Rochester takes center stage with High Falls Film Festival - Part II

Local cinemaniacs can stop holding their breath --- the first annual High Falls Film Festival has finally arrived. Running from October 17 to 21 at the Little Theatre, the Cinema, and the Dryden and Curtis Theatres at the George Eastman House, the Festival offers an impressive collection of movies that highlight the involvement of women in film both in front of and behind the camera. But it's more than just movies --- there will be plenty of seminars, an animation workshop and handful of parties at which you can rub elbows with the film industry elite (unless a restraining order is already in place).

You can buy tickets through Ticket Express (100 East Avenue, 222-5000), Kaufmann's Ticketmaster outlets or online through Ticketmaster. Same-day tickets, however, must be purchased at the venue of that particular screening. They'll run you $7.50 apiece, but packages are available if you plan on seeing a whole bunch of stuff and want first crack at the venue seating before everybody else. For more information, check out the official site at www.highfallsfilmfestival.com.

Last week, we previewed Festival films screening during the first three days (it's still available online at Planet Sick-Boy), and we wrap things up by looking at the remaining films of High Falls.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Zacharias Kunuk, Canada, 172 minutes) - 11:00 AM Saturday, October 20, Dryden Theatre

Winner of this year's prestigious Cannes Camera d'Or (for best first feature) and the Best Canadian Feature from the Toronto fest, Runner is the first film ever made in Inuktitut, the language spoken by Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic where the movie was filmed. The titular Atanarjuat falls for a woman who has already been promised to Oki, the nasty son of the village leader. When he tries to win her affection, Oki kills Atanarjuat's brother in an ambush attack. The story is based on a very old Inuit folk tale.

Shadow Boxers (Katya Bankowsky, USA, 72 minutes) - 12:00 PM Saturday, October 20, Little Theatre 1

Bankowsky began filming this documentary about women boxers in 1995 when, after 68 years of being an all-male event, the prestigious New York Golden Gloves tournament finally allowed women to compete. Much to the astonishment of the male-dominated sport, the women turned boxing on its ear by proving girls can be just as ferocious as boys in the ring. The film concentrates on a former kickboxing champion from Holland named Lucia Rijker, who describes the sport as addictive and all-consuming, telling stories about other fighters who abandoned their men and their children to pursue success between the ropes. Beautiful and well-spoken (at least for now), we see Rijker gain both confidence and credibility with each opponent she faces.

The Perfect You (Matthew Miller, USA, 90 minutes) - 1:00 PM Saturday, October 20, Curtis Theatre

The last person you'd expect to turn up at a film festival trumpeting women in film is Jenny McCarthy, but the former Playboy centerfold is one of two main characters who swear they're through with sex and relationships, and then spend the next 90 minutes contradicting their bizarre proclamation. McCarthy is Whitney, a television news reporter who has just moved to New York City (and, yes, you can see the World Trade Center). A neighbor who senses Whitney's sexual frustration tells her about male prostitution, and in a moment of weakness, Whitney tries it out.  But the guy she thinks is a rent-boy thinks she's a hooker. Hilarity ensues.

Girls Can't Swim (Anne-Sophie Birot, France, 102 minutes) - 1:45 PM Saturday, October 20, Little Theatre 1

We've seen plenty of summer coming-of-age tales about so many pairs of foreign teenagers that it's hard to keep them straight, but Birot's debut is remarkable for one simple reason --- its dynamic duo don't share any screen time until the film is nearly half over. Gwen is excited about summer vacation but becomes depressed when she learns best friend Lise won't be able to join her at her seaside home like previous vacations. Instead, her bickering parents allow campers to rent the front lawn because they're short on money. The two girls, both separately and together, have to deal with typical teenage strife, like arguing with parents and trying to find a secluded place to do guys and drugs and stuff.

The Hitch-hiker (Ida Lupino, USA, 71 minutes) - 2:30 PM Saturday, October 20, Dryden Theatre

Lupino's second offering for the Festival is the kind of film noir where you don't see any characters from above the knee for the first 10 minutes. The 1953 film, which is widely considered to be Lupino's best, is about two Army buddies (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) who head out for an extended fishing trip in Mexico, only to become kidnapped and held at gunpoint by a deranged serial killer (a chilling but terrific William Talman). While it would terrify only a few of today's moviegoers, The Hitch-Hiker must have really freaked people out 50 years ago.

Eisenstein (Renny Bartlett, Germany/Canada, 96 minutes) - 4:10 PM Saturday, October 20, Little Theatre 1

Double-check the title, folks --- this isn't a film about Albert. The extra "s" and "e" make this picture about celebrated Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, who was something of that country's D.W. Griffith and, more importantly, invented the whole (and now completely overused) film montage thing. Here, Eisenstein is played by Simon McBurney, who portrays the legendary director in typical biopic fashion, meaning he starts off as a nobody, gets famous, and then suffers a monumental career setback.

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition (George Butler, Germany/Sweden/UK/USA, 93 minutes) - 4:45 PM Saturday, October 20, Dryden Theatre

Narrated by former Hollywood star Liam Neeson, this award-winning documentary tells the story of the 1914 journey of Ernest Shackleton and his band of 26 (un)merry men as they attempted to hike across the continent of Antarctica. Everything was going fine until the crew woke up and found the ocean had frozen around them on the way there. And that's only the tip of the iceberg (sorry). There are lots of incredible photographs, passages read from diaries and interviews with relatives of the crew. Look for this bad boy when the Oscar nominations are announced in February.

Gaea Girls (Kim Longinottay and Jano Williams, UK, 104 minutes) - 5:00 PM Saturday, October 20, Little Theatre 2

If you crossed the WB's Popstars with Fox's Boot Camp and added a bit of that hideous wrestling movie Ready to Rumble, you'd be left with...well, an awful, unpalatable mess. Although Girls is a bit like each of those oft-maligned projects, it's much better than the sum of its parts. Girls is a documentary about a training camp that prepares women for careers in the Gaea circuit in Japan (think a female World Wrestling Federation, only perpetually set to Republica's "Ready to Go"). Parts are brutal and extremely difficult to watch, especially the scene where the drill sergeant explains, "Short hair makes you look tough." Seriously, this isn't for the squeamish, considering one of the directors had to flee one particularly traumatic episode in tears.

Yellow Card (John Riber, Zimbabwe, 90 minutes) - 6:40 PM Saturday, October 20, Little Theatre 1

Tiyane has just been named starting striker of the local Harare soccer team on the eve of a match that could earn them promotion to a higher division. But when his dad is injured, Tiyane is forced to miss the big game to take his father's place at a wedding, which is where he meets and falls for Juliet. Despite the difference in their social status, the two grow closer and closer until <cue sound of squealing brakes> Tiyane finds out his old girlfriend is pregnant. Trouble begins when the baby winds up on his doorstep, threatening to derail both his relationship with Juliet and his soccer career.

L.I.E. (Michael Cuesta, USA, 97 minutes) - 9:00 PM Saturday, October 20, Little Theatre 1

If movies have taught us one thing over the last few years, it's that the suburbs are a very dark, very screwed-up place. L.I.E. confirms this semi-revelation by taking the gritty subject matter of Kids and moving it about 35 miles east to Dix Hills in Long Island's Suffolk County, where sullen teen Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano) deals with his mother's death by hanging out with the wrong crowd, getting involved in petty theft and, most disturbingly, befriending a frighteningly amiable pedophile named Big John (original Hannibal Lecter Brian Cox). This wonderful film was unfairly rated NC-17 (it contains only some graphic dialogue and a little violence), and is a great example of how evil doesn't always come in easily recognizable packaging.

Coffy (Jack Hill, USA, 90 minutes) - 8:00 p.m. Sunday, October 20, Dryden Theatre

The Festival's closing night gala features honoree Pam Grier's (see accompanying interview in the following pages) third High Falls entry. Grier plays tough-as-nails vixen-turned-avenging-angel in this 1973 blaxploitation flick. Yeah, she poses as a Jamaican hooker named Mystique, hides a bunch of different weapons in her afro, and totes a lovely macramé purse, but if you think the latest crop of skinny white girls (Diaz, Alba, Garner, Gellar, et al.) knows how to kick ass, then you need to educate yourself with a little jolt of Coffy (cream and sugar are optional).