Film

The organizers of the 26th Annual Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival have recently released the schedule for the “Best of Fest,” a series of encores for films that have been among viewers’ favorites. Over the course of the Film Festival, visitors to the Daily Planet’s Film Festival viewer feedback site have been weighing in with their own opinions on dozens of films. MORE »

Seeing 21 films in 11 days is an arduous journey filled with delights, insights, and disappointments. Attending so many films can be both exhilarating and exhausting. A few films left indelible imprints in my mind, others fell by the roadside, and a couple I should have just ditched. MORE »

For over a quarter of a century, Minnesotans have reveled in the rare opportunity to spend a week diving into the cultures and lives of people from across the globe – at least for ninety minutes at a time. One of the most exciting aspects of the Minneapolis/ St. Paul International Film Festival, now in its 26th year, is the opportunity to meet the people that actually work on the films that they see. MORE »

When American singer and actor Dean Reed was found dead in a lake in communist East Berlin in 1986, it was surprising that the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune devoted so little attention to the story. After all, Reed had come to Minneapolis several times in the 1970s and 1980s to visit his friend Marv Davidov. Then, in 1978, Reed had been arrested in Buffalo, Minnesota and spent more than a week in the Wright County Jail for protesting, with farmers and others, against a high-voltage power line. In a wonderfully inventive tactic, Reed managed to call his friends the Everly Brothers, the Smothers Brothers, actress Jean Seberg in Paris and others in Chile, East Germany, and the Soviet Union, and turn the episode into an international affair. MORE »