Filmfest DC, pleasantly timed to coincide with the dogwoods and azaleas, while providing a homey alternative to the Cannes Film Festival in May, is poised to return for its 18th annual edition at several participating theaters.
Miramax’s “Valentin,” a would-be-wistful Argentine import about a precocious youngster, has been chosen as the opening-night selection, Wednesday at 7 p.m. in George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium. The muckraking “Super Size Me,” which chronicles filmmaker Morgan Spurlock’s month of overeating on a high-calorie diet at McDonald’s franchises, concludes the festival May 2 at the Lincoln Theatre.
Mr. Spurlock’s documentary is one of four selections that will open at Landmark’s E Street Cinema or Bethesda Row shortly after the festival. It joins a South Korean feature about the evolution of a monk, “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring,” on the Landmark calendar for May 7. “The Saddest Music in the World,” a new comedy from the inimitable Canadian humorist-antiquarian Guy Maddin, and “Since Otar Left,” a French-Belgian domestic drama about a languishing family in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, join the circuit a week later.
To some extent, the festival always recommends itself as a first and last look at titles destined to make little or no impression on the theatrical marketplace. Years later, it can be gratifying to recall some festival selection that deserved a wider audience. Of course, many others seem overspecialized or audience-proof from their inception. Anyone unprepared for letdowns should probably avoid the festival crapshoot entirely.
The Filmfest organizers have become comfortable with a trio of major thematic groupings while welcoming about a hundred titles to Washington every spring. There’s usually a category devoted to one particular national film industry: Argentina this year. “Global Rhythms” has proved an invaluable update on folk-music performers and traditions around the world. Documentaries with specific political axes to grind account for another familiar bloc.
The single most satisfying title in an assortment of preview tapes was “Bluegrass Journey.” A fond summary of the annual Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in upstate New York, “Bluegrass” is enhanced by superlative individual numbers from the Del McCoury Band, Nickel Creek and solo guitarist Tony Rice, who pulls a slow-tempo switch and mesmerizes everyone with a serene, contemplative instrumental.
The family feeling among bluegrass musicians is eloquently confirmed by Del McCoury and son Ronnie, among others. There’s also a genuinely hilarious guest appearance by Dolly Parton during a gala awards show. “Bluegrass Journey” is booked for showings at the American Film Institute Silver Theatre on April 23 and 24.
Two British productions that seem worth anticipating will get Filmfest sendoffs. Stephen Fry makes his directing debut with an adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel “Vile Bodies,” retitled “Bright Young Things,” the novel’s label for the fashionable socialites Mr. Waugh was satirizing in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The cast includes Peter O’Toole, Jim Broadbent, Emily Mortimer, Simon Callow and Dan Aykroyd. The Avalon has screenings Thursday and the following Monday, April 26.
The conflicts of the mid-17th century provide the background for “To Kill a King,” which features Rupert Everett as the ill-fated Charles I, Tim Roth as Oliver Cromwell and Dougray Scott as Thomas Fairfax. Mike Barker, the director, remains an unknown quantity with historical spectacle. Loews Cineplex Wisconsin Avenue hosts three screenings from April 26-28.
If you can’t get too many conversations between Oliver Stone and Fidel Castro, Filmfest will oblige with a double bill of “Comandante” and “Looking for Fidel” on April 25 at the Avalon and May 1, at AFI Silver. The former is the 90-minute chat that Home Box Office decided not to telecast a year ago, reasoning that it seemed partisan to a fault. “Looking for Fidel,” a later session that runs about an hour, was aired by the cable network recently. Two and a half hours with these soulmates looms as heavy going, even for May Day.
A French filmmaker named Jean-Michel Roux has used Iceland as a fondly ethereal and crackpot landscape for a satiric documentary titled “Investigation into the Invisible World,” which purports to heed the delusions of folks who consort with extraterrestrials, ghosts and elves, typically hidden in rock formations. The presentation is so deadpan that it could pass for an expanded, definitive segment of a television series trading on mystic humbug, sort of an “Unexplained Mysteries Goes to Iceland.”
Mr. Roux maintains a systematic facade of cliched spookiness, with the light calibrated for shivery impressions and the framing kept slightly askew, suggesting that the invisible world prefers tilted compositions. His cast cooperates with a group trance of occult credulity. I think many performers are a little too expert not to be actors, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to mistake them for legitimate nut cases. Judge for yourself April 30 or May 1 at Loews on Wisconsin Avenue.
I thought the jest would be exhausted in 10 or 20 minutes, and some spectators may believe that “Invisible World” outstays its welcome. I was persuaded that it got jollier as it went along. Mr. Roux navigates shifts of emphasis and changes of scene with unexpected versatility. I would have been sorry to miss the adept who diagrams a hierarchy of reincarnated life forms within a handy triangle. I also liked the way believers found corroboration in the movies, citing “Contact” and “The Sixth Sense” as revealed cosmic wisdom. I don’t know if “Invisible World” will emerge as the most popular selection of the festival, but it certainly looks like the most accomplished hoax.
EVENT: Filmfest DC, the 18th annual Washington, D.C., International Film Festival
WHEN: Wednesday through May 2
WHERE: Opening gala at Lisner Auditorium and concluding program at the Lincoln Theatre. Principal screening sites will be the American Film Institute Silver Theatre, the Avalon, Greenberg Theatre, Landmark E Street Cinema, Loews Cineplex Outer Circle and Wisconsin Avenue, the National Gallery of Art and National Geographic Society.
TICKETS: Most programs are $9. Opening night, an annual benefit, elevates to $40. The closing-night event is $15. Advance tickets can be purchased through Tickets.com or by calling 703/218-6500.
PHONE: 202/628-FILM
WEB SITE: www.filmfestdc.org
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