Now marking its sixth edition, the
Syracuse International Film Festival continues to plunder the planet to
track down the world’s next batch of cinema-crazy auteurs—some of them
hailing from our own back yard. Festival artistic director Owen Shapiro
and managing director Christine Fawcett-Shapiro promise another fest
crammed with guest speakers, music-oriented special events and movies
aplenty over a 10-day, two-weekend stretch, running from Friday, April
24, through Sunday, May 3.
The shows will again go on at Eastwood’s
Palace Theatre, 2384 James St.; Everson Museum of Art, 401 Harrison
St.; Armory Square’s Bristol IMAX Omnitheater, located within the
Museum of Science and Technology (MOST), 500 S. Franklin St.; and the
Hotel Syracuse’s Persian Terrace, 500 S. Warren St. Despite the global
economic woes, this year’s bang-for-your-buck blowout still boasts more
than 50 separate programs that will be spread out across these venues.
Each program runs about two hours, many with a main feature and a short
subject.
“We were more selective this year,” Owen
Shapiro stated at an April 17 press conference at the Persian Terrace,
“but the quality of the films are extraordinary. The judges will have a
tough time deciding the winners.” Shapiro does hint at one flick he
believes will be a sizable hit with the jury: Empties, a seriocomic tale of a cranky senior from Czech director Jan Sverak, whose 1996 release Kolya won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Empties
is the only festival entry to merit two separate screenings, on
Saturday, April 25, 1 p.m., at the Palace, and Saturday, May 2, 5:15
p.m., at the Everson.
Grumpy old man: A scene from Disney-Pixar’s Up, which will be discussed by supervising animator Scott Clark on Saturday, May 2, at the Palace.
It’s difficult to believe the quantum
leaps that the fest has made since its 2004 debut, which Shapiro
claimed to lure 4,000 attendees that year, but has since mushroomed to
nearly 10,000 patrons for the 2008 edition. “It was my wife’s idea to
start the festival,” Shapiro said with a laugh. “She conned me into
it.” And while the festival has its work cut out for itself just
marketing to those dedicated art-house mavens within the Central New
York region, Shapiro cited lots of interest from the world’s filmmakers
as well as anecdotal evidence from our own politicians. According to
Shapiro, Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll was at a Seattle meeting and
three different people came up to him to ask about the festival’s
progress.
Alas, there seems to be an unspoken curse between the festival and the Syracuse New Times, a loyal sponsor since the event’s inception. The slasher opus Lonely Joe, filmed in 2007 in Solvay and the offices of the Syracuse New Times,
was intended to be an integral component of the 2008 festival, but the
movie wasn’t ready in time for its planned splashy debut. This year’s
fest was supposed to premiere Session, director Haim Bouzaglo’s
psychological thriller that was shot in the Salt City during June 2007.
Alas, its lead actress, Bar Refaeli, is now such a super-hot commodity
following her exposure in the recent Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue, the movie is currently swimming the Hollywood waters in
search of a lucrative distribution deal. Now we’ll never know whether New Times
publisher Art Zimmer, in a pivotal role (according to Art, at least) as
a psychiatrist, is in the final cut or whether his performance will end
up as a DVD extra.
Special screenings stud the schedule, starting with the area premiere of That Evening Sun,
a noteworthy drama spearheaded by a strong performance from Hal
Holbrook as a cantankerous senior, on Saturday, April 25, 9:15 p.m., at
the Palace. The film’s producer Larsen Jay (a native of the
Cicero-North Syracuse area) and director Scott Teems will field
questions from the audience after the screening. Tickets are $10; $8
for seniors and students.
The 2008 cowboy flick Appaloosa
gallops to the fest on Thursday, April 30, 7 p.m., at the Palace.
Writer-director Ed Harris’ lively western was given a cursory release
last year after its distributor, New Line Cinema, was absorbed by
parent company Warner Brothers, so this festival showing is probably
the last time locals will see Appaloosa on the 35mm big screen.
Co-writer and producer Robert Knott, actor Tom Bower and composer Jeff
Beal will lead a discussion afterward. Tickets are $10 for the film ($8
for seniors and students), $16 for a film/party combo ($14,
seniors/students), with the 10 p.m. hoedown taking place at Armory
Square’s Daisy Dukes, 414 S. Clinton St.; $6 for the party only ($5,
seniors/students).
A salute to San Francisco independent
filmmaker Rob Nilsson features a fab foursome of his works. Nilsson’s
breakthrough drama, 1978’s Northern Lights, about North Dakota farmers in 1915, will run on Wednesday, April 29, 7 p.m., at the Palace. Nilsson’s Need
(Friday, May 1, 5:15 p.m.), a 2005 seedy saga of working girls in
Frisco’s Tenderloin district, and 2008’s South African-flavored Frank Dead Souls (Saturday, May 2, noon) and Presque Isle (Saturday, May 2, 7:30 p.m.), the latter a continuation of elements from Northern Lights,
all take place at the Everson. Nilsson will be available to answer
questions at each screening. Tickets are $8 per movie, with seniors and
students paying $6.
This year’s festival also pays homage to
Gian Vittorio Baldi, the 79-year-old Italian auteur who is currently
spending time in Syracuse critiquing projects from student filmmakers
and serving as one of the judges. Baldi will receive the 2009 Special
Achievement Award.
Capping the fest will be the area premiere of the Robin Williams comedy World’s Greatest Dad,
written and directed by East Syracuse auteur Bobcat Goldthwait, on
Sunday, May 3, 7 p.m., at the Palace. Goldthwait’s don’t-go-there
script offers a catalog of screen taboos in a pitch-black comedy about
the price of posthumous celebrityhood. Goldthwait will participate in a
question-answer free-for-all afterward; feel free to ask him what it’s
like to direct a naked Robin Williams. Tickets are $10 for the film ($8
for seniors and students), $16 for a film/party combo ($14,
seniors/students), with the 9:30 p.m. bash taking place at another
Armory Square bar (visit the festival’s site for details), and $6 for
the party only ($5, seniors/students). World’s Greatest Dad has
been picked up for national distribution by Magnolia Pictures in late
August, so festivalgoers have first crack at savoring Goldthwait’s
bizarre bounty.
Loco boy makes good: Bobcat Goldthwait (pictured from his 2007 festival appearance) returns with a May 3 screening of World’s Greatest Dad. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO
The 2009 festival certainly ends with
jarring irreverence, but it begins with an old-school biblical epic
that continues the fest’s annual exploration of modern music and old
movies. On Friday, April 24, 7 p.m., at the Palace, a screening of Fred
Niblo’s 1925 silent spectacle Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
will be accompanied by members of the Central New York Jazz Orchestra
performing a new composition by J.C. Sanford, who will serve as
trombonist and conductor. The Ben-Hur program is $16, $14 for students and seniors.
Another round of “New Technologies in
Animation,” always an audience favorite, takes place Saturday, May 2,
11 a.m., featuring a chat with Scott Clark, supervising animator for
Pixar-Disney’s upcoming ’toon Up, plus lots of clips, all at the Palace. Admission is $10 for adults, free for kids 14 and under.
The festival’s outdoor drive-in theater
also returns for another year, but has been detoured to a new location.
A huge canvas (which in the past has measured 24-by-32 feet) will hang
from the side of the Key Bank building across from L’Adour restaurant,
with patrons encouraged to park for free in the Montgomery Street
parking lot (Festa Italiana patrons will know where it is) at the
corner of Washington and Fayette streets. Clear Channel will air a
limited broadcasting signal for car radios, while a sound system cranks
out more audio for sidewalk passers-by. A 90-minute program of
family-oriented shorts will run continuously on Friday, May 1, and
Saturday, May 2, 8:30 p.m. to midnight, with different films each
night. Maybe Walt Shepperd, unofficial mayor of Montgomery Street, will
be headin’ east during the shows. Bob’s Barkers will set up his
sidewalk stand of snappys and franks (proprietor Bob Luongo might even
break out a soft-shoe routine) and a vendor of ice cream will also be
on hand to supply drive-in-style refreshments to your wheels.
The festival’s free forums include
“Hollywood and Politics,” on Wednesday, April 29, 2 p.m., at Syracuse
University’s Herg Auditorium, Newhouse 3, Waverly Avenue, a confab with
Appaloosa actor Tom Bower and actress Michelle Anton Allen, the
latter starring in an upcoming Nilsson movie. Newhouse 3’s Hamlin
Auditorium will host “Music and Sound in Film” on Thursday, April 30, 2
p.m., with Appaloosa composer Jeff Beal, Canadian sound designer Jane Tattersall and scorer Wolfgang Eckert.
Key events to remember include the Carol
North Schmuckler New Filmmakers Showcase on Friday, April 24, 6:45
p.m., at the Everson, featuring cinema created by students of SU’s
Visual Performing Arts program. A quintet of films addressing the topic
of “personalizing political resistance” will unspool on Sunday, April
26, at 1, 3:45 and 6:30 p.m., at Le Moyne College’s W. Carroll Coyne
Center for the Performing Arts, 1419 Salt Springs Road (445-4100). The
theme “Russian Heroes of Disability” holds court during a free daylong
event at SUNY Upstate’s Weiskotten Hall, with two movies, director
Edward Topol’s Standing on the Edge (2 p.m.) and Sergei Govorukhin’s No One But Us
(7 p.m.), plus a 4:30 p.m. panel discussion with Topol, Govorukhin and
others. And an all-animation program featuring 11 entries will take
place Sunday, May 3, 1:30 p.m., at the MOST.
A series of seminars, with emphases on
the local and global movie marketplace, will take place Saturday, May
2. Hollywood super-agent David Greenblatt imparts his advice on “How to
Get Into the Business,” starting at 11 a.m. at Syracuse Stage’s
Archbold Theater, 820 E. Genesee St. Local filmmakers will gather with
their international counterparts for a confab that introduces the
Syracuse Film Office, with discussions on everything from locations to
script and budget services in the Central New York region, starting at
1:30 p.m. at Phoebe’s, 900 E. Genesee St. Also at Phoebe’s,
entertainment lawyer John Stout will be one of several chatty folks for
a film investors’ roundtable on Central New York cinema projects at
3:30 p.m.
Single-admission tickets are $8, with
seniors and students discounted to $6. The awards party on Saturday,
May 2, 10 p.m., at the MOST costs $40, enabling patrons to hobnob with
the visiting filmmakers and dance to music from Los Blancos. A full
festival pass, good for all film programs as well as Ben-Hur
and the May 2 seminars costs $125, while students and seniors can snag
them for $100. An “academy ticket,” which includes access to movies,
parties, seminars and the awards celebration, is $250, with seniors and
students charged $225. A three-pack set of tickets for any three flicks
costs $20.
Tickets are being sold at the festival
headquarters at downtown’s Hotel Syracuse, 500 S. Warren St.; and at
the screening rooms. For more information, call 443-8826 or visit
www.syrfilmfest.com. Here’s a rundown of some festival highlights for
this weekend:
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (142 minutes).
MGM’s 1925 silent-movie spectacle should provide an intensive workout
for composer-trombonist J.C. Sanford’s new score, aided by members of
the Central New York Jazz Orchestra, which includes (as of press time)
drummer Larry Luttinger, bassist Pete Chwazik, keyboardist Rick
Montalbano, saxophonists John Jeanneret and Mike Dubaniewicz,
clarinetist John Delia and Jeff Stockham on trumpet. The film itself is
still one of the landmark silents, a lavish $4 million blockbuster that
almost sunk the studio during its troubled production; originally
filmed at great expense in Italy, much of the footage was deemed
unusable by MGM execs, who then hired new director Fred Niblo to finish
the project in Hollywood. And the main plot thread still resonates
today, as Judah Ben-Hur (Ramon Novarro) squares off against his former
best buddy Messala (Francis X. Bushman), a power-mad Roman with a nasty
knack for delivering anti-Semitic slurs. Tinted scenes and Technicolor
sequences enhance the 1988 restoration, with the second-unit work of
“directorial associate” B. Reeves Eason providing some truly vivid
moments of mayhem. It’ll be interesting to watch the jazz musicians go
into overdrive during the kinetic 10-minute chariot race, while
skin-hitter Luttinger won’t have to go all Buddy Rich on us during the
sequences involving the ship’s slave galley. Fawcett-Shapiro said at
the April 17 press conference that the evening will be a “toga party,”
but don’t bet on her hubby wearing a tunic. Palace, Friday, April 24, 7 p.m.
Judah and jazz: Drummer Larry Luttinger will provide some of the new musical counterpoint for the 1925 MGM spectacle Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (with Ramon Novarro) Friday at the Palace. Matt Mumau photo
The Heart is a Hidden Camera (12 minutes).
Director-writer-editor Gabriel Judet-Weinshel offers plenty of sensual
eye candy in this experimental short, which chronicles the youthful
romance between Theo (Jamie Harding, who played a terrorist in United 93)
and Natasha (Zulay Henao), with an inevitable tragedy (cue the mad
bomber) in the offing. The movie’s title doesn’t stray from the movie’s
theme, as Theo opens and closes his heart-as-camera depending on the
emotional situation at hand, as he processes his own uniquely surreal
images. George Nicholas’ ravishing color photography and lilting
musical contributions from the Ahn Trio are strong assets that help
define Judet-Weinshel’s artistic vision, which turns out to be a way
station between magic and memory. Palace, Saturday, April 25, 1 p.m.
Porque Hay Cosas Que Nunca Se Olvidan. (13 minutes). The English translation for this title, Because There Are Things You Never Forget,
lends a seeming element of nostalgic poignancy that you simply won’t
find in Argentinean director Lucas Figueroa’s darkly comic short. Set
mostly in a neighborhood of Naples, Italy, circa 1950 (save for a
present-day bracketing device concerning some prison conflicts),
Figueroa’s flashback deals with a quartet of soccer-playing young
hooligans (Nicolo Urbinati, Giulio Barbari, Victor Menegas and Tiziano
Scarponi) who go to drastic lengths to score some payback against “la
vieja mala,” the evil grandma (played by Emiliana Olmedo) who ruins
their game. Figueroa’s kid-friendly comedy marries the hyperactive
pacing of a Michael Bay blockbuster with the earthy textures of Fellini’s Amarcord, with enough demented goings-on to amuse adults, too. This is the third short film in Figueroa’s trilogy, preceded by 2005’s Con Que 24. . . Ouch! and 2007’s Boletos Por Favor (Tickets, Please). Palace, Saturday, April 25, 3:30 p.m.
Annie Lloyd (18 minutes).
The mother-daughter relationship is poignantly rendered in this
documentary from video artist Cecelia Condit, who pays a twilight
tribute to her infirm mother as she eloquently battles the ravages of
time. Annie’s speech is slowed and slurred (subtitles help the cause)
and she’s wheelchair-bound, yet her knack for doing artistic
specialties is still apparent, such as pressing autumn leaves into a
colorful treasure. Cecelia (who also narrates) mixes 16mm clips of
Annie at a younger age with footage of herself as she admires her mom’s
handiwork; the physical similarities between Annie and Cecelia suggest
that this family’s circle of life will continue unbroken. Everson, Saturday, April 25, 5:30 p.m.
That Evening Sun (109 minutes). Character actor Hal Holbrook, who has played everyone from Mark Twain to All the President’s Men’s
Deep Throat, offers a flinty, full-bodied interpretation of Abner
Meechum, a beyond-pissed-off curmudgeon who bolts from the rest home
where he was planted by his lawyer son (Walton Goggins) and heads back
to reclaim his Tennessee farm. But Abner’s son has already rented his
dad’s spread to Lonzo Choat (Ray McKinnon), a white-trash ne’er-do-well
who has an option to buy the place after three months. Lonzo’s abused
spouse Ludie (Carrie Preston) and budding teen daughter Pamela (Mia
Wasikowska) are hoping that troubled boozer Lonzo can get a new start
in life, but it doesn’t help that Abner, hunkered down in the
sharecroppers’ shanty on the property, has no intention of moving out.
Working from a William Gay short story,
writer-director Scott Teems offers a widescreen canvas filled with
telling details, from the boarded-up storefronts that line the streets
of Abner’s once-thriving small town to the deliberately fractured
flashback structure in which Abner recalls the dim memories of his
relationship with his deceased spouse (played by Designing Women’s
Dixie Carter, Holbrook’s real-life leading lady). Teems also scores
textured performances from his spot-on cast, especially McKinnon’s
simmering menace as Lonzo (“Bein’ old and crazy gets you a li’l extra
rope,” he warns Abner. “Best not hang yourself with it.”) and some neat
support from Northern Exposure’s Barry Corbin—barely
recognizable here except for the timbre in his voice—as Abner’s
neighbor pal. And Holbrook presents a master-class acting seminar on
how to dig deep down into a characterization, aided by some of the
tangiest dialogue in many a movie moon. “The road ahead ain’t long and
it ain’t winding,” Holbrook’s Abner remarks, knowing time isn’t on his
side. “It’s short and straight as a goddamned poisoned arrow.” Palace, Saturday, April 25, 9:15 p.m.
Vandals of the 21st Century (9 minutes).
In this cautionary tale from documentarian Ashot Movsisyan, archival
footage depicts the long-ago Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1923 (still
denied by the Turkish government), but the destruction didn’t end
there. A cultural genocide is now in progress, as guerilla-like
camerawork reveals that the 400-year-old carved khachkars (mostly
cemetery tombstones) of Julfa are being smashed by sledgehammer-toting
soldiers of the Azerbaijani army. A passionate, rabble-rousing work,
Movsisyan only takes nine minutes to get a viewer’s dander up. Le Moyne, Sunday, April 26, 1 p.m.
Voice Teacher (81 minutes).
Daniel Mendelson’s very entertaining documentary follows Don Roberts,
an Oneonta rabbi who doubles as a singing instructor with a knack for
unorthodox training methods. It’s a funny showcase right from the
opening sequence at a cantors’ convention in the Catskills, as Roberts
fields questions from students attending a seminar on his “philosophy
of singing”: “It’s nothing I can explain on one foot. I’m not Hillel.
{You want to know} how do I do what I do? I prefer not to do that.”
Roberts demands that his charges channel their inner animal in order to
mine their true voice, with plenty of life lessons along the way: “An
animal has no hangups; they don’t go to see a shrink. They’re hungry,
they kill it and they eat.” Director Mendelson doesn’t shy from his
subject’s peculiarities, like the facts that Roberts is a smoker and
not the best of daddies, while one longtime chum points out that
Roberts’ “nutsiness” can be so overwhelming that some associates
“didn’t want to see his brilliance.” Yet the proof is in the pudding,
with heartfelt endorsements from tenor student Stefan Fehr (“Open your
mouth and go. Don’t think about, don’t overanalyze it, just do it.”)
and fellow cantor Jeff Klepper, who experienced years of vocal woes
until he underwent Roberts’ eccentric therapy. The best moment in this
upbeat treat has Roberts boogieing to John Lennon’s “Nobody Told Me”
while shopping at a Borders in Vestal. Palace, Sunday, April 26, 3:45 p.m.
They Came to Play (91 minutes).
There’s no ivory coasting in Alex Rotaru’s engaging chronicle of the
2007 International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, with 75
of the world’s top amateur pianists in a spirited contest sponsored by
the Van Cliburn Foundation in Fort Worth, Texas.
A crowd-pleaser in the vein of Spellbound, the first half-hour of They Came to Play
spans the globe to capture snapshot profiles of 10 contenders. Alabama
ophthalmologist Drew Mays hopes to correct the stereotype of
a Deep South hayseed. Philadelphia music teacher Annette DiMedeo was
told early in her career by the Liberace organization that she needed
an act to succeed—so she became a pianist-ventriloquist with a wooden
dummy substituting as her “manager.” Berlin physicist Eberhard Zagrosek
is old enough to remember when the Allies entered his Bavarian village
in May 1945. France’s tennis coach Anne-Marie Rouchon, who once played
against Billie Jean King, also has a World War II memory: her first
taste of chocolate from a U.S. soldier when the Americans liberated
Paris. Henri-Robert Delbeau is a tango-happy internal medicine
physician from the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, while Kent
Lietzau from Rockville, Md., is a vice president of corporate strategy
marketing for Lockheed Martin. Greg Fisher runs a glass mirror shop in
Edmond, Okla., and is not shy about divulging his unsavory past as a
cocaine addict. Esfir Ross is a jolly dental assistant from Oakland,
Calif. (“I have all my teeth!”). And from Fort Worth, meet jeweler
James Raphael, who in 1995 composed variations on the Hativka, Israel’s
national anthem, as a dedication to Holocaust victims, and Clark
Griffith, a “professional” AIDS patient since 1995, and given to droll
remarks such as “Homosexuals are the last people who it’s OK to feel
uncomfortable about.”
During the three-day competition’s
winnowing-down process at Texas Christian University, however, members
of director Rotaru’s cinematic cross-section begin to drop out, as
other contenders then step up to vie for screen time. They include
investment analyst Ken Jisaka from Mill Valley, Calif., and Phoenix,
Ariz., court litigator Mark Fuller, the latter suffering from Hodgkins
disease. And for those who dote on reality-TV fodder like American Idol, they’ll be unprepared for the unexpected dramatic turns taken by They Came to Play,
because director Rotaru makes you instinctively care for these modest
musicians. Don’t expect “Chopsticks” as a musical selection. Still,
there’s plenty of classical music pieces during the climactic
competition that contribute to this documentary’s pleasantly sonic
earful, with Raphael’s rigorous presentation of Manuel de Fallas’
“Ritual Fire Dance” as a highlight, although his piano bench didn’t
survive the performance. Van Cliburn himself chimes in with some
inscrutable Yoda-esque wisdom (“You learn so much from each performance
and the more you will learn about yourself, the less you know.”), yet
perhaps director Rotaru’s sweetest visual lingers on volunteer Louise
Canafax, a backstage mom who at one point sleeps backstage underneath a
blanket studded with G clefs. Palace, Sunday, April 26, 6:30 p.m.
All Art’s news that’s fit to print: Syracuse New Times publisher Art Zimmer (right) on the set of Session with director Haim Bouzaglo (left) during the 2007 filming; Session is currently making the Hollywood distribution rounds.
Festival director Owen Shapiro: “The judges will have a tough time deciding the winners.” MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO
