THE OVERVIEW OF

THE 2009 MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

By Joel Johnson

The 2009 edition of the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF) will be opening the doors, welcoming festival goers and filmmakers alike, and begin the countdown on 123 opportunities to see wonderful films in Waterville, Maine (MIFF continues a tradition of having satellite venues by partnering with The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to provide eight additional opportunities to audiences from southern Maine, New Hampshire, and northern Massachusetts that look to that venue for film and live performance art). Each of these 131 screenings provides the opportunity for the serendipitous joining of a filmmaker’s creation and a film viewer able to fully appreciate that creation. While one may generally assume that whether a film will be judged pleasing or not is exclusively based on the attributes of the film, the filmgoer’s receptivity to a film can vary considerably. So the challenge to festival goers is to select the films that they want to see and to choose to see them when they are best able to appreciate them. So how does one approach this process?

One of the centerpiece events in any film festival is honoring the career achievements of individual filmmakers. This year’s honoree is Arthur Penn. His name may not immediately mean a lot to cinephiles who have come of age over the last couple decades, but he helped create some of the best films of the 1960’s and 1970’s. He is a three-time Oscar nominee as Best Director for The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde, and Alice’s Restaurant. After several years of directing television dramas, Penn’s first film The Left-Handed Gun (1958) featured the young up-and-coming star Paul Newman as Billy the Kid. This begins a career of working with and helping to burnish the reputation of some of the biggest names in Hollywood history (Marlon Brando, Anne Bancroft, Warren Beatty, Burt Lancaster, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Jeanne Moreau, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Melanie Griffith, James Woods, and Jack Nicholson among them). His films have been nominated for a total of 18 Oscars and have won four. While one can not dispute the choices of screening The Left-Handed Gun, Bonnie and Clyde, Night Moves, and Little Big Man to display Mr. Penn’s artistry, one could make an argument for the inclusion of several other films from his filmography. That an entirely different selection of films could justifiably be shown to honor Arthur Penn is a testament to his extraordinary career accomplishments.

From the festival goers’ perspective, seeing an older film—especially one shown to recognize the career achievement honoree—offers the rare opportunity to see on the big screen where it belong a film for which there has been an established consensus on the quality of the filmmaking and its place in history and hopefully hear the director share his insights and his experiences in making it. This is a safe and secure choice for seeing an outstanding film. The downside of choosing to see an older, classic film is that many festival goers will have definitely seen the film before and possibly countless times. One is familiar with where the action is leading and one may or may not gain sufficient additional insight from one’s umpteenth viewing of—say—Bonnie and Clyde to justify sacrificing the opportunity to see a new film that may be very appealing. In addition to the Arthur Penn films, MIFF is offering the film noir Detour (1945) and the classic musical Carousel (1956) as part of MIFF’s Re-Discovery sidebar. The sidebar also includes the new films The Memory of Angels (2008) which provides an opportunity to rediscover the film contributions of Montreal and For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009) to rediscover—or discover for the first time—the value of film critics who seem to be among the early casualties as the newspapers who have traditionally employed them deal with a shrinking readership.

Detour—selected in 1992 for registry by the National Film Preservation Board—hopefully will eventually reach the destination of being a pretty good movie which is more than I can say for last year’s similarly noirish The Big Combo (1955). The MIFF program description describes how the film being shown at MIFF was made from a print in star Ann Savage’s personal collection. Savage had been a busy actress garnering all but two of her 39 acting credits from 1943 to 1955. Her last screen appearance was as Guy Maddin’s mother in his semi-autobiographical My Winnipeg (2007) which screened at Railroad Square Cinema last year.

Carousel is a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical from Broadway’s Golden Age and the film adaptation was primarily shot in and around Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Although musicals have experienced a resurgence in the last few years, they had been considered box office poison from the late 60’s on. It will be interesting to see how contemporary audiences respond to an old-fashioned musical. Carousel did not garner any Academy Award nominations, but its director Henry King (who directed a whopping 117 films over a career from 1915 to 1962) received a nomination from the Director’s Guild of America and the writers Henry and Phoebe Ephron (yes, they are the parents of Nora, Delia, and Amy Ephron who have made their own imprints on the film business) were nominated for Best Written American Musical from the Writer’s Guild of America. Filmgoers who have seen the recently released documentary Every Little Step may want to check out “Louise’s Starlight Carnival dance partner” played by a young Jacques d’Amboise who appears in Every Little Step with his daughter Charlotte.

If the older classic films are solid bets to see because they are known quantities, then the films that are premiering at MIFF represent a willingness to take a risk to see films for which there is only limited information available and nothing to use (film reviews, audience ratings, awards, etc.) to gauge their quality. New films may be a surprising delight or a shocking disappointment. Regardless of how good or bad the film is the MIFF audiences will be among the very first to respond to the filmmaker’s creation. It is an honor and a responsibility to be among the first to provide feedback on what it was like to experience the film. This year, there are five films that will be receiving their world premiere at MIFF: the opening night film The Rivals, Tapped, 72 Musicians, The Kings, and the documentary short Aliens Among Us. Five additional films will be having their first showing in the United States: Infestation, John Connolly—Of Blood and Lost Things, Redemption Song, Ghost Bird, and Strange Events.

Even though MIFF audiences may be taking a chance to see a film at its world premiere, there are some things that may mitigate the likelihood of experiencing disappointment. The Rivals has been given a plum spot in the MIFF schedule. While not every MIFF opening night film has been scintillating, this is not where the festival programmers would want to place a marginal selection to the festival even if its story of the development of a Maine high school sports rivalry might make it very attractive based on the local Maine connections. In addition to its prominence in the MIFF schedule is that the film is the work of established documentarian Kirk Wolfinger. Kirk has made many documentaries for television including PBS’ Now and his film subjects have included the Titannic, sister ships of Titannic, Blackbeard’s mystery ship, the US space program, covert war in Laos, and Pocahontas. His 1994 Moon Shot was nominated for an Emmy award. We may have no track record to use in evaluating The Rivals, but we do have a track record to use in assessing the man who put together this film about the emergence of a football rivalry between two Maine communities (established power Rumford and up-and-coming Cape Elizabeth) from opposing ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. If the passions of a rivalry have truly been established between these two communities, there is the possibility of behavior that may stretch the boundaries of established theater decorum since the field of competition offers a much more visceral venue for resolving differences than even the most passionate of cinephiles tend to employ in debating the virtues and flaws of films beloved and despised.

Another world premiere film is Tapped which addresses the impact of the growing bottled water industry. This is a subject with considerable local interest as Poland Spring is bottled here in Maine and many Maine communities are concerned about the exploitation of this vital resource. Evaluating the record of the filmmaker provides little extra help in assessing the film. Neither Stephanie Soechtig or Jason Lindsey—the film’s co-directors—has been credited with making a film before and Mr. Lindsay’s only credited directing experience is working on the talk show CW Now. I can, however, share that some other members of the MIFF in the Morning organizing committee watched Tapped as part of the selection process for the winter film series and did give it a favorable review (though it was not, ultimately, chosen).

72 Musician and The Kings are also having their world premieres and neither has very much in the way of provenance to evaluate for either film or filmmakers. 72 Musicians does have a website that is linked to the film’s MIFF description and the film does have an intriguing trailer. It appears to be a kindred spirit to Anvil! The Story of Anvil that recently screened at Railroad Square Cinema. It is the story of several groups of hard-working musicians—as opposed to just the group Anvil—that are still searching for their big break. The Kings is the ultimate local film in that the filmmakers are not only from and the film itself is set in Waterville, Maine, but the Kings are defending local honor against visiting interlopers. Choosing to see these films will depend on whether one is attracted to what the film purports to show and either wants to be part of the live concert by the Architects—one of the bands featured in the film—that will follow the screening of 72 Musicians or wants to support the young aspiring filmmakers from Waterville, Maine, who have created The Kings. It would appear that ticket demand for The Kings—real or anticipated—has led to a change of venue from the 120-seat Railroad Square 1 to the 940-seat Waterville Opera House.

One of several films receiving it’s US Premiere is Kyle Rankins’ Infestation. Kyle is no stranger to MIFF audiences having presented (with co-director and longtime collaborator Efram Potelle) Maine-made productions Reindeer Games (no, not the one with Ben Affleck and Charlize Theron), Pennyweight, and They Came to Attack Us at early MIFFs. Later they were tapped to direct a film through Project Greenlight and directed The Battle of Shaker Heights. If you have seen those early films it will not surprise you that Infestation is a film that transcends the genres of horror, action, and comedy. I found a classic movie description in the Hollywood Reporter which describes Infestation as “28 Days Later meets Shaun of the Dead.” Infestation has two MIFF screenings, but one is at the Skowhegan Drive-in which embodies the traditional natural outlet for horror fare. There’s something ideal about the drive-in when your date needs to squeeze you just a little bit harder than usual.

Maurice Sweeney’s John Connolly—Of Blood and Lost Things will have its US premiere at MIFF. Mr. Connolly is an Irish writer who is a part-time resident of Maine and has created the haunted character of Charlie Parker. Parker has been featured in eight crime novels. Like the author, Parker has sought refuge in Maine. Mr. Sweeney is an Irish filmmaker aiming to reveal the author and his creation to a wider audience beyond the books’ legion of fans. Mr. Sweeney has worked extensively in television for several years in Ireland. He is best known for directing the two-part dramatic miniseries Cromwell in Ireland, the sports feature Michaèl: The Sounds of Sunday, and the documentary Flann O’Brien: The Lives of Brian for Irish television. Sweeney has won prizes for Best Sports Feature and Best Single Documentary at the Irish Film and Television Awards for the latter two productions. It should be noted that Flann O’Brien was another Irish writer so Sweeney is familiar with the challenges in revealing lives that may be much more active on the interior than what might be recorded and shown from the outside. It would seem likely that the Connolly film—probably made for Irish television—may not be a wild stab in the dark—except for what it reveals about what we troubled human souls are capable.

Jean-Marie Boulet’s Redemption Song doesn’t have much of a track record to evaluate and the French filmmaker has just a handful of credits—mostly as a cinematographer—for films that I don’t recognize. However, the subject of the film is not unfamiliar to MIFF audiences. Billy Bang was at MIFF several years ago. He not only presented a concert, but he and his band shared their personal experiences as soldiers in Vietnam. While being drafted and sent to Vietnam during the war was an experience that transcended race, this experience disproportionately affected African-Americans. For festival-goers familiar with Bang’s war and post-war experiences, this will provide a sense of personal closure on what has haunted him for his entire adult life. For those not so familiar with Bang’s life, this film will—at a minimum—show how music flows across cultural divides and reveals our common humanity.

Scott Crocker’s Ghost Bird comes to Waterville, Maine, for its first US stop (hence, its US premiere) after premiering at the prestigious Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto in May. There it garnered favorable notices for its story not only of the apparent extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the mid-1940’s and its supposed 2005 rediscovery in Brinkley, Arkansas, but its story of a desperate town seeking to base its own resurrection on the frenzy of interest among birdwatchers in the ivory-billed woodpecker’s. This is what makes this documentary of interest to a much wider audience than just the birdwatcher and naturalist crowd. Although Crocker was born in Pasadena and currently lives in Berkeley, California, he is no stranger to Maine since he graduated from Brunswick’s Bowdoin College.

Kanerva Cederström’s Strange Events is another film for which there is little track record to evaluate. This Finnish documentary short (running time 63 minutes) has been shown at the Transylvania (yes, that Transylvania) Film Festival in Romania. It won no prizes and I have found no reviews. Director Cederström just turned 60 this year and she has directed only a handful of films—mostly documentaries. Not really having a lot of familiarity with Finnish documentary films, I don’t know that there’s much there that is going to help in assessing how likely it is that this film that seeks to show how bemusingly odd life in a Finnish metropolis can be will be a transcendant film experience. One may have to make the decision to see this film based on whether one is drawn to see another documentary short that will screen with it. Martina Radwin’s 25-minute Aliens Among Us will be receiving its world premiere at MIFF. It tells the story of Muslim immigrants being targeted for deportation on the basis of their religion. This is another shadowy aspect of the so-called War on Terror that has been waged since September 11, 2001.

Fifteen to Check Out

These are films that I either have seen already or films that I am very interested in seeing. I hope that they will prove to be films that you will consider and if you are able to see any of them that you will find them as intriguing and entertaining as I anticipate that they will be.

I can give unqualified endorsement to seeing Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rums, Ole Christian Madsen’s Flame and Citron, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Lorna’s Silence because I was able to see these films at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. My reviews of the former two films can be accessed (http://www.wolfmoonjournal.com/2009/04/notes-from-the-2008-toronto-international-film-festival-2/ ) elsewhere on this website. They were two of my favorite films from Toronto. Lorna’s Silence is another of the Dardenne brother’s documentary-like explorations of life at the margins of society. The subject of this film is Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), a young woman from Albania, trying to start a new life in Belgium with her boyfriend. To become “legal” she has had a “sham marriage” to a drug-addicted Belgian (Jérémie Renier, a long-time Dardenne collaborator and most recently seen in Summer Hours). She now faces a terrible moral dilemma as the shadowy brokers who arranged her marriage now have hatched a plan for her to marry a Russian so that he can be “legal.” Like all of the Dardenne brothers’ films, this is a film that shows people and circumstances that we would like to wish away and ignore—but do so at our own peril. Despite a natural desire to look away, film viewers will likely find themselves totally engaged in Lorna’s Silence.

Foreign films booked in past MIFFs have more often than not been French language films. This is not altogether surprising in that France is one of the nations that does have a very active film industry, we share a border with the French-speaking Province of Quebec, and a sizable percentage of Mainers trace their heritage back to Quebec and, then ultimately, back to France. This year, however, the predominant foreign language is Spanish. Headless Woman and Historias Extraordinarias come to MIFF from Argentina. Lucrecia Martel, the director of The Headless Woman, has been building a relatively small portfolio of films that have garnered several awards and lots of critical praise. She has to be considered one of the shining lights of South American film. Her films present moral dilemmas and observe how that is or is not handled by her characters. The Headless Woman adds issues of race and class to the situation. This does mean that her films are not light and not undemanding of the film viewer. This is probably why The Headless Woman was voted the “Best Undistributed Movie of the Year” of 250 films that lacked distribution (Strand Releasing has since stepped into the void to provide distribution) in the United States. Mariano Llinás’ Historias Extraordinarias, the other Argentine export to MIFF, is a very long movie by any standard at 245 minutes, but will it feel long? The running time certainly will exceed the expectations for sitting tolerance of most festival-goers, but this film somehow manages to make that long running time work. Michael Vox wrote: “There isn’t a single moment that drags. It’s the most amazing thing” and his in-theater notes state “Perhaps the find of the [Cinequest] festival. Nothing dull. I needed to see what happens next. Fantastic storytelling.” The film has also found favor at other film festivals being nominated and winning prizes for audience favorite as well as juried awards for best film, its director, its producer, its script, its cinematography, and its set design.  Though much of this success has come on home ground in Argentina, the film received the Ibero-America Competition’s Knight Grand Jury Prize at the Miami International Film Festival (another MIFF). It has also been voted Best Video Film from the Argentinean Film Critics Association. This film certainly may seem daunting as it occupies a slot on the festival schedule for which two films show in every other festival venue, but the feeling that a film is “too long” has much more to do with the quality of the filmmaking than it does with absolute running time. Some very long films breeze along wonderfully and some relatively short films can seem to be taking forever to tell their story. I frequently feel that our film industry in its focus on “the bottom line” makes sure that films are edited down to standard lengths so that theaters can show them four or five times a day which ends up undermining the film’s storytelling.

From Bolivia comes Toshifumi Matsushita’s Pachamama. The film has been described as an ethnographic road movie and has been compared to Tony Gatlif’s Latcho Drom and Jianqi Huo’s Postmen of the Mountains—two films that have been popular with Railroad Square Cinema audiences. Another film that would seem to be bare some similarity to Pachamama is Himalaya (AKA Caravan) which was also very well-received by MIFF audiences. Both involve trade caravans vital to the survival of their mountain communities and both provide the opportunity for boys to take important steps toward assuming adult responsibilities. This type of film is very important for how it provides a window on ways of life that are increasingly disappearing as modern life—despite questions about its sustainability—displaces traditional labor-intensive practices. Himalaya was such a hot ticket during its MIFF run that it required scheduling screenings after the festival ended in attempts to accommodate demand. Appropriate for a film about a quest, Pachamama has been actively making the rounds on the festival circuit—including the Native American Film + Video Festival, the Cleveland International Film Festival, Tiburon International Film Festival, and the Nashville Film Festival. The film is in Quechura (Spanish and Aimara) with English subtitles.

Juan Carlos Martin’s 40 Days is a road trip across the United States taken by three Mexican youth—two men and a woman—that Variety’s reviewer John Anderson said provided a “brashly lyrical corrective to American hubris.” These are not desperately poor immigrants hoping to find prosperity and freedom in the US of A, but well-to-do youths who have jaded opinions of the United States and, like many Americans, a blindness about the faults of their home country. Ultimately, this trip is less about displaying the flaws of the two countries than it is about the journey of self-discovery each of the characters will make along the way. The film was shot a couple of years ago and is a “period piece” in that George W. Bush is the President and Hurricane Katrina is a recent event. With superb music and an outstanding cast, what more could anyone want from a road trip movie?

MIFF provides the opportunity for Maine audiences to see something that we don’t see the rest of the year—Bollywood movies. This year’s Bollywood film is Ghajini. On the face having a hero that has problems with his memory and uses tattoos and polaroids as memory aids, the film is reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s Memento. It is a musical and the music of A. R. Rahman—this year’s Oscar-winner for Slumdog Millionaire—moves from the background to centerstage. Memento’s Guy Pearce singing? The film’s website proudly declares that it is “the highest grossing film of all time” and “An Historic Hit,” but—like many American blockbusters—the critical response has been mixed. Some critics have praised the film and others have in no uncertain terms stated their disdain for it. Some of the criticism comes from the fact that this isn’t just a bit of a knock-off of Memento, but that it is a Hindi knock-off of a Tamil film of the same title. The subtleties of this sort of thing including different dialects and regional accents will no doubt be completely lost on most in the MIFF audiences. However, subtlety is not something that this film seems to care very much about. Ghajini (Pradeep Singh Rawat)—the film’s villain—is a particularly nefarious and evil character who according to some critics seems to make a cartoon character like Snidely Whiplash look nuanced. Not that the hero played by Bollywood mega-star Aamir Khan (MIFF 2006’s Rang de Besanti) comes off a lot better. He snarls, is violent, and seemingly is indestructible in dealing with Ghajini and his minions. What he overcomes to avenge his murdered girlfriend clearly defies reality. Subtlety and reality are not what I look for from a Bollywood film—and apparently neither do the legion of filmgoers who have lined up to see this film. It will be interesting to see how MIFF audiences respond to the level of violence in this film. It is, however, an opportunity we usually only get once a year.

My wife and I have adopted a film at MIFF for the last few years. As usual, there are many films in the MIFF schedule that we would have been proud to have adopted and the three films that we had already seen at Toronto seemed excellent candidates, but when we saw this in the list of films we knew that we had to adopt Ron Mann’s Know Your Mushrooms. If you’re like me, you probably grew up knowing that mushrooms you bought at the store were OK to eat and anything from the woods or your yard was poisonous. That’s a pretty good strategy for avoiding being poisoned by mushrooms, but not one for understanding and enjoying the diversity of mushrooms. This was something with which my wife’s mother was very involved. She was an amateur mycologist or someone involved in the study of fungi. This is a film that she would definitely have wanted to see and that would be true even if it didn’t include one of the people (Gary Lincoff) with whom she had gone on mushroom forays. So why should you want to see this film? Aside from the opportunity to learn about the many varieties and uses of mushrooms (including those that lead to altered states of consciousness), it probably is worth noting that this film received the Best Feature prize at the New York City Food Film Festival. Jeff Shannon of the Seattle Times wrote, “More than anything, Know Your Mushrooms is just plain fun. Mann has a singular knack for approaching his subjects with childlike curiosity that’s cleverly tongue-in-cheek and more than a little mischievous. He’s done it again and the result is more than a little delectable.” Isn’t it nice to know that there’s a fun documentary that will have you thinking about eating a healthy meal when many MIFF documentaries will be telling compelling stories about the world’s problems that implicitly (or even explicitly )ask, “Isn’t there something you should be doing about this?”

From Canada comes Benoit Pilon’s The Necessities of Life. The film is about Tivii, an Inuit hunter (Natar Ungalaaq, the title character in Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) who is diagnosed with tuberculosis—an infectious disease that killed hundreds of thousands of people before antibiotics were developed that could control it—and then is brought to a sanitarium in Quebec City. Bereft of his lifestyle, his language, his family and his community, Tivii does poorly until a nurse realizes that TB is not the biggest danger to his health. She comes up with an inspired plan to help his recovery. This film made a nine-film shortlist for this year’s Foreign-language Oscar, but did not get a nomination. It has, however, cleaned up at the both the Canadian Genies winning four awards for Direction (Pilon), Editing (Richard Comeau), Screenplay (Bernard Émond), and actor (Ungalaaq) out of the eight for which it was nominated as well as Quebec’s Jutras awards where it won three (Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay) out of the five for which it was nominated. It has done well at festivals winning audience awards at the Montreal World Film Festival as well as awards at the Palm Spring International Film Festival and the Washington DC Filmfest. I doubt that any other film arrives at MIFF with as many awards already on its mantle. Dennis Harvey of Variety calls the film “a finely wrought drama” that “is a model of emotional restraint earning its many lump-in-the-throat moments.”

Karin Albou’s Wedding Song is a very intimate slice-of-life look at two young girls on the brink of adulthood. Jewish Myriam and Muslim Nour live in the same house and are best friends. They share a curiosity about men and sex, but envy each other’s lives. Nour is engaged to her handsome cousin Khaled and Myriam wishes she had a handsome fiancé like her friend. Conversely, the home-bound Nour wishes she could go to school like Myriam. The time is 1942 and the place is Tunis, Tunisia. Nazis occupy this North African nation and that does affect their lives. Nazi propaganda spews from the radio. The war has kept Khaled from finding work so the wedding is on hold. After needing to pay a huge fine for being Jewish, Myriam’s mother arranges a wedding for Myriam to a kind, but much older doctor. Director Albou (who also appears in the film as Myriam’s mother) won the prize for direction at the Tarifa (Spain) African Film Festival. Much of the action takes place within the hammam (or spa) of the women’s quarters of the girl’s home giving the film a casualness about nudity that some may find too frank.

Eric Daniel Metzgar is back at MIFF with Reporter. (Last year he was here with Life. Support. Music. that described guitarist Jason Crigler’s amazing and arduous journey back to performer from a devastating stroke that had him teetering on the brinks of death and complete disability.) This time he is following New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof and a couple of aspiring journalists to the Congo into the middle of a horrible civil war that has killed an estimated 5.4 million people over the last decade. Kristof’s mission is to tell American readers what is going on over there just as he did in bringing Darfur’s suffering to the American consciousness and hope that his readers are moved. The key for Kristof is to tell the story of exactly how one individual is suffering and to avoid “psychic numbing” by telling readers how pervasive the suffering is. So this film is not only about the misery being experienced in the Congo, Kristof’s passion for his work, and his bravery in confronting dangerous warlords, it is about how news—or what passes for news—is disseminated these days and how absolutely vital those who get to the bottom of a story are to our democracy. If you are not going to see Know Your Mushrooms, this film which shows at the same time would be a worthy alternative even if you do hear an urgent whisper, “Isn’t there something you should do about this?”

Elise Bainbridge Hill is the subject of Karen Gehres’ Begging Naked. She has lived the kind of life that most of us turn away from. She came to New York City as a teenaged runaway. A pimp led her into prostitution and drug addiction. She became an artist. She supported herself as a stripper until Mayor Giuliani eradicated the seedy strip clubs where she danced. She ended up homeless and suffers from mental illness. Gehres was just another artist (and an aspiring filmmaker) when she met Elise and through their friendship Elise offered to tell her story to Karen for a film “on the record.” Like many documentaries about special individuals and unique happenings, this film has taken several years to finish. Gehres describes how new chapters have continued to emerge in the Elise’s life that have needed to be covered. This is a challenging film because it asks us to take a long, hard look at the kind of person about whom we tend to offer a simple explanation (she is a victim or sick or an abomination or, for some, even a monster) for the life she leads and then look away. There are contradictions in her life story. Her life has been shaped by forces that have pushed her life and yet she has made key choices along the way. She is creative, articulate, and troubled. Elise Bainbridge Hill has lived the kind of life that shows us what life in the margins is like and puts a human face on terms that we stereotype as whore, junkie, wacko, and street person. Roger Ebert included this important film in his own EbertFest noting that a street person doesn’t just happen—each and every one has a story.

Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic strip famously offered the wisdom, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Justin Strawhand’s War Against the Weak offers some further proof of the accuracy of this statement. The subject of Strawhand’s film is the American eugenics movements whose motto may well have been “better living by better breeding.” The film shows how those identified as sharing less desirable genetic qualities were oppressed by the full weight of the state into being sterilized in the hope that by helping along Darwin’s natural selection certain conditions could be eradicated. The problem is that the targeted less desirable qualities may be less desirable for purely political reasons such as race or ethnicity. The film follows the paper trail of money and ideas from various American institutions to Germany. The philosophy of American eugenics becomes the foundation for the Nazi theory of the master race and the culling of inferior humanity such as Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals. This is a fascinating story of how well-meaning scientists ended up on the wrong side of history.

Cloud 9 is a film that shows that love and sex are life-long experiences.  Andreas Dresen, who’s Grill Point played at MIFF in 2003, specializes in films solidly grounded in a palpably gritty real-life. It is this skill in evoking real-life and providing depth to his portraits of his characters that makes Cloud 9 so affecting. The film’s story is about a woman who finds a lover after 30 years of marriage. She finds herself torn between the man who has reawakened her passion—in an early lovemaking scene—and her life with her companionable and predictable husband. This romantic triangle between senior citizens could go in a number of directions and—without skilled direction, a taut script, and committed actors—that could definitely include spiraling downward into self-parody. Derek Elley of Variety called it “a small film with a big heart.” The film has been recognized with eight prizes and three additional nominations—mostly for Dresen and lead actress Ursula Werner—from Cannes, the Bavarian Film Awards, the German Film Awards, and the European Film Awards.

So you have waded through my thoughts about some of the films awaiting festival-goers to the 2009 Maine International Film Festival. I hope these have proved to be at least a little bit helpful. At this point, it is just up to the film and the mind-set of the filmgoer as far as how well it all works. Good luck and enjoy the movies!!