Films & Schedules - Monday, February 22, 2010

92 Minutes    

Interests: Short Cuts.

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WHATEVER TURNS YOU ON

DIRECTOR: Declan Cassidy - (Ireland)

The well-ordered running of an electronics store is disrupted when a homeless man arrives to make a purchase.

4 Minutes    

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TEN FOR GRANDPA

DIRECTOR: Doug Karr - (Canada/United States)

Was Grandpa a manipulative antihero or simply a victim of the McCarthy-era witch hunt?

7 Minutes    

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THIS IS HER

DIRECTOR: Katie Wolfe - (New Zealand)

“This is me. This is my husband. And this is the bitch who will one day steal him and ruin my life.”

12 Minutes    

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THIS WAY UP

DIRECTOR: Adam Foulkes - (Great Britain)

Laying the dead to rest has never been so much trouble.

9 Minutes    

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NETHERLAND DWARF

DIRECTOR: David Michôd - (Australia)

Harry really wants a rabbit; Harry’s dad really wants his wife back. They’ve both forgotten that they already have each other.

15 Minutes    

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SHORT TERM 12

DIRECTOR: Destin Daniel Cretton - (United States)

Denim, the supervisor for a residential facility housing 15 kids affected by child abuse, begins to realize that, in a lot of ways, he is no different from the children he tries to help.

22 Minutes    

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THE DINNER

DIRECTOR: Karchi Perlmann - (Hungary)

A day in the life of a small rural Hungarian family during the riots of September 2006. “A stewed-up existential, cultural and political pot of goulash.”

23 Minutes    

Sons of Cuba follows three boys at the prestigious Havana Boxing Academy as they prepare for the 2006 National Boxing Championship of Under-12’s.

Sons of Cuba is set in the legendary Havana Boxing Academy, no ordinary institution: this is a boarding school that handpicks nine-year-old boys and turns them into the best boxers in the world. The results have been stunning—Cuba has dominated Olympic boxing for the past quarter of a century. The boys’ duties extend far beyond the ring: they are groomed not only as world-class fighters, but also as international symbols of their country. Castro dubs them “the standard bearers of the Revolution.” Lang follows three young hopefuls through eight dramatic months of training and schooling as they prepare for the biggest event of their lives, Cuba’s National Boxing Championship for Under-12’s. During the season, crisis strikes: Fidel Castro, the boys’ leader and inspiration, is taken ill, and all of Cuba’s Olympic boxing champions defect to the USA, leaving the boys contemplating a future which is altogether different from the one they have been taught to believe in.

First Feature Film.

88 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Documentary Views, Global Classroom, Spanish Language.

Father and son gangsters freshly released from prison must keep their criminal enterprise afloat while trying to figure out who ratted them out. Was it Bill's wife or their despised family "friend"? Anyone is a suspect in this blackly comic piece of criminal realism.

Ken Loach meets “The Sopranos” might characterize this darkly comic and sometimes disturbing slice of social surrealism in which a family of dysfunctional crooks tries to keep their criminal enterprise from falling apart. As soon as Bill (Bob Hill) and his son Karl (Rob Hill) are released from jail, they try to figure out who ratted them out to the police. Bill’s partner (Julia Deakin) seems like your average housewife, but there’s something about her that suggests she may have had a hand in it. It soon becomes evident that this ordinary terraced house is packed to the rafters with gangsters. Among others, we meet a despised family “friend” (Tony Way), a hit man (Michael Smiley) who takes his toddler along on jobs, Karl’s pregnant girlfriend (Kali Peacock), and a nasty piece of work named Eric (David Schaal). Paranoia reigns supreme in this house, where everyone is suspicious of everyone else.

First Feature Film.

Winner of the Best Feature Prize at Fantastic Fest.

89 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: New Directors, Narrative Feature, Comedy.

Dawson, Isla 10 focuses on the imprisonment of advisors close to the deposed socialist government of president Salvador Allende. The men were jailed and endured hellish conditions on the island, the world's southernmost concentration camp, for more than a year.

After the military coup in 1973, deposed President Salvador Allende’s closest collaborators and ministers were locked up in a concentration camp on Dawson Island, lying at the western entrance to the Strait of Magellan. They are assigned numbers instead of names. Their lives are spared thanks to pressure from the International Red Cross, but they are not spared from torture and forced labor. Thirty years later, some survivors return to the island and rediscover the place where they learned to survive in such extreme conditions. Miguel Littin, who spent many years living in exile and to whom writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez dedicated his book “Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin,” took inspiration for his drama from the autobiography by Sergio Bitar, one of Allende’s ministers.

Filmography: The Promised Land (71), Letter From Marusia (76), Alsino and the Condor (82), The Shipwreck (94), The Last Man (05).

This year’s Chilean submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

117 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, History.

When Leila is pardoned after serving 12 years of a life sentence, she agrees to work as an assistant to Father Jacob, answering the letters of those who write asking for his help. Although she regards the pastor’s correspondence as pointless, the letters ultimately play a role in her redemption.

A simple but transcendent story about faith and human frailty, Letters to Father Jacob achieves a state of grace. Surprised when she is pardoned 12 years into a life sentence, hard-bitten killer Leila (Kaarina Hazard) takes the prison warden’s suggestion and winds up at the ramshackle rural parsonage of Father Jacob. The blind elderly man needs an assistant to pursue his main joy in life: answering the letters of those who write to ask for his help. Although Leila regards the pastor’s correspondence as pointless, it ultimately plays a role in her own redemption and heart-rending self-forgiveness.

Filmography: As If I Didn’t Exist (02), Mother of Mine (05), The New Man (07).

This year’s Finnish submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

85 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature.

“The Rape of Nanking” by Japanese soldiers remains one of China's darkest historical chapters. This luminous black-and-white film uses several small stories to illustrate the bigger picture: man's incredible inhumanity to man.

The atrocities committed by the Japanese army during its occupation of Nanking in December 1937—more than 300,000 were massacred, sexual assault was pandemic, and the city was virtually decimated—remain some of the most harrowing chapters of war in the 20th century. Lu Chuan’s vivid recreation of the “Rape of Nanking” tells the story of a small group of Westerners and Chinese engaged in anguished negotiations with the Japanese to limit the suffering of the civilian population. A series of key vignettes—a young Chinese soldier leads a doomed resistance group; a confused and anguished Japanese private is overwhelmed by the insanity; John Rabe, a German businessman, establishes a safety zone in an attempt to protect the lives of countless Chinese; and the harried secretary of a Nazi official betrays his charges to try and save his family—told with Lu’s burning, black-and-white images, bespeak man’s amazing inhumanity to man.

Filmography: Missing Gun (01), Kekexili Mountain Patrol (04).

135 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Asian, History.

Room and a Half portrays the life of Nobel prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky, who was forced into American exile in 1972.

Exiled to the United States in 1972, the famous Russian poet Joseph Brodsky always wanted to return anonymously to St. Petersburg, the city of his youth. Through a variety of imaginative techniques, 69-year-old animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky has made the Nobel Prize winner’s wish come true in Room and a Half. A fictional Brodsky narrates this nostalgic fantasy on board a cruise ship destined for Russia. Through a series of flashbacks he recalls his childhood, in particular the return of his father, laden with gifts, from World War II, and his parents’ affectionate reunion. It appears an idyllic time for the budding scribe who “live[s] in a city whose color [is] fossilized vodka.” Through the seamless fusion of documentary footage, classical Russian music, still photography, recordings of Brodsky reading his work, and beautiful, dreamlike animation, Khrzhanovsky has created a film as poetic as his subject matter.

First Feature Film.

130 Minutes    

Interests: New Directors, Narrative Feature, Animation, Literature.

Before dying, Nora devises a plan to make José, her ex-husband, take care of her funeral during the height of Passover celebration. But despite her meticulousness, she misses something—a mysterious photograph left under the bed which leads to unexpected outcomes.

A divorcée plots to reunite family and friends on the eve of Passover in this affecting, understated comedy set in Mexico City’s close-knit Jewish community. José learns that Nora, the woman he was married to for 30 years and then divorced, has committed suicide. Forced to wait five days for the funeral to allow his son to be present and the rabbi to officiate, José in the meantime discovers that Nora had prepared all of the plans and food for a final Passover Seder. But Nora also left something else: a curious photograph that may unlock the mystery of her life and death for the family she left behind. As curmudgeonly José reluctantly prepares for the funeral, a colorful collection of characters assemble in Nora’s apartment, including disapproving rabbis, a devoted housekeeper, a half-blind aunt, and the couple’s grown son. Winner of Audience Awards at festivals in Morelia, Miami, and Moscow, Chenillo’s warm and witty tale speaks to audiences everywhere.

First Feature Film.

Sponsored by the Consulate of Mexico.

92 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, Latino.

Woman Without Piano is a quietly comic look at a Madrid housewife's attempt to escape from her mundane and tedious existence.

Plain, middle-aged Rosa is a married woman with no friends and no social life. She has devoted her life to her family and doesn’t seem to think much of herself. But when night falls, she enters a fun, dark, and absurd new world. With her husband Francisco tucked in bed, Rosa (Spanish TV superstar Carmen Machi, recently seen in Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces) sneaks out to meet a young Polish construction worker at the bus station, instigating a provocative tour of nocturnal Madrid: neon-lit hotels, all-night bars, and dingy launderettes. Rebollo creates a fascinating, disquieting work in which “anything might happen, and the film—winner of the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Best Director award—holds the viewer in thrall by a chain of extraordinarily staged sequences fueled by a visual command and wit that honors the cinema of Jacques Tati, Otar Iosseliani, and Fellini.”—AFI Fest.

Filmography: Lola (06).

Sponsored by Blue Heron Paper.

95 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, Comedy.

Don Hahn's engaging look at the resurgence of the Disney company's animation tradition.

By the mid-1980s, the once mighty Disney Animation Studios were in a slump. Despite a flock of eager and talented young animators, innovation at the studio was held at bay by an old guard of conservative original-era executives. By the end of the 1990s, however, Disney had produced a string of bona fide hits from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? to The Lion King. What can account for this turnaround? Director Don Hahn is a 30-year Walt Disney Studios veteran, and his juicy behind-the-scenes tell-all of this transitional period is an encyclopedia of first-hand footage, drawings, and interviews detailing all the in-fights and ego trips, unequivocal failures and soaring successes, tragic lows and elating highs of the Disney renaissance.

First Feature Film.

Sponsored by Bingo Lewis.

86 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: New Directors, Documentary Views, Global Classroom, Animation, Art.