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Movies
at the 2003 High Falls Film Festival
Feature-Length
Films
ANGELA
(Feature, Italy, 87 minutes). With her two previous features, Roberta
Torre created the outrageous mini-genre of the Sicilian gangster musical,
but she comes into her own as a serious director with this spare, dark
drama about a Palermo Mafia wife, caught between the mob code of honor
and her adulterous passion. In a nervy, haunting screen debut, theater
actress Donatella Finocchiaro captures the inner turmoil of the seemingly
dutiful heroine. As Angela plunges into an affair with her husband's
womanizing cousin, she experiences something far more intoxicating than
illicit sex – a taste of freedom so compelling that she's
willing to court tragedy in its pursuit. (Amy Taubin)
Sponsored by: Delta Stratagem
ANYTHING
BUT LOVE (Feature, USA, 99 minutes). Rose (Isabel Rose)
is an old-fashioned girl – a struggling lounge singer, who idolizes
Audrey Hepburn and combs second-hand stores for the gloves, veiled hats
and swinging skirts that signify 1950s glamour. Just when Rose's
career prospects look most bleak, she finds herself pursued by not one
heartthrob but two: a successful corporate lawyer and a shy but raffish
piano player (played by a disarmingly sexy Andrew McCarthy.) Like its
heroine, “Anything But Love” makes the most of a thrift-store
style, ingenuously creating a couple of Vincente Minnelli-like musical
numbers on a shoe string budget. (Amy Taubin)
Writer/star Isabel Rose will introduce the film and
will be available for questions after the screening.
Sponsored
by: Warm 101.3 Continuous Soft Rock
BALZAC
AND A LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS (Feature, France/China,
116 minutes). At the height of the Cultural Revolution in China, two teenage
boys who are best friends are sent to the depths of the countryside for
a Maoist re-education. Sons of reactionary intellectuals, Luo is a violinist
who manages to save his precious instrument from immediate destruction
by pretending to local headman that Mozart is an important figure of the
Revolution and playing his tunes. His friend, Dai, is a lively and well-read
storyteller, who tailors his tales to entrance the peasantry after the
back-breaking labor they share in the fields and coal mines. The boys'
resourcefulness is taxed constantly in this alien and malevolent environment.
Dai's talent causes the chief of the village to send them to a larger
town to watch melodramatic movies of the revolution and bring those stories
back to the village. During one of these trips, they fall in love with
the local beauty (daughter of a renowned tailor), and they meet another
enemy of the people: a boy like themselves who happens to have a secret
stash of subversive literature, including Flaubert, Tolstoy, Balzac.
With these stories,
especially Balzac, they woo the girl, who begins to evolve emotionally
and intellectually. Beautifully shot in the remote Chinese countryside,
this film is a romantic paean to European thought, which makes it unusually
accessible to western audiences, who will also delight in the performances
of the three young actors. (Catherine Wyler)
Sponsored
by: Messenger Post
BLIND SHAFT
(Feature, China/Germany, 91 minutes). Every day, thousands of people risk
their lives in China's dangerous and often illegal mines. Song and Tang
are two of them, but they have a plan--one that involves murder and extortion.
But having won the trust of young Luan, the two have a crisis of conscience
that leads to an unexpected turn. Definitions of right and wrong become
blurred in this chilling tale of Chinese workers trying to get by any
way they can. Winner, Silver Bear, 2003 Berlin Film Festival and Audience
Award, 2003 Tribeca Film Festival.
BLUEGRASS
JOURNEY (Documentary, USA, 86 minutes). As straightforward
and audience-friendly as the music it pays tribute to, "Bluegrass
Journey" directed and produced by Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer,
captures the talent and spirit of Bluegrass at its two biggest
events: The Grey Fox
Bluegrass Festival in Ancramdale, New York and the International Bluegrass
Music Association's annual convention and awards ceremony in Louisville,
Kentucky. Opening with a four-minute jam, videotaped up-close, the film
keeps the music front and center without neglecting the input of its dedicated
fans, many of whom come to the festivals with their instruments, ready
to play in workshops and parking lots. The performances by such passionate,
virtuoso musicians as the Del McCoury Band, Nickel Creek, Bob Paisley
and Southern Grass, Tim O'Brien and The Crossing, and Tony Rice will have
audiences all but levitating. (Amy Taubin)
Directors and producers Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer will be at the
Festival to introduce the film and take questions after the screening.
Sponsored
by: Greater Rochester Visitors Association, Inc.
CATCHING
OUT (Documentary, USA, 79 minutes). The phrase ‘Catching
Out' describes the act of hopping a freight train. Here, the adventure
begins on the porch of a grainer hurtling through the arid expanse of
the Mojave Desert. The journey continues into the unconventional terrain
of an American sub-culture. The film features a seasoned eco-activist
named Lee, a young nomad named Jessica, and a twenty-something tramp couple
named Switch and Baby Girl. In three interwoven stories, CATCHING OUT
follows these contemporary trainhoppers as they navigate between the constraints
of society and the freedom of the road.
Director and Producer Sarah George will be at the festival to introduce
her film and take questions after the screening
THE
COMPANY
(Feature, USA/Germany). Special
Closing Night Film at the Dryden. With THE COMPANY, esteemed
director Robert Altman (GOSFORD PARK) teams up with the Joffrey Ballet
of Chicago and talents Neve Campbell and Malcolm McDowell to create an
airy, colorful and penetrating look at the intense day-to-day work of
a ballet company. Altman has explored the grittier side of artistic pursuits
before from his wry compassion for aspiring country musicians (NASHVILLE)
to his double-edged tribute to painting (VINCENT AND THEO) and the film
industry itself (THE PLAYER). THE COMPANY pays homage to one of the most
delicate of the arts, one dedicated to the joy and exuberance of movement.
The film is a startlingly intimate pas de deux between Altman's fluid,
expressive camera and the pulsating life force of ballet. The director
delves into the subtleties of the dancers' interactions , both on and
off the studio floor, through the story of a woman (Campbell) poised to
become a principal dance and wrestling with the astronomical physical
and emotional demands of her vocation. One source of anxiety is the company's
autocratic artistic director, portrayed with exceptional insight by McDowell.
Campbell drew on her experience studying with the National Ballet of Canada
to develop the story in collaboration with screenwriter Barbara Turner
(co-writer of POLLOCK). (Toronto International Film Festival 2003)
Co-writer Barbara Turner will be at the festival to introduce the
film and take questions after the screening.
Sponsored
by: Strong Health Women's Services
DIVAN
(Documentary, Hungary/Ukraine/USA, 77 minutes). Filmmaker Pearl Gluck
was raised in Borough Park, Brooklyn's insular Hassidic Jewish community.
When she was fifteen, thanks to what she wryly terms “ the miracle
of my mother's divorce,” she escaped to Manhattan. As much
as Gluck enjoys her more secularized life, she longs to win her father's
approval. But even when she receives the first Yiddish Fulbright grant
to Hungary, he is unimpressed. . “Divan” is the narrative
of a journey during which Gluck reaffirms both her emotional and intellectual
connection to Hassidic culture and also her desire to forge her own identity
outside the confines of her father's house. (Amy Taubin)
Filmmaker Pearl
Gluck will join us to introduce her film and
take questions afterward.
GIRL HOOD
(Documentary, USA, 82 minutes). Award-winning documentarian Liz Garbus
follows two teenage girls, Shanae and Megan, as they make the transition
to the outside world from the juvenile institution where they served time
for extremely violent crimes. The film investigates the situations that
gave rise to the girls' violent acts, and also their desperate desire
for maternal love. Empathetic but never sentimental, GIRL HOOD is far
removed from Hollywood's vision of growing up female, but its two
heroines are more courageous and deserving of attention than any teen
movie idol. (Amy Taubin)
GUARDIAN OF THE FRONTIER
(Feature, Slovenia, 100 minutes). Despite news reports of a serial killer
on the loose, three Slovenian college chums head out on a summer rafting
trip. The winding river and the deep woods along its bank are filled with
dangers, but the greatest threat comes from within the women themselves
as they attempt to define their sexual identities and desires. Director
Maja Weiss expertly maneuvers between realism and fantasy and among three
distinct female subjectivities. (Amy Taubin)
IN AMERICA
(Feature, USA, 114 minutes): Like Jim Sheridan's acclaimed MY LEFT
FOOT and IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, IN AMERICA is an intense, deeply personal
film. Based on the Irish director's experience of living in New
York City in the 1980s with his family—and trying to pay the rent
while looking for work in the theater—it's a volatile mixture
of memory and raw, immediate emotion. Johnny (Paddy Considine) brings
his wife (Samantha Morton) and two daughters to New York in the hope that
they will be able to begin a new life. But the family is still suffering
the death of Frankie, the youngest child, and the highs and lows of the
city itself mirror the chaotic inner experience of mourning. The film
is anguished, exciting, and hilarious, sometimes all at once.
Naomi Sheridan
will be on hand at the Festival to talk about the film and take questions
from the audience.
INCH'
ALLAH SUNDAY (Feature, France, 97 minutes). Set during the
1970s when France relaxed its immigration policy to allow Algerian workers
to bring their families to live with them, the first fiction feature by
documentarian Yamina Benguigui is a graceful, moving, and occasionally
quietly funny account of a woman caught between two cultures. Literally
wrenched from the arms of her mother, Zouina arrives in France with her
three children only to find herself a prisoner in her husband's
house. Her mother-in-law treats her like a slave and her confused, insecure
husband follows his mother's lead to prove his manhood. But on the
rare occasions when Zouina manages to get out, she finds an intriguing
world, where people are unexpectedly supportive. (Amy Taubin)
LAST DANCE
(Documentary, USA, 84 minutes). It was a most unlikely artistic collaboration:
Pilobolus, the decades old experimental dance company and Maurice Sendak,
writer and illustrator of such famed children's books as Where the
Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. When Sendak explains during
his first meeting with the company that the subtext of all his work is
the Holocaust, you can see Pilobolus's collective jaw drop. Mirra
Bank documented the process of this merger, capturing some of its stormy
moments and also the exhilaration of everyone involved when it bears fruit.
(Amy Taubin)
Mirra Bank, the
film's director, will attend to introduce her film and discuss it with
High Falls audience members.
LOS ZAFIROS:
MUSIC FROM THE EDGE OF TIME (Documentary, USA, 85 minutes). Long before
the term “fusion music” was coined, four young Cuban singers
and a guitarist, who were crazy for American groups like The Plattters
and The Mills Brothers, put together a group that combined doo-wop and
surf music with salsa, calypso, bossa nova and every other Latin beat
imaginable. At the most chilling moment of the standoff between Kennedy
and Castro, the music of Los Zafiros (The Sapphires) was the passionate
artistic marriage that Cold War politics tried to forbid. Thirty years
after the group fell apart, director/producer Lorenzo DeStefano and executive
producers Randa Haines and Sandra Levinson bring together its two surviving
members in a film that rivals THE BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB in its combination
of irresistible music and charming codgers against the background of one
of the world's most fascinating cities. (Amy Taubin)
Producer Randa
Haines will join us at the screening to introduce the film and talk with
the audience.
Sponsored
by: 4D Advertising
MARK OF
CAIN (Documentary, USA, 73 minutes). The tradition of tattooing
in Russian prisons is a form of outsider art dating back to the early
Soviet gulags. Created by prisoner-artists with a potentially lethal mix
of soot and urine, the tattoos are a coded language from which can be
read everything about an inmate's status in the prison hierarchy,
the crimes for which he or she has been convicted, and the length and
times of incarceration. Alix Lambert gained access to eight Russian prisons,
where she interviewed thieves and murderers in their cells as well as
prison officials, who are remarkably forthcoming about the terrible conditions.
MARK OF CAIN suggests what Dostoyevsky might have done, had digital cameras
been available in the 19th century. (Amy Taubin)
Meet Alix Lambert,
the film's director, as she comes to High Falls to introduce her film
and take questions after the screening.
MR. AND
MRS. IYER (Feature, India, 120 minutes). On an afternoon
bus trip through the seemingly peaceful Himalayan foothills, a diverse
group of multi-generational passengers bicker about seating arrangements
and the noise made by a bunch of excitable teenagers. Mrs. Meenakshi Iyer
is a Hindu woman traveling with her young son. Raja, a photographer who
is a casual acquaintance of Meenakshi's father, is charged with
looking out for her during the long journey. When the bus is stopped by
a road closed as a result of the burning of a Hindu village by Muslims,
the police announce that Hindu extremists are seeking revenge and command
that everyone remain on the locked bus for the night. Raja reveals to
Meenakshi that he is Muslim and when Hindu rioters board the bus, Meenakshi
saves his life by claiming him as her husband. Through the ensuing day
and night, "Mr. and Mrs. Iyer" must trust each other if they
are to survive the violence that is exploding around them. As an intimate
friendship develops between the pair, Meenakshi must come to terms with
her own class and religious prejudices and always-on-the-move Raja with
his loner lifestyle.
MONIQUE
(Feature, France, 92 minutes). Middle-aged photographer Alex is so bored
with his life that he barely speaks to his son, his wife or his boss.
When his son goes off to school and his wife leaves him to move in with
her sculpting instructor, Alex is surprised find himself home alone with
a full-size life-like silicone doll of a buxom younger woman that he ordered
over the Internet one drunken, lonely night. As Alex becomes enamoured
with the idea of living like a hermit with "the perfect woman,"
his friends alternately worry for his sanity and are inspired to engage
in increasingly erotic behaviors themselves but ultimately question their
own desires and perceived imperfections. When you get what you want, do
you really want what you have? By turns comic, sexy and somber—and
definitely outrageous—MONIQUE explores the complex issues of love,
relationships and the search for perfection in our lives. (Karen vanMeenen)
MY ARCHITECT
(Documentary, USA, 116 minutes). Louis Kahn was described in his obituary
in The New York Times as America's preeminent architect, but he
died alone and on the verge of bankruptcy, of a heart attack in the men's
room of Pennsylvania Station in 1974. The obituary mentioned that Kahn
left a wife and one daughter, but omitted the less known fact that he
had fathered another daughter and a son during successive, extended relationships
with women who worked with him on architectural projects. Roughly twenty-five
years after his father's death, his youngest child, Nathaniel Kahn,
decided to make a film about the man who was such a seductive and mysterious
figure in his life. (Amy Taubin)
Producer Susan
Rose Behr will join us at the screening of this film, and will be on hand
for Q&A.
Sponsored
by: K2
MY LIFE
WITHOUT ME (Feature, Spain/Canada, 106 minutes): Gifted
Canadian actor Sarah Polley combines gossamer and steel in her portrayal
of Ann, a 24-year-old wife and mother of two young daughters who goes
to the hospital thinking she's pregnant and discovers that she is
dying of cancer. . Director Isabel Coixet is wonderfully sensitive to
Polley's performance; in an excellent supporting cast, Mark Ruffalo
is achingly romantic as the lover Ann meets in a Laundromat and Deborah
Harry brings the bruises of a lifetime to the role of Ann's mother.
(Amy Taubin)
Sponsored
by: Buck & Pulleyn
NOGO
(Feature, Austria, 90 minutes). An isolated highway gas station is the
point of intersection for three stories, each featuring a couple, united
against what it perceives as a hostile, threatening world. The debut film
of Austrian writer-directors Sabine Hiebler and Gerhard Ertl, NOGO displays
the punked-out visual style, dark humor, and edgy eroticism that defines
recent German-language cinema. (Amy Taubin)
OSAMA
(Feature, Afghanistan, 82 minutes). The first entirely Afghan film made
after the fall of the Taliban is also the debut of director Siddiq Barmak.
Based on a newspaper account Barmak read while in exile in Pakistan, it
tells the harrowing story of a twelve-year-old-girl forced to a disguise
herself as a boy in order to support her widowed mother and grandmother.
She is soon rounded up and sent to a Taliban boys' school, run by
a monstrous mullah, in whom religious fanaticism and misogyny are inseparable.
Working with limited resources and in chaotic conditions, Barmak has produced
a film that is both raw and thoughtful, combining neorealism with elements
of self-reflexivity, much in the manner of the Iranian master, Abbas Kiaristami.
(Amy Taubin)
Sponsored
by: Craig Autometrics
OUR TIMES
(Documentary, Iran, 75 minutes). Rakhshan Bani-Eternad, one of Iran's
leading and most prolific filmmakers, takes as her subject the power of
women in the 2001 presidential election. Opening with the pragmatic and
exuberant campaign waged by young artists, filmmakers, and college students
(including Bani-Eternad's daughter) in support of the re-election
of Mohammad Khatami, the film then focuses on Arezoo Bayat, one of 48
female nominees for president whose candidacies were all refused by the
government. The film is an inspiring tribute to a remarkable woman and
also a tough-minded, unblinking depiction of the conditions Iranian women
struggle against every day of their lives. (Amy Taubin)
THE SAME
RIVER TWICE (Documentary, USA, 78 minutes). In the late
1970s, Robb Moss was part of a small group of twentysomethings, who worked
as whitewater guides on the Colorado River. Moss filmed his friends'
sojourn in this wild Paradise where the only dress code was to go naked
whenever the tourists were absent. Twenty years later Moss, now a film
professor at Harvard, decided to visit his old friends, show them his
record of their hippie idyll, and find out how their lives had developed
in the intervening years. THE SAME RIVER TWICE weaves past and present
into portraits of baby-boomers who have become wiser but not cynical in
middle-age. (Amy Taubin)
Editor Karen Schmeer
will offer unique insights at the screening, as she introduces the film
and takes audience questions following the screening.
SEASIDE
(Feature, France, 88 minutes). Julie Lopes-Curval's bountiful debut
feature is set in a formerly fashionable French beach resort, and you
can feel the sea breezes and the sense of bonheur they inspire –even
on damp winter nights – in just about every shot. Curval weaves
the lives of about a dozen residents and summer visitors into a tapestry
of friendships, romances, marriages, feuds and divorces. In a delicately
balanced ensemble cast, three actresses stand out: fast-rising French
star Helene Fillieres, Ludmila Mikael, and, best of all, Bulle Ogier,
who brings to her character the knowledge that the psyche and the body
do not necessarily age in concert. (Amy Taubin)
Sponsored
by: Mercury Print Productions, Inc.
SHANGHAI
EXPRESS (part of the Women's Preservation
Fund Screening). Also showing: A FOOL AND HIS MONEY.
Shanghai Express FEATURE,
USA, 1932. Directed by Josef von Sternberg
With Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Clive Brook, Eugene
Pallette
Irresistibly enjoyable. Marlene Dietrich gets to deliver
what is pehaps her most memorable line: "It took more than one man
to change my name to Shanghai Lily." In this glossy mixture of sex
and intrigue, Shanghai Lily and her exquisitely stoic beloved (Clive Brook)
fall into the hands of sinister Chinese revolutionaries led by Warner
Oland. (He gets to deliver a camp classic -"The white woman stays
with me.") When this Oriental chieftain questions Lily about why
she's going to Shanghai, she answers "To buy a new hat." The
scriptwriter, Jules Furthman, must have had a special affection for this
line, because he gave it to Lauren Bacall, in her debut film, TO
HAVE AND HAVE NOT in 1944. Directed by Josef von Sternberg, this
movie has a style - a triumphant fusion of sin, glamour, shamelessness,
art, and perhaps, a furtive sense of humor. (Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights
at the Movies)
SHANGHAI LILY will be preceded by this recently recovered
short film:
A Fool And His Money USA,
1912, 12 minutes. A FOOL AND HIS MONEY
was discovered in the summer of 2000 in a trunk purchased at a flea market.
It is a "lost" film by the first woman director Alice Guy Blaché
for her Solax studio.
In 1894, she was hired as a secretary at Gaumont studio
in Paris. In 1896, she directed her first film, and by 1897, she was running
all production at Gaumont. When she married Herbert Blaché, 8 years
her junior, they formed Solax studios in the US.
Eager to depict itself as an American company, Solax interestingly
played an important role in depicting Jews and Blacks in a more kindly
fashion than the times dictated. A FOOL AND HIS MONEY is the first American
film with an all Black cast.
It was recently preserved by the American Film Institute
with a grant from the Women's Film Preservation Fund of New York Women
in Film and Television. Mary Lea Bandy, Chief Curator of Film and Media
at the Museum of Modern Art will introduce the film.
For information on Alice Guy Blaché, thanks
to Tara Taghizadeh, "Alice in Wonderland," Pop Matters, June
12, 2002.
SHE GOT
GAME: BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE WOMEN'S TENNIS TOUR
(Documentary, Canada, 78 minutes). Abbey Jack Neidik and Bobbi Jo Krals
take a hard look at the less glamorous aspects of women's professional
tennis. While the filmmakers get some revealing face-to-face interviews
with Martina Hingis, Jennifer Caprioti, Serena Williams, and the sensible,
straight-talking Martina Navratilova, their focus is the players who don't
achieve a top-ten ranking, and in particular, Canadian Sonya Jeyaseelan,
whose turbulent career they follow for three years. (Amy Taubin)
SISTERS
(Feature, Russia, 85 minutes). A fast-paced tale of two Russian girls
on the run, SISTERS is the first and only film directed by Sergei Bodrov
Jr., who became a movie-acting idol in Russia with his performance in
THE BROTHER (1997) and died in an avalanche while scouting locations for
his second feature. SISTERS is set in the same gangster milieu as THE
BROTHER, but unlike most gangster flicks, it looks at the underworld from
a female perspective. As teenage Sveta and her younger half sister travel
about the city, looking for food and a place to sleep, we get a glimpse
of the chaotic new Russian society, where the cops are no match for organized
crime. (Amy Taubin)
SISTERS
IN CINEMA (Documentary, USA, 62 minutes). Filmmaker and
scholar Yvonne Welbon traces the history of Black women directors in the
U.S. She discovers that although only two Black women—Euzhan Palcy
and Darnell Martin—have made films within the Hollywood studio system,
the number of African-American female directors making independent movies
has risen significantly in recent years. Directors Julie Dash, Kasi Lemmons,
Cheryl Dunye, Caulleen Smith, DeMane Davis, Bridgett Davis and Maya Angelou
(who, at age seventy, after twenty years of knocking on doors to no avail,
finally got to direct her first feature DOWN IN THE DELTA) are highly
articulate interview subjects. (Amy Taubin)
Sponsored
by: The City of Rochester
STOKED:
THE RISE AND FALL OF GATOR (Documentary, USA, 82 minutes).
The aggressive style of Mark Gator Rogowski (a.k.a. Gator Mark Anthony)—his
unpredictable lines, and outrageous personal antics—made him a favorite
on the 1980s pro skateboarding circuit, and for years he rode a career
wave of fame, wealth, and world travel. At the end of the decade, Gator
found himself with personal and career troubles, and tried to reinvent
himself with a name change, new sponsor, born-again Christianity, and
a split from his longtime girlfriend. No one knew how bad his mental state
had slipped, until in the spring of 1991, when—at the age of 24—he
confessed to the murder of a 20-year old girl known well by many in the
skateboard scene. Gator is now serving 31 years to life in prison for
rape and murder. This chronicle is the result of six years of persistence
and investigation, and about how the commercialization of a once authentic
youth culture curdled the fortunes—and psyche—of its first
golden boy.
Sponsored
by: 94.1 the Zone. Rochester's New Rock Alternative
THIS IS
A GAME, LADIES (Documentary, USA, 114 minutes). For enthusiasts
of women's basketball, college basketball, or basketball in general,
this is a must see movie. Director Peter Schnall follows Rutgers University's
Scarlett Knights for an entire season as their incredibly tough, smart,
determined coach, C. Vivian Springer, tries to take them to a national
championship. One of only two African-American women coaching college
ball, Springer has already gotten three Rutgers teams all the way to the
NCAA Women's Final Four, so expectations are extremely high. As
the season progresses and the team gains cohesion, the emotion that the
players and their coach feel for the game and for one another is as close
to true love as you are likely to see on the screen. (Amy Taubin)
Executive Producer
Hilary Sio will be on hand to answer questions from High Falls audience
members.
Sponsored
by: Christa Construction
THIS IS
NOT A LOVE SONG (Feature, United Kingdom, 94 minutes). It's
tempting to compare this lean, mean, horror machine to such celebrated
depictions of rural vigilante violence as DELIVERANCE or SOUTHERN COMFORT,
but woman director Bille Eltringham's approach is visually more
original and psychologically more penetrating. Two petty criminals find
themselves in deadly trouble when their car runs out of gas in a wild
and desolate corner of Britain. Eltringham uses digital video to unusually
expressive effect, and her direction of the two leading actors, Michael
Colgan and Kenneth Glenaan, is impressive. (Amy Taubin)
THE TRUE
MEANING OF PICTURES: SHELBY LEE ADAMS' APPALACHIA (Documentary,
Canada, 70 minutes). For thirty years, Shelby Lee Adams has been photographing
the people of Appalachia—not middle-class people like himself, but
the families who live in remote “hollers” where poverty has
been entrenched for generations. Director Jennifer Baichwal and cinematographer
Nick de Pencier show us Adams at work and engage with the controversy
that rages around his undeniably powerful photographs. (Amy Taubin)
Sponsored
by: Gelfand-Piper Photography
TUPPERWARE!
(Documentary, USA, 62 minutes). Documentarian Laurie Kahn-Leavitt
digs into the Eisenhower era to tell the story of the “Tupperware
ladies,” a woman's workforce that hosted parties to sell the
airtight-plastic food-storage containers manufactured by Earl Silas Tupper
to homemakers just like themselves. Tupper knew that plastics were the
future, but it took the vision of Brownie Wise, his charismatic head of
sales, to turn Tupperware into a multimillion dollar business. The first
woman to appear on the cover of Business Week, Wise eventually hit her
head on Tupperware's plastic ceiling. (Amy Taubin)
Director Laurie
Kahn-Leavitt will come to High Falls to introduce her film and lead the
discussion following the screening.
VENUS
BOYZ (Documentary, Switzerland/USA, 104 minutes). Meet Storme
Weather, Dred Gerestant, Diane Torr, and a half-dozen other glorious gender-benders
who were born female but masquerade as male on the cabaret stage and often
in real life. Woman director Gabriel Bauer documents the international
drag king scene, focusing on its mid-1990s heyday when Sunday night cabaret
performances drew crowds to Club Casanova in NYC's East Village.
Mixing fragments of performance, backstage and at-home interviews, and
on-the-street encounters, Bauer uncovers the pleasure and motives of a
wide variety of kings, who enjoy sending up machismo but also relish the
power that comes with being perceived as male (Amy Taubin)
Sponsored
by: 96.5 WCMF. The Rock Station
SHORTS PROGRAM 1
Faithful
Written and directed by Marzena Grzegorczyk
Produced by Marzena Grzegorczyk and Iwona Witowicz
Los Angeles, California, 2002, color, 15 minutes
In Polish with English subtitles
A mysterious letter implicates a successful politician in
a lengthy extramarital affair and sparks a conflict among three women:
the politician's wife, her sister and his alleged lover. The man's unfaithfulness
becomes marginal as the women confront the limits of their own honesty
while trying to uncover the truth.
Marzena Grzegorczyk, a native of Warsaw, Poland, received
her MFA from the University of Southern California and has worked as a
director, writer and cinematographer on over a dozen short films.
The Most Beautiful Man in the World
Written and directed by Alicia Duffy
UK, 2003, color, 4 minutes
A young girl briefly experiences a sense of freedom.
Alicia Duffy's short films have won awards around
the globe. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN IN THE WORLD was nominated for a BAFTA.
Exercise with Ching Yung
Written, directed, produced, photographed and edited by Wenhwa Ts'ao
Chicago, Illinois, 2003, color, 8 minutes
An autobiographical exploration about being the daughter
of an old-fashioned Chinese father, whose lifelong wish had been to have
a son to carry on his family name.
Wenhwa Ts'ao, a native of Taiwan, received her MFA from
Virginia Commonwealth University and currently teaches film and video
at Columbia College in Chicago. Her films have been widely exhibited in
festivals.
HMAS Unicorn
Directed by Elissa Down
Produced by Jimmy Jack, Elissa Down and Dale Hynd
Edited by Leanne Cole
Western Australia, 2001, color, 13 minutes
In the summer of 1964, three unusual incidents took place
on Lake Grace. The first two were totally inexplicable. The third and
most disturbing provided one clue, the diary of 16-year-old Gwen Howard
Elissa Down's short films have won several awards. She is currently working
on two feature films.
Strange and Charmed
Written and directed by Shari Frilot
Produced by Effie Brown
Photographed by Denise Brassard
Edited by Lisa Ginsburg
Los Angeles, California, 2003, color, 16 minutes
The love lives of three women are examined through the point
of view of two subatomic particles flying through space and time.
Shari Frilot has received multiple awards and fellowships
for her filmmaking, and was recently named one of Filmmaker Magazine's
“25 New Faces in Independent Film.” She is currently a senior
programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and a programming consultant
for OUTFEST.
On My Knees
Written and directed by Kim Wood
2003, black and white, 13 minutes
Scenes documented in the diary of nineteenth-century British
maid Hannah Cullwick are re-enacted in this mesmerizing tale of obsession
and ownership. From Hannah serving her mistress to posing for a photographer
(at the request of her upper-class lover, with whom she had a 54-year
relationship) in fetishistic scenes, Hannah's diary reveals a depth of
experience far beyond her mundane servitude.
Brooklyn based filmmaker Kim Wood's work has screened internationally
in such environments as the Sundance Film Festival and the Guggenheim
Museum.
Unearthed
Written, directed, produced, edited and photographed by Christina Spangler
Glenham, New York, 2002, color, 8 minutes
An unearthed potato is given a wondrous glimpse into the
visible world in this stop-motion animation. Using its newfound sight,
the curious tuber happens upon a discarded bag of potato chips and must
come to terms with its own mortality.
Christina Spangler obtained her BFA in Film/Animation/Video from Rhode
Island School of Design in 2002 and made UNEARTHED as her senior degree
project, one of three vegetable themed stop-motion films.
Nunzia
Written and directed by Giulia Oriani
Rome, Italy, 2002, color, 12:30 minutes
In Italian with English subtitles
The flu forces Nunzia to stay home while her family goes
on vacation. Her son, overly caring to the point of selfishness, arranges
for home care for Nunzia. In her brief taste of freedom and independence,
Nunzia rediscovers her dormant energy and enthusiasm for life and meets
a man.
Giulia Oriani is a film director, drama teacher and actress.
Total Running Time: 89:30 minutes
SHORTS PROGRAM 2
Gaza Book of Longing
Directed by Jessica Allee, Shane Flores and Wago Krieder
New York, New York, 2003, color, 2 minutes
The landscape of a botanical conservatory drives the memory
of dispossession as a woman yearns for the climate of her homeland. Her
search and discovery of a solitary olive tree in the metropolis reveals
a longing that cannot be bounded by artificial constructions.
Working within the crossroads between architecture, art,
and activism, Jessica Allee is a New York designer who explores the impact
of architectural and geophysical environment on the actions of cultural
identity.
The House
Written and directed by Vivienne Jones
Produced by Maggie Ellis
London, England, 2003, color, 8:32 minutes
A unique film combining live action shots of women with
mental disabilities as they explore their own lives and memories through
drawings and the animations the filmmakers have created from these artworks.
The project stemmed from art workshops conducted in a group home between
1996 and 2000.
Vivienne Jones earned a degree in animation at West Surrey
College of Art & Design in 1992. She freelances as an animation director
and costume designer for film and television and is currently working
on the next Harry Potter film as a costume buyer.
The Candy Machine
Written, directed, produced and edited by Ami Z. Cuneo
Photographed by C.T. Oyster
Los Angeles, California, 2002, black and white, 7:20 minutes
A young girl savors the sweetness of her grandmother's treats.
Or does she?
A graduate of UCLA's School of Film, Television and Digital
Media, Ami Z.
Cuneo currently works in documentary and narrative feature screenwriting
and production.
Spring in Awe
Written, directed and photographed by Martina Radwan
Produced by Martina Radwan and Moira Demos
Edited by Moira Demos
New York, New York, 2003, color, 4 minutes
The realities and absurdities of the war in Iraq are obscured
by the blurring of the lines between news, entertainment and advertising
in the lights of Times Square.
Martina Radwan worked in the film industry for many years
as a cinematographer. Spring in Awe is her first work as a director. She
worked as second camera for Personal Velocity, which screened in the 2002
High Falls Film Festival.
The Eyeglasses
Written and directed by Irina Sitkova
Edited by Natalia Tapkova
Moscow, Russia, 2002, color, 15 minutes
In Russian with English subtitles
A man who sees the world in indistinct spots finally gets
eyeglasses. But he soon witnesses a murder and gets a second chance to
change the outcome.
Irina Sitkova has worked in television and film in various capacities
and has won several awards for her film directing.
Kitchen Bird Cocoon
Written, directed and edited by Julija Naskova
Produced by Julija Naskova and Katia Belas
Los Angeles, California, 2003, color, 24 minutes
This eerie tale follows the psychology of the non-symbiotic
relationship of two mismatched roommates, a Macedonian woman and an American
man.
Julija Naskova received her MFA at UCLA. Her short films have been screened
around the world and have won several awards.
My Josephine
Written and directed by Barry Jenkins
Produced by Jasmin Tiggett
Edited by Meghan Robertson
Tallahassee, Florida, 2003, color, 8 minutes
In English and Arabic with English subtitles
An immigrant yearns for the affections of his coworker as
they work through the night washing American flags.
Jasmin Tiggett is an undergraduate student at the Film School
at Florida State University. Meghan Robertson is an undergraduate student
at the Florida State University Film School and a graduate of the Dreyfoos
School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida.
A Girl's Best Friend
Written, directed and edited by Eileen White
Produced by Andrea Struble and Tom Reid
Photographed by Catalina Santamaria
New York, New York, 2003, color, 19:30 minutes
This lighthearted comic romp follows the adventures of Gwen,
"the perfect woman," and the jealous men in her life, one of
whom needs to be "fixed."
Eileen White, who recently received her MFA from City College
where A Girl's Best Friend was selected Best Fiction Film and Best Screenplay,
has directed several award-winning short films and videos which have been
exhibited in the New York area. Catalina Santamaria of Bogota, Columbia
holds an MA from The New School for Social Research and also has her own
company, Tren del Sur, which is based in New York City. Andrea Struble,
a native of Michigan, recently graduated with an MFA with a concentration
in producing from City College.
Total Running Time: 88:22 minutes
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