16th Annual AT&T St. Louis
International Film Festival
Features
Children of Glory
(Szabadság, szerelem)
Krisztina Goda, Hungary, 2006, 123 min.
Hungarian with English subtitles
Saturday, Nov. 10, 7 p.m., Plaza Frontenac
Sunday, Nov. 11, 9:30 p.m., Plaza Frontenac
Budapest, 1956. Karcsi is a young water-polo star who becomes embroiled in the anti-Soviet revolution that is brewing in the streets. At first, he is only out for adventure, but a fiery female student catches his eye, and in following her steps, he finds himself right at the heart of the uprising. With the subsequent retreat of the Red Army, the revolution seems to be a success, and he returns to his team to play at the Melbourne Olympics. Little does he know that the Soviets are marching right back into Hungary. Karcsi and his teammates show the world that this small nation will not be defeated by their actions in the pool during the most bloody and violent Olympic water-polo match in history. Based on actual historical events, the painstakingly precise re-creations in the film are not merely a historical landscape of sights and sounds but a moving and touching story with timeless relevance to the human condition.
The Collector
(Komornik)
Feliks Falk, Poland, 2005, 93 min.
Polish with English subtitles
Friday, Nov. 9, 4:30 p.m., Plaza Frontenac
Monday, Nov. 12, 2:30 p.m., Plaza Frontenac
An arrogant, zealous, and overly ambitious debt collector goes about his job with an unreasonable conviction. Every day he somehow manages to steel himself and his heart against the drastic situations faced by many of the tragic and often very poor people he encounters on a daily basis. However, one day he is forced to pay a visit to an ex-girlfriend, a meeting that blasts through his emotional defenses and leads to a moral epiphany of sorts. His clumsy attempts at redemption for past actions are repeatedly met with scorn and ridicule while his own career goes down in flames around him.
Ecumenical Jury Prize at 2006 Berlin Film Festival; Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Production Design, and Audience Award at 2006 Polish Film Awards
Crossroads
(Jujiro)
Teinosuke Kinugasa, Japan, 1928, 80 min.
Japanese with English subtitles
With “Water Works” shorts
Saturday, Nov. 10, 7 p.m., Saint Louis Art Museum
This beautifully restored classic of Japanese silent cinema offers one stunning image after another. Director Kinugasa (“Page of Madness”) infuriated his producers with this wildly surprising tale, set in 18th-century Japan, about a young ronin who, having killed a man in a duel over a geisha, turns to his protective older sister for help, thereby putting her in great peril. Madness, prostitution, rape, murder, blindness ensue, all captured with Kinugasa’s astonishing artistry. The expressionistic sets and costumes, moving camera, intense close-ups, and hallucinatory and subjective shots conspire to give “Crossroads” a haunting beauty of visual experimentation. The film was the first Japanese film to be widely seen in Europe, where it enjoyed a great success; more surprisingly, it was also a commercial success at home, despite the producers’ worries.
New Music Circle will provide live musical accompaniment as part of its ongoing Circle Cinema presentations at the Art Museum.
Opening the program is a selection of seven “Water Works,” silent shorts made for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts’ current “Water” exhibit: “Josh Rollins’ “Electric Water,” Krystyna Bleszynski’s “Two Rivers,” RD Zurick’s “Meditation on Maya,” Jim Klenn’s “The Source,” Daniel Borengasser’s “Suds,” Dianne Becker’s “Rolling Shoals: Skipping Rocks,” and Rachel and Zlatko Cosic’s “Touch.” New Music Circle’s Rich O’Donnell will provide live musical accompaniment on water-based instruments of his own devising.
The Curiosity of Chance
Russell P. Marleau, Belgium/USA, 2006, 98 min.
Saturday, Nov. 10, 7:15 p.m., Tivoli Theatre
Because of his military father, an already “out” and eccentric teenager is forced to attend an international American high school in the Netherlands, where he recruits a bizarre circle of oddball outcasts as friends. To help him bring down the homophobic bully threatening his peaceful existence in his new school, Chance enlists the help of the straight jock neighbor boy who he has a growing crush on and an aging drag queen who inspires him to follow his own voice. “The Curiosity of Chance,” set in the 1980s, combines the fragile essence of teen angst films, lively period music, and some spectacularly flamboyant female impersonators into a John Hughes-type film that couldn’t have possibly made at the time in which it’s set.
Director Marleau and star Tad Hilgenbrink, a native of Quincy, Ill., will attend.
Audience Choice Best of Fest at 2007 Palm Springs International Film Festival; Best Director at 2006 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Cyrano Fernandez
Alberto Arvelo, Venezuela, 2005, 100 min.
Castilian Spanish with English subtitles
Monday, Nov. 12, 9:45 p.m., Tivoli Theatre
Based on Edmond Rosan’s classic novel “Cyrano de Beregerac,” “Cyrano Fernandez” is a harsh and sensual version of one of the most beloved stories in the history of literature. This modernized Venezuelan version features a love triangle between Cyrano Fernandez, Roxana Padilla, and Cristian Santana, and takes place in labyrinthine urban neighborhood that becomes a fourth character.
Director Arvelo will attend.
Daisy
(Deiji)
Andrew Lau, South Korea, 2006, 110 min.
Korean, English, and Mandarin with English subtitles
Saturday, Nov. 17, 7:15 p.m., Plaza Frontenac
Sunday, Nov. 18, 6:30 p.m., Plaza Frontenac
“Daisy” is the tragic love story about the inevitable showdown between an Interpol detective and a professional assassin who fall in love with the same woman. A young Korean artist who paints portraits in the city square dreams of one day holding a solo exhibition of her works. She is a relative stranger in this city, and her only source of strength is the memory of her first love. Then she meets a new man. Well, almost meets him: She never really sees his face, but after giving him a drawing of a daisy, he responds by having a pot of daisies delivered to her door every day. This riveting film stars a number of major Korean film stars and is directed by celebrated director Andrew Lau, whose “Infernal Affairs” trilogy is the basis for Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning “The Departed.”
Dam Street
(Hong Yan)
Li Yu, China, 2005, 93 min.
Mandarin with English subtitles
Monday, Nov. 12, 5 p.m., Tivoli Theatre
Thursday, Nov. 15, 5 p.m., Tivoli Theatre
In the early-1980s, Xiao Yun – a 16-year-old girl living in small riverside town in China – discovers she is pregnant. The local community is stunned, her family loses face, and she and her boyfriend are expelled from school. In the aftermath, her boyfriend leaves her; she gives birth and is then forced to put her child up for adoption. Ten years later, her relationship with her family strained and ostracized by residents of the town, Xiao Yunn is reduced to working as a singer in a local song-and-dance troupe. Her only real companion is Xiao Yong, a fiercely affectionate boy who protects her from the critical eyes of the community until a marriage proposal reveals the limits of their friendship and the depth of her unresolved past.
Cinema D’Essai (Art Cinema) CICAE Award at 2005 Venice Film Festival;
Best Director at 2005 Flanders International Film Festival
Sponsored by East Asian Studies Program & International and Area Studies at Washington University
Disappearances
Jay Craven, USA, 2006, 103 min.
Monday, Nov. 12, 7 p.m., Tivoli Theatre
Based on the award-winning novel by Howard Frank Mosher, “Disappearances” is a powerfully mysterious film from SLIFF alum Jay Craven (“Where the Rivers Flow North”). The story is set deep in the rural Northeast and features excellent ensemble performances by legendary actor/songwriter Kris Kristofferson, Genevieve Bujold, and newcomer Charlie McDermott. Kristofferson stars as schemer and dreamer “Quebec Bill” Bonhomme in a spellbinding tale of smugglers, a family’s mysterious past, and a young boy’s rite of passage. Bill, desperate to raise money to preserve his endangered cattle herd through a long winter, resorts to whiskey smuggling, a traditional family occupation. He takes his son on an unforgettable trip that will long remain etched in the viewer’s mind. Craven’s delightfully simple narrative operates on powerful metaphorical levels with a healthy dose of magical realism.
Director Craven will attend.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
(Le Scaphandre et le papillon)
Julian Schnabel, France, 2007, 112 min.
French with English subtitles
Sunday, Nov. 18, 6:45 p.m., Tivoli Theatre
(This screening was originally scheduled for the Saint Louis Art Museum but has been moved.)
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” the new film by internationally renowned artist and filmmaker Julian Schanbel (“Basquiat,” “Before Night Falls”) is the remarkable true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of French Elle, who believes he is living his life to its absolute fullest when a sudden stroke leaves him almost entirely paralyzed. While the physical challenges of Bauby’s fate leave him with little hope for the future, he begins to discover how his life’s passions, his rich memories, and his newfound imagination can help him achieve a life without boundaries.
Best Director and Technical Grand Prize for Cinematography at 2007 Cannes Film Festival
Sponsored by Marcia Harris
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