 9.

“The main shift in cycling at this point is that it is becoming more mainstream around the world,” Mr. Barbur said. “It is one of the most positive moments of the past decades, and can only grow from here.”

The full story is at the NEW YORK TIMES.

Photo: The film “Bikelordz,” by Mikey Hart, part of the Bicycle Film Festival in London, follows young BMX bikers in Accra, Ghana. Image courtesy of the Bicycle Film Festival

“If you asked anyone to name five film directors, they’d inevitably be men,” Ms. Millward said, “so we decided to create a platform for our peers.”

The full blog post, on London’s Birds Eye View Film Festival, is at the NEW YORK TIMES, and also continues here after the jump

The 2011 Birds Eye View Film Festival will run for the seventh time March 8 to 17 at three sites: the BFI Southbank, the Institute for Contemporary Arts and the Southbank Center. It will begin on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. To commemorate that, the festival will highlight a century of women filmmakers, from Lois Weber, one of the first women to direct a feature film, to Lucy Walker, whose “Wasteland” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The 2011 festival will also host a “Bloody Women” retrospective that will highlight women’s contributions to the horror genre. Artists like the Grammy winner Imogen Heap and Micachu, an English experimental composer, will premier live music scores alongside silent horror films at the Southbank Center’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

“I think in part exploring horror and gothic cinema feels very relevant because it’s having a huge surge in popularity, with films such as ‘Twilight,’ so it’s natural for an organization like Birds Eye View to think about what this means as a cultural shift,” Ms. Millward said. “It’s also always interesting for us to explore a genre where there are such strong gender stereotypes.”

Last year the festival looked at blondes on screen, and a few years ago at women in comedy cinema.

The 2011 festival will include panel discussions, short-film screenings and master classes. The feature-film roster includes films like “Meek’s Cutoff,” with Michelle Williams; Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark”; and Susanne Bier’s Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated “In a Better World.” There also will be several screenings and discussions devoted to the German New Wave filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta.

Photo: A scene from “In a Better World,” one of the films showing at the 2011 Birds Eye View Film Festival in London. Image courtesy of Birds Eye View Film Festival

There is hardly a mention of war or the Taliban, although the occasional news update flashes across television screens in a few scenes. This is not by accident. Khan, who is 35, was born in Pakistan and grew up in London, wanted to make a film about the Islamabad that he and other young people know today: a relaxed, laid-back city that “always sleeps”.

First released in 2009, the film has screened in Abu Dhabi, Goa, London, New York, and San Francisco, but Pakistan officials recently banned the film. Its Central Board of Film Censors has taken issue with dialogue references to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, the use of the word “lesbian”, and scenes in which the film’s characters drink alcohol and curse in English and Urdu.

More Intelligent Life asked Hammad Khan about his film after a recent screening at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. The full interview is at INTELLIGENT LIFE and also continues after the jump

To Western audiences who have seen films like Richard Linklater’s “Slacker”, the story of your film might feel somewhat familiar. Were you influenced by other slacker films?

“Slacker” is a very different film from “Slackistan”. Apart from an opening nod to the ‘youth walking and talking’ style of that film, my film is far more traditional and story-driven. “Slacker” is in a league of its own and was a pioneering, near-experimental film. Perhaps better comparisons could be drawn with Richard Linklater’s other youth movie, “Dazed & Confused” or Whit Stillman’s “Metropolitan”, about the upper-class youth in New York.

Your film was recently banned in Pakistan. Why do you think that happened, and what do you plan to do about it?

Good old-fashioned arbitrary state censorship still exists. I feel disappointed and angered by their decision. It’s one rule for Hollywood/Bollywood films playing uncut week in, week out, and a totally different one for home-grown independent films. They have shown themselves to be enemies of progressive film culture and apologists for the extremist elements of society. Next steps, we go underground and try to show the film unconventionally and under the radar.

How accurate is your depiction of Islamabad? Why do you think it is the city that “always sleeps”?

The depiction of Islamabad is about as accurate as I know it. The youth in the movie are real, the houses, the cars, the hangouts and the daily conversations and issues. In a sense, all of this was happening and I tried to point a camera at it, rather than skew reality and package it for Western audiences.

How have people responded to your film?

The film has received warm responses from the largely South Asian diaspora audiences, mostly from the younger folk. The unexpected responses have come from mainstream British audiences and commentators, who don’t seem interested in this world or “a Pakistan just like us.” Some don’t even acknowledge that it is real, which is a bit ignorant. But, given the times we are in, the gulf of understanding between cultures is widening rather than coming closer. I thought perhaps “Slackistan” would confound people enough to wake up and question their own perceptions of Pakistan. Sadly, it seems more people than I thought actually want their prejudices about the world reinforced right now, rather than challenged.

You include Muslim punk bands in the soundtrack. Has Muslim punk had a big impact on young people in Islamabad?

The punk, indie, hip-hop, pop are all from bands that either the actors were part of, or were friends of mine. The young people of Islamabad are even a little more Westernised than in most parts of the country and they do like their guitars and their drums.

You include a scene in which the main character walks into a poor, segregated Christian community. How common is it for Christian communities in Islamabad to live in such isolated areas?

These segregated colonies are in each main district/sector. They are basically slums sandwiched between mansions and shiny buildings. The lives of these minorities are very difficult; they do the most menial jobs and have no respect. In fact, they are constantly living in fear and under threat from the larger population. Recently the issue of the country’s blasphemy laws has become a national debate after the brutal assassination of the Governor of Punjab by his own guard. He was shot 27 times in one of the most peaceful markets in Islamabad, where we shot a lot of “Slackistan”, only because he spoke out on the blasphemy law and defended a Christian woman charged with this law.

How do you think Islamabad has changed in the past five or ten years?

It used to be a safer, more serene place. Beautiful hills, quiet and clean streets. Some people say it’s bland, but historically it used to be where foreign diplomats would hate to leave. Nowadays, there is far more security on the ground. Moving around isn’t as free as it used to be. [But] there are beautiful places to walk and trek. There is nothing quite like the serene stillness of a sunny winter’s afternoon in Islamabad.

What’s been your experience in Pakistan?

I was born in Pakistan but my father was a political activist who fled to the UK in exile during the years of martial law. I returned to Pakistan sporadically in my teens and early twenties. But I am, all said and done, a true Londoner.

Shahbaz Shigri, who plays the male lead in the film (Hasan), said in an interview with the Guardian that the films that come out of Pakistan are either religious or political. Why do you think that is?

Well there aren’t many films to start off with. All credit is due to filmmakers who can tell indigenous stories and get them out there. The problem isn’t the filmmaker, it is the myopic, rigid approach to Pakistan that exists in Western media and culture. I have found some of it to be so narrow and agenda-driven that it has reached absurd levels. The film has been criticised by some intellectuals for not dealing with the Taliban or showing the outside world. That kind of reaction is either extremely arrogant or just mentally opaque. How can a window on the sixth-largest population in the world be reduced to a little peephole, beyond which there must be a man with a beard and a gun? This might go some way in answering the question why films from Pakistan need to be political or religious. Let it be said, slackers outnumber terrorists in Pakistan by a big margin!

For some of the characters in the film, the best option is to leave Islamabad for education or other opportunities elsewhere.

It felt natural to include that in the story, because these kids do have the money and visas to escape to New York or London if they can’t handle it back home. It’s an impulse because nothing works in Pakistan and everything seems to be available in the US and Europe. Even if you’re rich, you can’t escape the reality that everything is broken around you. The question then becomes do you escape this reality or confront it?

Why did you want to make this film?

This was life under our noses and I thought it would be interesting to capture this set of young people. They are the future of the country and they seem lost. I also wanted to paint a picture of the city that I spent some years in with some affection.

Do you consider yourself to be a slacker?

I don’t consider myself a “slacker” in the way I have portrayed the twenty-somethings of Islamabad. Perhaps we all go through a period in life where we’re stuck and in between two phases in life. I think it’s a universal thing.

To commemorate the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Harry Shearer, an actor, author, director and part-time New Orleans resident, has created “The Big Uneasy”, an investigative documentary in which he also stars. The film screened recently at the Curzon Soho cinema in London, followed by a question and answer session with Shearer.

Shearer is best known for his voice-overs for “The Simpsons” and his starring roles in such satirical films as “This is Spinal Tap” and “A Mighty Wind”. He takes a very serious turn with “The Big Uneasy”, aiming to prove that the devastation in New Orleans following the hurricane was not a “natural disaster” but instead an “unnatural disaster caused by people.” Also, that the city remains at risk.

The full blog post, on Harry Shearer’s documentary film The Big Uneasy, is at INTELLIGENT LIFE.

The post also continues here, after the jump.

“I’ve crossed the line from mock documentaries to real ones,” he told the audience. The film features interviews with engineers tasked with evaluating post-storm information. “Why did New Orleans flood?” Shearer asks. Their answers include detailed findings about the shoddy construction of the levees, and the backlash they confronted upon attempting to make these findings public.

One of these engineers, Ivor van Heerden, for example, talks about losing his job as deputy director of Louisiana State University’s hurricane centre after delivering his report on the many failures presided over by the Army Corps of Engineers in the years leading up to Katrina . Maria Garzino, another engineer, says she told her superiors at the Army Corps of Engineers that the hydraulic pumps installed after the storm were faulty, only to see her reports ignored.

Where films such as “Trouble the Water” and Spike Lee’s two four-hour documentaries on the subject—the award-winning “When the Levees Broke” and “If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise”—are heavily emotional endeavours that tackle issues of race and class among New Orleans residents, Shearer’s film spends more time considering the science and politics behind the mess.

Key to Shearer’s film are interviews with experts about the construction of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet canal, a waterway designed to shorten shipping routes into the New Orleans’ inner harbour. Critics of the canal, which was built in the mid-1960s by the Corps of Engineers, blame it for weakening the Louisiana coastline and so allowing the storm to overwhelm the levees and flood barriers.

Occasionally Shearer strays from this course of inquiry. Briefly mentioned is his contention that media coverage of Hurricane Katrina focused largely on poor black people, and overlooked lower-middle class white people who in his words “were nowhere near the Superdome.” Yet he downplays this point and only mentions it once, which is awkward. Is this important or an aside? We also spend a lot of time with Shearer and his friends as they ponder such questions as, “Why would you build a city below sea level?” But this mostly middle-aged and white group hardly feels indicative of the city as a whole.

The agenda of “The Big Uneasy” is worthwhile. The fact that the wreckage of Katrina was largely a product of engineering failure is important to recognise, particularly as these problems have not been solved. But as a film it is too heavy with data and light on drama to work as a compelling narrative. Perhaps if more residents were given a voice in the film, the statistics might have translated into something more personal.

“The Big Uneasy” will be screened throughout September, October and November in Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, and St. Louis

“No One Knows About Persian Cats” is a film directed by Bahman Ghobadi, an award-winning Kurdish-Iranian film-maker. Mr Ghobadi first came to prominence with “A Time For Drunken Horses,” a film about smuggling across the Iran-Iraq border.

“Persian Cats”, which won the Special Jury Prize in the “Un Certain Regard” section at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of young musicians in Tehran trying to make music under the strict censorship of the Iranian state. The film, whose characters are played by real Tehran musicians, depicts the tiny basements and cow sheds that are their rehearsal rooms, and their difficulties in finding venues where the government will let them give live performances. Drummers muffle their kit with blankets during rehearsals but angry neighbors still cut off the electricity or call the police when the guitars get too loud, stifling a burgeoning music scene.

My full interview, with “No One Knows About Persian Cats” director Bahman Ghobadi, is at the ECONOMIST, and also here on Blogowitz, after the jump.

The Economist: Why did you feel that the story of “No One Knows About Persian Cats” needed to be told?

Bahman Ghobadi: I was in the middle of making another film called
“60 Seconds About Us,” for which I could not get a permit. I tried for two to three years to get a permit and the government kept rejecting me. Because I have always loved music, a friend of mine suggested I go and record my vocal album. So I went to record and I got to know the musicians of the Tehran underground world. I realised a film needs to be made about these artists who have been suppressed by the government, because they had never been seen. I decided to create the Iranian underground cinema just like the Iranian underground music. They gave
me the courage to break the walls of censorship and say what I need to say.

The Economist: So you are a musician as well. What do you play?

BG: I have sang a lot, I know drum instruments, especially Iranian traditional drum instruments. And now, even though I am busy with a few other projects in Kurdistan, Iraq, I am recording my first album.

The Economist: Rather than use professional actors, you chose to hire local Tehran musicians to portray themselves in your movie. Why did you make that decision?

BG: When you make a film about real musicians in real locations, you cannot ask another musician to play the role of another musician. I did not have any choice. These kids go through a lot of tragedies and drama on a day-to-day basis. Just to be able to make music, they are faced with the authorities and with the police who ban their music, take away their instruments, and lash them as punishment.

The Economist: It was reported that you had to flee Iran after the film came out? Is that true?

BG: The Ministry of Information asked me to a famous spot in that ministry called Divar- Sangi (in English: Stone Wall), and very respectfully, they told me if I want to continue with filmmaking, I
have to comply with their standards such as not having interviews with foreign press, and not contacting certain people. They also told me several times that my other option was to leave Iran. So I was forced to leave. I don’t know anymore where to call home. I go back and forth between Kurdistan, Iraq, Berlin, and the United States for making my new film. I certainly have the hope that things improve in Iran soon so that I can return.

The Economist: How dangerous is it to make music in Tehran today? Are things improving or getting worse?

BG: It is more dangerous and more bitter than you think. For instance, [Persian Cats' two lead characters] Ashkan [Kooshanejad] and Negar [Shaghaghi] had an underground concert in Karaj (suburbs of Tehran), which the authorities invaded and arrested the musicians and all the 400 audience. Ashkan and Negar were thrown in jail, and they were charged with being fire-worshipers and Satan-worshipers just for making this
type of music. Things are currently worsening day after day.

The Economist: How accurately does your film portray the actual music scene in Tehran? Are there really young people wearing Strokes T-shirts and Vans backpacks?

BG: Yes. I have not changed anything in that film; all people are real, all locations and clothes are real. I think of Iranian culture as a beauty veiled by the black ugly chador of politics, and in my film I have tried to unveil this beauty.

The Economist: How do you make films differently now from when you first started?

BG: I have changed a lot. The imprisonment of my friend Roxana Saberi [screenplay writer for "Persian Cats"], the fact that I could not get a permit to make films, that I was forced to leave Iran, and most
importantly getting to know the musicians featured in this film, have really advanced me and my thinking. I see myself as a window-maker who tries to show a less-seen corner of this world. I also believe that Iran’s current situation has changed not only me, but a great number of people.

The Economist: What’s next for you?

BG: I’m busy with filmmaking workshops, writing a script, and producing a film of a young film-maker. I have 2-3 film-making projects in Berlin and Kurdistan that I will start some time this year. It should be done in 2-3 years. I’m basically in search of a place that I can call home.

“These films produce knowledge and they form opinions often about the weakest and most vulnerable people in society,” said Patrick Hazard, festival director. “They comment on places and situations that their audience may never come across directly. So we like to unpick these messages, develop them and also critique them.”

The full story, on London’s International Documentary Film festival, is at the NEW YORK TIMES.

Thet Sambath nurses hopes that the film will one day be shown in Cambodia. He could make the case that “Enemies of the People” could offer steps towards reconciliation. After a screening before Cambodian refugees in Utah recently, several women told Sambath that they had arrived filled with resentment, but that the film inspired them to want to meet the men who confessed to the killings and hug them for finally telling the truth.

The full interview with Thet Sambath, on the documentary film “Enemies of the People,” is at MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE.

Josh Harris was once an important cog in the wheel of internet development. His heyday came in the 1990s, when he created the first internet television network, Pseudo.com. An early internet multimillionaire, he soon became known as “the Warhol of the Web”. But his dramatic rise was followed by an even more dramatic fall in 2000, when Pseudo.com filed for bankruptcy and his public image was tarnished by his own project to chronicle his life on the web. Years later, most people have no idea who he is.

The full blog post, on the “We Live in Public” documentary film, is at INTELLIGENT LIFE, and also continues here, after the jump.

Harris’s grim fate as an entrepreneur and web celebrity is the subject of Ondi Timoner’s documentary We Live in Public, which won the 2009 Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. After screening as part of the 53rd annual London Film Festival, the film is now in select cinemas in America and Britain.

Timoner follows Harris’s rise as an internet golden boy in the early 1990s, a man with good ideas and the money to back them. But by the end of the decade, Harris’ ideas became obsessive and controlling. He closes the millennium with a project called “Quiet: We Live In Public”, which involved putting 100 artists in a New York City basement and filming every moment of their lives (including showers, sex and visits to the bathroom). His final experiment in online broadcasting was a 30-day, 24-hour surveillance of him and his girlfriend living in their apartment, during which his girlfriend breaks up with him. This, together with the burst of the dotcom bubble and the drama of bankruptcy leads to a breakdown for Harris.

Harris had contacted Timoner in 1999 to document “Quiet”, which explains her access and early coverage. Timoner, who has admitted to being sceptical of Harris’s early projects, has described this film as a metaphor. As Andrew Smith wrote in the Guardian, “she sees Harris as a warning of what our children might become, perpetually connected to millions but starved of intimate contact with a few.”

The film follows Harris as he retreats into seclusion, first as an apple farmer in upstate New York, then as a network CEO in Ethiopia, playing basketball with local kids in his spare time. What he will do next is anyone’s guess. (Perhaps invest in internet addiction companies?)

At the London screening I went to, there were plenty of gasps in response to Harris’s more outlandish comments and broadcast moments. Timoner is clearly trying to illustrate the problems inherent in our increasingly personal relationship with the internet. “We Live In Public” left me with an incredibly strong urge to remove myself from Twitter, delete my MySpace page, dump my LinkedIn profile and go completely offline. Unfortunately, the urge didn’t last long. Perhaps an hour later, I felt compelled (think Death Star tractor beam) to check my email and update my Facebook page status.

More entertaining than the film was watching the crowd listen to and engage with Grey afterwards. (One gushing audience member offered her band a gig at his London club. Another identified herself as a dominatrix and seemed to want to talk shop.)

After Grey admitted that she was shocked that Soderberg asked her to be in the film, and explained her preparations for the role (she interviewed a couple of call girls and read anonymous call-girl blogs), the conversation quickly turned to sex.

The full blog post, on the London screening of The Girlfriend Experience (and actress Q&A), is at INTELLIGENT LIFE.

I’ve seen “Do the Right Thing” many times, and have observed and participated in many debates about its value and meaning. But this particular London screening reminded me of just how well it captures the little things that not only set people off, but also calm them down and even make them laugh. There are incendiary and violent moments throughout the film (based on actual events), but there is also plenty of humour and humanity.

The full blog post, on the 20th anniversary screening of Do The Right Thing in London, is at INTELLIGENT LIFE.