Portland observer., February 04, 2015, Image 13

February 4, 2015
The
Portland Observer Black
History Month
Page 13
Vancouver
East County
Beaverton
Mississippi
Alberta
North Portland
‘Wild Tales’ is a collection of six darkly-comedic short stories and is nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. The Argentine production opens the
Portland International Film Festival on Thursday at the Regal Fox Tower 10, 846 S.W. Park Ave., which is also the site of the festival’s opening night party.
Savoring Cultures and Perspectives
O PINIONATED
J UDGE
BY J UDGE
D ARLEEN O RTEGA
International Film
Festival an opening
to the world
Every February, I travel the world—and
so can you, or virtually so, because the
Portland International Film Festival offers
the most culturally diverse film event of the
year, beginning this week. You can choose
from 150 films (97 features and 60 shorts)
from 52 countries. One of the true pleasures
of the event is that it brings out local folks
with ties all over the world; I savor the
pleasure of hearing so many different lan-
guages spoken as I wait for the films to begin.
The festival’s opening night film is “Wild
Tales,” an Argentine production that pre-
sents six darkly-comedic short stories and is
nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign
Language Film. I caught a preview screening
of the other Oscar-nominated foreign lan-
guage film on offer, “Timbuktu,” a powerful
depiction of a community in northern Mali
under jihadist occupation. It’s a rare oppor-
Oscar nominated ‘Timbuktu’ is a powerful African melodrama about a community
in northern Mali under jihadist occupation, one of 150 films from 52 countries at
the Portland International Film Festival.
tunity to see a film by an African director
(Abderrahmane Sissako, who lives in France),
and his depiction of the effects of Islamic
extremism on one community is subtle and
visually poetic and so visceral that I actually
involuntarily cried out during one scene. It’s
a contender for my list of the best films of
2014—and my yearly 10-best list nearly al-
ways includes a film or two that I see first at
PIFF. Timbuktu will play on Feb. 7 and 10.
I also have caught two other films in
preview screenings so far. “10,000 Km,”
from Spain, focuses on a Barcelona couple
who set out to live apart for a year while one
of them pursues a career opportunity in Los
Angeles. A lot of the film’s visual focus is on
the range of electronic communications that
tie the two as they attempt to stay connected
over Skype and text. But what attracted to me
was how perceptive the film was about inti-
macy itself; an apparently quite connected
and compatible couple in a seven-year rela-
tionship find that their intimacy begins to
disintegrate rather quickly with physical dis-
tance. How many relationships would sur-
vive such circumstances? Why and in what
way would they survive? The film is full of
insights about the thin line that separates a
life together and a life apart. It plays on Feb.
8 and 18.
“The Japanese Dog,” from Romania,
didn’t intrigue me in the same way. It’s a quiet
tale of a grouchy older man who lives in a
small village and is adjusting to the loss of his
wife and many of his belongings in a flood.
He appears stuck in his curmudgeonly rut
until his estranged son returns home for a
visit with his Japanese wife and small son.
Their scenes of reconnection are quietly
charming but what some have called subtlety
struck me as a little thin and not very rich in
understanding about what drove father and
son apart. It is scheduled to play three times,
on Feb. 6, 11, and 19.
Some of the films I’m especially looking
forward to early in the festival are “‘71,” a
thriller set in Belfast during the worst part of
the Troubles, in which Jack O’Connell (star
of “Unbroken”) plays a soldier trapped and
unarmed in hostile territory; “Clouds of Sil
Maria,” a French film starring Juliette Binoche
as a middle-aged actress returning to a play
that made her famous, but this time playing
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