North America's oldest and largest celebration of cinema from the Arab world embarks upon its 14th edition this week, with a typically eclectic mix of 45 documentaries, shorts and narrative features. Following the opening night festivities at the Castro Theater on Thursday, October 14, the 14th Arab Film Festival (AFF) shifts to Landmark's Embarcadero Cinema (a new venue for the fest) for three days (Oct. 15 to 17). That same weekend, AFF appears at San Jose's Camera 12 Cinemas (Oct. 16 and 17), before returning to Berkeley's Shattuck Cinemas the following weekend (Oct. 22 to 24). For those who live in southern California, AFF presents three days worth of films at the Writers Guild of America Theater in Beverly Hills (Oct. 22 to 24).
There were two particular films I'd hoped to find in this year's AFF line-up. One made the cut and one did not. The missing one is Elia Suleiman's The Time That Remains, which premiered to glowing reviews at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Suleiman is considered Palestine's most accomplished filmmaker and I remember when his breakthrough film, Chronicle of a Disappearance screened at the very first AFF in 1998. Eighteen months after its Cannes premiere, The Time That Remains slips in to that netherworld of internationally acclaimed films that for whatever reason, have been bypassed by Bay Area programmers.
The film I'm dying to see which is in the festival is Yousry Nasrallah's Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story, which had its international premiere one year ago at the Venice Film Festival. Known essentially as an art-film director, Nasrallah served as assistant to Egyptian master Youssef Chahine and has inherited the mantle of being that country's most recognized director abroad. For Scheherazade, he's teamed up with popular screenwriter Wahid Hamid (The Yacoubian Building) and the result is that rare animal – a critical success on the festival circuit and a rousing box office success in Egypt due largely to its controversial subject matter. Mona Zaki stars as a TV talk show host who is encouraged by her politically ambitious husband to forego hot-button topics like government corruption. After switching her show's focus to women's issues, she becomes the Oprah of Egypt, with her guests spinning tales, à la Scheherazade, of women's oppression in Egypt. In his rave review in Variety, Jay Weissberg calls the film "bold and brave," presenting "women's sexuality as an expression of self-determination, making clear the parallels with an ever-degenerating political system." Here in the Bay Area we've been fortunate to follow the complete arc of Nasrallah's career – all five of his previous narrative features have screened locally (Summersaults (1988), Mercedes (1993) and The Aquarium (2009) at the SF International Film Festival, and The City (1999) and Gate of the Sun (2004) at AFF). It's reassuring to have that tradition continue. The following are two radically different trailers for Scheherazade, one created for the Arab market and one for the foreign arthouse market. They barely look like the same film.
Within the AFF line-up are some films that have screened at other Bay Area festivals. Mehdi Ben Attia's The String won the audience award at this year's Frameline and stars Italian screen legend Claudia Cardinale as a Tunisian matriarch whose gay son is having an affair with her handyman. (My capsule review is here). Another film set in Tunisia, Karin Albou's The Wedding Song, was the closing night film of the 2009 SF Jewish Film Festival. Set in 1942 Nazi-occupied Tunis, an Arab girl and Jewish girl of marriageable age must navigate their increasingly desperate circumstances. (My capsule review is here). One of the best films at the SF Film Society's 2009 French Cinema Now was Philippe Lioret's Welcome. Vincent Lindon (Mademoiselle Chambon) portrays a swimming instructor who wrestles with helping a 17-year-old Kurdish Iraqi refugee – one determined to swim across the English Channel from Calais to Great Britain. Here are trailers for The String, The Wedding Song and Welcome.
At this year's Palm Springs International Film Festival, I caught two more films in the AFF line-up. The more appealing was Ahmed Abdallah's low-budget indie Heliopolis, a melancholy ode to personal frustration set in Cairo's once glorious titular suburb. Its cast of characters includes a university student making a documentary about the neighborhood, a hotel receptionist who envies the foreign guests and longingly watches TV5 Monde, a hashish dealer, an upwardly mobile couple battling traffic jams on the their way to see an apartment, and the seller of that apartment who wants nothing more than to emigrate to Canada. Each is searching for an alternate life and the film's delicate narrative has them brushing against each other – but not in an obnoxious, Crash-y kind of way. The other film I saw was Hatem Ali's The Long Night from Syria, an allegory about the release of three political prisoners and its effect on family members who've grown accustomed to their absence. It's a bit leaden and culturally inscrutable, but nonetheless deals with some important issues. Here's a trailer for Heliopolis.
This year's opening night AFF film is Lyès Salem's Mascarades, a comedy that was Algeria's 2009 submission for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. A box office success at home and in France, the film stars director Salem as a ridiculed villager who invents a drunken story about his narcoleptic sister's engagement to a wealthy European. The impending faux-marriage gains him the respect of the village, but the enmity of his sister who's secretly in love with his best friend. These twotrailers make it look like great fun. Director/star Lyès Salem is scheduled to attend the screening, which will be preceded by the presentation of AFF's annual Noor Awards for Outstanding Feature, Short and Documentary. In last Friday's San Francisco Chronicle, there was an interesting interview with Lyès conducted by writer Jonathan Curiel.
With its selection of narrative features, AFF always strikes a nice balance between art films and more commercial fare. Fitting squarely in the former category is The Man Who Sold the World, the second film from fraternal Moroccan directing team Imad and Swel Noury (their first film Heaven's Doors screened at the 2007 SF International Film Festival). While the title may come from a David Bowie song, the story is a loose adaptation of Dostoevsky's "A Weak Heart." Set in a totalitarian dystopia, a young man named X falls in love with a beautiful cabaret singer, then descends into madness over his inability to accept happiness. In her positive review for Variety, Alissa Simon claims "the general public may find it pretentious and baffling, but cinephiles will swoon," and goes on to say that "although the plot may not yield many satisfactions, the stunning production and sound design offer numerous pleasures." Here's the trailer. Another art film in the line-up is Dima El Horr's Every Day is a Holiday, a Lebanese film in which three women travel through the desert by bus, en route to a men's prison where their men are incarcerated. Variety's Dennis Harvey hated it, writing that "As ponderous as its heavy-handedly ironic title, this tedious road trip belabors its metaphorical significance as thoroughly as it buries human interest, resulting in an arid journey." Yikes! The trailer, however, looks intriguing. And I'll go unquestioningly to see any film that stars Hiam Abbass.
Elsewhere amongst the AFF narrative features is Ali Mostafa's City of Life, which claims to be "the first multi-lingual feature film to be written, produced and directed by an Emirati with United Arab Emirates funding." Set in Dubai, the film's structure intercuts between three stories – a young, privileged Emirati lout, an Indian taxi driver with Bollywood dreams and a Romanian flight attendant in love with a British playboy. Again writing in Variety, Alissa Simon labels the film a "lurid melodrama" that's "shamelessly packed with product placement" and "feels as soulless as the city in which it unfolds." Since I never expect to visit the UAE, the armchair traveler in me might still take a chance on it. Here's the trailer. In addition to The String and The Wedding Song, there's a third Tunisia-set film in the festival. Ibrahim Letaief's Cinecitta (official site) concerns a young director who robs a bank in order to finance his new film. Rounding out the 2010 AFF narrative feature selection are three more titles from Syria (Gate of Heaven, Half MG Nicotine, Once Again), for which I was unable to obtain information apart from the brief descriptions on the AFF website.
AFF consistently spotlights some worthwhile feature documentaries. There are eight in this year's festival and heading up the list is Julia Bacha's critically acclaimed Budrus (official site). The film screened at this year's SF International and Jewish Film Festivals, but I'm probably not the only person to have missed those earlier opportunities. Budrus is the story of Palestinians and Israelis uniting in non-violent confrontations to stop construction of Israel's Separation Barrier in a West Bank village. There are five other feature-length docs in the fest dealing with Palestinian issues: Fragments of a Lost Palestine, GazaStrophe, the Day After, Little Town of Bethlehem, SAZ and Shooting Muhammad. Those who saw last year's remarkable doc Garbage Dreams, which concerned the Cairo community of Coptic Christians responsible for recycling 80% of that city's waste, may want to check out this year's Marina of the Zabbaleen. Finally, 12 Angry Lebanese looks at a production of "Twelve Angry Men" staged in a Lebanese prison.
The 33rd edition of the 33rd Mill Valley Film Festival (MFFF) gets going this Thursday, October 7 and continues through Sunday, October 17. Since posting my overview of the line-up last week, the festival has filled one its TBA slots with Rabbit Hole, the latest project from John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus). The film was well received at its Toronto world premiere last month, and stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as parents grappling with the recent death of a young son.
I've attended MVFF every year since 2004, which is when vehicle-less me discovered the ease of reaching the San Rafael Film Center by Golden Gate Transit bus. (The festival's Mill Valley venues, however, remain all but impossible to reach by public transit, except during weekday commute hours). But it looks like I'll be giving the fest a pass this year. Between the vagaries of my own work schedule and the festival schedule, I just couldn't find two films playing San Rafael on the same day that warranted the trip north. I even missed all the press screenings in San Francisco. So for this year's MVFF preview, I'm offering only eight capsules of films I watched on DVD screener. Happily, they were all very much worth a look.
Black Field (Greece, dir. Vardis Marinakis) In 17th century Greece, a severely wounded Turkish janissary is found outside an imposing stone convent. He's put in chains and nursed back to health by two nuns, one of whom has a secret between her legs. As a young boy, "she" was disguised as a girl by the mother superior in order to keep "him" from being kidnapped and turned into a janissary. Once the opportunity presents itself, the janissary and nun escape into the surrounding forest, where their initial enmity transforms into a begrudging tolerance for each other. Following a capture and second escape, their relationship goes even deeper. This transfixing and visually arresting film marks a strong feature debut by director Marinakis. It plays out almost like a fairy tale and is one of the most intriguing stories about gender identity I've ever seen.
Kawasaki's Rose (Czech Republic, dir. Jan Hrebejk) For his 10th feature, prolific social satirist and MVFF mainstay Hrebejk makes his most overtly political work yet – the first Czech film to raise the issue of cooperation with the country's communist-era secret police. An esteemed psychology professor and former dissident is about to receive a national award for service to the nation. To mark the occasion, a TV crew that includes the professor's resentful son-in-law is making a documentary. In the process they uncover a terrible secret that might destroy a reputation and a family. It's a compelling story, with dashes of humor and sharply drawn characters. The film does lose steam once the secret has been revealed, but rallies with a heart wrenching final act at the awards ceremony. I think it's Hrebejk's – and his frequent collaborator, screenwriter Petr Jarchovský's – finest work since 2004's Up and Down. It's also the Czech Republic's submission for this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
Moloch Tropical (Haiti/France dir. Raoul Peck) Filmmaker/activist/ex-Haitian Minister of Culture Peck (Lumumba) has cooked up a fascinating, absurdist satire about the final 24 hours in the presidency of a desperate Haitian despot. President Théogène (perfectly cast Zinedine Soualem) begins the day by stepping on broken glass and spends the rest of it limping from crisis to crisis. The populace is in revolt, the journalist he's torturing in the dungeon won't talk and the maid refuses to have sex with him. Worse still, that day's meticulously planned celebration of Haiti's 200th birthday promises to implode. It's enough to render a demagogue gaga. Set almost entirely within the walls of a luxurious mountaintop stone citadel, Peck's film moves at a brisk pace with purposeful camera movements and succinct editing, which is almost enough to counterbalance its somewhat overstuffed screenplay. Best of all is a hilarious rendering of the song "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."
Queen of the Sun (USA, dir. Taggart Siegel) I've been fascinated by the disturbing phenomenon of honeybee CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) since reading about it two years ago. At this year's SF International Film Festival there was a feeble documentary called Colony, which was less an investigation into CCD than a portrait of a bible-thumping, Mennonite beekeeping family. Fortunately, Queen of the Sun is everything Colony wasn't – a highly informative, passionate, visually striking look at something that should be of grave concern to everyone, considering that bees pollinate 40% of what we eat. Director Siegel (The Real Dirt of Farmer John) engages charismatic apiarists from around the world, who look at the 10,000 year-old symbiotic relationship between bees and man before considering the possible causes of CCD (the most likely culprits being monoculture, pesticides, genetically engineered crops and mechanized, migratory beekeeping). He ends on an optimistic note, focusing on urban rooftop beekeeping (especially the fight to make it legal in NYC) and the emergence of honeybee sanctuaries. Interestingly, a third documentary about CCD, titled Vanishing of the Bees, will screen at this year's SF DocFest.
The Two Horses of Genghis Khan (Germany, dir. Byambasuren Davaa) From the director of The Story of the Weeping Camel and The Cave of the Yellow Dog comes this third Mongolia-set docu-fiction hybrid. Urna is a singer from Inner Mongolia (a part of China) who travels to Outer Mongolia. She's promised her deceased grandmother to restore a violin that was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and track down the lyrics to an ancient song which is partially engraved on the violin's neck. The journey takes her from the big city (Ulan Bator) to the pastoral steppes, a sojourn which allows the film to raise issues of cultural identity-loss and the evils of modernity's encroachment. Two Horses is a more melancholy work than Weeping Camel and Yellow Dog, and lacks some of their charm and narrative drive. The climactic denouement feels particularly manipulated this time out. But it's an engaging story, with equally gorgeous scenery and singing – and it contains unforgettable advice on how to send a text message where there's no signal.
Dumas (France/Belgium dir. Safy Nebbou) This film's distributors should have simply translated the French title, L'autre Dumas (The Other Dumas), which correctly infers that this film is equally about Alexandre Dumas' collaborator, Auguste Maquet. Based on a 2003 stage play, Dumas is set at the dawn of the French Revolution of 1848, a time when the two writers were adapting "The Count of Monte Cristo" for the stage and writing the novel "The Viscount of Bragelonne." When a smitten Maquet finds himself impersonating Dumas in order to help a young woman whose father is languishing in prison, it sets off a plot thick with intrigue and pathos. Counter-balancing all that plot-i-ness is a nuanced tale of two writers unable to practice their craft in solitude. Gerard Dépardieu clearly has a grand time portraying the dynamic Dumas. And Benoît Poelvoorde, an actor with whom I'm unfamiliar, is equally adept at playing Dumas' opposite, the meek and sober Maquet. Also worth mentioning are Dominique Blanc as Dumas' wise administrative assistant/mistress, and gorgeous Mélanie Thierry as the object of Dumas' and Maquet's desire. The cinematography is alleged to be spectacular – something I couldn't tell from the murky screener I previewed. Dépardieu's casting was controversial in France, as Dumas was the descendent of a freed Haitian slave and Dépardieu appears in the film with darkened skin and wooly wig.
William Vincent (USA, dir. Jay Anania) Fans of last year's quasi-experimental film Erased James Franco will have an easier time digging this existentialist indie neo-noir than the Pineapple Express crowd. Here Franco plays William Vincent, which is a name he assumes after he misses a plane flight that crashes. WV floats like a phantom through NYC, living in a Chinatown storefront and working as an editor of nature documentaries when he isn't absentmindedly pick-pocketing strangers. That latter talent gets him noticed by a menacing gangster/dealer/pimp, sucking WV into in an increasingly violent realm. Steeped in atmosphere, with moody lighting and dialogue spoken in methodical half-whispers, William Vincent will either fascinate or try your patience. Or both.
Ed Hardy 'Tattoo the World' (USA, dir. Emiko Omori) This serviceable doc traces the remarkable career of Donald Edward Talbot Hardy. As a kid in 1950's Corona del Mar, Hardy became obsessed with tattoos and hung out in the parlors of Long Beach's Nu-Pike Amusement Park. After obtaining a SF Art Institute printmaking degree, he operated a short-lived Vancouver shop before moving to San Diego, where he developed his craft inking umpteen sailors. Years of hard work on both coasts lead to his current stature as a master body artist and painter, one whose branding on everything from underwear to coffee cups generated $700 million in international sales by 2009. Over the course of this documentary, we learn about the evolution of Hardy's artistry and his influences, both cultural (customized car painting, Mexican poster art, Yakuza full-body tats) and personal (mentors like Sailor Jerry Collins and rock-star tattooist Lyle Tuttle). The film benefits from Hardy's genial on-screen articulacy and from the extensive examples we see of his vibrant, exquisitely photographed work. Perhaps less successful is the director's listless voiceover narration and peculiar decision to score the film with opera and classical music.
By far the most exciting news for Bay Area cinephiles this week was the announcement that the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) will bring Olivier Assayas' critically acclaimed Carlos to its Sundance Kabuki screen for a one-week run on November 5. What's more, it'll be the full 5 1/2 hour version, shown in two parts with a 15-minute intermission. There will be two shows daily at 12:15 and 6:45.
I was really starting to worry. I knew the film was being aired in three parts on The Sundance Channel from October 11 to 14, followed by IFC's VOD roll-out of a truncated 140-minute version on October 20. The U.S. theatrical release is scheduled for NYC's IFC Center (in a special Roadshow Edition) on October 15. But what about those of us in the Bay Area craving the full-on, big screen Carlos experience? I kept waiting for it to pop up on Landmark Theater's list of autumn releases, but that wasn't happening. So what a relief to have the SFFS insert it in the middle of their busy 2010 Fall Season.
One caveat, however, is that Carlos will be projected digitally (Blu-ray) and not in 35mm. But at least we're not alone in that respect. From what I've ascertained, it appears that the 5 1/2 hour theatrical release is only available in digital format, which is a shame considering that this made-for-French-TV mini-series was actually shot on film. The movie was even shown digitally at its Cannes premiere, a fact which so annoyed NY Times critic Manohla Dargis she felt compelled to blog about it. But as the Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern wrote, Carlos is "a textbook case of the total immersion that one can enjoy only in a theatrical setting." Given the choice of watching Carlos over the course of three days on The Sundance Channel, or (gasp) watching a chopped up version On Demand, or (double gasp) waiting for the lord-knows-when DVD release, there's no question that the SFFS presentation at the Kabuki is the way to go, digital be damned.
For those not in the know, Carlos is a sprawling, yet tightly wound biopic about one Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, the notorious and charismatic Venezuelan who orchestrated a series of terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East throughout the '70s and '80s. It stars Édgar Ramírez, whom Variety's Todd McCarthy claims "inhabits the title role with the arrogant charisma of Brando in his prime." The film was part of the Official Selection at this year's Cannes Film Festival, but was controversially screened out of competition due to its TV connections (thereby rendering it ineligible for any of the festival's prizes). Writing in Film Comment, J. Hoberman called Carlos "possibly the most universally admired movie among the Cannes Film Festival’s official selections." Over at MUBI, David Hudson compiles the (mostly) rave reviews from the Cannes and New York Film Festivals. Also well worth checking out is The Sundance Channel's Carlos site, which contains reviews, profiles, synopses, photos and video. Below is the official trailer.
At the press conference announcing the 33rd Mill Valley Film Festival (MFFF) line-up, Founder/Executive Director Mark Fishkin referred to a "programming sensibility" that has evolved at MVFF over the course of three decades. That sensibility has become an extremely successful formula – one that inspired indieWIRE to name it one of the world's 50 leading film festivals. There's little arguing with success, and as evidenced by the 143 films and programs in this year's selection, MVFF33 will be adhering to the tried and true.
The bedrock of the festival's success is its position as THE post-Venice/Toronto/Telluride launching pad for autumn prestige films expected to figure prominently during Awards Season. If you want to see tomorrow's big movies today, as well as ogle the stars that come with them, MVFF is the Bay Area's place to be as amenable celebs make the trek to Marin County. Among this year's attendees will be Annette Bening, currently riding a 10-year career high with The Kids Are All Right. She won't be plugging a film, but will instead be feted with a clips, conversation and Q&A tribute. Also getting the MVFF tribute treatment this year is Edward Norton. He'll be there with Stone, playing a convicted arsonist who uses his wife (Milla Jovovich) to manipulate an early prison release from an about-to-retire parole officer (Robert De Niro). Bay Area native Sam Rockwell will be at the fest on Opening Night. He's accompanying Conviction, in which he plays a convict whose sister (Hilary Swank) is hellbent on proving his innocence. Last but not least, we'll get a gander at fellow Bay Area boy James Franco, who's getting raves for his portrayal of extreme mountain-climber Aron Ralston in Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire follow-up, 127 Hours.
If famous directors are more your thing, MVFF33 features several prominent ones live and in person. In 2006 the fest did a Spotlight on Alejandro González Iñarritu with Babel. That Spotlight is turned back on in 2010 as the noted Mexican director returns with Biutiful, for which Javier Bardem won a Best Actor prize at Cannes. Meanwhile, artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel occupies MVFF33's Centerpiece slot with his latest work, Miral. This drama set in the middle-East is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Rula Jebreal (also expected to attend) and stars Hiam Abbass (Lemon Tree, The Visitor) and Slumdog Millionaire heroine Freida Pinto. Closing out MVFF33 on October 17 will be The Debt, to be attended by its director, John Madden (Shakespeare in Love). The Debt stars Helen Mirren as an Israeli Mossad agent being forced out of retirement.
Among the other upcoming fall releases appearing at Mill Valley we have - yes, Helen Mirren again – this time starring as Prospera in Julie Taymor's (Frida, Across the Universe) sure-to-be strange adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Sharing the Opening Night duties with the aforementioned Conviction is Tom Hooper's The King's Speech. Fresh from its Audience Award win at Toronto, the film stars Colin Firth as a stammering King George VI who's aided by an unorthodox speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush. For those who can't wait for the October 29 release of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the third filmed installment of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy" will be shown once at the festival on October 13. Marin-ite Sean Penn is represented at MVFF33 by Doug Liman's Fair Game, in which he plays the husband of outed undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts). Finally, in what is sure to be a huge crowd pleaser, Sally Hawkins leads a strike of women auto-factory workers in Nigel Cole's Made in Dagenham. (Personally, the thought of watching the actress who played Happy Go Lucky's obnoxious optimist Poppy, channeling Norma Rae in a film by the guy who directed Calendar Girls is the very stuff of nightmares.)
Another area in which MFFF stakes its reputation is the Valley of the Docs section. I probably watch over 50 documentary features each year and I'm always impressed how many of the best come from MVFF. There are exactly two dozen in this year's line-up, and here's a handful that are of interest to me. At the top of the list is The Two Horses of Genghis Khan, another Mongolian docu-fiction hybrid from the director of The Story of the Weeping Camel and The Cave of the Yellow Dog. I have high hopes for Queen of the Sun, a doc about the frightening phenomenon of honeybee CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), which has got to be better than the pointless film Colony that screened at this year' SF International Film Festival. Every film enthusiast should want to see Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, a study of the enormous talent who shot The Red Shoes and The African Queen (and who only passed away last year). Docs about the counterculture are a MVFF mainstay, and this year I'm eyeing Ed Hardy 'Tattoo the World' and Space, Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm. Most Valuable Players sounds like fun, as it takes a peek at the Freddy Awards (the Tonys of local high school musical productions). Finally, at the press conference Fishkin highly recommended Stefan Jarl's Submission, in which the acclaimed Swedish documentarian has his blood analyzed and discovers it contains several hundred types of industrial chemicals.
The festival frequently pairs a music documentary with a live performance event. Following the October 15 screening of Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone – a Laurence Fishburne-narrated doc about the influential L.A. based ska-punk band – Fishbone itself will perform live at The Woods Music Hall in Mill Valley. (The previous evening, Everyday Sunshine opens SF DocFest and Fishbone will play that fest's Opening Night Bash at the DNA Lounge).
The biggest part of MVFF is always the World Cinema section, which clocks in with 40 films this year. As usual, the Mill Valley programmers have marched to their own drummer in assembling 2010's international line-up. So if you're hoping to catch the more acclaimed/discussed films from this year's major film festivals, MVFF might disappoint – perhaps this year more than in the past. I'm pretty obsessive about tracking these things and at first glance I drew a blank on all but a handful of titles. Apart from some films I mentioned earlier, only three rang a bell. Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid is a slick re-imagining of Kim Ki-young's 1960 cult shocker, in which a man's extramarital affair has horrific repercussions for his family. (The SF International Asian American Film Fest screened the original version last spring.) In an admitted attempt to entice a younger demographic to MVFF, they've programmed French-Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats, a follow-up to last year's wildly acclaimed I Killed My Mother. Dolan once again directs himself, this time as a guy competing with his female best friend for the attentions of a dim Adonis. Then in Sam Taylor-wood's Nowhere Boy, Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass) serves up a portrait of the teen-aged John Lennon. October 9 will be Lennon's 70th birthday and to celebrate (albeit one day early) MVFF will have a live music event featuring vintage Fab Four video clips and a performance by cover band Rubber Souldiers. Nowhere Boy opens in theaters on October 15.
Closer scrutiny of the World Cinema section revealed some familiar names. MVFF-regular Jan Hrebejk is currently the Czech Republic's most prominent director, and his latest film Kawasaki's Rose is about a revered political dissident with a shameful secret. The film was just named that country's 2010 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar submission. A new film from director/political activist Raoul Peck (Lumumba) is always welcome. His satirical Moloch Tropical follows the final 24 hours of a Haitian autocrat's presidency. Peck should know from whence he speaks, having once served as Haiti's Minister of Culture. Veteran French director Alain Corneau (who died one month ago) is in MVFF33 with Love Crime, a tale of corporate intrigue starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludvine Sagnier. Also from France we have none other than Gerard Dépardieu having a go at "The Three Musketeers" writer Alexandre Dumas, in Safy Nebbou's Dumas. Another veteran director in the line-up is Japan's Yôji Yamada, best known for his Tora-San comedies. I adored his recent samurai trilogy (The Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, Love and Honor), but scathing reviews have put me off his latest, About Her Brother.
There are more intriguing possibilities in World Cinema. Feo Aladag's When We Leave won the top prize at Tribeca and was just named Germany's 2010 Oscar submission. It stars Sibel Kekilli (Fatih Akin's Head On) as a mother fleeing an abusive husband in Istanbul. Another German-language film, Switzerland's Julia's Disappearance, features the estimable Bruno Ganz. These two movies will respectively serve as Centerpiece and Closing Night films during October's revamped Berlin & Beyond festival at the Castro Theater. From the SF-based Global Film Initiative's 2010 Global Lens series, MVFF has programmed Adrift from Vietnam and Becloud from Mexico. The entire 10-film 2010 GFI series will play the Rafael Film Center following the festival, from October 18 to 28. From Argentina I'm reading good things about Puzzle, which stars The Headless Woman's Maria Onetto. Set in 1963, Italy's Cosmonauta is about a teen-aged girl's obsession with the Soviet space program. It received two small prizes at last year's Venice Film Festival. Desert Flower is the true story of Somali supermodel Waris Dirie and recreates her "transformation from starving runaway to fashion icon to human rights activist and U.N. Special Ambassador dedicated to the fight against Female Genital Mutilation." Set in the Transylvanian countryside, Katalin Varga follows a woman's quest to avenge a rape that occurred in her past. Then in Black Field, a 17th century Turkish janissary joins forces with a Greek nun who possesses a "little something extra" (hint, hint – the film is co-presented by Frameline). Finally, who can resist a title like The Most Important Thing in Life is Not Being Dead?
MVFF33 also has several American indies of note. Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture won the jury award for Best Narrative Feature at SXSW, and what would MVFF be without a new film from prolific local director Rob Nilsson (Sand)? In addition to 127 Hours, James Franco stars in Jay Anania's existentialist neo-noir William Vincent. The October 17 screening of William Vincent begins a half hour before Franco's Spotlight tribute at the Rafael, so it's not unthinkable to hope he'll drop by to do a personal intro. Elsewhere in MVFF33 you'll find the 5@5 Shorts Programs (five programs of five shorts each screening weekdays at 5:00), a Children's FilmFest (now in its 17th year), special panels and lastly, a 30th anniversary screening of The Empire Strikes Back. It can all be found on the festival's website, along with many more narrative features and documentaries I wasn't able to mention here.
The Bay Area's annual avalanche of autumnal film festivals gets rolling this Thursday, September 16 with Cine + Mas' 2nd San Francisco Latino Film Festival (SFLFF). Cine + Mas – an organization of former volunteers and contractors from Sylvia Perel's behemothic and now defunct Latino Film Festival – came on the scene last November with a debut fest that screened some worthy films but was woefully under-attended. This year the organization has made two smart moves. First, they've taken their event out of November (a month overstuffed with festivals) and moved it to September where they'll be the only game in town. Second, the principal venue has been changed from Landmark's Lumiere Theater to the Mission District's Roxie Theater, putting the fest closer to its core audience. Let's hope it's a strategy that works, because the Bay Area really does need a festival exclusively dedicated to Latin American cinema. (Sylvia Perel's three-day Redwood City Latino Film Festival makes it fifth appearance November 5 to 7, with the line-up TBA).
SFLFF unofficially kicks off on Thursday with an "Exclusive Cine + Mas PreTheatrical Release" screening of Javier Fuentes-León's Undertow (Contracorriente) – the night before it opens at Landmark's Bridge Theater. If you've been kicking yourself for missing Undertow's sold-out Frameline Centerpiece screening back in June, where it won the Jury Award and according to many was robbed of the Audience Award, here's your chance to see it (or see it again) in a festival setting. Notably, Cine + Mas will be showing the film in 35mm, whereas Frameline's digital screening at the Castro left something to be desired. Director Fuentes-León is expected to attend.
The following evening, SFLFF gets underway with its two official opening night films, Florence Jaugey's La Yuma and Enrique Buchichio's Leo's Room (El cuarto de Leo) (El cuarto de Leo). La Yuma is the first narrative feature to come out of Nicaragua in 20 years and tells the story of a young woman seeking to escape her hardscrabble life through boxing. In Leo's Room, an indecisive Uruguayan grad student struggles with his sexuality, and is aided by a sympathetic therapist, a stoner couch-potato roommate and a grade-school ex-girlfriend whose problems are bigger than his own. In researching the festival's narrative features for this post – a difficult endeavor given that many films have only been written about in Spanish – it appears that Leo's Room is the most critically acclaimed of the bunch. In his rave review for Variety, Ronnie Schieb calls the film "an impressive debut" and a "delicately balanced mood piece" that "drifts in a laid-back dreamy way toward edgy subjects." He goes on to praise the director's "oblique approach to character (that) leaves nothing to stereotype" and the film's "limpid vision of a quasi-amniotic state of grace."
In addition to La Yuma, there are other SFLFF features with strong female protagonists. In Alberto Cortés' Heart of Time (Corazon del tiempo), a young Chiapas woman stirs controversy when she falls in love with a Zapatista revolutionary instead of the village boy to whom she's betrothed. Featuring a non-professional cast, Heart of Time screened in the World Cinema section at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and was one of three films nominated for Best Picture at the 2010 Ariel Awards (Mexico's Oscar). It received five Ariel nominations total, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Another film in which a young woman is forced to marry against her wishes is Teresa Constantini's 19th century Argentine historical saga, Felicitas. Set on the outskirts of Buenos Aires against a backdrop of war and plague, the titular heroine endures a marriage to a man 40 years her senior and emerges triumphant. The film's trailer resembles an overbaked bodice-buster, but the rich period detail and hunky male lead offer some promise. Then in Gerardo Tort's feminist road movie Round Trip (Viaje redondo), two Mexican women from different social classes discover they have much in common. Tort also directed the grim and gritty Streeters (De la calle), which really impressed me when it screened at the 2002 SF International Film Festival. Round Trip was also co-written by Beatriz Novaro, who along with sister María wrote the 1991 arthouse hit Danzón.
A few other SFLFF narrative features caught my eye. From Bolivia there's Tonchi Antezana's Elephant Cemetery (El cementerio de los elefantes), about a 33-year-old alcoholic reflecting on his misspent life. Elephant Cemetery is a La Paz euphemism for an area where alcoholics go to drink themselves to death. Leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva gets the biopic treatment in Fábio Barreto's Lula, Son of Brazil (Lula, o Filho do Brasil). Starting with his birth in 1945, the film traces Lula's humble beginnings in rural Pernambuco state, his São Paulo childhood and his years as a union leader, ending just before his 1980 entry into politics. Barreto is the younger brother of renowned director Bruno Barreto (Dona Flor and her Two Husbands, Four Days in September, Last Stop 174) and reviews of this film, reportedly the most expensive ever made in Brazil, accuse it of being more than a bit hagiographic. From Cuba, SFLFF has programmed that country's 2009 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar submission, Ernesto Daranas Serrano's Broken Gods (Los Dioses rotos), in which a university professor observes modern day prostitution through the mythos of legendary early 20th century pimp/politician Alberto Yarini Ponce de León. Finally, Jose Montesinos directs and stars in the San Francisco-set crime-drama, Owned.
Of course, there are a number of terrific-sounding documentary features in the fest as well. In the past ten years or so, perhaps no other nation's cuisine has exploded on the international food scene like that of Peru. Ernesto Ceballos' Cooking Up Dreams (De ollas y sueños) looks deep into that country's culinary movement and has chef Gastón Acurio of San Francisco's celebrated La Mar restaurant as one of its guides. Also at the top of my list of docs to see is Mercedes Sosa Singer, an Intimate Journey (Mercedes Sosa Cantora, un viaje intimo), which follows the iconic Argentine folksinger through the recording sessions of her final album. In another Argentine music documentary, Xavier Villaverde and Regina Álvarez' Gypsies in Buenos Aires (Gitanos de Buenos Aires), acclaimed flamenco artist David Amaya uncovers a community of Andalusian gypsies who fled to Argentina during the Spanish Civil War. The aftermath of that particular war is also touched upon in Lillian Lieberman's Visa to Paradise (Visa al Paraiso), which tells the incredible story of Gilberto Bosques, also known as the Mexican Schindler. Bosques was Mexico's Consul General in Marseilles from 1939 to 1943, during which time he issued over 40,000 visas to Jews and Spanish Republicans fleeing Hitler and Franco respectively. Perhaps Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo got to Casablanca on visas issued by Gilberto Bosques? Other political-themed docs in the fest include a look at the legacy of the Mexican Revolution (Ray Telles' The Storm That Swept Mexico), plus two dealing with the hot-button issue of U.S. immigration, Esaú Melédez' Immigration Nation: The Battle for a Dream and Ricardo A. Martinez' The Wall (La muralla).
Other special highlights of the festival include a Shorts Program and a Mexico-in-Film Sidebar featuring screenings of two classics: Julio Bracho's 1944 breakthrough urban drama Another Dawn (Distinto amanecer) and Fernando de Fuentes and Miguel M. Delgado's 1943 Doña Barbara. The latter is adapted from Romulo Gallegos' classic Venezuelan novel and stars the irrepressible Maria Félix as a despotic ranch owner.
In addition to the Roxie Theater and Mission Cultural Center, selections from the SFLFF will play at a half dozen other Bay Area venues through September 26. The festival website has links to all the films, with a trailer, film clip or link for each film. The complete schedule is here and you can download a PDF of the mini-guide here. The films scheduled to be screened in 35mm are Undertow, Felicitas, Heart of Time, Lula and La Yuma. Filmmakers are expected at attend screenings of Undertow, Lula, Mercedes Sosa, Owned, Heart of Time, The Storm That Swept Mexico, The Wall, Immigration Nation and the shorts Ebony Goddess, Imaginary Road, Legend and Gordita.
a critical success on the festival circuit and a rousing box office success in Egypt due largely to its controversial subject matter. Mona Zaki stars as a TV talk show host who is encouraged by her politically ambitious husband to forego hot-button topics like government corruption. After switching her show's focus to women's issues, she becomes the Oprah of Egypt, with her guests spinning tales, à la Scheherazade, of women's oppression in Egypt. In his rave review in Variety, Jay Weissberg calls the film "bold and brave," presenting "women's sexuality as an expression of self-determination, making clear the parallels with an ever-degenerating political system." Here in the Bay Area we've been fortunate to follow the complete arc of Nasrallah's career – all five of his previous narrative features have screened locally (Summersaults (1988), Mercedes (1993) and The Aquarium (2009) at the SF International Film Festival, and The City (1999) and Gate of the Sun (2004) at AFF). It's reassuring to have that tradition continue. The following are two radically different trailers for Scheherazade, one created for the Arab market and one for the foreign arthouse market. They barely look like the same film.
capsule review is here). One of the best films at the SF Film Society's 2009 French Cinema Now was Philippe Lioret's Welcome. Vincent Lindon (Mademoiselle Chambon) portrays a swimming instructor who wrestles with helping a 17-year-old Kurdish Iraqi refugee – one determined to swim across the English Channel from Calais to Great Britain. Here are trailers for The String, The Wedding Song and Welcome.
documentary about the neighborhood, a hotel receptionist who envies the foreign guests and longingly watches TV5 Monde, a hashish dealer, an upwardly mobile couple battling traffic jams on the their way to see an apartment, and the seller of that apartment who wants nothing more than to emigrate to Canada. Each is searching for an alternate life and the film's delicate narrative has them brushing against each other – but not in an obnoxious, Crash-y kind of way. The other film I saw was Hatem Ali's The Long Night from Syria, an allegory about the release of three political prisoners and its effect on family members who've grown accustomed to their absence. It's a bit leaden and culturally inscrutable, but nonetheless deals with some important issues. Here's a trailer for Heliopolis.
This year's opening night AFF film is Lyès Salem's Mascarades, a comedy that was Algeria's 2009 submission for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. A box office success at home and in France, the film stars director Salem as a ridiculed villager who invents a drunken story about his narcoleptic sister's engagement to a wealthy European. The impending faux-marriage gains him the respect of the village, but the enmity of his sister who's secretly in love with his best friend. These two trailers make it look like great fun. Director/star Lyès Salem is scheduled to attend the screening, which will be preceded by the presentation of AFF's annual Noor Awards for Outstanding Feature, Short and Documentary. In last Friday's San Francisco Chronicle, there was an interesting interview with Lyès conducted by writer Jonathan Curiel.
adaptation of Dostoevsky's "A Weak Heart." Set in a totalitarian dystopia, a young man named X falls in love with a beautiful cabaret singer, then descends into madness over his inability to accept happiness. In her positive review for Variety, Alissa Simon claims "the general public may find it pretentious and baffling, but cinephiles will swoon," and goes on to say that "although the plot may not yield many satisfactions, the stunning production and sound design offer numerous pleasures." Here's the trailer. Another art film in the line-up is Dima El Horr's Every Day is a Holiday, a Lebanese film in which three women travel through the desert by bus, en route to a men's prison where their men are incarcerated. Variety's Dennis Harvey hated it, writing that "As ponderous as its heavy-handedly ironic title, this tedious road trip belabors its metaphorical significance as thoroughly as it buries human interest, resulting in an arid journey." Yikes! The trailer, however, looks intriguing. And I'll go unquestioningly to see any film that stars Hiam Abbass.
there's a third Tunisia-set film in the festival. Ibrahim Letaief's Cinecitta (official site) concerns a young director who robs a bank in order to finance his new film. Rounding out the 2010 AFF narrative feature selection are three more titles from Syria (Gate of Heaven, Half MG Nicotine, Once Again), for which I was unable to obtain information apart from the brief descriptions on the AFF website.
Lost Palestine, GazaStrophe, the Day After, Little Town of Bethlehem, SAZ and Shooting Muhammad. Those who saw last year's remarkable doc Garbage Dreams, which concerned the Cairo community of Coptic Christians responsible for recycling 80% of that city's waste, may want to check out this year's Marina of the Zabbaleen. Finally, 12 Angry Lebanese looks at a production of "Twelve Angry Men" staged in a Lebanese prison.
