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
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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.
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