THE BEST BETS FOR THE 2007 MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

By Joel Johnson

If you have purchased a MIFF full festival pass and have decided to allow your cinephilia free rein to control your life during festival week (7/13/07-7/22/07), you can afford to be a bit cavalier in choosing what to see. After all, even choosing what you see entirely by random, if you plan to watch twenty-five films or more, you are going to see a lot of good films and maybe a few clunkers. However, if you are choosing to see only a film or two or, perhaps more likely, the ten films that you can see by purchasing a partial festival pass, you really want to see ten good films with the possibility of seeing a couple or so truly outstanding films. Whether one is encountering the one-sheet 2007 MIFF-at-a-glance movie schedule, the descriptions on the MIFF website, or those in the glossy MIFF program guide, the dozens of seductive descriptions can paralyze the would-be neophyte festivalgoer into failing to decide to see anything. So this article is intended to provide some guidance on choosing festival films as well as some recommendations-my best bets-for seeing really good films during MIFF.

MIFF has grown over the last ten years, and there are many more good films in the program now than there were in the first couple of years. This means the odds are with you for selecting a good film. Failing to choose to see any films in the festival places you at much greater risk of missing a wonderful opportunity than the risk of seeing an occasional film that you might not like. There can, of course, definitely be some serendipity in seeing a film that you might not ordinarily have chosen to see. Sometimes this can be a very interesting, informative, entertaining, and even a profoundly moving experience. Of course, if you had expected a certain kind of film experience, and the film you see is the very antithesis of that experience, you may not be singing its praises. So it is helpful to have a fairly clear idea as to your own interests and tolerances.

If you are only going to see only one film during this year’s festival, that film probably is High and Outside. Every year or two, there is a film in the festival that has a particular appeal well beyond the usual festival crowd. The clips from Empire Falls that were shown during the 2004 MIFF and The Real Dirt on Farmer John that was shown during the 2005 MIFF are good examples of attracting many people who were only interested in seeing those films. High and Outside focuses on former Red Sox lefthander Bill Lee, whose outspoken and unusual opinions earned him the nickname of “the Spaceman.” With director Peter Vogt and “the Spaceman” himself in attendance for the 6:30 screening on July 18^th at the Waterville Opera House, there is likely to be several hundred citizens of Red Sox nation present only for this film. If you were following the team during the 1970s, this is an out-and-out must see. If, on the other hand, you are indifferent toward or even hate baseball or, specifically, the Red Sox, High and Outside would probably be a must avoid.

For those who plan to take in more than just one film, the challenge of selecting films starts as soon as the festival begins. The official opening film is Arctic Tales, and this is likely to be the popular choice for most festivalgoers as much for the celebratory kick-off to the movie orgy as it is for this film. Arctic Tales is already scheduled to come to MIFF’s primary venue Railroad Square Cinema and likely will be coming to lots of “theaters near you” wherever you live. However, while Queen Latifah is narrating a film that appears to anthropomorphize polar bears and other critters of the far north, there are three other options that I have included in my Best Bets:

Billy the Kid is Jennifer Venditti’s intimate documentary about a teenage boy having more than the usual difficulty in just fitting in. The film is remarkable because the boy in question is from a small town in Maine. Venditti met Billy when she was working as a casting director on Bugcrush, a short that appeared in last year’s MIFF. She decided that he would be an interesting subject for her first film. Originally intended as a short, the material blossomed into a feature-length film, serendipitously capturing a first romance. This film is doing well on the film festival circuit, capturing the jury prize for best documentary at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin, Texas, and having just claimed the same award at the Los Angeles Film Festival in the waning days of June. Shows Friday, 7/13 at 6:45 P.M. in RRSQ 1 and Sunday, 7/15 at 3:30 P.M. in RRSQ 1.

Killer of Sheep is a thirty-year-old film that has a stellar pedigree and an almost mythic existence. Unlike most critically acclaimed films from three decades ago that would have been released into theaters and then spent years beckoning seductively from video store shelves, this film has only been seen by a relative handful of people. Made as a student film in 1977 by Charles Burnett while he was at UCLA, the film won the prestigious FIPRESCI prize at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival-one of the top five film festivals in the world-and then garnered more prestige by being selected for the National Film Registry by the National Film Preservation Board in 1990. This film has never been given a theatrical release in part because it took years to secure permission to use the songs in the soundtrack that Burnett had originally chosen. Of course, the fact that the film provides a slice-of-life for a working class black man and his family living in Los Angeles’s Watts section may have something to do with it. Films rarely focus on just ordinary people struggling through life and that the people are black-members of a minority-probably didn’t make the film more attractive for distributors. As a slice-of-life film, there is minimal plot and much more emphasis on the keen observation of detail. That includes watching what this man does for a living, and this may prove to be quite disturbing for some people. The film’s title likely has more than one meaning, but it’s most literal meaning is what he does for work at an abattoir. Shows Friday, 7/13 at 7:15 P.M. in RRSQ 3; Saturday, 7/14 at 3:15 P.M. in RRSQ 2; and Sunday, 7/15 at 9:15 P.M. in RRSQ 2.

Exiled is the third alternative to the official opening film. This is Hong Kong director Johnny To’s transplantation of that cinematic staple-the Western-to Macao, the former Portuguese island colony off mainland China. To is one of the heavyweights in the Hong Kong film industry, having directed forty-six films with all but one coming since 1986. Along with his prodigious output, his films consistently deliver crackling tension, ironic humor, kick-ass energy, and cool heroes (or heroines). Several nominations have been received and three prizes have been awarded, either from the Hong Kong film industry or from several film festivals. This may not be top-shelf To, but his shelves go up higher than most other directors. For sheer entertainment value, this may be the best choice. Shows Friday, 7/13 at 7:00 P.M. in RRSQ 2 and Monday, 7/16 at 9:30 P.M. in WOH.

So while you are pondering my choices as the Best Bets for the opening screening of this year’s MIFF, let’s start thinking about my other choices as Best Bets for the rest of the festival.

Knee Deep is the second Maine documentary to make it onto my Best Bets list. Frequently, films set in Maine, whether fictional or documentary, arrive without much of a track record: no reviews, either limited or no prior festival screenings, and the director is either a first-time director or has only worked on very obscure films. Michael Chandler has worked as a film editor, and his work on Amadeus garnered him an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA award. He has turned to directing documentaries, and his most acclaimed film was Forgotten Fires, which uses a series of church burnings in the South to explore racism and hatred. Chandler has chosen as the subject of his documentary Knee Deep a bizarre news story that came out two or three years ago. A young Farmington man had shot and wounded his own mother to prevent her from selling the family farm. Chandler’s film about the people behind this story received the Best Documentary award from the jury at the Florida Film Festival. Shows Saturday, 7/14 at 3:30 P.M. in WOH; Sunday, 7/15 at 6:30 P.M. in WOH; and Friday, 7/20 at 9:30 P.M. in RRSQ 1.

The World of Until Further Notice is local filmmakers Jak Peters and Paul Ezzy’s follow-up to their highly entertaining short Until Further Notice that showed in last year’s MIFF. I don’t devote a lot of attention to short films and tend to think of them as just something extra in the festival film-going experience. Sometimes it is an extra benefit, and sometimes it is an extra annoyance. However, those fortunate enough to see the first screening of Until Further Notice were passing advice on the street, in the lobby, and out in the parking lot that the short was the real deal, and the feature with which it was paired was a film that offered no significant benefit for being seen. The creators of Until Further Notice have received a grant to underwrite expenses for showing the film at major film festivals. So unless you have determined that you would detest an anthology of sketches, quick-hitting visual jokes, and the silent film antics of a latter-day Buster Keaton, The World Of Until Further Notice should definitely be a film that you seek out. Shows Saturday, 7/14 at 3:00 P.M. in RRSQ 3 and Tuesday, 7/17 at 9:00 P.M. in RRSQ 3.

C.R.A.Z.Y. is the film that my wife and I adopted as part of MIFF’s adopt-a-movie sponsorship program. I only mention that in the interests of full disclosure. Jean-Marc Vallée’s film has collected an impressive array of awards. The film turned the Genie Awards (Canadian Oscars) and the Jutras Awards (Québec Oscars) into its own coronation celebrations by winning prizes in eleven of thirteen and thirteen of fourteen of its nominated categories, respectively. The film has also won several other awards including the Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Audience Favorite at the AFI (American Film Institute) Fest. The European Film Academy nominated it for its Screen International Award for achievement in World Cinema. Critics have written reams of praise for it. Though the film has a most impressive pedigree, that is not the reason that we adopted the film. The film deals with a very difficult issue. How do we accept differences in others around us, in our own families, and, indeed, in ourselves? This is especially difficult when that difference is sexual orientation, which increasingly has become a flashpoint for our religious traditions and in our society. That the filmmakers have presented this coming-of-age story with humor, with snappy visuals, with energy, and with a glorious 1970s glam-rock soundtrack for a package that is both entertaining and thought provoking is an impressive achievement. There are many fine quotations available from critics who have reviewed the film, but the one that stands out to me is this: “Definitely more than the sum of its parts”-Jamie Woolley, BBC. Shows Monday, 7/16 at 6:30 P.M. in WOH; Wednesday, 7/18 at 9:30 P.M. in WOH; and Friday, 7/20 at 3:00 P.M. in WOH.

Madeinusa was the Peruvian representative in this past year’s Foreign Film Oscar competition. I must admit that one of the reasons that I love film festivals is for the opportunity to see films from other countries that often struggle in the American marketplace because of audience reluctance to watch subtitled films. So the opportunity to see a film from a small South American nation and one that-theoretically, anyway-is the best film from that nation is something that I find very intriguing. That the film presents a fictionalized parochial alternative Christianity in which sin is unseen by God from the time of Jesus’ death on the Cross on Good Friday until the resurrection on Easter Morning also piqued my curiosity. Madeinusa is the daughter of the mayor of her Peruvian village and the chosen queen of the bacchanal festival while Jesus is in the tomb. Her name and the film’s title might suggest that the film has a rather direct reference to the United States and even possibly constitute anti-Americanism. That is not borne out by what reviewers are saying. The film has issues of the parochial village encountering the much wider world as a geologist from Lima wanders into the village upsetting the local order. Madeinusa finds herself attracted to the stranger threatening to alter the destiny chosen for her by her father. Although Christianity has often been integrated into other religious or cultural practices, I would reiterate that this is not a film purporting to describe actual practices-this unique version of Christianity is fictional. Themes in the film could be disturbing. Considerable praise has been directed toward director Claudia Llosa for such an accomplished first film. If her name seems vaguely familiar, you may be familiar with the work of her uncle, the author Mario Vargas Llosa. Shows Wednesday, 7/18 at 6:30 P.M. in RRSQ 1 and Thursday, 7/19 at 9:30 P.M. in WOH.

Interview is the English-language remake of a film made by Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh had intended to make an English-language version himself, but his murder by an Islamic fanatic prevented that. Steve Buscemi has picked up the directorial reins of this story about an encounter between a proud journalist demoted to doing an interview with a celebrity actress provocateur-think Paris Hilton with a somewhat better acting resume. Buscemi gets a rare lead role playing the frustrated journalist, and, though the celebrity actress (Katja Schuurman) in the Dutch version appears in the film, she is portrayed by Sienna Miller in this version. After initially and not surprisingly getting completely off on the wrong foot, the two eventually have a much more unexpected and intimate encounter. This is a film that offers an opportunity to see the people beyond and behind the headlines that we usually see. Buscemi is an underutilized terrific actor, and Miller is a rising star more famous as Jude Law’s former fiancée. This gives both an opportunity to fully display their talents. The film has been making the rounds of the upper echelons of film festivals (Sundance, Berlin, Seattle, etc.) in advance of a limited theatrical release this summer. Reviews have been quite good and the Internet Movie Database

(www.imdb.com ) reports a composite audience rating of 8.0 out of 10 from more than 300 individuals. Shows Monday, 7/16 at 6:30 P.M. in RRSQ 1 and Tuesday, 7/17 at 3:30 P.M. in RRSQ 1.

Rocket Science is Jeff Blitz’s follow-up to his very successful and Oscar-nominated documentary about the National Spelling Bee Spellbound. Though this film has a title that could be for a documentary, it is definitely not one. It, instead, is a film that would appear to be from the genre of teen-aged comedy. There are a lot of hackneyed films from this genre that have delivered varying degrees of entertainment value, which have varied from fanciful to totally ridiculous. However, when a film is compared-and compared favorably-with Alexander Payne’s Election (one of my favorite films), then I am impressed. Reece Daniel Thompson plays high school student Hal Hefner who has a stuttering problem. Hal ends up being recruited for the debating team and seeks to romance the debating team captain Ginny Ryerson. Justin Chang of Variety writes, “This unusually voluble comedy is as eloquent about love, self-realization and adolescent angst as its protagonist is endearingly tongue-tied.” Maine’s own Anna Kendrick portrays the hyper-competitive Ginny Ryerson, who apparently yields nothing in comparison with Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick from Election. The talented young Kendrick is following up on her Independent Spirit Award-nominated performance in Camp and her Tony-nominated work on Broadway. Rocket Science is the first of three films that she has coming out over the next year. Director Blitz received a directing award at the Sundance Film Festival for Rocket Science and that could well be the first of several awards for the film. Shows Monday, 7/16 at 9:30 P.M. in RRSQ 2 and Tuesday, at 6:15 P.M. in RRSQ 2.

Guru is this year’s Bollywood film. Bollywood films feature music, dance, and high-energy production numbers in telling all manner of stories, from historical epics to tragedies to romances. The MIFF programmers have generally been able to book some of the best that Bollywood has to offer. Last year’s three film Bollywood contingent included India’s Foreign Language Oscar candidate Rang De Basanti. This year’s film chronicles the rise and fall of an ambitious Indian businessman. Gurukant Desai (Bollywood superstar Abhishek Backchan) hails from a small village. He wants to own his own business. He marries Sujata who is being played by former Miss Universe Aishwara Rai. He becomes a tycoon, but when his unscrupulous business practices end up being discovered, his world is threatened. Bollywood films may not be for everyone, but if you appreciate the energy and exoticism of India, then this is a good film for you. Shows Tuesday, 7/17 at 6:00 P.M. in RRSQ 1; Saturday, 7/21 at 11:30 A.M. in RRSQ 2; and Sunday, 7/22 at 3:30 P.M. in RRSQ 2.

Manhattan, Kansas is a very personal documentary about a daughter trying to reconnect with her own mother following a several year estrangement. Rebuilding trust and understanding after her mother had threatened to kill her is a tentative process, and Tara Wray takes her camera along to record what happens when she goes from New York City to see her mom Evie in Manhattan, Kansas. The film explores what it really means to be family. It supposedly has a surprise ending. Though this film shares potential mental health issues and eccentric lifestyle choices with another intimate mother-daughter documentary called Alma that veteran MIFF goers will recall from the 1999 MIFF, the film doesn’t seem to have the same dark, deeply disturbing gothic claustrophobia that imbued Alma. Manhattan, Kansas has appeared at many film festivals across the country and received the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Shows Saturday, 7/14 at 3:30 P.M. in RRSQ 1 and Monday, 7/16 at 9:00 P.M. in RRSQ 3.

Strange Culture is Lynn Hershman-Leeson’s unconventional documentary about the legal troubles that ensued for Steve Kurtz following the unexpected death of his wife Hope. While the emergency medical personal responded to the rescue call, they discovered materials that made them suspicious. Soon a team in Hazmat protection suits is searching his home and seizes his computer, his writings, his books, his cat, and his wife’s body. Steve Kurtz became suspected of being a bioterrorist for which there is still pending prosecution. Kurtz, who is an artist who used his art to criticize the food industry, had gathered unusual-though not illegal-materials for use in his art. The film’s implication is that War on Terror paranoia had been harnessed to neutralize a troublesome critic. Though this could make for an engaging traditional documentary, Hershman-Leeson’s technique shows actors interacting with the real people involved and then reenacting events from the story. This is a unique storytelling process that has never been used before. It takes the film viewer behind the scenes and helps the filmmaker deal with some issues that the pending court proceedings would not allow to be talked about directly. This film has shown at Sundance, Berlin, and the recently concluded 2007 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York City. It should be seen for both its subject matter and for its unique approach to telling the story. Shows Saturday, 7/14 at 9:30 P.M. in WOH; Wednesday, 7/18 at 3:30 P.M. in RRSQ 1; and Friday, 7/20 at 6:00 P.M. in RRSQ 3.

Josh’s Trees is a unique and powerful film. I had the opportunity to see it back in 2005 at the New Montreal FilmFest. If you have never heard of this film festival, that is not surprising. 2005 was the first and, apparently, the last edition for the New Montreal FilmFest. There’s an interesting story-and maybe a movie-in the film festival wars that broke in Montreal over the last three years or so, but that isn’t why I mention the New Montreal FilmFest. It is because Josh’s Trees showed there. Peter Entell, the film’s director, and Josh Hanig were close personal friends and fellow filmmakers. Josh and Peter followed parallel and occasionally intersecting career tracks as they learned and then practiced their filmmaking craft. Josh eventually found and married his wife Leslie when he was in his forties and then embarked on the adventure of becoming a parent. Virtually at the same time as he learned that he would be a father, Josh found out that he had terminal pancreatic cancer. Josh did what filmmakers seem compelled to do-he recorded what was happening in his life as he battled the cancer and addressed his unborn son Marshall. Entell steps in like a very special uncle to complete Josh’s work after Josh loses his battle with the cancer at age forty-six. He not only provides some shape to the hours of footage recorded by Josh, but he integrates the growing boy Marshall and Marshall’s mother Leslie into an ongoing story of life and love. The film addresses the deepest and most profound truths that come from being alive. Marshall will grow up without a father, but he will never doubt his father’s love and-in time-he will know his father more intimately than most sons can achieve in an entire lifetime. There was a very strong and favorable audience response in Montreal to this wonderful film. Shows Thursday, 7/19 at 6:00 P.M. in RRSQ 3 and Saturday, 7/21 at 9:00 P.M. in RRSQ 3.

Four Minutes is another film that I know from the first-hand experience of actually seeing it. You may want to check out my review of this German film in Postcard #4 from Toronto (www.wolfmoonpress.com/Movies/Toronto4_2006.htm). I found this film about the battle of wills between an aged piano instructor who teaches in prison and her highly volatile student both engrossing and entertaining, but it was not my favorite film from Toronto. You should definitely know that Chris Kraus’s film has done very well in the German Film Awards. The film was nominated for eight Lolas (German Oscars) and won two. One Lola was for lead actress Monica Bleibtreu and the other was the top prize of the awards ceremony as Outstanding Feature Film or the equivalent of Best Picture. This same prize was won by The Lives Of Others before it represented Germany in the Academy Awards and then won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. So this could well be an early opportunity to see a contender for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. Shows Friday, 7/20 at 9:30 P.M. in WOH; Saturday, 7/21 at 6:15 P.M. in RRSQ 1; and Sunday, 7/22 at 12:30 P.M. in RRSQ 1.

We Are Together is a documentary in which people are persevering in the face of profound losses. Paul Taylor’s film introduces us to children-specifically, one family of siblings-at South Africa’s Agape Orphanage who have lost parents to AIDS. Although they have experienced a terrible loss, their lives go on and they still have to find their way. Music provides way to express their emotions and an opportunity to define their lives. Filmed over three years, the film charts a series of ups-and-downs as the orphanage tries to cope with the increasing demands to serve more children, the siblings deal with yet another devastating loss, and their choir sees an opportunity to travel to the United Kingdom suddenly fall through. You’ll have to see the movie to get all the “ups.” Needless to say, there must be some good ones since the film won seven awards at film festivals around the world, including three audience awards from the Amnesty International Film Festival, the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, and the recently completed Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Shows Sunday, 7/15 at 3:00 P.M. in RRSQ 3; Friday, 7/20 at 9:00 P.M. in RRSQ 3; and Sunday, 7/22 at 3:30 P.M. in WOH.

This is a group of quality films that have received awards, earned praise from critics, and won the affection of audiences at festivals. There are no guarantees, but I hope you will find these recommendations helpful as you make your own selections. It should go without saying that there are some wonderful and fascinating films that I did not include on this list. It may, of course, be that these qualities have just not been discovered by enough people yet, and you could be among the first at MIFF to recognize it. You would also be wise to listen to your fellow festivalgoers who may have already seen a film that you have the opportunity to see. If someone whose opinion you trust is telling you or, even better, several people are telling you that something is either awful or fantastic, that opinion is definitely worth considering.

A few words are probably needed to address why some films were not included on the list.

Of the films featuring Bud Cort, Harold and Maude is a cult classic and M.A.S.H. is a classic from Robert Altman. Both films have been seen on the big screen and/or the little one for nearly forty years. These certainly deserve to be seen, but a large segment of MIFF-goers has already seen it. There’s not a lot of information available that would make the other Bud Cort films seem as stellar as Harold and Maude and M.A.S.H.

The films of Taiwanese director Lin Cheng-Sheng have not received a lot of attention in the West, which means that there’s not a lot of reviews to check out or a lot of prizes to sort through. Seeing his films is an opportunity for discovery, but there’s not much of a track record to use to mitigate any risk of not having the film work for you. Of his films, I think that Betelnut Beauty, which was well received at the Berlin Film Festival, capturing a New Talent awards for actress Angelica Lee and Best Director award for Lin Cheng-Sheng, is probably the most promising. I am, however, interested in how the same-sex relationship is addressed in Taiwan during Murmur Of Youth.

Jacques Rivette is acknowledged as one of the founders of the French “New Wave” during the late 1950s and into the 1960s. He continues to be active now several decades later. Rivette is a unique cinematic voice and his films tend not to be straightforward. They can be exhilarating for some filmgoers and leave others bewildered. They also tend to be long, with two of the offerings either approaching (Haut, Bas Fragile at 169 minutes) or exceeding (Celine and Julie Go Boating at 193 minutes) three hours. That’s a substantial test of endurance for the film viewer. Even Claire Denis’s documentary about the director and his work is 125 minutes, but that may be a best way to get an overview of his films prior to 1990.

I decided not to include two documentaries on my list because the subject matter continues to be very disturbing. One is Nanking, which addresses the appalling atrocities of murder, rape, and mayhem committed by the Japanese army upon seizing the then-capitol of China. The death toll is disputed but may extend into the hundreds of thousands of lives. This is truly one of the ugliest chapters in a very ugly World War II. The other film is Election Day about November 2, 2004. Not quite as gruesome as Nanking, but I’m still having trouble coming to terms with that day. These may be great films, but the subject matter will be difficult.

Anyway, there are plenty of interesting choices out there, and before the festival begins each one seemingly has the possibility to be a magical film. Before long it will be clear which ones succeed in doing that, which ones miss doing that, and which ones miss by a lot. I hope your choices (whether you have followed my recommendations or not) will all work for you, and you will have few disappointments at the festival. Enjoy the festival and check back to see our festival coverage.