Michael Glawogger's Whores' Glory (2011)
Film Comment Selects gets underway tomorrow with a packed, eclectic slate that journeys from a Pink Floyd concert in the ruins of Pompeii to the villages of Northern Albania to real-life brothels across the globe. And that’s just this weekend!
Get started tomorrow with the Golden Lion-winning new adaptation if Goethe's Faust, an ingenious reinvention of the classic tale that sparked heated debate at the Venice Film Festival. Stay later that night for Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii, a revival of the 1982 feature that features a bizarre, one-of-a-kind performance by the band in an otherwise empty amphitheater made of stone.
On Saturday, we’ll feature Joshua Marston’s first film since Maria Full of Grace (2004), The Forgiveness of Blood, which this time finds the American director looking at how a blood grudge affects a family in Northern Albania (director and stars in person!). My Own Private River is James Franco’s recut version of Gus Van Sant’s classic My Own Private Idaho with new footage, accompanied by a related exhibit in the Furman Gallery (Franco in person!). Whores’ Glory fashions a plain-stated lens into the lives of prostitutes in many of the world’s most notorious red-light districts.
Also featured in the festival’s early days is Life is Sweet, Mike Leigh’s breakthrough feature unavailable on DVD in the United States. (The screening is a tribute to our late friend and colleague Bingham Ray, who released the film as the inaugural feature from his company October Films.) And don’t miss a restored print of Le sauvage, a screwball Catherine Deneuve classic from 1975 that plays ahead of our planned Chaplin Award ceremony honoring Deneuve in April.
Head here for the complete lineup this weekend and for the entire festival, which runs through March 1. Four-film passes start at just $28 for members!
