Report from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival

[Lydia Leftcoast]

After several years of forcing film lovers to chase all over the Twin Cities to catch the latest in foreign films, the festival organizers finally realized that they could rent a multiplex and make things convenient. The one they rented, St. Anthony Main, is located near the University of Minnesota campus, relatively convenient for residents of both Minneapolis and St. Paul.

There are 140 American and foreign films playing over the 16 days of the festival. Naturally, no one can see all of them, but I've seen three so far, all very different, all extremely worth while.

I'll start with the one I saw tonight (4/20)

Katyn (Poland)
Historical background: During the brief period when Stalin and Hitler were on good terms, they agreed to divide up Poland. The Red Army captured 20,000 Polish military officers and over a period of several months, took them into the Katyn Forest and massacred them. After the war, the Communist government of Poland insisted that the Germans had massacred the officers, and anyone who suggested otherwise was in big trouble.

This film, directed by the noted Andrzej Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds) personalizes the story by focusing on three victims and their families' struggles under two of the worst dictatorships of modern times. It is absorbing, often very hard to watch, but like most of the foreign films that show up at these festivals, full of rich details, complex characters, and ironic situations, as having the Nazis blamed for one of the few atrocities that they didn't commit. The final scene is a harrowing reenactment of how the three main characters met their end, and then the screen goes black.

On 4/18, I saw these two films:

The Tiger's Tail (Ireland)
In the past twenty years, Ireland has undergone amazing economic growth, The main character of this film, Liam O'Leary, has grown rich as a take-no-prisoners real estate developer. While stuck in traffic on his way to an awards dinner, he spots his exact double. He keeps seeing his double around town, even staring into the window of his house, but no one believes him. The double turns out to be real, an identical twin given up for adoption long ago, and jealous. He finagles his way into Liam's life, taking over completely for a while, leaving Liam on the streets and considered crazy for insisting that someone has stolen his life. But the experience provides him with a needed education in the price that his country has paid for its economic success.

Strawberry Shortcakes (Japan) Don't be fooled by the title. This film about four young women seeking their fortunes in Tokyo is definitely not for children. For one thing, one of the women, Akiyo, is a call girl, and another, Satoko, is the receptionist at the agency where she works. The third, Toko, is a commercial artist with a major eating disorder, and the fourth, her roommate Chihiro, is a clerical worker who is so desperate to get married that she drives the men away. Based on a manga (graphic novel), this movie shows its origins in scenes that I could easily imagine in their pen-and-ink renditions. The four main characters are all multi-dimensional, and despite the often grim situations they find themselves in, there's a lot of offbeat humor. Although the narrative cuts back and forth between their various stories, they all meet up at the end.

What all three of these films have in common is that they're stories I haven't seen before. Much of the time, I can predict where a Hollywood movie is going, because I've seen their stories a dozen times before. I couldn't predict what was going to happen in these three films (aside from the obvious fact that the Katyn Forest Massacre really occurred), and that's one reason why I like seeing foreign films.

I don't think that any of these three films has a U.S. distributor, so your only chance to see them may be at a film festival or on a college campus.

I won't be able to attend the festival for a couple of days, but I'll report back when I've seen some more films.

[saltpoint]

1. Congrats to the Festival organizers and donors and sponsors for running

what sounds like a first-class operation, and thanks to you for supporting world film events.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Well, the first night they botched ticket sales

having only one ticket line for all four movies that were starting at roughly the same time. They actually had to start the first set of films twenty minutes late, although they gave everyone a free beverage as a form of apology.

When I went this evening, there was no long ticket line, so they must have figured out a better way. I came planning to see a French thriller, but the print hadn't arrived yet, so I decided to see Katyn instead, and I'm glad I did, despite the grim nature of the subject matter.

However, the selection of films and the choice of venue have been terrific.

[saltpoint]

3. Well, they'll get the logistics ironed out, and months from now, you

folks who attended and supported the Festival will only recall the films.

I love what you're doing, LL.

[geardaddy]

4. M g/f and I plan to see

some of the movies.

I like that most of them are being shown in the same place, as opposed to previous years.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Tuesday night's film:

Sons (Norway) Lars has a dead-end job as a lifeguard at a public pool. One day, he reprimands a young boy, Tim, for sneaking into the women's locker room. Later that same day, he sees Tim go off with Hans, a pedophile who molested Lars and his best friend many years ago and then disappeared. No one will listen to him, so he decides to gather evidence. This sets off a chain of events with nearly fatal consequences for both Lars and Tim. What is particularly interesting is the portrayal of Hans. While he is clearly self-serving and cynical, you come to understand why a troubled boy would go with him willingly.

[dpbrown]

6. Thanks for these reviews!

Maybe when the little activist is a little older (well, maybe a lot older) we'll take in some film festivals together.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Thursday night's film

Big Dreams, Little Tokyo Boyd, a nerdy American who speak excellent but stilted Japanese, is going around trying to sell his "improve your English" book to Japanese people. It is a few minutes into the film before we realize that he is in the "Japantown" of an American city. His roommate Jerome is a Japanese-American who aspires to become a sumo wrestler but keeps being rejected as underweight. This film has a definite low-budget look and is only mildly amusing but it is highly original. I had an "aha!" moment when the final credits revealed that the picture had been film in Orem, Utah. Surely director Dave Boyle, who portrays Boyd, must have been a Mormon missionary, and Boyd's overly formal look and the frustrations of going door to door and handing out leaflets on the street must have inspired part of the film.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Three films tonight! (4/28)

Footsteps: A Journey in Faith (U.S.) I saw this one because it's a documentary that a priest from my church took part in. It's about an interfaith association of clergy from Minneapolis (Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims) who travel to the Middle East together. They come to understand one another's traditions better but also uncover some sore spots.

Up the Yangtze (Canada) A documentary about the effects of the Three Gorges Dam, focusing on one impoverished, displaced family. Teen-aged Yu Shui wants to go to high school, but her illiterate parents tell her that the family needs another wage earner, so she goes to work on a luxury riverboat that takes foreigners up and down the Yangtze. While the tourists are shown comfortable, modern rowhouses that supposedly house people displaced by the dam, Yu Shui's family lives first in a handmade shanty and then, when that is flooded out, in a building that looks like a garage and has about as many amenities. Meanwhile, Yu Shui has to adjust to a very different world, both on the boat and during shore leave. On a personal note, I was in Chongqing, one of the major cities along the Yangtze, in 1990, and if the scenes shown in the film are typical, the city has undergone amazing changes in just 18 years.

Jar City (Iceland) Last year, I bought an English translation of an Icelandic book at my friendly neighborhood mystery bookstore, and behold, here the film version turned up at the film festival. Two seemingly unrelated stories come together. In one story, a reclusive old man, whose apartment was notorious for its bad smell, is found with his head bashed in. In the second story, a little girl dies of a brain tumor, and her father becomes obsessed with illegally searching Iceland's famous DNA database for clues about its origins. A middle-aged police detective with a heroin-addicted daughter is assigned to find out who killed the old man. The only clue is a photograph of a grave marker in a country churchyard. This film was a remarkably faithful adaptation of the book, and I appreciated the mood of gloom and foreboding afforded by the beautiful but winter-darkened, bleak, and windswept Icelandic landscape.