A
gripping thriller set in World War Two Holland, and a
hilarious offbeat romantic comedy from New Zealand have
been selected to open and close the 2007 Bermuda International
Film Festival, March 16-24.
Black
Book, by veteran director Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct,
Total Recall, RoboCop) will open the festival, while Eagle
vs. Shark, the first film by Kiwi stand-up comedian Taika
Waititi, will close the event. Black Book will screen
at 7 p.m. on Friday March 16 at Southside Cinema, while
Eagle vs. Shark will screen at 6.30 p.m. on Saturday March
24 at Liberty Theatre.
The
festival also announces an addition to its World Cinema
line-up, the Julien Temple documentary Joe Strummer: The
Future is Unwritten, as well as the films screening in
the Special Presentation and Midnight Madness categories.
“Julien
Temple’s Joe Strummer documentary has only screened at
Sundance and Dublin so far, so it’s a real coup for the
festival,” says deputy director Duncan Hall. “Likewise,
Eagle vs. Shark has only screened at the Sundance, Rotterdam
and Berlin festivals, with all the screenings taking place
over the last month.”
Opening
Night Film
Black
Book
(d.
Paul Verhoeven, Netherlands-Germany-United Kingdom-Belgium,
135 minutes)
English
and Dutch, German, and Hebrew with English subtitles
In
the late summer of 1944, pretty Jewish chanteuse Rachel
Stein (Carice van Houten) is waiting out the war, separated
from her family and a moment away from being caught by
the Gestapo. She joins the Resistance, and infiltrates
the German security service. Her mission soon finds her
charming a high-ranking official (Sebastian Koch) and,
without any warning, she is swept into a spider’s web
of intrigue, treachery and betrayal that even sheds light
on the ambush that wiped out her family.
Closing
Night Film
Eagle
vs. Shark
(d.
Taika Waititi, New Zealand, 87 minutes)
This
hilarious, wickedly offbeat love story is about a funny,
fractured romance between two misfits, woven into an all-consuming
quest for revenge, and shot through with the strange,
sweet hilarity of the human condition. It all begins with
the hopeless romantic Lily (Loren Horsley), a lonely oddball
and fast-food waitress, who is in love with Jarrod (Jemaine
Clement), another lonely oddball. He works as a video
game clerk, but has spent the last decade plotting revenge
on a bully from his high school past. When Lily and Jarrod
connect at a “dress as your favourite animal” party, she’s
an anemic shark and he’s a fluffy-headed eagle. After
a brief fling, Jarrod dumps Lily because he’s too busy
“training” for his all-important payback mission. As Jarrod’s
day of reckoning arrives, and everything hits the fan,
Jarrod and Lily will find something that goes beyond romantic
fantasies and revenge – faith in who they are.
World
Cinema
Joe
Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
(d.
Julien Temple, United Kingdom, 123 minutes)
As
the front man of the Clash from 1977 onwards, Joe Strummer
changed people’s lives forever. Five years after his death,
his influence reaches out around the world, more strongly
now than ever before. In The Future Is Unwritten, from
British film director Julien Temple, Joe Strummer is revealed
not just as a legend or musician, but as a true communicator
of our times. Drawing on both a shared punk history
and the close personal friendship that
developed over the last years of Joe’s life, Julien Temple’s
film is a celebration of Joe Strummer – before, during
and after the Clash.
Special
Presentations
The
Killer Within
(d.
Macky Alston, United States, 85 minutes)
Bob
Bechtel is a mild-mannered chap with a wife and two daughters
who teaches psychology at the University of Arizona. For
50 years he has kept a big secret: he is a killer. In
1955, while at Swarthmore College, he went on a shooting
rampage and took the life of fellow student, Holmes Strozier.
Although not convicted of murder, he was committed to
a hospital for the criminally insane. After five years
he was released, and half a century later Bob decided
to tell family, friends and colleagues of this disturbing
chapter in his life. And, disturbing it is. Bob claims
that intense bullying led him to that bizarre point. Strozier’s
brother, John, disputes the harassment. Filmmaker Alston
neatly captures the weird compassion in the situation:
the stepdaughter perplexed by her mother who married him
knowing his history; the daughter who knows she is on
this earth only because Bob was given a second chance;
and, the wife who loves him but acknowledges that part
of him is scary at times.
Paris
je’taime
(d.
Tom Tykwer and Others, France, 1 16 minutes)
French
with English subtitles
Tristan
Carné wanted to make a feature composed of short films
by different directors from around the world, each celebrating
a different one of Paris’s 20 arrondissements (neighbourhoods).
Tom Tykwer’s “True,” starring Natalie Portman and Melchior
Beslon, set in the 10th arrondissement, was filmed first
and served as a model for future directors. The next directors
to sign on were the Coen brothers. With the Tykwer and
Coen brothers films as examples, many of the world’s most
acclaimed filmmakers readily agreed to take part. Each
director was asked to tell the story of a romantic encounter
in Paris in under five minutes, on a tight budget and
a two to three day shooting schedule. The film’s crazy-quilt
collection of cinematic images and stories show us a city
that is diverse, unexpected, and in constant movement.
A
Sunday in Kigali (Un Dimanche à Kigali)
(d.
Robert Favreau, Canada, 118 minutes)
French
with English subtitles
This
powerful film tells a remarkable story of love, loss and
regret set against the background of the Rwandan genocide
in 1994. Bernard Valcourt is a Canadian journalist
living in Rwanda to make a film about the spread and treatment
of AIDS in the country. At a poolside bar he meets
Gentille, a young Rwandan woman working there.
At first a relationship between them seems impossible,
but they are inexorably drawn together. Contrasted
against their growing love for each other are the worrying
signs that the country around them is moving towards civil
war, a war whose climax would leave so many people dead.
Everything’s
Cool
(d.
Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold, United States, 2007)
In
this “toxic comedy” the filmmakers who made Blue Vinyl
– which won Best Documentary at BIFF 2002 -- weave an
entertaining, though distressing, tale about the most
dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding
and political action – global warming. On one side are
the activists and scientists struggling to rouse an indifferent
public and unimpressed government to take action. On the
other side are the lobbyists working tirelessly to dismiss
the issue as the hysterical speculation of a fanatical
few. Helfand and Gold follow a cadre of messengers who
are passionate and exasperated about the urgent need for
change. There is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who
keeps trying to retire from the fight; a Weather Channel
expert climatologist who has the excruciating task of
reducing her PhD to primetime sound bites;
a public servant who blows the lid off the White House's
manipulation of key climate-change research; and, two
“bad boys” aiming a radical critique at the environmental
movement. The disinterest of the public is palpable and
the calculated dismissal of the issue by naysayers is
obscene. Everything’s not cool and the sooner we actively
pursue solutions the better.
Midnight
Madness
Shortbus
(d.
John Cameron Mitchell, United States, 102 minutes)
The
film explores the lives of several characters living in
New York between the September 11 terrorist attacks and
the great blackout of summer 2003. That period of time
saw New Yorkers shaken from their often cynical, anonymous
existence. The result, says the filmmaker, was a sincere
reconnection with the world. The story focuses primarily
on two couples, one straight and one gay, and how their
lives intersect with a variety of semi-lost souls. Male
and female, straight and gay, the characters find one
another – and eventually find themselves – when they all
converge at a weekly underground salon called “Shortbus”,
a mad nexus of art, music, politics, and polysexual carnality.
The film is packed with graphic sex, which is used as
a plot device to move the narrative along and to reveal
the intentions and fears of the multiple characters portrayed.
Taxidermia
(d.
Gyorgy Palfi, Hungary, 92 minutes)
Three
stories. Three ages. Three men. A grandfather, a father,
a son, linked together by recurring motifs. The dim grandfather,
an orderly during World War Two, lives in his bizarre fantasies;
he desires love. The huge father seeks success as a top
athlete – a speedeater – in the postwar Soviet era. The
grandson, a meek, small-boned taxidermist, yearns for something
greater: immortality. He wants to create the most perfect
work of art of all time by stuffing his own torso. Historical
facts and surrealism become intertwined as magical realism,
like in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or the works
of the popular contemporary Hungarian writer, Parti Nagy
Lajos; the script is based on two of the latter’s stories.
The filmmaker added the third, that of the grandson, the
taxidermist. The film is a goulash of bodily fluids and
perversity – its unrestrained, anarchic visual imagination
and grotesque poetry leave one in disbelief.
Tickets
to BIFF 2007 are available now from the festival web site,
www.biff.bm , or from the box office
at #6 Passenger Terminal, Front Street, Hamilton. The
box office is open daily, except Sunday, from 10 a.m.
to 6 p.m.
The
mission of the Bermuda International Film Festival is
to advance the love of independent film from around the
world, and create a community welcoming to filmmakers
and filmgoers.
Media
Contact:
Duncan
Hall
Deputy
Festival Director
Bermuda
International Film Festival
Tel:
293-3456
Fax:
293-7769
E-mail:
deputydirector@biff.bm