OCR Text |
Show H orde of films competes for festival Radicals exploit the tension as native fishermen struggle with the Vietnamese refugees who have moved in on the local fishing grounds. From "Fire on the Water." The following are the films selected to compete for honors at the U.S. Festival: DOCUMENTARY The Atomic Cafe. It was an era when a song could brag, "Jesus Hits Lake an Atom Bomb." ...when commentators commen-tators gloated as the Rosenbergs Rosen-bergs went to the electric chair. ..when citizens were advised to protect themselves them-selves from the effects of an atom blast by ducking under a desk or covering up with a sweater. Filmmakers Kevin and Pierce Rafferty and Jayne Loader pored through countless government films from the 1950s to put together this funny-horrifying look at an era's complacent compla-cent aggressive attitude toward nuclear warfare. Becoming American. The film follows a Laotian family from its refugee camp in Thailand to Seattle. They are simple tribal people and ordinary American gadgets like automatic doors and escalators seem like science-fiction science-fiction devices to them. Director Ken Levine is scheduled to visit for the festival. Burden of Dreams. In filming "Fitzcarraldo" in the Amazon jungle, German director Werner Herzog had to fight weather, the wilderness, wilder-ness, cultural gaps with his tribal extras, and the logistical logisti-cal problems of hauling a 50-ton steamship over the side of a hill. Herzog allowed Les Blank to shoot this documentary on the filming, because he feared it might be the only document of his struggle to make the movie. Some have said Blank's film rivals "Fitzcarraldo" itself for lunatic wonder. Coming of Age. A group of sexually, racially mixed teenagers meet at a two-week two-week camp outside Los Angeles and deal with their own biases and fears in a series of emotional exchanges. ex-changes. The confrontations, sometimes provoking the viewer to tears, reflect the problems in our adult society. socie-ty. Directed by Josh Hannig. Conversations with Wil-lard Wil-lard Van Dyke. Amalie Rothschild directed this portrait por-trait of one of the pioneer documentary filmmakers. In the film, Van Dyke looks back on his work of the Thirties and says, "We were naive enough to believe our films could change the world." Dark Circle. In California, it looked like a group of women were going to lose their fight to have the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant closed. Then the plant defeated itself. After months of reassurances re-assurances from Diablo's operators and on the verge of opening it was discovered dis-covered that an error in blueprints had placed a reactor in the wrong building- This documentary by Judy Irving, Chris Beaver, and Ruth Landy examines the ludicrous disturbing record of domestic nuclear power. Besides Diablo, the film also looks at Nagasaki and the Rocky Flats facility near Denver, where children are allowed to play in contaminated con-taminated ground fill taken from the plant area. Fire on the Water. Director Direc-tor Robert Hillman, who will be present at the festival, looks at the conflict on the Texas Gulf coast between newly-arrived Vietnamese fishermen, and the long-established long-established locals. The Texans blame the Asians for the lack of shrimp in the waters, when actually it is themselves who have gradually gradu-ally fished out the beds over the years. Eventually, the KKK becomes involved in the controversy. Their leader is a "racist Christian" Chris-tian" who is also part Indian! Miles to Go. An all-woman film crew and cast tell the story of a group of women left to trek through the mountains for two to three weeks in an encounter with nature. The film gets its power not just from the women struggling against nature, but from their interrelationshipsmaking inter-relationshipsmaking decisions, deci-sions, choosing a leader, accepting authority, etc. Directed by Deborah Boldt. Moses Pendleton Presents Moses Pendleton. Robert Elf Strom's film is the one to see this year, say festival insiders. Pendleton is a genuine American eccentric who floats around his 22-room 22-room Victorian mansion in his grandfather's clothes. Called the "Charlie Chaplin of dance," he believes that "the body is the greatest toy we have." Pendleton works with the Momix troupe and the Pola-bilus Pola-bilus Dance Company. (The latter, incidentally, is named after a "light-sensitive fungus fun-gus that grows on horse dung.") The festival will host a spectacular climax Sunday night after the last screening of the documentary. Pendleton Pendle-ton himself will appear on the Egyptian stage, in performance per-formance with members of the Momix group. Poto and Cabengo. A documentary on the controversy con-troversy that enveloped two young twin sisters in California. Cali-fornia. Were they unable In FilmVideo Festival Guide speak due to a learning disability or could it be, as some linguists suggested, that the sisters had evolved their own language between them? (Poto and Cabengo are their names for each other.) Director Jean-Pierre Gorin deals with the media hype that suddenly surrounds sur-rounds the family, and the false hopes of the twins' lower-class parents that all the publicity will help them find a better life. Rodin: The Gates of Hell. The Gates, 25-30 feet high, have to be one of the monumental unfinished art works of modern times. Many of Rodin's other sculptures sculp-tures (the Thinker, for instance) were studies for this project. The film may start out like a high-school educational flick, but it has an awe-inspiring awe-inspiring climax. Two hundred hun-dred sculptors and craftsmen crafts-men gather together to perform the last step in the process a bronze pouring over the gates. The project is the largest such pouring in this century. SL-1. The first nuclear reactor accident in the U.S. occurred in January, 1961 at the Sl-1 reactor near Idaho Falls, when the core exploded, ex-ploded, killing three military men. The investigation by the Atomic Energy Commission Commis-sion concluded the cause was an elementary error committed com-mitted by the crew something some-thing all three of the highly-trained highly-trained victims should have easily avoided. Using government documents, docu-ments, Salt Lake filmmakers film-makers C. Larry Roberts and Diane Orr follow the last 72 hours of one of the men. The result is an indictment of nuclear safety measures and its vulnerability to an unstable un-stable individual. Say Amen, Somebody. Things we didn't know: the black gospel music we know P mumm, j .... . i i. i, i if l it! "l v ' I; Mary-Frances (Muf) James, 72-year-old participant, parti-cipant, maneuvers her way up a 100-foot rock cliff during the filming of "Miles to Go." ; IMP today wasn't always used in religion. Ministers resisted the swing-oriented style, and it never really found its way inside churches until the 1920s. George Nierenberg, a festival guest, illuminates the origins of gospel and sets your toes tapping. Vernon, Florida. The man who brought you pet cemeteries ceme-teries last year in Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris, is back. This time he looks at the denizens of a sleepy Southern town, including a man obsessed with hunting the wild turkey, a preacher who believes prayer got him a used van, and a woman who says the desert is growing at a rate of 14 feet a year. Some critics have applauded ap-plauded Morris' view of Americana. But one critic, Judith Crist, registered a strong dissent, saying his approach is only a sophisti-;. cated version of "Reai People," sneering at ec-v centricity. She wrote, "...(the film gives) its subjects sub-jects an opportunity to sound senile or foolish, and the viewer a chance to wallow in his superiority." DRAMATIC The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez. Based on a true story, "Ballad" tells the story of Mexican cowhand Cortez, who shot down a white sheriff in 1901 after the lawman killed Cortez' brother over a semantic "misunderstanding." Fleeing Flee-ing to the Rio Grande, Cortez' bravery and cunning frustrated a posse of some 600 men, excited the press of the time, and started a legend among Spanish-Americans. Spanish-Americans. Directed by Robert M. Young (a scheduled sched-uled festival guest) and starring Edward James Olmos as Cortez. Citizen. An utterly positive film that follows a group of kids through San Francisco as they encounter the wide variety of the city's crazy street people. Director William Will-iam Farley will be present at the festival. Chan is Missing. Wayne Wang's directorial debut is one of the most acclaimed independent films of the year. An old Chinese cabbie and his nephew have given $40,000 to a shifty business partner, Chan, who promptly disappears. During their search, they find out something some-thing about Chan, themselves, them-selves, and the Oriental paradox that the more they find out, the less they really know. Dream On. The story of an L.A. actor and actress who are inspired to form an acting company. Now if they can only find a theater and stage a play. Leading man Ed Harris, who starred in Creepshow and last year's festival film, Knightriders, has been described as a new Steve McQueen. Eating Raoul. Paul and Mary Bland (Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov) are a prissy, happily-married couple who share a fondness for good food and wine, an aversion to sex, and a dream to move away from the swinger-dominated swinger-dominated California scene and open a nice gourmet restaurant, Chez Bland, out in the country. But it's hard to raise money, until they hit on a homicidal, but efficient plan. Mary will lure rich degenerates to their apartment apart-ment (through ads placed under pseudonyms like "Cruel Carla") where Paul will dispatch them with his trusty frying pan. The scheme works fine until a scheming stud named Raoul (Richard Beltran) blackmails black-mails his way into the set-up. Audiences have flocked to this black comedy about an Eisenhower-era couple somehow caught in the early 1980s. Director Bartel will be attending the festival. The Eyes of the Amaryllis. Set on Nantucket, this fantasy fan-tasy focuses on a grandmother grand-mother who lost her sailor husband years ago to the sea, her granddaughter, and a ghostly stranger who keeps watch on whatever (whoever?) (who-ever?) is washed up by the sea. Director Fred Keller is a festival guest this year. The Mediterranean. An artist and his wife, living on an isolated ranch, try but fail to recapture the idyllic love that was first born when they met on the Mediterranean. Their strongest link is their daughter, but even she is in danger of being crushed by the troubled, claustrophobic atmosphere. A sensitive story on the difficulties of less. u minimum UWF maintaining love. Director Yan Nascimbene is a festival guest. Mission Hill. In Robert Jones' film, two siblings try different ways to escape their tough Boston neighborhood. neighbor-hood. The brother, a high-school high-school dropout, is turning to petty thievery. The sister tries for a singing career. The Personals. A rare independent film, it has already secured a run in mainstream theaters across the county. Bill Schoppert plays the Minneapolis version ver-sion of Woody Allen, a slightly tubby, balding ad man who tries to cure his Jonathan Bolt plays Seward, the mysterious watchful stranger by the sea in Fred Keller's fantasy "The Eyes of the Amaryllis." kgh yiel: Tlenosit Lcb Money Marttr ::Z on 6 monm WAS NOW 6 MONTH CERTIFICATES $10,000.00 $2,500.00 91-DAY CERTIFICATES $7,500.00 $2,500.00 Check your nearby First Security Bank for this week's current rate and take advantage of this new way of earning a higher yield for less. Federal regulations require substantial penalty for early withdrawal. First Security Bank of Utah, N.A., First Security Bank of Idaho, N.A., First Security State Bank, First Security Bank of Rock Springs Each depositor is insured to $100,000 by FDIC. Park i 1 :r d;iy, honors loneliness by taking out a "personal" ad in the classifieds. classi-fieds. The woman he meets is pretty, understanding, loving and married. Purple Haze. In the summer sum-mer of 1968, a young man is kicked out of college for smoking pot, and joins an old high-school friend to ponder that familiar dilemma of the age "What do we do about the draft?" The movie may be worth watching for the sound track alone, which includes Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Buffalo Springfield, and Jefferson Airplane. Director Di-rector David Burton Morris will be present at the festival. -a if 1 ( z S January 13, 1983 Page B3 Smithereens. Susan Siedel-man's Siedel-man's film is about a young girl named Wren, grubbily scratching for fame, who aspires to join a punk rock group. Critic Stanley Kauff-man Kauff-man noted that Wren is not a likeable character, but she is memorable for "her hassled, befuddled response to contemporary American hype, her ambition to float in the sea of chic." According to festival sources, the jury for the film competition consists of critic Roger Ebert, filmmaker Glenn Silber (who did last year's El Salvador) and Deseret News film critic Chris Hicks. it |