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Pat Dowell

  • The film The Act of Killing is the most talked about movie of the year. It's a film that is both fiction and nonfiction. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer talked to the old men in charge of the death squads in Indonesia in the 1960s that killed somewhere between 500,000 to 2 million civilians in the name of thwarting communism.
  • British filmmaker Sally Potter gained worldwide attention with her 1992 film Orlando. Like all of her movies, it was unconventional in its story and structure. Her new film, Ginger & Rosa, is more realistic and direct.
  • Leviathan is a new film that's a documentary, and yet not quite a documentary. The mostly wordless art piece uses tiny cameras and dramatic soundscaping to probe the edges of human-animal interaction off the coast of New England. The filmmakers explain their unusual production process.
  • When it was released in the early '60s, Shirley Clarke's controversial film about heroin addicts got shut down by New York police after two screenings. Now, a half-century later, audiences get a second chance to see the newly restored movie in theaters.
  • Lawrence Kasdan, who's known for The Big Chill and Grand Canyon, has directed another boomer-centric comedy in Darling Companion. Pat Dowell talks with star Kevin Kline about his role, and with Kasdan and his wife and co-writer, Meg Kasdan, about the real-life experience that inspired the movie.
  • Germany's official entry at the 84th Oscars is Pina, a documentary showcasing the groundbreaking work of the late choreographer Pina Bausch. Director Wim Wenders discusses Bausch, representing dance on screen, and working in 3-D.
  • The legendary experimental filmmaker's work is the subject of a career-spanning retrospective at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. VanDerBeek merged collage-style filmmaking with new technology throughout his career.
  • No One Knows About Persian Cats tells the story of Iranian musicians trying to put together a band in a country where heavy metal, rock and hip-hop are illegal. The film won two prizes at last year's Cannes International Film Festival, and opens in this week in the U.S.
  • The Boston-based composer is remembered, 100 years after his birth, for a string of three-minute pops-concert classics such as "Sleigh Ride," "The Typewriter" and "The Syncopated Clock."
  • Filmmaker John Huston -- born 100 years ago Saturday, on Aug. 5, 1906 -- made some of cinema's most enduring classics, among them The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.