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About What's happening. (Eugene, OR) 1982-1993 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 13, 1987)
Time for the International Film Festival Again! E very year for the past seven, Steve Bove has sought to find the most interesting American and foreign films released during the year for Cinema 7’s eight-week-long sum mer movie madness. The whole proc ess of booking films is complex; on ly one or two prints of a film may ex ist; shipping costs are outrageous. Every year there are films he wants to show that are unobtainable or too expensive. This year he even called the executor of Orson Welles’ estate trying to find a print of the 1952 Othello, but to no avail; for dis tribution purposes, the film no long er exists. Likewise, it proved impos sible to locate an uncut print of Bob Dylan’s four-and-a-half-hour Renal do and Clara. Too bad; apparently, only the man himself knows where it is. In spite of the hassles and disap pointments that go with running a small festival, Bove revels in the idea of seeing these 26 films from Great Britain, Italy, France, the Nether lands, Spain, Africa, South America, Australia, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Poland, Japan, and the USA in Eu gene. Financially, Bove’s hopes are modest—he just wants to break even. The highlight of the festival for some moviegoers is the chance to see early, rare works by masters like Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, and Jean-Luc Goddard, all of whom are represented this year. A new print of Kurosawa’s 1946 film about a young woman, No Regrets For Our Youth (Sept. 1-3), is billed as his “first personal film” and promises to be a real treat. The heavy favorite to replace Welles’ unavailable Othello is Chimes At Midnight (Sept. 15-17), with a very hefty Welles playing Fal staff. Renoir’s La Vie Est a Nous (Life Is Ours) (Aug. 25-27), a 1936 docu mentary made for the French Com munist Party, was not shown in this country for 50 years. Goddard’s Une Femme est une Femme (A Woman is a Woman) (Sept. 15-17) is a new wide screen print of his 1962 spoof of the Hollywood musical. Brand-new American releases in clude another of Robert Altman’s Broadway plays-into-film (Beyond Therapy, Aug. 18-20) and Alex Cox’s first film since Sid and Nancy. Cox’s spaghetti western homage to Sergio Leone, Straight To Hell (Sept. 4-7), by Lois Wadsworth is described by Courtney Love who co-stars in the picture as being “about manliness, sweat, sexual tension, guns and coffee. It’s the B movie of all B movies. That’s what’s promised, and that’s what’s delivered.” Just for comparison, Bove has booked Le one’s wide-screen all-time-top-of-the genre 1966 hit, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly to play the same three nights. I loved seeing Leone’s 1968 Once Upon a Time in the West on the wide screen in June and wouldn’t miss this double bill. Other landmarks include a new film by Dutch director Marleen Gorris whose explosively feminist A Ques tion of Silence stirred up a firestorm of controversy a few years back. The new film is called Broken Mirrors (Aug. 21-24); it’s a thriller set in a brothel in Amsterdam. Sharing the bill is French director Agnes Varda's highly acclaimed Vagabond. Tangos, The Exile ofGardel (Aug. 14-17) and Nineteen Nineteen (Aug. 18-20) are reviewed in this issue. Australian director Paul Cox (Man of Flowers) has Isabelle Huppert to star in Cactus (Sept. 1-3), a love story between a woman who loses her sight after an accident and a very indepen dent blind man she meets. From Ita ly, Ermano Olmi’s Camina, Camina (Aug. 25-27) promises to be a sim ple and innocent film about the birth of Christ that “nourishes the spirit.” An animation retrospective of the works of American cartoonist George Pal and some stunning puppet anima tion from Czechoslovakia make a double bill all the big kids in the fami ly can enjoy August 28-31. One of the shows Steve wanted for last year’s festival makes it this year —Polish film director Andrzj Wadja’s The Orchestra Conductor (Sept. 8-10). Wadja, living in self-imposed exile following his excellent Solidarity films, Man of Steel and Man of Mar ble, directs John Gielgud in this story of a Polish conductor returning to his native land after 50 years. On the bill with Wadja is Russian director Alexi Gherman’s My Friend Ivan Lapshin about the ordinary beauties and strug gles of life in a provincial town in 1935 before the terrible war. Andy Warhol (Sept. 11-14) is an hour-long biography of the late, great with film clips from some of his films summer sale! V 1 • Southern comfort at Folkways Hammocks, straw hats, natural fibre clothing, jewelry and folk art from around the world! Fifth St. Public Market downstairs 683-2204 762 E. 13th Ave. next to the Excelsior 343-8667 FOLKWAYS IMPORTS A any. and comments from friends and ad mirers. Hopes run high that British director Peter Greenaway’s new film, A Zed and Two Noughts (Sept. 11-14), will be as bonkers as his first hit, The Draughtsman’s Contract. The African film in the series is from the Ivory Coast. Titled Faces of Wymen (Sept. 18-21), these three stories of women “pieced together over 12 years by a film-maker who doesn't have a single dull thought in his head” sounds like pure delight. Sharing the bill is a film from Great Britain, Black Joy about West Indians in London. Winding up the festival in late Sept ember is Police (Sept. 22-24), French director Maurice Pialat’s neo-realistic cops-and-drug-mafia thriller starring Gerard Depardieu. The Good Father (Sept. 22-24) from Great Britain’s Mike Newell (Dance With a Stranger) stars Anthony Hopkins as a father separated from his son when his mar riage falls apart. The last film, Law of Desire (Sept. 25-Oct.l), is from Spain, and advance billing suggests that Pedro Almodovar has taken love and lust to new hilarious heights. ABOVE: Cactus is by Australian director Paul Cox and plays September 1-3. BELOW: Straight To Hell, another of Cox’ films, pays homage to Sergio Leone’s “Spaghetti Westerns.” BOTTOM: My Friend Ivan Lapshin is a very personal account of life in Stalinist Russia. Park Street be CAFE 2 Serving Continental break fast, seasonal salads, soups, quiche, sandwiches with chemical-free meats, es presso and more. 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