Jay Cocks Introduces: A Tribute to Verna Bloom

Jay Cocks Introduces A Tribute to Verna Bloom

Verna Bloom was a frequent MIFF guest and dear friend who came for the first time in 2002 and for the last in 2017, when she was one of the special returning guests for our 20th year celebration. In 2004, we honored the richly-deserving Verna with a special section, and in the catalog that year, we said: “What a pleasure it is to welcome Verna Bloom back to MIFF, and, for the first time, to officially honor one of the finest actresses of our era with a tribute to her brilliant work. Verna has graced MIFF with her presence each of the past two years with screenings of Peter Fonda’s masterpiece The Hired Hand, in which her unforgettable performance established a new standard, defining women’s strength in the traditionally male domain of westerns. Verna went on to co-star with Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter and Honky Tonk Man, to play no less a personage than Mary, Mother of Jesus, in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, and to make an indelible appearance in Scorsese’s After Hours after a memorable turn in the original Animal House. Lots of great acting. Lots of films. Verna Bloom.”

Verna, who lived in Maine part of each year, returned to MIFF many more times, but we never showed After Hours. We get to rectify that this year, and also show her amazingly incendiary first starring film, Medium Cool, shot in part around the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention, as a way of honoring such a wonderful presence, such a wonderful actress, one who we miss today and always will.

35mm print! After Hours

USA—1985—35mm—97 Minutes

In English Director: Martin Scorsese

Screenplay: Joseph Minion

Producers: Amy Robinson, Griffin Dunne, Robert F. Colesberry

Cast: Griffin Dunne, Verna Bloom, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Catherine O’Hara, Tommy Chong, Cheech Marin, Will Patton

Print courtesy: Warner Brothers

A most unusual film in the canon of both director Martin Scorsese and one of its stars, Verna Bloom, After Hours is both very particular to its mid’80s era and New York locale and timeless in its evocation of paranoia and black humor. “Martin Scorsese transforms a debilitating convention of ’80s comedy—absurd underreaction to increasingly bizarre and threatening situations—into a rich, wincingly funny metaphysical farce. A lonely computer programmer is lured from the workday security of midtown Manhattan to an expressionistic late-night SoHo by the vague promise of casual sex with a mysterious blonde (Rosanna Arquette)”—Dave Kehr. The computer programmer’s (Griffin Dunne) almost Joycean odyssey is populated by one of the more remarkable casts of the era, including Bloom’s June, an unusual creator of unusual sculptures, as well as Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, and Catherine O’Hara.

Sponsored by Lee Feigon

35mm print! Medium Cool

USA—1969—35mm—111 Minutes

In English

Director, Screenplay: Haskell Wexler

Producers: Jerold Wexler, Haskell Wexler, Tully Friedman

Music: Mike Bloomfield

Cast: Verna Bloom, Robert Forster, Peter Bonerz, Mariana Field Print courtesy: The Academy Film Archive,The Film Foundation, Paramount Pictures

There simply is no film like Medium Cool. Shot on location in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention, which turned into a national nightmare when police started beating anti-Vietnam War protesters, cinematographer Haskell Wexler turns director in a fiction film with a script that unexpectedly became a hybrid of fiction and incendiary documentary. This was an unprecedented moment in American history, following the 1967 Summer of Love, as the counterculture proposed something different to a war and murders at home (Bobby Kennedy was assassinated just a month earlier) that seemed to contradict that vision in the worst possible way. Against this incredible background, a TV news cameraman (Robert Forster) and an Appalachian woman, achingly played by Verna Bloom, might dare to fall in love. “A kind of cinematic Guernica”—Vincent Canby, New York Times

Sponsored by Shannon Haines

Monday, July 15, 6:30 p.m., WOH

Sunday, July 14, 9:30 p.m., RR1

New England premiere! Blow the Man Down

USA—2019—DCP—90 Minutes

In English

Directors, Screenplay: Bridget Savage Cole, Danielle Krudy

Producers: Drew Houpt, Alex Scharfman

Music: David Coffin

Cast: Sophie Lowe, Morgan Saylor, Margo Martindale, June Squibb, Annette O’Toole, Marceline Hugot, Will Brittain

Print courtesy: Drew Houpt, Alex Schafman

Friday, July 12, 6:30 p.m., WOH

Saturday, July 20, 6:30 p.m., WOH

This is not your ordinary everyday Made-in-Maine movie, if there is such a thing. Blow the Man Down was shot in late winter, not midsummer. Yes, it was shot on the coast, but…the Chambers of Commerce there might not really use it to sell the area—or maybe they will, because this is one terrific movie, even if the skies are often gray in it. Co-directors and screenwriters Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy will storm you like a nor’easter with their film’s amazing combination of dark humor, suspense, saltiness (in all the meanings of the word), and just plain originality. It all starts with a chorus of sea shanty singers and moves on to Priscilla and Mary Beth Connolly, whom we join on the day of their mother’s funeral after a long illness. They need a break—but they won’t get one. A dead body, three seriously busybody friends of their mom’s (played by great actresses Annette O’Toole, June Squibb, and Marceline Hugot), and a friendly but inquisitive young local cop (Will Brittain) combine with towering local inn-keeper—okay, it’s actually a brothel—Enid (the unforgettable Margo Martindale) to make the Connolly sisters’ lives complicated.

Sponosored by Joan and Peter Beckerman

World premiere!

The Gathering: Roots and Branches of Los Angeles Jazz

Followed by a live concert with a trio of the L.A. jazz musicians in The Gathering: Jesse Sharps–woodwinds, Bobby West–piano, Pete Jacobson–cello

USA—2019—Digital Projection—105 Minutes

Director, Producer: Tom Paige

Print courtesy: Tom Paige

Celebrating and continuing the legacy of underrecognized jazz genius Horace Tapscott and the South Central African American community around Leimert Park in Los Angeles to which he devoted his life, The Gathering: Roots and Branches of Los Angeles Jazz world premieres at MIFF. Following the film, a concert bringing The Gathering’s musicians, under the leadership of bandleader, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Sharps, will help make the evening one of MIFF’s must-see events. The Gathering, an informal and revolving group of south L.A. musicians, are among the direct musical descendants of Horace Tapscott, the pianist, composer, and leader for two decades of the Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra (also known as P.A.P.A. or The Ark). Though he was a true jazz original, recognized by critics as “a completely distinctive jazz genius on a par with Thelonious Monk or Rahsaan Roland Kirk,” Tapscott never achieved their widespread recognition because he chose to devote his life and leadership to the South L.A. community, including Watts and areas between it and downtown L.A., birthing an African American Arts and Jazz renaissance. Among the musicians who came out of The Ark to greater recognition worldwide are Arthur Blythe, Kamasi Washington, David Murray, Azar Lawrence, and many more. With Tapscott’s death in 1999, Jesse Sharps who at times was the bandleader of the group, helped birth an offshoot group that became The Gathering.

Tuesday, July 16, 6:30 p.m., WOH

Director Tom Paige started work on his film capturing the group’s unique, vibrant, and exploratory yet highly accessible jazz with concert footage from a 2005 celebratory event, and has continued for almost 15 years on his labor of love, featuring a wealth of priceless interviews and more recent live recordings. As the original “Gathering” event in 2005 was a celebration, so will be the long-awaited premiere showing of Paige’s film at MIFF. The concert in Waterville in conjunction with the premiere—a first for the group as such on the East Coast—will feature Sharps, continuing in his legacy as a leading keeper of the Ark’s and Tapscott’s flame, as part of a trio of the Ark’s other great players, with pianist supreme Bobby West and pioneering cellist Pete Jacobson. They will play music that celebrates an under-the-radar cultural explosion that has gone unnoticed for far too long.

Presented by Camden National Bank

Sponsored by Deep Groove Records

With support from Pro Movers and Colby Department of Music

Luce USA—2019—DCP—109 Minutes

In English

Director: Julius Onah

Screenplay: J.C. Lee, Julius Onah, based on the play by J.C. Lee

Producers: Andrew Yang, John Baker, Julius Onah

Cast: Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Tim Roth, Kelvyn Harrison Jr.

Print courtesy: Neon

An all-star high school athlete, straight-A student, and debater par excellence, Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is a poster boy for the new American Dream, as are his white parents, Amy and Peter (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth), who adopted him from war-torn Eritrea a decade earlier. When Luce’s teacher, Ms. Wilson (recent Oscar winner Octavia Spencer) makes a shocking discovery in his locker, Luce’s stellar reputation is called into question. Is he really at fault, or is Ms. Wilson preying on dangerous stereotypes? “In two short years, Trump’s toxic America has turned race, privilege, and class into incendiary topics while amplifying intolerance, and Julius Onah‘s powerfully constructed Luce mixes all these socio-political subjects into a provocative Molotov cocktail that shatters, burns, and leaves no easy answers. It’s one of the most relevant films about today’s poisoned America and, as it stands, is destined to become one of the very best movies of the year”—Jordan Ruimy, The Playlist

Sponsored by Lee and Peter Lyford

Sunday, July 21, 7:00 p.m., WOH