Charlie Cockey – The Movie Gourmet

Cinequest Insiders Look at the 2016 Festival

March 2, 2016 by movie gourmet

The Movie Gourmet asked the folks who pick the movies at Cinequest about this year’s program.

MIKE RABEHL is Cinequest’s Director of Programming/Associate Director.

What are your predictions for the biggest audience pleasers? Something like THE SAPPHIRES/THE GRAND SEDUCTION/WILD TALES from past festivals?

Rabehl: As the programming director, I simply do not pick favorites. But, I really think audiences are going to find complete enjoyment in films like REMEMBER ME, HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS, BUDDY SOLITAIRE, THE COMEDY CLUB, CHUCK NORRIS VS. COMMUNISM, I LOVE YOU BOTH, and any of the BARCO ESCAPE screenings.

What might be the festival’s biggest surprise hit?

Rabehl: I think two films that are REALLY going to affect people are LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED? and UNTIL 20.

Is there any remarkable new filmmaking talent (like last year’s The Center)?

Rabehl: So much to answer here. You look at Simon Stone’s debut with THE DAUGHTER, or Michael Boroweic and Sam Marine’s MAN UNDERGROUND, and you have to be in awe of what they make you feel. Yet, I really think women director’s shine this year. You look at the French influence of Estelle Artus’ ACCORDING TO HER, the vibrancy of Alicia Slimmer’s CREEDMORIA, the purity of Jane Gull’s MY FERAL HEART, or the timeliness and importance of Kim Rocco Shields’ LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED?…It’s really tough to pick just one, So many great voices, and every single one I have mentioned is unique and, in the case of several, quite groundbreaking.

Is there anything that we haven’t seen before in a movie?

Rabehl: I think LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED? pushes the boundaries in a big way and takes of somewhere we haven’t gone before—into a world where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is ridiculed. And, I think people are really going to be wowed by Chris Brown’s THE OTHER KIDS—a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction that really shines a light on the newest generation of youth. And, I have NEVER seen a film like PARABELLUM in all my years of watching cinema. Just something totally different and leaves you breathless at the end.

Last year there were some great single screenings – ’71 and Gemma Bovery kind of under the radar and Three Hearts at the California. Any Can’t Miss single screenings this year?

Rabehl: OPENING and CLOSING nights, definitely. And, I think people will be very sorry if they miss seeing THE WAVE, MA MA, and SUNSET SONG on the big screen. We have also ADDED a new film to the line-up on March 13th, with Paramount’s THE LITTLE PRINCE. I saw it in December, and it is going to be a strong contender for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars next year.

You have a good nose for films from Belgium and Norway. Any Must Sees this year from those national film programs?

Rabehl: I’ve already mentioned THE WAVE—which is from Norway. But, two more films from Norway: STAYING ALIVE and WOMEN IN OVERSIZED MEN’S SHIRTS are definites. And, from Belgium, BROTHER and PROBLEMSKI HOTEL would be my picks. Also, from Russia, don’t miss ORLEANS

Demimonde really looks like my kind of movie (noirish), and Charlie Cockey says that you liked it a lot. Anything you want to tell me about it?

Rabehl: Oh, this one is going to really going to be a sleeper. Hungarian cinema has always been one of our favorites. We have two features this year (the other is FEVER AT DAWN), but in DEMIMONDE, you have this sweeping, Gothic story that feels like a noir. It’s a combination of visual set pieces, costumes, and this incredible musical score that makes me wish to see it on the big screen, rather than the small one I saw it on.

CHARLIE COCKEY is Cinequest’s International Film Programmer.

Some of Cinequest’s highlights always come from international cinema – IDA, of course, and THE HUNT, HEAVENLY SHIFT, IN THE SHADOW and last year’s exquisite CORN ISLAND. What should we be looking for at Cinequest 2016?

Cockey: Please don’t miss THE MEMORY OF WATER – it’s rough, emotionally, but it’s incredible filmmaking. Did you see the absolutely remarkable film THE LIFE OF FISH by Matias Bize? Same director – same quality.

My other picks are LOST IN MUNICH, MAGALLANES, PARABELLUM, SONG OF SONGS, WHY ME? and FEVER AT DAWN.

SANDY WOLF is Cinequest Documentary Programmer.

Last year’s doc program was very strong, especially ASPIE SEEKS LOVE, MEET THE HITLERS, THERE WILL BE NO STAY and SWEDEN’S COOLEST NATIONAL TEAM. What do you see as the strongest 2-3 documentary features this year? What do you predict will be the biggest audience pleasing documentary?

Wolf: My favorite doc is CHUCK NORRIS VS. COMMUNISM, which I know you have seen. After that, my next two favorites are TRANSFIXED (which is about a transsexual trying to undergo a sex change, who also has Asperger’s) and UNDER 20 (sad but inspirational about a kid who has cancer but keeps on with his high achieving life) – I could see that being an audience favorite, too.

Three others which I favored more so than some of the others are COMEDY CLUB, DAN AND MARGO and GORDON GETTY: THERE WILL BE MUSIC.

Is there any remarkable new documentary filmmaking talent (first feature, etc.)?

Wolf: TRANSFIXED is a first feature.

Bookmark my Cinequest 2016 page, with links to all my coverage. Follow me on Twitter for the latest.

DVD/Stream of the Week: A COFFEE IN BERLIN – slacker minus coffee equals plenty of laughs

January 20, 2015 by movie gourmet

Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly. It’s the debut feature for writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, a talented filmmaker we’ll be hearing from again.

We see a slacker moving from encounter to encounter in a series of vignettes. Gerster has created a warm-hearted but lost character who needs to connect with others – but sabotages his every opportunity. He has no apparent long term goals, and even his short term goal of getting some coffee is frustrated.

As the main character (Tom Schilling) wanders through contemporary Berlin, A Coffee in Berlin demonstrates an outstanding sense of place, especially in a dawn montage near the end of the film. The soundtrack is also excellent – the understated music complements each scene remarkably well.

I saw A Coffee in Berlin (then titled Oh Boy) at Cinequest 2013 and singled it out as one of the three most wholly original films in the festival and as one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the year. A Coffee in Berlin was snagged for the festival by Cinequest’s film scout extraordinaire Charlie Cockey. A Coffee in Berlin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

A Coffee in Berlin: slacker minus coffee equals plenty of laughs

June 19, 2014 by movie gourmet

Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly. Opening tomorrow, it’s the debut feature for writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, a talented filmmaker we’ll be hearing from again.

Cinequest’s Charlie Cockey: The Man Who Goes to Film Festivals

March 1, 2014 by movie gourmet

Charlie Cockey (photo courtesy Around the World in 14 Films)

Charlie Cockey is at a film festival. (Actually, right now he’s probably traveling between the Berlin International Film Festival and Cinequest.) But, whenever you read this, the odds are that he’s sampling cinema at a film fest somewhere.

Cockey, the international film programmer for San Jose’s Cinequest, attends twelve or more international film festivals each year. He never misses the great Berlin and Venice fests, and also makes the rounds of the European national film showcases in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and other countries.

Cockey is Cinequest’s film scout extraordinaire and responsible for the most singular films on Cinequest’s program, the movies unlike any you have seen before. In my recent Why Cinequest is essential, I highlighted three of his gems from last year’s Cinequest: the German dark comedy Oh Boy (the debut from talented writer-director Jan Ole Gerster), the absurdist Czech comedy Polski Film and the offbeat The Dead Man and Being Happy, with its gloriously wacky road trip through the backwaters of Argentina. (My favorite Charlie Cockey selection is the unsettling 2011 Slovak Visible World – which is creepy even for a voyeur film.) Cockey found 12 of the films in last year’s Cinequest, and has brought as many as 17.

Cockey, who lives in the Czech Republic’s second city Brno, speaks English, Czech, German, French, Italian and Romanian. That’s helpful, but the national film festivals usually have English-subtitled “festival version” screenings for distributors and festival programmers (plus non-subtitled screenings for the local public).

How did an American guy come to live in Brno? “A Czech woman tied my shoelaces together,” Cockey replies. Before he had acquired his Czech language fluency, he was sitting in a darkened Czech theater and was surprised to see no subtitles on the film. Needing to ask the woman next to him for help with the translation, he touched her hand and sparks flew, or at least one literal spark from static electricity. Fourteen years later, the two are still partners.

What are Charlie Cockey’s tips for sampling movies at a festival? Like any festival-goer, he chooses screenings based on the buzz, the director and sometimes a gut feeling. He doesn’t mind bad movies because “if a film’s not working, I leave”. He adds, “The mediocre ones are tough because you need to stick it out”.

First and foremost, Charlie Cockey is a man who devours culture in any form – books, music, cinema, food – with a voracious but discerning appetite. Cockey’s journey brought him from the East Coast and Idaho to 1960s San Francisco as a musician and as a road manager for a band. He opened San Francisco’s first science fiction bookstore (Fantasy, Etc) and ran it for the last quarter of the 20th Century. “There are no accidents,” he says. “Only surprises.”

Extremely generous with his knowledge and taste, Cockey loves to share the most precisely individual recommendations of books and movies. He relishes the memory of helping a boy – dragged into Fantasy, Etc by his parents – discover a genre of literature (in this case fantasy) that spawned a new love of reading. And he couldn’t resist quizzing me about my interests and then recommending an extremely obscure collection of letters from a German intelligence official in WWII – a book that I NEVER would have otherwise considered but which turned out to be a great read.

Here’s how to experience Cinequest the Charlie Cockey way: “Find films as you live life – by being open, prepared, ready, flexible and friendly”.

Follow The Movie Gourmet on Twitter for my continuing coverage of the 2014 Cinequest.

2013 at the Movies: Most Fun at the Movies

December 25, 2013 by movie gourmet

The Movie Gourmet had a great year at the movies and here are the highlights:

1. Taking The Wife to Bad Girl Night at the Noir City Film Festival. Noir City is the great San Francisco celebration of film noir, and Bad Girl Night is an annual double feature of noir’s nastiest femmes fatale. Now The Wife loves it too!

2. Interviewing Cinequest’s international film programmer Charlie Cockey – a film finder extraordinaire and a man who devours culture in any form. Watch for the interview when I preview the 2014 Cinequest.

3. Seeing three wholly original films at Cinequest: the German dark comedy Oh Boy (the debut from talented writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, the absurdist Czech comedy Polski Film and the offbeat The Dead Man and Being Happy, with its gloriously wacky road trip through the backwaters of Argentina.

4. Seeing five of the year’s best films (Mud, Stories We Tell, Me and You, The Spectacular Now and Before Midnight) in a May fortnight that included The Movie Gourmet’s Film Rampage.

5. I was the only audience member for Not Fade Away. I love sitting all alone in a theater because it makes me feel like a movie mogul in a studio screening room. Because I see lots of obscure movies at odd times like Monday nights and Sunday mornings, I am often part of a very small audience (five or fewer). But I hadn’t been the ONLY viewer since El Mariachi in 1992.

6. The DVD release of Here’s the Kicker featuring a blurb from The Movie Gourmet on the DVD cover. I enjoyed this indie comedy, and I hope my blurb will persuade folks to see it.