9/12
BORN INTO BROTHELS (India/US; 2004;
d. Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman)
The children's questioning
eyes frame the opening scene of this powerful look into the world of seven children
from Calcutta's red light district. Born into Brothels is "a moving,
charming and sad tribute" to these children's "irrepressible creative
spirits," said A.O. Scott (The New York Times). Deftly cutting
through language and cultural barriers the film chronicles the Briska's photography
classes for these children. It follows (sometimes tragically) the children's
quests to leave the brothels, intersecting closely framed images of the children
with scenes of life on the streets shot by these young photographers. "This
film carries us so touchingly into their world, it would take a heart of stone,
finally, to ignore them-or to look away from the sometimes dazzling and always
meaningful images they create," says Michael Wilmington (The Chicago
Tribune). (R; 85 min.)
9/19
SAVING FACE (US; 2004; d. Alice Wu)
This witty comedy about three
generations of Chinese-Americans "reaffirms the power of personal choice,
while also promising to love and to cherish even the most hidebound cultures,"
said Jami Bernard (The New York Daily News). Although Wilhelmina (Michelle
Krusiec), a successful young New York City doctor, has not found a way to tell
her family that she has a female lover, when her widowed mother (Joan Chen,
director of Xiu Xiu the Sent Down Girl), shows up at the door of her
apartment--pregnant and refusing to name the baby's father--mother and daughter
must take the first step to opening conversations about that most silenced subject--sex.
Saving Face is a delightfully witty and satirical film, "unabashedly
romantic without being cloying or disingenuous," said Carina Chocano (The
Los Angeles Times). (R; 91 min.)
9/26
TURTLES CAN FLY/LAKPOSHTHA HÂM PARVAZ
MIKONAND (Iran/France/Iraq; 2004; d. Bahman Ghobadi)
In the first Iraqi
film since the American-led invasion, internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker
Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses) poetically and tragically
reminds us that the most tragic victims of war are children. Set in a Kurdish
refuge camp on the Iraq-Turkey border on eve of the first preemptive Iraqi strike,
the story opens as a young girl leaps to her death while thirteen-year-old Soran
searches frantically for a satellite dish so the refuges can watch the U.S.
invasion on television. Soran and the other children in the camp (all Kurdish
refuge children making their acting debut) have the dangerous but necessary
job of clearing minefields as they balance their hopes of freedom with the realities
of war. "I wish everyone who has an opinion on the war in Iraq could see
Turtles Can Fly," commented Roger Ebert of The Chicago
Sun Times. (PG-13; 98 min.)
10/3
MAD HOT BALLROOM (US; 2005; d. Marilyn
Agrelo)
This
documentary by first-time director Marilyn Agrelo is equal parts Spellbound
and To Be and To Have. It documents the lives of three sets of fifth-grade
students and teachers as they prepare for and participate in a ballroom dancing
competition sponsored by the New York City public school system. The students
come from three distinct neighborhoods--Washington Heights, TriBeCa, and Bensonhurst--in
the city. Walter Addiego of The San Francisco Chronicle says
Mad Hot Ballroom is "sensitive to the full complex of emotions
invoked by the competition," while Kenneth Turan of The Los
Angeles Times calls it "warm, funny and very difficult to resist."
(PG; 105 min.)
10/17
THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY (US/Norway;
2004; d. Hans Petter Moland)
This cosmopolitan film
by Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland centers on a young Vietnamese man's
physically and emotionally difficult journey to find his father, an American
soldier during the Vietnam War. Binh (Dustin Nguyen) is rejected by his compatriots
for being a "bui doi" (loosely translated a "less than dirt")
for his mixed parentage and sets off to find his father (Nick Nolte) with only
a ragged photograph to guide him. Set in the early 1990s, the film is not only
a moving story of personal reconciliation but, as Terry Lawson of The
Detroit Free Press writes, "a poignant and affecting portrait
of the war's lingering consequences." (R; 125 min.)
10/24
YES
(UK; 2004; d. Sally Potter)
With dialogue
written entirely in iambic pentameter (familiar to audiences from Shakespeare's
plays) director Sally Potter's film is not only thematically complex but also
challenges assumptions about the way movies can tell stories. The protagonists
are He (Simon Abkarian), a surgeon-turned-cook from Lebanon, and She (Joan Allen),
a scientist trapped in a loveless marriage with a stuffy politician (Sam Neill).
The film chronicles the conflicting forces--political, social, religious, cultural,
and economic--that complicate the intense romance that arises between them after
a chance meeting. Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called
the film "alive and daring, not a rehearsal of safe material and styles."
(R; 100 min.)
10/31
THE ANIMATION SHOW 2005 (Various Counties;
2005; d. Multiple Directors)
The Animation Show
is an annual celebration of animation (for adults) produced by artists
in the field, using styles "from computer-generated imagery to hand-drawn
doodles" (Ty Burr, The Boston Globe). Since 2003, these collections
of animated short features have found enthusiastic audiences and critical praise.
This year's program is produced and presented by Mike Judge of Beavis and
Butthead fame and Academy Award nominated animator, Don Hertzfeldt. The
program is composed of twelve shorts from five countries. This is "a dizzying
array of visual treats" (Kevin Crust, The Los Angeles Times).
(NR; 85 min.)
11/7
THE EDUKATORS/DIE FETTEN JAHRE SIND VORBEI
(Germany; 2004; d. Hans Weingartner)
The
political merges with the personal in surprising ways in this German film that
can boast of one of the greatest surprise endings in recent memory. Two friends
protest social inequality with passion and dedication to non-violence by breaking
into mansions and warning the rich occupants that their "days of plenty
are numbered." The friendship is tested by a love triangle and an action
that is supposed to be symbolic but leads to a kidnapping and a direct confrontation
with raw political power. The Edukators was a surprise hit at the Cannes
Film Festival. Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter describes the
film as possessing "the fresh breath of originality that makes going to
the movies a pleasure." (R; 127 min.)
11/14
TRAVELERS AND MAGICIANS (Australia/Bhutan;
2003; d. Khyentse Norbu)
Along a road
in the countryside of the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, a monk relates a tale
to a restless hitchhiker eager to escape the confines of his rural upbringing.
Directed by Khyentse Norbu (The Cup), Travelers and Magicians
is the first feature film set in this Himalayan country. As the monk's tale
is related, the hitchhiker is forced to confront his mystical unity with this
place where, by royal decree, Gross National Happiness is considered more important
than Gross National Product. Desson Thomson of The Washington Post
recommends the film highly for both the beauty of Bhutan and for film's central
message. "To watch this movie is to be moved not only by an affecting,
warmly spirited yarn, but also by the wisdom that seems to waft tous
directly from those snow-capped peaks." (NR; 108 min.)
11/28
THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL
(us; 2003; d. Judy Irving)
Connor, Mingus, Picasso, Sophie,
Pushkin, Tupelo and the other forty wild parrots of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco
have found their philosopher-saint. In Judy Irving's "affectionate documentary,"
Mark Bittner, a"shaggy-haired, ponytailed, redheaded, 50-ish San Franciscan,"
spends his days tending these wild parrots, feeding them from his hand, tending
them when they are injured, learning their individual ways. We are introduced
to Bittner as he and his wild flock of parrots are, for differing reasons, about
to become homeless. This underground phenomenon, "fueled by fans who urge
their friends to see it," is a must-see film, said Roger Ebert (The
Chicago Sun Times). (G; 83 min.)
Cinema 10 is a non-profit, volunteer group which presents alternative film programming. We work to bring the best in American independent and foreign films to North Country audiences. If you have a suggestion or would like to get involved, please e-mail Holly Chambers. The Cinema 10 Board members are Chris Affre, Fran Bailey, Holly Chambers, Ed Clark, Viki Levitt, Anne Malone, Hilary Oak, Celine Philibert, Chris Robinson, Eric Schultze, David Sommerstein, Christino Tamon, and Donna Williamson.
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