Almost every day of the year a film festival takes place somewhere in the world - from sub-Saharan Africa to the Land of the Midnight Sun. "Sundance to Sarajevo" is a tour of the world's film festivals by an insider whose familiarity with the personalities, places, and culture surrounding the cinema makes him uniquely suited to his role. Kenneth Turan, film critic for the "Los Angeles Times", writes about the most unusual as well as the most important film festivals, and the cities in which they occur, with an eye toward the larger picture. His lively narrative emphasizes the cultural, political, and sociological aspects of each event as well as the human stories that influence the various and telling ways the film world and the real world intersect. Of the festivals profiled in detail, Cannes and Sundance are obvious choices as the biggest, brashest, and most influential of the bunch. The others were selected for their ability to open a window onto a wider, more diverse world and cinema's place in it. Sometimes, as with Sarajevo and Havana, film is a vehicle for understanding the international political community's most vexing dilemmas. Sometimes, as with Burkina Faso's FESPACO and Pordenone's Giornate del Cinema Muto, it's a chance to examine the very nature of the cinematic experience. But always the stories in this book show us that film means more and touches deeper chords than anyone might have expected. No other book explores so many different festivals in such detail or provides a context beyond the merely cinematic.

About the Author
Kenneth Turan is film critic for the Los Angeles Times and a frequent contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and the co-author of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke.


Book Information
ISBN 9780520240728
Author Kenneth Turan
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 272g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 13mm