Opening Night News

The MFA kicks off its John Cassavetes and Peter Falk series with a pair of their lesser known collaborations.

A frequent collaborator with former AFI co-student David Lynch, Frederick Elmes has supplied a dreamy, super-realistic visual style to four of Lynch's features, including "Eraserhead" and more recently, "Wild at Heart" . Raised in New Jersey, he became interested in photography when he was lent a Leica camera by his father.

Walk past the new Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese monument outside Keyspan Park in Coney Island, and you'll see a moment frozen in time.

I DON'T KNOW if this is true elsewhere, but this festival seems to afford a certain loyalty, not only to independent filmmakers but to local filmmakers and to films shot in and around town.

Pedro AlmodA3var's paean to womanhood, in particular motherhood and actresshood, is dedicated to three of the kind: Bette Davis, specifically for All about Eve; Gena Rowlands, for Opening Night; and Romy Schneider, for The Important Thing Is to Love .

The son of Sicilian immigrants, Ben Gazzara grew up on New York City's tough Lower East Side in a cold-water flat with the bathtub in the kitchen, speaking Italian as his first language.

Film from the pioneer of US independent cinema, John Cassavetes: his dramatic 1997 tale of a fading actress trying to keep going Performers Myrtle Gordon : Gena Rowlands Maurice Adams : John Cassavetes Manny Victor : Ben Gazzara Sarah Goode : Joan Blondell David Samuels : Paul Stewart Dorothy Victor : Zohra Lampert Nancy Stein : Laura Johnson Gus ...

As a director, John Cassavetes isn't as famous as Steven Spielberg or George Lucas.

When actress Gena Rowlands arrived in Hollywood in the 1950s, she could easily have opted to take the Hollywood starlet route.

Ivo van Hove's Toneelgroep Amsterdam, which presented a stage amalgam of John Cassavetes' film Opening Night to acclaim at BAM last season, will participate in the New Island Festival in late summer.