31 minute read
Achievement
The Mackintosh Man
United States 1973 – Digital Projection – 98 minutes
In English
Director: John Huston
Producers: John Foreman, John Huston
Screenplay: Walter Hill, based on the novel The Freedom Trap by Desmond Bagley
Cast: Paul Newman, Dominique Sanda, James Mason, Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen
Print Courtesy: Warner Brothers
Paul Newman and John Huston are the quintessentially American icons involved in The Mackintosh Man, along with screenwriter (and former MIFF Lifetime Achievement Winner) Walter Hill, but the setting of this crackerjack spy thriller is the U.K. and the lead actress is Dominique Sanda. “Technically, The Mackintosh Man is a Cold War thriller, but politics are so severely subjugated in Walter Hill’s adaptation of Desmond Bagley’s novel The Freedom Trap that the film is part heist, prison breakout, and espionage thriller.… Filmed in gorgeous England and Malta, Mackintosh is a slick and tightly directed thriller about a jewel thief named Reardon (Newman) whose incarceration is a ploy to deal with a convicted Communist double-agent named Slade (Ian Bannen) after the pair breakout from prison. Held captive by his liberators, Reardon escapes their isolated country estate, and later hooks up with a pretty associate named Mrs. Smith (Sanda) to prevent Slade’s escape through Malta…. A manhunt through the bleak Irish fields is tensely choreographed, and a subsequent car chase through narrow country roads seems to have been filmed with the vehicles barreling down at top speed, making simple POV shots incredibly exciting”—
Mark Hasa, KQWK
Sponsored by Suzanne Uhl-Melanson of Ameriprise Financial
Steppenwolf
Switzerland/United Kingdom/France/Italy/United States 1974 –Digital Projection – 117 minutes
In English Director: Fred Haimes
Producers: Melvin Fishman, Richard Herland
Screenplay: Fred Haines, based on the novel by Hermann Hesse Cast: Max von Sydow, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clémenti, Carla Romanelli, Roy Bosier
Print Courtesy: Contemporary Films
“For Madmen Only” reads the sign at the entrance to the Magic Theater in Steppenwolf. Fred Haines (no stranger to adapting gigantic works to the screen as the co-screenwriter of Joseph Strick’s adaptation of James Joyce’s seemingly unfilmable Ulysses) directs for the only time in this literally fantastic adaptation of Herman Hesse’s celebrated and philosophical novel. Ingmar Bergman’s constant lead actor, Max von Sydow, stars with Sanda in Haines’ fevered adaptation of Hesse’s exploration of the spiritual and sensual elements of human personality. We follow a worldweary writer considering suicide as he reaches midlife. That is until he meets Hermine, a beautiful young woman who shows unusual interest in him and makes him pledge obedience to her as she initiates him into the pleasures of the flesh, including jazz, drugs, and sex. Hermine eventually leads Harry to the Magic Theater, where a delirious dream about some aspect of his personality lurks behind every door—including, perhaps, his homicidal side.
Sponsored by The Living Tree CenterAcupuncture & Oriental Medicine
Une Femme Douce
France 1969 – Digital Projection – 88 minutes
In French with English subtitles
Director: Robert Bresson
Producer: Mag Bodard
Screenplay: Robert Bresson, based on the short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Cast: Dominique Sanda, Guy Frangin, Jeanne Lobre, Claude Ollier, Jacques Kébadian
Print Courtesy: Paramount Pictures
Dominique Sanda’s first film is one of the remarkable French director Robert Bresson’s greatest triumphs, the unforgettable Une Femme Douce (known in the U.S. at the time of its release as A Gentle Creature). Based on a Dostoevsky short story, it’s Bresson’s first in color. For a director with whom the word “rigorous” is seemingly always associated, an artist whose belief in the transcendent is reached through the quotidian, the color palette and the beauty of the young Sanda might seem contradictory. But that is not the way Une Femme Douce plays out, beginning with the suicide of Sanda’s Elle, and flashing back through her life through the eyes of her pawnbroker husband as he attempts to understand their troubled marriage and her tragic passing.
Sponsored by Thomas Crisp
The Bookshop
United Kingdom/Spain 2018 – DCP – 113 minutes
In English
Director: Isabel Coixet
Producers: Jaume Banacolocha, Joan Bas, Adolfo Blanco, Chris Curling
Screenplay: Isabel Coixet, based on the novel by Penelope Fitzgerald
Cast: Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, Hunter Tremayne, Honor Kneafsey
Print Courtesy: Greenwich Entertainment
England, 1959. Free-spirited widow Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) risks everything to open a bookshop in a conservative East Anglian coastal town. While bringing about a surprising cultural awakening through works by Ray Bradbury and Vladimir Nabokov (the “scandalous” novel Lolita), she earns the polite but ruthless opposition of a local grand dame (Patricia Clarkson) and the support and affection of a reclusive book loving widower (Bill Nighy). As Florence’s obstacles amass and bear suspicious signs of a local power struggle, she is forced to ask: is there a place for a bookshop in a town that may not want one? Based on Penelope Fitzgerald’s acclaimed novel and directed by Isabel Coixet (Learning to Drive, a top finisher in MIFF’s Audience Award voting in 2015), The Bookshop is an elegant yet incisive rendering of personal resolve, tested in the battle for the soul of a community. Isabel Coixet’s gentle, charming, and thoroughly principled new English-language film walked away with most major awards at her native Spain’s Oscar-equivalent Goya awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.
Sponsored by Ted and Barbara Alfond
Friday, July 13, 6:30 p.m., OH
Saturday, July 14, 6:00 p.m., RR3
Mark Tipton and Les Sorciers Perdus perform a live, newly-composed score! 7th
Heaven
United States 1927 – DCP – 110 minutes
Silent, with English intertitles
Director: Frank Borzage
Producer: William Fox
Screenplay: Benjamin Glazer, Katherine Hilliker, and H.H. Caldwell, based on the play by Austin Strong
Cast: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Albert Gran, David Butler, Marie Mosquini
Print Courtesy: 20th Century Fox
What a treat this evening will be! Last year’s audience burst into the most universal and enthusiastic applause and shouts of joy heard in MIFF’s history for the great silent film Sunrise with a new live score performed by Mark Tipton and Les Sorciers Perdus. The group has a newly composed score ready to premiere with one of the most enchanting movies around (especially for an early Oscar winner for Best Actress, Director and Screenplay). Frank Borzage’s absolutely charming Paris-set romance, 7th Heaven, with early American film icons Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, is simply as wonderful as cinema can get. A simple story of a street sweeper who takes in a young woman in trouble as the two find genuine love, is the basis for something far more. “Borzage’s films—or at least the coherent collection made between the mid-twenties and World War II—are sublime demonstrations of a system of sensual spirituality; products of their director’s uncompromising romanticism and fluent sense of cinemotion. 7th Heaven tracks the transformational love of Farrell and Gaynor from the sewers to the stars, across time and space, and beyond death itself, affirming triumphantly that melodrama can mean much more than just an excuse for a good weep”—Time Out
Sponsored by Camden National Bank
Wednesday, July 18, 6:30 p.m., OH
Support the Girls
United States 2018 – DCP – 94 minutes
In English
Director, Screenplay: Andrew Bujalski
Producers: Houston King, Sam Slater
Cast: Regina Hall, Haley Lou Richardson, Dylan Gelula, A.J. Michalka, Brooklyn Decker
Print Courtesy: Magnolia Pictures
Lisa—played by a spectacularly great Regina Hall (Scary Movie, Girls Trip)—is the last person you’d expect to find in a highway-side “sports bar with curves;” but as general manager at Double Whammies, she’s come to love the place and its customers. An incurable den mother, she nurtures and protects her girls fiercely—but over the course of one trying day, her optimism is battered from every direction. Double Whammies sells a big, weird American fantasy, but what happens when reality pokes a bunch of holes in it? Director/writer Andrew Bujalski’s (Computer Chess) pitch-perfect film, which balances between the comic and the seemingly not-so-funny reality of our culture, is keenly observed, quietly feminist, entirely woman-centric and sympathetic. This is just plain honest, true, artfully scripted, directed, and acted filmmaking.
Sponsored by Karen Heck and Bruce Olson, Tree Spirits of Maine
Sunday, July 22, 7:00 p.m., OH
Remembering Hal Ashby
In an age of nonconformity and innovation in Hollywood and in the country, Hal Ashby was an iconoclast’s iconoclast, a true original, a Hollywood maverick whose films were distinct and distinctly different. From Harold and Maude to Being There, from Shampoo to Coming Home, from Bound for Glory to The Last Detail, Ashby was beloved by his actors. With an outlook on American culture and politics casually but determinedly anti-establishment, Ashby’s art was always unmistakable. Hal couldn’t join us at MIFF this year—he passed 30 years ago, so he has a good excuse—but through the three films in this modest section devoted to him, he is joining us. Hal is a remarkable new film biography, and we have two of his finest works to show you in magisterial form—Oscar winner for Best Cinematography Bound for Glory in a stunning and rarely seen 35mm print, and Being There, the truly visionary story of an idiot who attains the highest level of power in the U.S. government, in a digital restoration.
Being There
United States 1979 – DCP – 130 minutes
In English
Director: Hal Ashby
Producer: Andrew Braunsberg
Screenplay Jerzy Kosinski, based on his novel
Principal Cast: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Dysart, Richard Basehart
Print Courtesy: Warner Brothers
The time is almost 40 years ago. Yet here’s a movie that foresees the rise to the heights of power in Washington of an idiot who does nothing but watch TV all day. Certainly Peter Sellers’ Chance the Gardener has very little in common with anyone who might happen to come to mind with that description—he’s a poor and unpretentious man, whatever else he might be. Yet Being There, Ashby’s sly, unique final ’70s masterpiece, looks somehow both prescient and philosophical, comic and tragic, a Zen fable and a wicked satire. Melvyn Douglas took home an Oscar and the film was nominated for a Best Comedy Golden Globe (but is it really a comedy?) along with many other awards. Is it of its time or of ours? In this DCP digital restoration, Being There will be “Being Here” at MIFF for you to decide.
Sponsored by Boy Locksmith
35mm Print! Bound for Glory
United States 1976 – 35mm – 147 minutes
In English
Director: Hal Ashby
Producers: Robert F. Blumofe, Charles Mulvehill
Screenplay: Robert Getchell, based on the autobiography by Woody Guthrie
Cast: David Carradine, Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland, Randy Quaid
Print Courtesy: Park Circus Films
A once-in-a-lifetime chance to see one of the most gorgeously shot movies ever in an original 35mm print! The pre-fame life of legendary singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie is the subject of Ashby’s one-of-a-kind film, winner of two Oscars—one for the jaw-dropping cinematography of Dustbowl-era America by the great Haskell Wexler (including the first-ever use of a Steadicam shot)—and a nominee for four more, including Best Picture. NOT nominated—and certainly one of the greatest omissions in Oscar history—was David Carradine’s sly, affecting, natural, and utterly winning incarnation of Woody Guthrie. The film “captures a truth that is idiosyncratically American, as hard as a rock and as exhilarating as a fresh breeze. In his own unobtrusive way, Ashby—working through a magnificent performance by Carradine—has converted technical virtuosity to his own end, creating a richly ambiguous character study that sings and provokes and celebrates”—Molly Haskell, Village Voice. This Land is Your Land, indeed.
Sponsored by Zachary-Allen Wallace
United States 2018 – DCP – 90 minutes
In English
Director: Amy Scott
Producers: Christine Beebe, Lisa Janssen, Jonathan Lynch, Brian Morrow
With: Hal Ashby, Judd Apatow, Jeff Bridges, Rosanna Arquette, Jane Fonda
Print Courtesy: Oscilloscope Films
Ashby’s singular genius led to an unprecedented string of Oscar-winning films in the 1970s. His legacy is undeniable. And yet, the obsessive and uncompromising nature that brought us these films became his downfall. In Hal, on-camera interviews with Oscar-winning actors Lee Grant, Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Louis Gossett Jr., Jeff Bridges, and more recall how they were empowered by Ashby and granted collaborative freedom. Contemporary directors including Alexander Payne, Judd Apatow, Lisa Cholodenko, and David O. Russell attest to the quiet but powerful influence Ashby has had on their own filmmaking. Behind the camera colleagues Norman Jewison, Robert Towne, Haskell Wexler, and Pablo Ferro stand witness to Ashby’s brilliance as a filmmaker and the forces that led to his undoing. While on the outside Ashby embodied a quintessentially peaceful vibe, internally he was dealing with deeper issues that he then transformed into the main themes of his work. Out of his anti-authoritarian inclinations leftover from a troubled childhood emerged a filmmaker dedicated to making prescient films that challenged racial stereotypes and gentrification; examined military authority; celebrated love that knows no color, age or race; explored sexual politics during a time of national crisis; championed a socialist folk singer; illuminated the plight of veterans and the cost of war; and revealed the dark underbelly of corporate control of American politics.
Sponsored by Mike Perreault
Saturday, July 14, 9:30 p.m., RR1
Monday, July 16, 6:30 p.m., RR1
We mean every word of our name at MIFF. We are a film festival, we are a Maine film festival, and we are an international film festival. And, though we took a year off from presenting our annual World Filmmakers’ Forum last year, we are thrilled to be hosting the Forum and its fantastic crew of filmmakers again this year— especially since their films are so terrific!
This year’s MIFF includes films from 33 countries. And it includes some of the most exciting, fresh, imaginative, optimistic and downright thrilling movies in the festival. But the works by our World Filmmakers’ Forum guests are even more so.
Is it a coincidence that all our guests this year are from South or Central America? Perhaps and perhaps not. What the creations of Alana Simões, Santiago Gallelli, and Juliana Rojas have in common is their creativity and vitality—and there’s an abundance of that to be found in the cinema of those regions.
We anticipate some great discussions and look forward to the energy of these fine filmmakers at their films’ showings. Each of our guests is a world-class delight.
U.S. Premiere! Mi Hermano (My Brother)
Mexico 2018 – DCP – 70 minutes
In Spanish and Russian with English subtitles
Director: Alana Simões
Screenplay: Alana Simões, Aldo Alvarez Morales
Print Courtesy: Alana Simões
Alexey was born in Russia and adopted by Gabriela, a single woman in Spain. Later, Gabriela and Alexey adopted Mateo, another child from Siberia. Over the course of nine years, Alexey and Mateo demonstrate what it means to build bonds of reciprocal trust despite the internal conflicts they face. Director Alana Simões says of her first feature, truly a labor of love in more ways than one: “I see this relationship I’ve followed for years now as the purest manifestation of affection: the chosen brotherhood, the shared orphanage.” Mi Hermano is an affecting experience for the film’s subjects and for its audience.
Sponsored by Bria Watson
Alana Simões
Alana Simões is no longer “a filmmaker to watch.” She is a filmmaker who is being watched! And she has a path through South and Central America that, combined with her unique yet sensitive style, has taken her from Brazil (where she was born), through Cuba (where she graduated from Film School), to Mexico, where she currently lives, teaching and making films. As a documentary maker with vision and compassion, her eye and heart are evident in every movie she makes.
Monday, July 16, 6:15 p.m., RR2
Friday, July 20, 3:15 p.m., RR2
Shorts by Alana Simões: Yo Dual, Marti, The Mexican Dream (teaser)
Cuba/Cuba/Mexico 2007/2007/2018 – Digital Projection – 34 minutes
In Spanish with English subtitles and in English
Prints courtesy: Alana Simões
Alana Simões is involved in so many interesting projects! Americans will be fascinated by the material she’s currently shooting for a timely documentary series called The Mexican Dream, which focuses on migration across the Mexico-USA border. Instead of showing the northward flow of Mexican migrants searching for a better life, it pictures the opposite: southbound Americans crossing the border to spend the rest of their lives in Mexico. The Chapala Lakeside, 40 km from Guadalajara, lodges the largest community of American expatriates. Many of them are retired baby boomers fleeing the U.S. because of disillusion with our country; however, younger immigrants are seen more and more often in the region. Before this series and her first feature, Mi Hermano, Simões made two extraordinary shorts in Cuba: Yo Dual, following a Cuban artist and the dual aspects of his own personality and of Cuban culture; and Marti, exploring the life of a man whose destiny is sealed with the repetition of misfortunes as he tries to overcome a crime he has committed, one which many might commit under the same circumstances.
Saturday, July 14, 3:15 p.m., RR2
Santiago Gallelli
Santiago Gallelli, usually working with his producing partner Benjamín Doménech, has in a short time become not just the most important young producer in South America, but simply the most important. His projects have ranged from past international co-productions like Madly and Kill Me Please to the two recent films we’re screening here at MIFF: The Queen of Fear, a signature film at Sundance this year, and Zama, just nominated for 11 Argentinian Academy Award equivalents. Remarkably, Gallelli has accomplished this feat in less than a decade.
The Queen of Fear
Argentina 2018 – DCP – 107 minutes In Spanish with English subtitles
Director, Screenplay: Valeria Bertuccelli
Co-Director: Fabiana Tiscornia
Producers: Santiago Gallelli, Benjamín Doménech, Christian Faillace, Juan Pablo Galli, Matias Roveda, Juan Vera Principal Cast: Valeria Bertuccelli, Gabriel Goity, Darío Grandinetti, Anders Hvidegaard, Stine Primdahl
Print Courtesy: Visit Films
The latest film from the dazzling Argentinian producing team of Santiago Gallelli and Benjamín Doménech, The Queen of Fear is a tour-de-force for its amazing lead actress, Valeria Bertuccelli, who also directed and wrote it. The Sundance Film Festival, where the film premiered, said: “The Queen of Fear (follows) eccentric yet lovable Robertina, a celebrated theatre actress whose onewoman show is set to open in a week. Occupied with half-hearted rehearsals, she tries to distract herself from her husband’s unexplained absence. When she discovers a close friend from her past is dying, she doesn’t hesitate to drop everything and fly across the world to visit him one last time. Their bittersweet reunion forces Robertina to re-examine her priorities and the opulent lifestyle she has fashioned for herself. Steeped in subtle absurdist comedy and featuring a remarkable lead performance at its core, The Queen of Fear is unafraid to explore apprehension and theatricality, questioning what it means to unravel in a world that is so tightly wound. Valeria Bertuccelli [is] a virtuoso storyteller capable of perfectly balancing the pathos and humor of this elegant and meditative story, which promises to charm and disconcert in equal measure.”
Sponsored by Joel and Alice Johnson
Sunday, July 15, 3:30 p.m., RR1
Wednesday, July 18, 3:15 p.m., RR2
Zama
Argentina 2018 – Digital Projection – 115 minutes
In Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Lucretia Martel
Producers: Santiago Gallelli, Benjamín Doménech, Matias Roveda, Vânia Catani, Screenplay: Lucretia Martel, based on the novel by Antonio Di Benedetto
Cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lola Dueñas, Matheus Nachtergaele, Juan Minujín, Nahuel Cano
Print Courtesy: Strand Releasing
Argentina’s Lucretia Martel (La Cienaga) is one of the most revered directors in the world. Her new film, Zama, based on a bonkers but characteristically Argentinian novel from the ’50s that looks back on a country and a culture, is her first in nine years, and has been greeted with the loudest cheers of all. “In the opening shot of this film, the title character, Don Diego de Zama, stands on a beach, striking, on the sand at low tide, what we can infer he considers a heroic pose. Zama’s pose makes a provisionally handsome picture, but the movie doesn’t wait long to puncture its protagonist’s pretension. While he was born in South America, Don Diego is a colonizer from Spain, a functionary in its government stationed far from his wife and children. The governor to whom he’s asked for a letter of transfer, so he may reunite with his family, sets arbitrary conditions before he’ll even consider writing to the king to get the process started. Ms. Martel’s attention to period detail is impeccable. Zama is a mordantly funny and relentlessly modernist critique of colonialism that makes no conclusions, ultimately resting on a scene of verdant nature not entirely stained by humanity.”—Glenn Kenny, rogerebert.com.
Sponsored by Juliet Goodfriend and Marc Moreau
Tuesday, July 17, 3:30 p.m., RR1
Juliana Rojas
Sometimes filmmakers’ success comes out of the blue—a shockingly great debut film or a total about face from previously undistinguished work by an industry veteran. But sometimes a director—or in the case of Juliana Rojas and collaborator Marco Dutra, a pair of directors—reaches a stunning success you really could have predicted from a steady path of increasingly ambitious and fully fulfilled previous work, starting with shorts, moving through promising features and finally culminating in something that makes you just shake your head and say, “Wow!” With Juliana Rojas and collaborator Marco Dutra, a path through stopovers like the Cannes and SXSW Film Festivals took them to that “Wow!” film, Good Manners, and to Maine.
Good Manners
Brazil 2017 – DCP – 135 minutes
In Portuguese with English subtitles
Directors, Screenplay: Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra
Producers: Frédéric Corvez, Clément Duboin, Sara Silveira
Cast: Isabél Zuaa, Marjorie Estiano, Miguel Lobo, Cida Moreira, Andréa Marquee
Print Courtesy: Distrib Films
Want to rediscover the thrill of cinema? Try seeing Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s mind-blowingly subversive Brazilian surprise, Good Manners, “a fairy tale, a horror movie, a romance, a musical and a social parable...ALL-IN-ONE MOVIE!”—Film De Culto. Clara is a care worker living on the outskirts of São Paulo. Struggling to make ends meet, she accepts the position of live-in nanny to the as-yet unborn child of a wealthy single woman named Ana. The two women immediately develop a strong bond, but Ana’s increasingly strange behavior hints at a deep, dark secret. Then, one night, the shocking truth emerges. What starts as an eccentrically styled slice of social realism morphs into something else entirely, without ever compromising the emotional integrity of its characters, nor stretching narrative credibility, no matter how weird things get—and they do get truly weird. To say any more would be to spoil a bit of the breathtaking fun of Good Manners, a movie that’s unafraid of breaking rules and creating new ones.
Sponsored by Abi Manter
Hard Labor
Brazil 2011 – DCP – 99 minutes
In Portuguese with English subtitles
Directors, Screenplay: Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra
Producer: Sara Silveira
Cast: Helena Albergaria, Marat Descartes, Naloana Lima, Gilda Nomacce, Marina Flores
Print Courtesy: Cinema Slate
“The Shining meets a Vittorio De Sica film”—AP, fitting for Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s predecessor to the incredible mixed genres of Good Manners. In Hard Labor, a middle-class couple slowly succumbs to the allures of entrepreneurship and the horrors of a schizophrenic job market. As Helena starts a new business venture (a small grocery store), her white-collar husband Otávio is let go from his job. Determined to stay afloat, Otávio goes on a series of ego-crushing job interviews and is forced to adapt to the needs of a new economy. Helena, now the family’s breadwinner, discovers that the building housing her store has a sinister past. Beautifully translating the evanescent forces of cyber-age economics into a Grand Guignol of kitchen-sink sensibilities, Hard Labor is a true original.
Sponsored by Dorcas Miller and Ben Townsend
Friday, July 20, 9:30 p.m., RR1
Saturday, July 21, 6:30 p.m., RR1
Sunday, July 22, 12:15 p.m., RR2
Parties & Receptions
Opening Night Party
Friday, July 13, 9:00 p.m.
Castonguay Square
(Just outside the Opera House)
Catered by Silver Street Tavern
Join us for a festive kick-off to MIFF 2018, featuring live music by Jelly Sauce.
Sponsored by Are You Ready to Party??
World Filmmakers’ Forum Party
Thursday, July 19, 7:30–10:00 p.m., 18 Below, 18 Silver Street
This year’s MIFF hosts films from 33 countries. And it includes some of the most exciting, fresh, imaginative, optimistic and downright thrilling movies in the festival. Join us to honor World Filmmakers’ Forum guests Alana Simões, Santiago Gallelli, and Juliana Rojas. Appetizers, cash bar.
Student Filmmakers’ Reception
Saturday, July 21, 2:30 p.m.
Jorgensen’s Cafe
103 Main Street
Connect with some of Maine’s most talented young filmmakers and celebrate their outstanding work. Light refreshments.
Party for Dominique Sanda
Sunday, July 15, 8:30 p.m.
Itali-ah Market & Restaurant
74 Main Street
Come and celebrate the fabulous Dominique Sanda, this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award honoree. Enjoy hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar.
Maine Film Forum
Saturday, July 21, 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Common Street Arts
93 Main Street
You’re invited to Making it in Maine Day at MIFF! Brunch with MIFF filmmaker guests, film festival leaders and educators from across the state, as well as representatives from the Maine Film Office. Special presentation on the History of Women in Film by Andi Isaacs. Refreshments provided by Meridians.
Closing Night Party
Centerpiece Gala Reception
Wednesday, July 18, 8:30 p.m.
Amici’s Cucina
137 Main Street, Waterville
Celebrate returning MIFF favorites
Mark Tipton and Les Sorciers
Perdus after they premiere a newly composed score alongside one of the most enchanting movies in film history. Hors d’oeuvres, cash bar.
Sunday, July 22, 9:00 p.m.
Portland Pie Co.
173 Main Street
Join the MIFF staff to close the festival and celebrate MIFF 21! Delicious slices, cash bar.
Workshops
VJ
Suave: Tilt Brush workshop—for kids!
Monday, July 16, 1:00–3:00 p.m.
Common Street Arts
93 Main Street
VJ Suave teaches students to draw in a virtual 3D environment using Tilt Brush. Tilt Brush VR transports the user inside their drawing so they can walk around their own creations.
In the workshop the participants engage with virtual reality gaining experience in 3D digital drawing techniques. Space is the canvas, the palette is imagination, the possibilities are endless. Students can paint with three-dimensional brushes, stars, lights, and even fire! Experience painting like never before while walking around the art. Free and open to the public.
Children’s Discovery Museum: Mobile Museum
Wednesday, July 18, 1:00–4:00 p.m.
Castonguay Square
Visit the Children’s Discovery Museum’s mobile museum with sensory activities in the park! Free and open to the public.
Children’s Discovery Museum: Mobile Museum
Thursday, July 19, 2:00–6:00 p.m.
Castonguay Square
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Mini Pin Hole Cameras
Thursday, July 19, 4:00–6:00 p.m. Common Street Arts
93 Main Street
Explore the Children’s Discovery Museum’s mobile museum with sensory activities and enjoy Art in the Park! Make a simple pin hole camera from cardboard and tracing paper. Design and decorate the outside of the camera and learn about how the first camera and film images were created. Free and open to the public.
MIFF Celebrity Drawing
Tuesday, July 17, 5:30–8:00 p.m.
Common Street Arts
93 Main Street
Draw a MIFF celebrity! Seasoned and aspiring artists are invited to participate in the life drawing program hosted by Common Street Arts. This program provides a unique opportunity for emerging and established artists to hone their drawing skills in a supportive environment. Participants bring their media of choice: charcoal, pastels, paint, clay, etc. and CSA provides the chairs, costumed model, and camaraderie. $5 entry
The Celebrity Drawing session is open to all levels of experience and is with without formal instruction. Scholarships available to high school students. For more information call 872-ARTS or email serena@watervillecreates.org.
MIFF Art Happy Hour
Wednesday, July 18, 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Common Street Arts
93 Main Street
Art Happy Hour (MIFF style!) Make your own card print using 35 mm film. Snacks and wine. $25 entry
VJ Suave: Tilt Brush workshop—for adults!
Friday, July 20, 4:30–6:30 p.m.
Common Street Arts
93 Main Street
VJ Suave teaches students to draw in a virtual 3D environment using Tilt Brush. Tilt Brush VR program transports the user inside their drawing so they can walk around their own creations. 3D models and virtual reality videos can be created to share. Students can paint with three-dimensional brushes, stars, lights, and even fire! Experience painting like never before while walking around the art. Free and open to the public.
New Restoration
Andrei Rublev
Russia 1966 – DCP – 183 minutes
In Russian, Italian, and Tartar with English subtitles
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenplay: Andrey Konchalovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky
Cast: Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolay Grinko, Nikolay Sergeev, Irina Tarkovskaya, Nikolay Burlyaev
Print Courtesy: Janus Films
This is an exciting event: the long-awaited restoration of the full-length version of the film that first brought the unique and legendary Russian filmmaking genius Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker, Solaris) to worldwide attention. With his second feature, a towering epic that took him years to complete, Tarkovsky waded deep into the past and emerged with a visionary masterwork. Threading together several self-contained episodes, the filmmaker follows renowned icon painter Andrei Rublev through the harsh realities of medieval Russian life, vividly conjuring the dark and otherworldly atmosphere of the age: a primitive hot-air balloon takes to the sky, snow falls inside an unfinished church, naked pagans celebrate the midsummer solstice, and a young man oversees the casting of a gigantic bell. Appearing here in Tarkovsky’s preferred 183-minute cut, the version that was originally censored by Soviet authorities, Andrei Rublev is an arresting meditation on art, faith, and endurance, and a powerful reflection on expressive constraints in the director’s own time, a visually overwhelming masterpiece.
New Restoration Jabberwocky
United Kingdom 1977 – DCP – 105 minutes
In English
Director: Terry Gilliam
Producer: Sanford Lieberson
Screenplay: Terry Gilliam, Charles Alverson, based on the poem by Lewis Carroll
Cast: Michael Palin, Harry H. Corbett, John Le Mesurier, Warren Mitchell, Max Wall
Print Courtesy: Rainbow Releasing, The Film Foundation
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!” Lewis Carroll’s poem from Through the Looking Glass goes on to also warn its young hero to “beware the Jubjub bird and shun the frumious Bandersnatch,” but it was the Jabberwocky, as depicted in John Tenniel’s unforgettable original illustration, that seized many young minds, including Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Time Bandits, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys), who directed his first film outside the Monty Python fold (although still starring the group’s Michael Palin) in this startlingly imaginative 1977 film whimsically based on the poem. Comic and, of course, wildly imaginative, Jabberwocky follows young peasant Dennis Cooper, who has no interest in adventure or fortune, yet is mistaken as the kingdom’s only hope when a horrible monster threatens the countryside. Restored by the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
Sponsored by Jabar, LaLiberty & Dubord, Attorneys at Law
New Restoration La Vérité (The Truth)
France 1960 – DCP – 127 minutes
In French with English subtitles
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Producer: Raoul Levy
Screenplay: Henri-Georges Clouzot, Simone Drieu, Michèle Perrein, Jérôme Géronimi, Christiane Rochefort, Véra Clouzot
Principal Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Paul Meurisse, Charles Vanel, Print Courtesy: Sony Pictures, The Film Foundation
An Oscar nominee in 1960 and Golden Globe winner that same year, La Vérité has subsequently been almost forgotten, though it’s directed by no less than the great French creator of The Wages of Fear and Diabolique, Henri-Georges Clouzot, and stars the greatest French star of her era, Brigitte Bardot. Forgotten no more, this dazzling new DCP restoration brings the film the attention it deserves. La Verité is a courtroom mystery: “Bardot has killed the man she loves, who also happens to be her sister’s fiancée. But what she’s really on trial for is for being a woman, for being young and for being unconventional. It’s 1960 France that the film really judges and finds wanting. Clouzot fills the frame with dozens of pretentious hypocrites or figures of authority, condemning them all. Bardot, always at the centre, is a beacon of beauty, truth, and liberty. She accepts who she is, chooses to act in freedom, and takes responsibility for her actions. Bardot’s Dominique Marceau is French cinema’s greatest and most romantic existentialist heroine. Bardot in La Vérité is what people claim falsely for Brando in The Wild One She and the film are both great.”—Jose Arroyo, First Impressions Restored by Sony Pictures Entertainment in partnership with The Film Foundation and RT Features.
Sponsored by The Children’s Book Cellar and RE-BOOKS
Sunday, July 15, 12:00 p.m., RR1
Thursday, July 19, 5:00 p.m., RR3
Wednesday, July 18, 9:30 p.m., OH
Saturday, July 21, 9:15 p.m., RR2
Friday, July 13, 9:15 p.m., RR2
Saturday, Jul 21, 6:00 p.m., RR3
New Restoration Lucía
Cuba 1968 – DCP – 160 minutes
In Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Humberto Solás
Producers: Raúl Canosa, Camilo Vives
Screenplay: Julio García Espinosa, Nelson Rodríguez, Humberto Solás
Cast: Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Núñez, Adela Legrá, Eduardo Moure, Ramón Brito, Adolfo, Llauradó
Print Courtesy: Cineteca di Bologna, The Film Foundation
Lucía was a jolt when it first was seen in the U.S. and Europe. Fidel Castro’s Cuba of the ’60s had been so demonized and simplified for its communist government being so close to U.S. territory that the appearance of Humberto Solás’ elegant, complex, gorgeous, “European” black and white masterpiece about three generations of Cuban women in different eras was downright shocking. It was also an exhilarating artistic experience. Solás’ vision in Lucía is of three women, all named Lucía, in three very different eras in Cuban history: the late 19th century, the 1930s, and the film’s own era. This astonishingly rich new restoration is a major rediscovery. Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). Restoration funded by Turner Classic Movies and The Foundation’s World Cinema Project.
Sponsored by Jak Peters
New Restoration Picture of Light
Canada 1994 – DCP – 83 minutes
In English
Director, Screenplay: Peter Mettler
Producers: Alexandra Rockingham Gill, Peter Mettler, Ingrid Veninger
With: Gavin Connor, Brian Ladoon, Don Lind, Peter Mettler, Kees Verspeek
Print Courtesy: First Run Features
Aurora Borealis: the Northern Lights. We see them in Maine in winter—if we’re very lucky. But you see them more reliably and more spectacularly as you head north. So that’s what Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler and his brave crew did to make Picture of Light, shown here in a new restoration so those lights haven’t faded. Mettler heads to Canada’s arctic in search of one of Earth’s greatest natural wonders. While combining glimpses of the characters who live in this remote environment with the film crew’s comic and absurd attempts to deal with the extreme cold, the film reveals the paradoxes involved in trying to capture the spectacular light show of the Northern Lights on celluloid. But, non-spoiler alert: they do!
Sponsored by The Jenson Family
New Restoration Sansho Dayo (Sansho the Bailiff)
Japan 1954 – DCP – 124 minutes
In Japanese with English subtitles
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Screenplay: Fuji Yahiro and Yoshikata Yoda, based on the short story by Ogai Mori
Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyôko Kagawa, Eitarô Shindô, Akitake Kôno
Print Courtesy: Janus Films, The Film Foundation
It’s pretty easy to make the case that Kenji Mizoguchi is one of the greatest directors in cinema history, and that case gets easier every year. His sublime and transcendent masterpieces, usually showing a sympathy and reverence for the lives of women, look more and more like masterpieces that will be revered centuries from now (should we still be here). Of all of his films, Sansho Dayo may be the most universally loved, and this new DCP restoration brings it to the screen in its most dazzling form. When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually wrenched apart by vicious slave traders. Under Mizoguchi’s dazzling direction, this classic Japanese story became one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil. Restored by KADOKAWA Corporation and The Film Foundation at Cineric, Inc. in New York with sound by Audio Mechanics, with the cooperation of The Japan Foundation. Special thanks to Masahiro Miyajima and Martin Scorsese for their consultation.
Sponsored by Shannon Haines and Norman Shirley
Saturday, July 14, 6:15 p.m., RR2
Wednesday, July 18, 6:15 p.m., RR2
Saturday, July 21, 9:30 p.m., OH
Saturday, July 22, 3:30 p.m., RR1
Wednesday, July 18, 3:30 p.m., OH
Friday, July 20, 9:00 p.m., RR3
New Restoration Soleil Ô (Oh, Sun)
Mauritania/France 1970 – DCP – 98 minutes
In French and Arabic with English subtitles
Director, Screenplay: Med Hondo
Cast: Robert Liensol, Théo Légitimus, Gabriel Glissant, Mabousso Lo, Bernard Fresson
Print Courtesy: Cineteca di Bologna, The Film Foundation
Timely? You could say that, or you could say “the more things change….” Whatever you might say, Soleil Ô is a discovery rather than a rediscovery. An amazing work of art from the late ’60s, little seen even at the time and largely forgotten since, made with four years of labor and almost no money in a time when movies could not be made that way, it expresses life from an outsider’s point of view. There’s really nothing else like it, and its restoration is cause for both aesthetic and political celebration. In director Med Hondo’s Locarno Film Festival prize-winner, a black immigrant from Mauritania makes his way to Paris in search of “his Gaul ancestors.” This filmic manifesto denounces a new form of slavery: immigrants desperately seek work and a place to live, but find themselves face to face with indifference, rejection, and humiliation, before heeding the final call for uprising. “Soleil Ô” is the title of a West Indian song that tells of the pain of the black people from Dahomey (now Benin) who were taken to the Caribbean as slaves. Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in collaboration with Med Hondo. Restoration funded by the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and UNESCO–in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna.
Sponsored by Waterville United Church of Christ
Sunday, July 15, 9:00 p.m., RR3
Monday, July 16, 3:00 p.m., RR3
New Restoration Transatlantic
United States 1931 – DCP – 78 minutes
In English
Director: WIlliam K. Howard:
Screenplay: Guy Bolton, Lynn Starling
Cast: Edmund Lowe, Lois Moran, Myrna Loy, John Halliday, Greta Nissen, Jean Hersholt
Print Courtesy: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The Film Foundation, 20th Century Fox
A 1931 Oscar winner, Transatlantic boasts stunning soft focus cinematography from the unrivaled James Wong Howe in its magnificent luxury oceanliner set, and a genuinely suspenseful story told with rapid-fire editing, a swooningly mobile camera and a sharp-tongued script—in Year 4 of the “talkies.” The film exhibits a relatively early performance by Myrna Loy, terrific direction from William K. Howard, and laudatory reviews from the New York Times for bringing “considerably more entertainment than is usual” (we concur) and having “almost as many plots as it has officers.” What more could you want in this lovely restoration? Restored by the Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation. DCP courtesy of The Film Foundation Conservation Collection at the Academy Film Archive.
Sponsored by Bob and Arleen Lovelace
Restoration Premiere! When You Read This Letter
France 1953 – DCP – 104 minutes
In French with English subtitles
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Producers: Jean-Pierre Melville, Paul Temps
Screenplay: Jacques Deval
Cast: Philippe Lemaire, Juliette Gréco, Yvonne Sanson, Robert Dalban, Daniel Cauchy
Print Courtesy: Rialto Pictures
Jean-Pierre Melville’s burgeoning reputation as one of the greatest French directors in history is startlingly augmented by this dazzling new 4K restoration. But it turns out that this film—which Melville himself tended to dismiss as a stepping stone to his other work, including Bob Le Flambeur, Army of Shadows and Le Cercle Rouge (shown at MIFF last year)—is a masterpiece of its own, and absolutely of a piece in its dark, ironic, and shadowy moral world with his more celebrated works. Is it strange for a noir to start in a convent? After her parents’ sudden death, Thérèse (Juliette Gréco) decides to leave the convent to run the family business and care for her younger sister, who is involved with local lowlife, Max (Philippe Lemaire). Attempted suicide, blackmail, a rigged car accident, and a one-sided love affair bring this remarkable film to a startling conclusion.
Saturday, July 14, 3:00 p.m., RR3
Friday, July 20, 6:00 p.m., RR3
Monday, July 16, 9:30 p.m., OH
Sunday, July 22, 12:30 p.m., RR1
The sixth volume of MIFFONEDGE features a suite of immersive sensory experiences. This program asks us to step outside of our everyday perception and look with fresh eyes. We are thrilled to welcome Brazilian new media artist duo VJ Suave back to MIFFONEDGE. VJ Suave joins us with an exciting new virtual reality exhibit, Floresta Encantada (Enchanted Forest), in which they take us into a magical forest. Immerse yourself in the forest scene and explore a virtual world. Susan Bickford’s project (stillness)15 asks us to meditate on the nature of water as we explore an entire cycle of a reversing falls. An homage to the inspirational power of Maine’s rivers, Susan’s project is a delight for the senses.
About VJ Suave
VJ Suave is a new media artist duo formed by Ygor Marotta and Ceci Soloaga.
Specialists in digital art and moving projection, VJ Suave’s 2D frame-by-frame animations are projected on urban surfaces. Displaying an art concept called digital graffiti, blending technology with street art. Along with their works, the duo proposes a unique moment of connection between the spectator and the city, mixing animated story with real life. The animated projections in movement make the narrative come to life, where the characters can run and color the environments.
Floresta Encantada (Enchanted Forest)
by VJ Suave
In this new installation VJ Suave investigates a new technology: virtual reality, a tool that is able to lead the visitor to other dimensions. Mixing 3D animation, programming, spatial audio and a game creation tool, the artists transport viewers into a magical forest, where they are free to choose their own paths and actions.
The goal is to release the story characters in the city. Now they go further and bring the viewers into their own universe, where they can interact with the scenery, objects, characters, and also with their own bodies.
Through total immersion in the forest’s ambience, the installation invites the public to have a self-aware experience, instigating many reflections. The forests are full, energetic, and powerful places. Nature reminds us who we are and that we are all a part of it. It is necessary to broaden the perception that goes beyond the view, to experience the environment with all the senses.
Open daily 12:00–7:00 pm
July 14–21
Common Street Arts
93 Main Street Free admission
Tilt Brush workshop with VJ Suave
VJ Suave teaches students to draw in a virtual 3D environment using Tilt Brush. The Tilt Brush VR program transports the user inside their drawing so they can walk around their own creations. The subject of the workshop can be adapted and 3D models and virtual reality videos can be created to share.
In this workshop, participants engage with virtual reality and gain experience in 3D digital drawing techniques. Space is the canvas, the palette is imagination, the possibilities are endless. Students can paint with three-dimensional brushes, stars, lights, and even fire! Experience painting like never before while walking around your creation.
Bickford’s approach to art is a deeply ecological one. A Certified Nature Therapy Guide, Bickford also holds an MFA from Maine College of Art and a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Winner of the 2017 Maine Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in Media and Performance, Susan Bickford has been creating interdisciplinary collaborative retreats/performances in nature since 2001. These performances also result in video installations which are shown in traditional art spaces. The (stillness) project is an annual event begun in 2015, migrating through sites along the waterways of Midcoast Maine. She is a lecturer at the University of Maine at Augusta as well as Director of the Danforth Gallery.
(stillness)15, 56:22 rt loop
Susan Bickford welcomes us into a meditation for the fifty-six minute twenty-two second duration of a natural shift in flow at a reversing falls with an interdisciplinary performance of being at its center. She lifts the veil at its edges to reveal her process as a videographer and asks us to virtually sit within this place, become aware of our attention and discover endless wonder from multiple perspectives simultaneously.
Children’s Discovery Museum: Mobile Museum without Walls
Have you ever seen a bug X-ray? Can you build a mini roller-coaster for balls? What happens when you pour all the water into the funnel really fast? Come explore the Children’s Discovery Museum’s mobile Museum without Walls - a series of mini pop-up interactive exhibits that invite you to experiment, tinker, and get a bit messy.
