The Iranian government is threatening to boycott this year’s Venice Film Festival, reportedly in response to recent European sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, which were instigated as a result of the country’s nuclear program.

Chris Marker, the French filmmaker best known for 1962’s La Jetée, has passed away at age 91. He’s credited as the inventor of the essay film, a “form pitched between documentary and personal reflection, exploring the subjectivity of the cinematic perspective.”

Via Flavorwire we learn that Holly Gilliam has started a blog to share material from the archive of her dad, Minneapolis-born Monty Python illustrator and filmmaker Terry Gilliam. She hopes to turn the cache of scripts, doodles, and cut-outs into a book.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Frank Pierson has died at age 87. Known for penning Dog Day Afternoon and Cool Hand Luke, his 5-decade career spanned film and TV—most recently including producer duties for AMC’s Mad Men.

As the Olympics begin in London, Ai Weiwei comments on his experience of the 2008 games: “My memory of the Beijing Olympics has not changed. It is a fake smile, an elaborate costume party with the sole intention of glorifying the country.”

Where better than Vienna, Freud’s hometown and a “shadowy city of ghosts,” to encounter the phantom of a friend thought dead? Holly Martins, a day away from returning to the United States, has made a shocking discovery: Harry Lime is alive, reanimated by the smirking face of Orson Welles, and apparently skulking around the doorways of Vienna, unseen yet permeating the city like an otherworldly fog…

A new bill before the Ukrainian Parliament hopes to criminalize all positive depictions of homosexuality in art, film, and television. Supporters of the proposal say, “Our goal is the preservation of the moral, spiritual, and physical health of the nation.”

The Indian government has asked the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing to remove a video installation discussing the 2002 communal Gujarat riots. Officials from the Ministry of External Affairs claim the video had “politically controversial overtones.”

Vito Russo is the subject of a new HBO documentary, Vito. The film scholar and activist is best known for his profound contributions to the gay rights movement and his groundbreaking book on LGBT visibility in early Hollywood cinema, The Celluloid Closet.