Cinephile Series
Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinémathèque
Jacques Richard, France, 2004, 210 min.
Thursday, 1:00 PM

At La Cinémathèque Française, a Who's Who of French directors, critics and film historians learned to love film. Besides helping mentor the New Wave, Henri Langlois — cinema's original preservationist — poured his passion for film into building a legendary institution and a legacy which can inspire cinephile communities everywhere, including Flickerings. This three and a half-hour documentary features interviews with Langlois and clips from a sampling of the movies he saved and screened. See Flickerings' review

Outlaw Cinema
Breathless
Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1961, 90 min.
Thursday, 7:00 PM

The film that launched more than one New Wave, and an example of "Outlaw Cinema" par excellence. Jean-Luc Godard set the tone for the French New Wave and his own career with this energic, irreverent homage to American Film Noir. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg play a cheap hood and his American girlfriend on the lam in Paris as cinematic conventions are blown away on all sides in Godard's "shoot-from-the-hip" style.

Documentary
Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?
Heather Whinna & Vickie Hunter, USA, 2004, 94 min.
Friday, 11:00 AM

An outsiders' perspective of the curious world of Christian music, especially as it is played and enjoyed at Cornerstone Festival. The documentary features commentary by both insiders and other outsiders, including producer Steve Albini and Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot, and fest concert footage of Pedro the Lion, the Danielson Family, Stryper and more. Directors Heather Whinna and Vickie Hunter will introduce their debut film at the festival where much of it was filmed, and field questions after the screening.

Outlaw Cinema
Open City
Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 1945, 100 min.
Friday, 3:00 PM

There were still Nazis in northern Italy when Roberto Rossellini cobbled together a cast and crew (not to mention funding!) and snatched this tale of the Italian resistance out of the Roman alleyways almost as it was still happening. The result was a film that stunned the world for its audacity and the miracle of its making, but also for a raw style to be called "neo-realism" that would influence filmmakers around the world for generations.

Select Shorts
Most
Bobby Garabedian, Czech Republic/USA, 2003, 29 min.
Sunday, 6:00 PM
A poetic and powerful story of a father forced to choose between love and duty.

Man & Beast
Dogville
Lars von Trier, France, 2003, 177 mins.
Friday, 7:00 PM

Danish enfant terrible of cinema Lars Von Trier stages his own take on "Our Town" in this minimalist and theatrical story of Grace (Nicole Kidman), a refugee who lands in a suspiciously iconic American small town. Von Trier again probes human darkness with his unique and unflinching light, leaving his customary trail of controversy along the way.

Select Shorts
Like Twenty Impossibles
Annemarie Jacir, Palestine/USA, 2003, 17 min.
Saturday, 10:00 AM (Film Showcase program)
In one more example of "Outlaw Cinema," a Palestinian film crew gets hassled
by the Border Patrol at an unexpected checkpoint.

Outlaw Cinema
The Battle of Algiers
Gillo Pontecorvo, Algeria/Italy, 1965, 117 min.
Saturday, 11:00 AM

This film about insurgency against an occupying power in an urban and Muslim setting was screened by the Pentagon as Iraq descended into a rerun of the French experience in Algeria. The film is famous for both its documentary-look and claim that not one frame is actual newsreel footage. With chilling familiarity, violence begats violence in this evenhanded treatment, universally-acknowledged as one of the best movies ever made.  Trailer & Reviews

Documentary
Bonhoeffer
Martin Doblmeier, USA, 2003, 90 min.
Saturday, 3:00 PM

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was chaplain to the German resistance movement, struggling with his co-conspirators through the ethics of assassinating a tyrant, and sharing their fate when the plot to kill Hitler failed. With historical footage and interviews, this documentary follows the young theologian through the desperate times and experiences that forged the famous theology that rejected "cheap grace" in favor of a costly commitment.

Select Shorts
The House is Black
Forough Farrokhzad, Iran, 1963, 22 min.
Saturday, 6:00 PM
Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad showed how her art could combine with film in this lyrical documentary about a leper colony, inspiring a new generation of Iranian filmmakers.

Man & Beast
The Cow
Dariush Mehrjui, Iran, 1969, 100 min.
Saturday, 7:00 PM

A film which could also be classed as "Outlaw Cinema". The Cow was smuggled out of the Shah's Iran and took prizes at international festivals, forcing a release in Iran and announcing that a new era in Iranian Cinema had begun. The film's raw, neo-realist take on village life is both an amazing glimpse of a relationshp between man and beast, but also of the beast in man as an allegory of xenophobia in the face of Otherness.

Outlaw Cinema
The Motorcycle Diaries
Walter Salles, USA, 2004, 95 min.
Sunday, 11:00 AM

A gorgeous and thoughtful sort of "buddy-movie," as a pair of penniless adventure seekers (who are also medical students) take off on a journey of discovery across South America. One of these adventurers, of course, is the future revolutionary "Che" Guevara, and his discoveries on this trip help create the social consciousness that carried him through revolutions around the globe. Directed by Central Station's Walter Salles.

Outlaw Cinema
A Man Escaped
Robert Bresson, Italy, 2003, 114 min.
Sunday, 7:00 PM

A French Resistance fighter, imprisoned by the Gestapo, and with a death sentence looming, persistantly struggles on in a film with powerful metaphysical echos beyond the immediate story. Indeed, the real story here may actually be the director's exquisite control and choreography of the smallest gesture or sound, in a work that makes one of the most accessible introductions to that French master of minimalism, Robert Bresson.

Man & Beast
Time of the Wolf
Michael Haneke, France/Austria/Germany, 2003, 114 min.
Sunday, 7:00 PM

An unusual and disturbing "post-apocalyptic" film: director Michael Haneke applies his "angry prophet" style of moral scrutiny to bear upon a classic existential setting: a group of survivors stuck with one another after an unnamed calamity. Yet this film is much less about plot than a painful examination of the human heart and social dynamics under crisis conditions, finding the inevitable darknesses, but maybe offering a glimpse of light.