Friday marks the start of Eastern Washington's biggest little cinema celebration - the Spokane International Film Festival (Jan 27 - Feb 5). "It's SPIFFY!"
Eastern Washington is sparse. Spokane stands alone as the only large(ish) city in the region; an island in a ocean of scrubby desert, pine hills, and rolling wheat. I live yonder, in the wheat sea, on a cinematic atol with one small theater that doesnt do indie. Something is indeed better than nothing, but a bona fide film festival less than two hours from home is definitely an annual highlight.
SpIFF is a modest endeavor compared with the gargantuan festivals that now pepper the claendar, but at last year's festival I discovered two of my top five films for the year: Embrace Of The Serpent (mezmerizing) and Aferim! (mezmerizing and traumatizing). At a time of the year when Sundance and awards ceremonies are all the news, I thought something from the other end of the spectrum might be interesting to readers.
As usual, SpIFF will take place mostly in the two tiny theaters that comprise The Magic Lantern, Spokane's only artsy indie theater, which all but died last year from brokeness (again), and yet somehow came back from the dead (again). Thank fuck. And thank the vocal local film community!
Also as usual, opening night is a celebration of local film at the historic - and gorgeous - Bing Crosby Theater, and closing night ten days hence is a celebration of classic film at the equaly historic - and gorgeous - Fox Theater. Opening night at the Bing will feature The Basket, which in 1999 was the first major film production in the area, and put Spokane on the map as a film-making location. Closing night at the Fox, home to the Spokane Symphony Orhcestra, will feature The Phantom Of The Opera (1925), accompanied by a live performance of the score. Last year the symphony performed to Chaplin's City Lights, an experience I won't soon forget.
Herewith then are the titles I'm most intrigued by! I'm unfamiliar with all of these films so descriptions are courtesy of the SpIFF website, where scheduling and tickets are of course available if you live in this neck of the woods.
Death By A Thousand Cuts
USA / 2016 / 73 mins. / Documentary In Spanish and Creole with English subtitles
Directed by Jake Kheel, Juan Mejia Botero
In Death by a Thousand Cuts, Eligio Eloy Vargas, alias Melaneo, a Dominican Park Ranger in the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park was found brutally murdered by machete. At the time, he was believed to have been on patrol investigating an illegal charcoal production site often run by Haitians coming across the border into protected Dominican forests. This murder becomes the metaphor for the larger story of increasing tension between Haiti and the Dominican Republic over illicit charcoal exploitation and mass deforestation.
Won the Grand Jury Prize Documentary Section at the Seattle International Film Festival
Death by a Thousand Cuts - ENG Trailer from Human Pictures Film on Vimeo.
Nise: The Heart Of Madness (Nise: O Coração Da Loucura)
Brazil / 2015 / 106 mins. In Portuguese with English subtitles
Directed by Roberto Berliner
Dr. Nise da Silveira arrives in a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro and refuses to employ the new and violent electroshock and lobotomy in the treatment of mental illness. Ridiculed by her colleagues, Nise takes the abandoned Sector for Occupational Therapy, where she would start a revolution through paints, dogs and love. And an interest in the psychology of Carl Jung. Renowned modern art museums would later open their doors to artists nobody had ever heard of. Many critics pointed out that these exhibitions revealed painters that should be ranked amongst the best Brazillian artists of the century. Some saw this explosion of art and beauty as a sign that something comparable to the renaissance was happening in Rio de Janeiro. Behind this miracle was no art academy, patron or dealer, but a psychiatrist, ridiculed by her colleagues, and a painting studio at a mental hospital. The artists were schizophrenic, poor, hospitalized for several decades, abandoned by their families and hopeless according to their doctors. This is their inspiring story.
Won the Grand Prix at Tokyo International Film Festival
Strangers On The Earth
Spain / USA / 2016 / 96 mins. / Documentary In multiple languages with English subtitles
Directed by Tristan Cook Tristan Cook is scheduled to attend
Perhaps Europe’s most popular pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago attracts wayfarers of all stripes to walk its ancient paths in search of meaning. One such pilgrim is Dane Johansen, an American cellist who in 2014 ventured to walk the Camino with his instrument on his back, performing music for his fellow pilgrims along the way. As Dane soon discovers, the paths we travel through life are often uncomfortably magnified by the reality of life on the Camino. Accompanied by the vast landscapes of Northern Spain, the haunting music of J.S. Bach for solo cello (performed by Johansen), and the very personal struggles and joys of the many pilgrims encountered along the way, Strangers on the Earth examines the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of the concept of ‘journey’ and the vital role it can play as part of the human experience.
Kedi
USA / Turkey / Germany / 2016 / 80 mins. / Documentary In Turkish with English Subtitles
Directed by Ceyda Torun
Kedi is not a documentary about house cats or the strays you occasionally see in your back yard. Kedi is a film about the hundreds of thousands of cats who have roamed the metropolis of Istanbul freely for thousands of years, wandering in and out of people’s lives, impacting them in ways only an animal who lives between the worlds of the wild and the tamed can. Cats and their kittens bring joy and purpose to those they choose, giving people an opportunity to reflect on life and their place in it. In Istanbul, cats are the mirrors to ourselves.
Our Love Story (Yeon-ae-dam)
South Korea / 2016 / 99 mins. In Korean with English Subtitles
Directed by Lee Hyunju
Yoon-ju is a graduate student of fine arts and is working on her graduation exhibition. One day, while she is searching materials for her project, she runs into Ji-soo at a junk shop. Watching Ji-soo in an odd place, Yoon-ju finds herself drawn to her. After their initial encounter, Yoon-ju once again runs into Ji-soo at a convenience store, and the two eventually start dating. Never having enjoyed dating men, Yoon-ju finds Ji-soo fascinating and becomes completely infatuated with her.
Jeonju International Film Festival (2016) - Korean Competition - Grand Prize
The Women’s Balcony (Ismach Hatani)
Israel / 2016 / 96 mins. In Hebrew with English Subtitles
A Film by Shlomit Nehama and Emil Ben-Simon Hosted by Neal Schindler, Director of Spokane Area Jewish Family Services
An accident during a bar mitzvah celebration leads to a gender rift in a devout Orthodox community in Jerusalem, in this rousing, good-hearted tale about women speaking truth to patriarchal power. When the women’s balcony in an Orthodox synagogue collapses, leaving the rabbi’s wife in a coma and the rabbi in shock, the congregation falls into crisis. Charismatic young Rabbi David appears to be a savior after the accident, but slowly starts pushing his fundamentalist ways and tries to take control. This tests the women’s friendships and creates an almost Lysistrata-type rift between the community’s women and men.
Lost in Paris
France / Belgium / 2016 / 83 mins. In French with English Subtitles
Directed by Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon Hosted by Florian Preisig, Professor of French and Chair Modern Languages & Literatures at EWU
Filmed in Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon’s signature whimsical style (The Fairy, SpIFF 2010), Lost in Paris stars the filmmakers as a small-town Canadian librarian and a strangely seductive, oddly egotistical vagabond. When Fiona’s (Gordon) orderly life is disrupted by a letter of distress from her 93-year-old Aunt Martha (delightfully portrayed by Academy Award®-nominee Emmanuelle Riva) who is living in Paris, Fiona hops on the first plane she can and arrives only to discover that Martha has disappeared. In an avalanche of spectacular disasters, she encounters Dom (Abel), the affable, but annoying tramp who just won’t leave her alone. Replete with the amazing antics and intricately choreographed slapstick that has come to define Abel and Gordon’s work, Lost in Paris is a wondrously fun and hectic tale of peculiar people finding love while lost in the City of Lights.
NO TRAILER YET
District Zero
Spain / 2015 / 67 mins. / Documentary In Arabic with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Fernández Mayoral, Pablo Tosco, Pablo Iraburu
Maamun opens the door to his shop, like he does every other morning. It is a tiny white container. Next to it is an identical container, and then another, and another. Thousands of containers stretch as far as the eye can see, all of them exactly the same. We are in one of the biggest refugee camps in the world: Zaatari, in Jordan. His shop repairs mobile phones. Maamun starts to serve his customers. Their memory cards contain their past in Syria: happiness, routine, family life. And then the war came, followed by destruction, fear and flight. Maamun rebuilds photos and sound, recovers lost content, recharges batteries, and restores the only link his neighbours still have with Syria. He and his friend Karim have decided to provide a new service: printing off the photos which have filled up the mobile phones of the people who live in Zaatari.
Through his routine, the conversations with his friends and neighbours, the daily life in his tiny shop, we discover that no-one wants to print off photos of the war; there is much more to the refugees’ sense of identity than that. They want to remember, they want to emphasise their Syrian identity, their identity as individual people. The photographs printed off in Maamun’s shop every day not only make us ask questions about the identity of the refugees, but also about our own identity: who are we? Why are we here? Where were we born? Where will we die?
Portrait Of A Garden
Netherlands / 2015 / 98 mins. / Documentary In Dutch with English Subtitles
Directed by Rosie Stapel
In a historical vegetable garden on a Dutch estate, the 85 year-old pruning master and the gardener tend to the espaliers. As they prune, the men chat about food, the weather, the world and they share their knowledge of horticulture. Surrounded by vegetable patches, citrus trees in the historical orangery, the orchard and lush grapevines we’re swept along by their passion, dedication and knowledge that make up the essential ingredients of successfully maintaining a large vegetable garden.
Fifteen years, they have spent working on the pear arbour. Will it finally close over this year?
Despite his old age, the pruning master is still inexhaustible and driven. As he worries about the loss of centuries of knowledge, the younger gardener makes a real effort of soaking up all this knowledge and passing it on.
Meanwhile the seasons go by. The gardening lady works the vegetable patches, the citrus trees leave their winter accommodation and we get to meet the Apple Blossom Beetle. The grand finale is in August with its seemingly never-ending harvest and its abundance of taste, colour and scent. As peace slowly returns to the natural world, it’s business as usual for the gardener amid the falling leaves and the white frost on the branches. Everything has its time.
Dolores
Germany / 2016 / 90 mins. In German with English Subtitles
Directed by Michael Rösel
Georg Letterer is an introvert modeler, who builds detail-obsessed prototypes. He receives an order from a famous Hollywood Actress Dolores Moor to make a model of her extravagant Villa. This is the opportunity for Georg to escape from suburban dreariness and the perfidious psychological terror of his brother. He tirelessly works on the detailed model and simultaneously falls for the unattainable Dolores. One day Georg discovers an unusual power: he is able to influence the physical reality of the villa through the prototype he is building. With his own interests in mind, Georg becomes a calculating puppeteer who holds the threads of life of everyone around him, just to win Dolores for himself. The film is based on a 70-page Belgian comic book “Dolores” by François Schuiten & Benoit Peeters (Text) and Anne Baltus (Illustrations), published in 1991.
Diani & Devine Meet The Apocalypse
USA / 2016 / 90 mins.
Directed by Etta Devine and Gabriel Diani Etta Devine and Gabriel Diani are Scheduled to Attend
Sponsored by STCU
Two comedians. One apocalypse. When all power and communication systems mysteriously shut off, down on their luck comedians Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine pack up their things and hit the road in search of a safe haven to wait out the possible extinction event. Accompanied by their trusty dog Watson and their miserable cat Mrs. Peel, the duo must struggle against the mundane realities of the collapse of civilization while retaining their decency and rationality as the rest of humanity starts getting really, really weird. It’s like those old Hope and Crosby Road to… movies meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Only Funnier.
In Her Name (Au Nom De Ma Fille)
France / Germany / 2016 / 87 mins. In French with English Subtitles
Directed by Vincent Garenq Hosted by Frédéric Dugenet, Lecturer in Languages and Cultures at Whitworth University
Inspired by a true story. July 10, 1982: Kalinka Bamberski, fourteen years old, is found dead in her mother’s new house in Germany. Kalinka would spend her vacation there ever since her mother had started a new life with a seductive and charismatic doctor, Dieter Krombach. Although the strange circumstances of her death, which involved rape, point to Krombach, a conspiration of silence seems to protect him.
André Bamberski, Kalinka’s father, sets out on a struggle for justice confronted by borders and barriers. Alone against doctors, judges, and even against his ex-wife, who is deep in denial, his determination for his daughter’s murderer to be found guilty and sentenced will be relentless – even if it means spending his whole life in order for justice to be done.
After The Storm
Japan / 2016 / 117 mins. In Japanese with English Subtitles
Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
Dwelling on his past glory as a prize-winning author, Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) wastes the money he makes as a private detective on gambling and can barely pay child support. After the death of his father, his aging mother (Kirin Kiki) and beautiful ex-wife (Yoko Make) seem to be moving on with their lives. Renewing contact with his initially distrusting family, Ryota struggles to take back control of his existence and to find a lasting place in the life of his young son (Taiyo Yoshizawa) – until a stormy summer night offers them a chance to truly bond again.
Conduct! Every Move Counts
Germany / 2016 / 81 mins. / Documentary In English and German with English Subtitles
Directed by Götz Schauder
Every two years 24 young conductors travel to the Frankfurt Opera House to compete against each other in the world’s leading Sir Georg Solti conducting competition. Conduct! Every Move Counts accompanies five of them through evaluation rounds up to the final, which two of them reach.
Aziz Shokhakimov who traveled from the remote Uzbekistan will prove that he is one of the best in his field though being only twenty years old. Music reverberates within the young man. His assertiveness collides with the views of the older, more experienced orchestra musicians. In the USA, Alondra de la Parra is already a star. The New Yorker attempts to conquer Europe with her refreshing enthusiasm. Despite the enormous pressure of the competition the eloquent Englishman James Lowe keeps his integrity as a musician and a human being. The German Andreas Hotz tries to convince the orchestra with intellect and knowledge. Shizuo Z Kuwahara has traveled from Japan without a baton. He creates moments of greatest magic with his bare hands.
All five conductors have to endure challenges in Frankfurt that put to test their musical skills and their character. Thanks to the precise observations of the camera and unvarnished comments by the musicians Conduct! Every Move Counts documents the interplay between conductor and orchestra with unique authenticity.
Mixed Match
Canada / 2016 / 95 mins.
Directed by Jeff Chiba Stearns Jeff Chiba Stearns and Athena Mari Asklipiadis are scheduled to attend
Mixed Match is an important human story told from the perspective of mixed race blood cancer patients must reflect on their multiracial identities and complex genetics as they struggle with a seemingly impossible search to find bone marrow donors. With the multiracial community becoming one of the fastest growing demographics in North America, being mixed race is no longer just about an identity, it can be a matter of life and death.
Creepy
Japan / 2016 / 130 mins. In Japanese with English Subtitles
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who made his name with classics Cure and Bright Future, gets back to his roots by putting the thumbscrews to the audience with his latest, Creepy. A year after a botched hostage negotiation with a serial killer turned deadly, ex-detective Koichi (Hidetoshi Nishijima), and his wife move into a new house with a deeply strancge new neighbor (Teruyuki Kagawa). His old cop colleagues come calling for his help on a mysterious case, which may be related to the strange goings-on next door, in this insidiously-constructed narrative that braids plot twists on top of plot twists and shock on top of shock.
Médecin De Campagne (Irreplaceable)
France / 2016 / 102 mins. In French with English Subtitles
Directed by Thomas Lilti Hosted by Philippe Valle, Instructor of Graphic Design at the North Idaho College
Rolling off Hippocrates, which world premiered at the Cannes’ Critics’ Week to warm reviews, doctor-turned-filmmaker Thomas Lilti delves once again into the medical world with Irreplacable (The Country Doctor). The social dramedy stars Francois Cluzet (Intouchables) as a devoted and revered countryside doctor whose life gets rocked by a middle-age woman who has come from the city hospital to earn her chops. Challenging each other with opposite views on medicine, can the pair bond and learn from one another?
Phantom Of The Opera
USA / 1925 / 93 mins. / Silent
Directed by Rupert Julian
Don’t miss this season’s Symphonic Film at The Fox, the 1925 classic Phantom of the Opera. Watch the great Lon Chaney, Sr. in one of his most memorable roles while the Spokane Symphony performs the soundtrack LIVE. They will be joined by pianist Rick Friend, performing his own musical score to accompany the digitally restored version of the film. This rendition of the literary classic remains most famous for Chaney’s ghastly, self-devised make-up, which was kept under wraps until the film’s premiere. Please note that the SpIFF Festival Pass does not include admission to Phantom of the Opera.