FAF. AFI. Previews.

Film Arts Festival

The San Francisco International Film Festival's determined ignorance earlier this year of Bay Area local Caveh Zahedi's latest film I Am a Sex Addict came as a great, if not entirely surprising, disappointment. The film screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival to sold-out crowds and received an extremely high audience rating. Those wary of entering Zahedi's mindscape after his previous, squirm-inducing, confrontational films were greeted with a happy surprise. I Am a Sex Addict is accessible - an important point when put in the context of his other work. It is funny, engaging and enjoyable despite its off-color topic. I was sitting next to Caveh in Rotterdam as programmers from other festivals around the world approached him, hopeful for a shot at screening his film. But I didn't see a single face from San Francisco, his hometown. Luckily, the Film Arts Foundation has stepped forward and will be presenting I Am a Sex Addict as its closing night film. And really, that's what the foundation is there for - to give deserving films a chance.

GreenCine will be co-presenting two documentary screenings at the festival, which runs through November 9 - Romántico and Wellstone!. If you've visited the artistic Mission District in San Francisco, you'll be familiar with the protagonists of Romántico, the mariachi performers who are a regular fixture at popular tapas joints like Esperpento. The film follows Carmelo, an illegal Mexican immigrant and musician, as he decides to return home in order to be closer to his diabetic mother and growing daughters. Thanks to Lou Dobbs and others, illegal immigration is a hot topic right now, regularly sparking rhetorical outbursts and fist-shaking. Taking a different approach, director Mark Beker has instead made a quiet film that chooses to simply document Carmelo's contrasting worlds.

Wellstone!, as befits its subject matter, is not so calm. The documentary is a memorial tribute to Paul Wellstone, the Minnesotan Senator who gave us hope that regular Americans can occasionally stop thinking of "liberal" as a dirty word and actually vote for one. In 1990, Wellstone chose to run a real race against long-time Republican incumbent Rudy Boschowitz and, largely through the power of grassroots organization, labor support and his infectiously sincere spirit, actually pulled off a win. He consistently voted according to his beliefs and was the only senator up for reelection who voted against the war in Iraq. The Republicans made it their mission to upend him in the 2002 election, but tragically, before they could, he, along with his wife, daughter and other staffers, died in a plane crash just eleven days before the election. This film is not hard-hitting, or even particularly well-made, but it does serve as a good introduction to Wellstone for those unfamiliar with his passionate leadership.

AFI Fest

As the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq passes 2000, and as the Senate closes its doors to discuss the duplicity surrounding those now-infamous fabricated documents presented as justification for the invasion, it's an appropriate time to examine past and present wars. The New York Times is doing just that at AFI Fest (through November 13) in their inaugural series of panel discussions, "Times Talks." It's a great marketing tool, an elaborate plug for the Times' Hollywood coverage. Considering the Times' vacillation over the war itself and the self-flagellation that followed, dealing with war on the screen seems like a comparatively safe bet. In the first of the three "Talks," NYT film critics AO Scott and Manohla Dargis will discuss "Hollywood at War," then and now. The second talk will see NYT Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati moderate a discussion amongst war doc directors Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), Stephen Marshall (BattleGround), Jehane Noujaim (Control Room), Garrett Scott (Occupation: Dreamland) and Michael Tucker (Gunner Palace). Panel discussions like these usually resolve nothing, but this group in particular should have some interesting personal stories to tell about their time in Iraq. Then, moving on to the Cold War, Lynn Hirschberg will interview George Clooney on the heels of his success with Good Night, and Good Luck. It should be an engaging interview considering that Clooney is both (thankfully) intelligent and (sadly) the closest thing our generation has to Cary Grant.

Wars, then and now, serve, too, as a backdrop to some of AFI's highlights this year. In a controversial move, France has put forward Merry Christmas (Joyeux Noël) as its candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award rather than the obvious US crowd pleaser, March of the Penguins. It concerns the now legendary Christmas Truce of 1914 that saw German, French and British troops in the horrific trenches of Ypres cease fire for Christmas to collect their dead, sing carols and play football. Now considered to be the last great gesture of dying 19th century honor, the truce was greeted with disdain by those in charge who, in reaction, instituted Christmas Eve artillery bombardments for the remainder of the war.

A similar determination to cope despite adverse circumstances can be seen in Stephen Frears's latest, Mrs Henderson Presents, about that most historic of nude review houses, the Windmill Theater, which refused to close (or clothe) during the Blitz. Dame Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins spar as Laura Henderson, owner of the Windmill, and Vivien Van Damm, its manager, from the time the Windmill is bought and reopened in 1931 until Mrs Henderson's death in 1944. The intelligence of their repartee draws attention to something now almost entirely absent from movies - witty dialogue, as once exemplified by Oscar Wilde, brought to the screen by the likes of Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, and all but entirely lost for (and possibly on) audiences today.

Another WWII-era film, Brazilian Marcelo Gomes's Cinema, Aspirin and Vultures, follows two odd "miracle drug" salesmen on a road trip of sorts - Johann, a German who has escaped the war and Ranulpho, a Brazilian who is himself running away from a drought that is destroying the Northeast of his country. Together they introduce people in the remote areas of Brazil to two items it's hard to imagine living without - movies and aspirin.

Of course, we shouldn't forget the smaller films, and two documentaries that are sure to be impressive are The Art of Flight, which tells the story of two Sudanese refugees struggling in Egypt along with their filmmaker witness, and The Devil's Miner, a document of the life of 14-year-old Basillio who works in the deadly mines of Cerro Rico, Bolivia, a place where usually Catholic workers, once underground, worship the devil.

Posted by dwhudson at November 3, 2005 5:45 AM