If there was one standout moment during the 30th installment of the Miami International Film Festival, it was Darlene Love's performance of "Lean on Me" that followed the opening-night screening of Twenty Feet From Stardom, the documentary about back-up singers in which she is featured. (We've already written about how her pipes threatened the very structural integrity of the Gusman.)

Twenty Feet From Stardom, Morgan Neville's documentary about African-American female back-up singers and the first film to sell at this year's Sundance Film Festival, will be widely released to theaters June 14 by the Weinstein Company and is being put forth by many industry watchers as proof of the Weinstein brothers' resurgence following their separation from Miramax.

See also:
- Actor Brady Corbet on Francophiles, Old School Filmmaking, and Au Hasard Balthazar
- Everybody Has A Plan's Viggo Mortensen Wants To Tell You a Secret
- The Boy Who Smells Like Fish: Talkin' Tuna and Stank With the Cast and Crew
- Twenty Feet From Stardom: Darlene Love Dominates at MIFF Opening Night

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Courtesy of Vanity Fair

Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger

The Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger was in town last week for his Miami International Film Festival screening of Which Way Is the Front Line From Here?, his documentary about his fellow war reporter and Restrepo codirector, Tim Hetherington, who died in combat in Libya almost two years ago.

Though the rest of their interview with Cultist will run closer to the April 18 premiere of the film on HBO, Junger and his supervising producer, Sara Bernstein, did give us a few hints about his upcoming, as-yet-unannounced next documentary project.

Their partnership began with what Bernstein called a "record-setting green light" for Junger's pitch of the Hetherington documentary.

"Yeah, that's right," Junger confirmed. "Twenty-eight minutes flat."

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Jessica Berman and Fernando Trueba.

No one who has regularly attended the Miami International Film Festival during its 30 years will argue against the choice of Fernando Trueba for a career tribute award. The Oscar-winning director has repeatedly debuted well-regarded films at MIFF from as far back as 1986 with El año de las luces. In 1994, the festival debuted his calling card to big time recognition: Belle Epoque, a movie that would go on to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at that year's Academy Awards. This year marked his 10th visit to the festival, the last being in 2011 to introduce Miami to last year's Oscar-nominated Best Animated Feature Film, Chico and Rita.

The night of his career tribute at the Olympia Theater at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts on Friday opened with the house lights dimming unannounced and a video mashup featuring overlapping clips of many iconic images from Trueba's films. Melding them was a video effect that added a multi-colored glow to the images with overlapping neon geometric shapes. Music stuttered and looped, as echoing dialogue in mostly Spanish faded in and out for about five minutes.

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courtesy of Zipporah Films

from Frederick Wiseman's Zoo

For almost half a century, Frederick Wiseman has been directing some of the finest documentaries ever made. In more than 40 films, he's taken his camera everywhere, from slaughterhouses to a school for the blind, a ballet company, abusive relationships, and into zero gravity. Tonight at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, the Miami International Film Festival is hosting a 20th-anniversary screening of Zoo, his 1993 exploration of Metrozoo.

"All the films are thematically related," Wiseman writes from Paris, where he is editing his next documentary, At Berkeley, about the California university. "My interest is in making films about as many different aspects of human behavior as possible."

In Zoo, Wiseman focuses his lens on the entertainment, business, and research sides of Metrozoo (now called Zoo Miami) to not only peek behind the bars and closed doors but also to examine the ethics of a zoo and of society as a whole. It's a beautiful film, at times very funny and at others heartbreaking.

See also:
- Actor Brady Corbet on Francophiles, Old School Filmmaking, and Au Hasard Balthazar
- Everybody Has A Plan's Viggo Mortensen Wants To Tell You a Secret
- The Boy Who Smells Like Fish: Talkin' Tuna and Stank With the Cast and Crew
- Twenty Feet From Stardom: Darlene Love Dominates at MIFF Opening Night

More »

Photo by Hans Morgenstern

Actor Alfredo Castro and Andres Castillo, Assistant Director of MIFF.

As news of Hugo Chávez's death spread across South Florida, last night was a good night to see a movie about the end of a dictatorship. A packed house attended the Miami premiere of No, Chilean director Pablo Larraín's final film in his Pinochet trilogy. The Miami International Film Festival staff even had to delay the screening several minutes while the audience continued to stream in.

After the audience was mostly seated, Andres Castillo, assistant director of MIFF, walked out to introduce the film. He received applause when he mentioned No's Oscar nomination. Though the film's director had attended MIFF for at least one of the other two films in the trilogy, he was not present last night. Instead, Castillo introduced actor Alfredo Castro, who played prominent roles in all three of the films and co-wrote the screenplay to the first of the films, 2008's Tony Manero.

See also:
- Actor Brady Corbet on Francophiles, Old School Filmmaking, and Au Hasard Balthazar
- Everybody Has A Plan's Viggo Mortensen Wants To Tell You a Secret
- The Boy Who Smells Like Fish: Talkin' Tuna and Stank With the Cast and Crew
- Twenty Feet From Stardom: Darlene Love Dominates at MIFF Opening Night

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Brady Corbet.

If you want to see the power of cinema at its best, watch a film by Robert Bresson. The young actor/director Brady Corbet knows this, and he will take advantage of his pedestal at this year's Miami International Film Festival to express it by presenting what he thinks is one of the French director's masterpieces: Au Hasard Balthazar.

Corbet spoke to New Times about his desire to present the film in 35mm. He says he expects the festival to have a pristine print supplied by Rialto Pictures for the one-night-only event at the Tower Theater in Little Havana this Friday night.

See also:
- Five Foreign Films at MIFF for People Who Don't Usually Like Foreign Films
- Everybody Has A Plan's Viggo Mortensen Wants To Tell You a Secret
- The Boy Who Smells Like Fish: Talkin' Tuna and Stank With the Cast and Crew
- Twenty Feet From Stardom: Darlene Love Dominates at MIFF Opening Night

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Twenty Feet from Stardom, the Miami International Film Festival's opening-night film, was jaw-dropping. Venus and Serena, its closer, has superstar power. But if you're hoping to see the MIFF entry that earned the most headlines this year, it's Dark Blood, the final film starring the '90s acting wunderkind who died too young, River Phoenix.

MIFF will screen the film, which has finally made it to the big screen after languishing in storage for nearly 20 years, tomorrow night at the Gusman Center -- expect a big ol' fancy deal, including a red carpet. And you can check it out for free if you win the tickets we're giving away. Find out how after the jump.

See also:
- Dark Blood Director George Sluizer on River Phoenix: "I Never Thought of Drugs"
- River Phoenix's Last Film to Make U.S. Debut at Miami International Film Festival

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Viggo Mortensen in Everybody Has a Plan.

Viggo Mortensen is a man of secrets. He might be best known as Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings series, but his most memorable performances on film have been in the roles of men whose lives are ruled by dark secrets: take A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, for example.

Now, fans can add Everybody Has A Plan to that list. Viggo plays two twins who lead very different lives -- one as a pediatrician in the city, another as a beekeeper who deals in crime on the side on rural Argentine riverbanks -- until one takes over the other's life -- and, unwittingly, the dark secrets that go with it.

It's no accident that Mortensen keeps getting these roles. "I've never literally played twins," he admits, "but everybody is complicated in real life.

See also:
- Five Foreign Films at MIFF for People Who Don't Usually Like Foreign Films
- The Boy Who Smells Like Fish: Talkin' Tuna and Stank With the Cast and Crew
- Twenty Feet From Stardom: Darlene Love Dominates at MIFF Opening Night

More »

The Olympia Theater hosted the world premiere of The Boy Who Smells Like Fish at the Miami International Film Festival Saturday. The comedy is about, well, a boy who smells like fish.

The boy in question, played by Big Love's Douglas Smith, isn't doing anything untoward with your ceviche while you're off in the bathroom. No, he has trimethylaminuria, a real but rare metabolic disorder that causes him to secrete a fishy odor. A representative from a Miami-based support group for sufferers of trimethylaminuria was on hand to thank the filmmakers "for telling our story."

After the premiere, the festivities continued on the 19th floor of the JW Marriott Marquis, where guests and their scents mingled high above downtown Miami. We were there, not only to enjoy the responsibly portioned desserts and two-lane virtual bowling alley (which smelled like virtual feet) but to learn more about the cast and crew's firsthand experiences with body odor.

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Photos by Ciara LaVelle

Darlene Love greets fans on the red carpet.

You might think you don't know Darlene Love. But you're wrong. You've heard her on hits starting in the '60s -- songs like "He's a Rebel," Da Doo Ron Ron," and "Christmas Baby Please Come Home." When you think of that oldies girl group sound, it's her voice you're thinking of.

Love is arguably one of the most important pop musicians of the last century, but few people have heard her name because of a music industry that hid her behind lesser talent. The same goes for Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega, and Claudia Lennear -- all backup singers with resumes packed with music's biggest stars (Ray Charles, Tina Turner, the Rolling Stones) whose vocal talents are as unbelievable as the fact that they never became household names.

Twenty Feet From Stardom, the Miami International Film Festival's opening night film, tells the stories of these singers and others, with input from Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, and Sheryl Crow, among other musicians who've made it into the spotlight. But the real stars of this film are the backup singers -- and after the screening, Darlene Love took the stage to prove that even at 71, she's still got pipes that'll blow your mind.

See also:
- Miami International Film Festival's "Home Movies": Films By Locals
- Miami International Film Festival Announces 2013 Lineup: Viggo Mortensen, River Phoenix, Venus and Serena

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