Filmfest DC April 10, 2012

Canadian Films in Filmfest DC

•If I Were You

Marcia Gay Harden gives a bravura performance in this comedy about two women who make a pact to fix each other's lives. The complication is that Madelyn (Harden) is the wife of the man with whom Lucy (Leonor Watling) is having an affair. Further, Madelyn knows about the affair. Accidentally spotting Lucy and husband Paul (Joseph Kell) on a romantic dinner, Madelyn surreptitiously calls Paul's cell to ask when he'll be home. Spooked, Paul nervously calls off the affair, which sends young Lucy into a suicidal spin. Concerned and intrigued, Madelyn follows Lucy home and stops her from killing herself. Lucy pours her heart out about how wonderful Paul is and how the kind Madelyn is "nothing like Paul's wife." As the two lovelorn women offer each other advice, complications ensue…and ensue and ensue again as the pool of people sucked into the charade increases. —Dave Nuttycombe

Special Guests
Director, Phillipe Falardeau
Director, Joan Carr-Wiggin
Producer, David Gordian
Executive Producer, Savitri Gordian
Executive Producer, Mark Paladini

Friday, April 20th, 6:30 pm, Regal Cinemas Gallery Place
Saturday, April 21st, 8:30 pm, Regal Cinemas Gallery Place

•Leave it on the Floor

Remember the wildly flamboyant proto-LGBT ball scene of the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning? The close-knit milieu thrives in Los Angeles today, as dramatized by the sensational new musical Leave it on the Floor. Sent packing by his homophobic mother, 22-year-old Brad (Ephraim Sykes) is cruised by Carter (D.C.-born Andre Myers), who lures him into a makeshift club in which various "houses" of men compete for high-energy drag queen glory. Under the watchful gaze and tart tongue of house mother Queen Latina (Miss Barbie-Q), Brad tries to fit in while juggling the affections of Carter and Princess Eminence (Phillip Evelyn). With a genre-hopping range of terrific songs energetically performed in such unlikely milieus as a bowling alley and a funeral, Leave it on the Floor thrums with the joyous energy of movement and the hard-forged bonds of outsiders uniting as family. —Eddie Cockrell

Special Guest, Director, Sheldon Larry

Friday, April 13th, 6:30 pm, Naval Heritage Center
Saturday, April 14th, 9:00 pm, Naval Heritage Center

•Monsieur Lazhar

Monsieur Lazhar was a 2012 Oscar® finalist for Best Foreign Language Film. Following the death of a beloved teacher in the very classroom where she coached her ethnically diverse 11- and 12-year-old charges, 55-year-old Algerian immigrant Bachir Lazhar (Fellag) materializes as if from nowhere to assume teaching duties. Quiet and dapper, he's a stickler for proper French whose uncertain understanding of the Quebecois educational system seems his only immediate impediment. Yet even as the children, including luminous newcomers Sophie Nelisse and Emilien Neromn, struggle with questions about their former teacher's death that no adult save Monsieur Lazhar seems willing to answer, the teacher himself is grappling with a tragic past, a delicate present, and an uncertain future. The film is audaciously adapted from a single-character play and showcases writer-director Philippe Falardeau's felicitous skill with young actors and nuanced drama. —Eddie Cockrell

Special Guest, Director, Phillipe Falardeau

Friday, April 13th, 8:45 pm, Avalon Theatre
Tuesday, April 17th, 8:45 pm, Landmark’s E Street Cinema
•Pink Ribbons, Inc.

Billions of dollars have been raised by women and men devoted to ending to breast cancer. The ubiquitous pink ribbons of breast cancer philanthropy—and the hand-in-hand marketing of brands and products associated with that philanthropy—permeate our culture and provide assurance that we are engaged in a successful battle against this insidious disease. But reality is not so comforting: breast cancer rates in North America have risen to 1 in 8. Who really benefits from the pink ribbon campaigns, the cause or the company? And what if these same companies have actually contributed to the problem? Pool's "indignant and subversive film resoundingly pops the shiny pink balloon of the breast cancer movement/industry," writes John Anderson in Variety. "In showing the real story of breast cancer and the lives of those who fight it, Pink Ribbons, Inc. reveals the co-opting of what marketing experts have labeled a 'dream cause.' "—Various sources

Special Guest, Producer, Ravida Din

Saturday, April 14th, 6:00 pm, Landmark’s E Street Cinema
Thursday, April 19th, 8:45 pm, Landmark’s E Street Cinema

•Planet Yoga

In his pursuit of the "possibility of flexibility and peace," director and narrator Carlos Ferrand travels from Oakland to Vancouver to Paris to northern Canada to Toronto and, inevitably, India, in search of followers, both prominent and personal, who practice, teach, and espouse the fascinating history and joyful spirituality of yoga. Ferrand is candid about his first experiments with yoga: "Either I hurt myself," he admits, in his charming Peruvian accent, "or the preaching and chanting turned me off." Despite his initial scepticism, Ferrand turns out to be a genial and unhurried guide, and his film Planet Yoga reflects those qualities. The film emphasizes the meshing of eastern spirituality with the materialism of the west, demonstrating in its proponents a reconciliation of the two at once appealing and inspirational. "Yoga is needed everywhere," concludes one practitioner, and, after watching Planet Yoga, that's a sentiment hard to reject. —Eddie Cockrell

Tuesday, April 17th, 6:30 pm, Goethe-Institut Washington
Wednesday, April 18th, 8:45 pm, Goethe-Institut Washington

•Starbuck

Writer-director Ken Scott's funny and beguiling Starbuck takes a fertile premise and runs with it. Genial screw-up David Wosniak (Patrick Huard) can't do much of anything right. The 42-year-old teenager in vintage sports gear is a constant disappointment to his Montreal family, his pregnant girlfriend Valerie (Julie Le Breton) now wants nothing to do with him, and he owes some very bad men a great deal of money. One day a lawyer shows up with news that there's one thing David did very right indeed: 533 children were conceived using sperm he sold to a dodgy clinic in the 1980s, and now 142 of them want to meet Daddy. Money and fame—well, infamy, at least—are within David's grasp, if only he'll take ownership of the village he had no idea others raised. David's sincere efforts to be a guardian angel to a few of his offspring suggest there's something salvageable within him, while Scott's logical and precise plotting gives the comedy a bawdy but tender look at how an overgrown adolescent slowly becomes a father of fully grown children. 

Scott named the film for the legendary bull that sired some 200,000 daughters in the 1980s and 1990s. Selected by the Toronto International Film Festival as one of the Top Ten Canadian films of 2011, Starbuck also won the audience award for narrative feature at the Palm Springs Film Festival. Its protagonist may be flawed, but the film itself is a potent and well-nigh perfect comedy of responsibility and redemption. —Eddie Cockrell
Thursday, April 12th, 7:00 pm, Regal Cinemas Gallery Place

•Crazy Wisdom: The Life & Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rippoche

For many of us, the image of a Tibetan lama is that of a serene, burgundy-robed monk with a shaved head, not that of a man with a modern haircut, dressed in an admiral's uniform, and smoking a cigar. Yet that was one of the many guises of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the most memorable Tibetan teacher to leave his country after the Chinese occupation. He gained his biggest audience in the United States, where he founded the first Buddhist university in Boulder, Colorado. Almost 25 years after his death, filmmaker Joanna Demetrakas interviews several of his students, who now take a mostly positive view of the controversial aspects of Trungpa's life, including his drinking, extravagances, and dalliances with students. In the long and rich history of Tibetan Buddhism, his outrageous "crazy wisdom" teaching style was a bona fide tradition, but perhaps not one that fit our preconceptions of Buddhist teachers. —Vancouver Film Festival
Tuesday, April 17th, 9:00 pm, Goethe-Institut Washington
Wednesday, April 18th, 6:30 pm, Goethe-Institut Washington

•RasTa: A Soul’s Journey

RasTa: A Soul's Journey tells the story of the journey of Rita and Bob Marley's granddaughter's, Donisha Prendergast, to eight countries to explore the roots, evolution, and impact of Rastafari. Donisha is an irrepressible and charming guide, educating viewers about a way of life that many know little about beyond the dreadlocks, ganja, and the red, gold, and green. Along the way she encounters Rastafarian elders, musicians, poets, professors, and individuals who share personal stories about the influence Donisha's iconic grandfather, Bob Marley, had on their lives. Moving away from the standing approaches to Rastafari and Jamaica, RasTa: A Soul's Journey focuses on the international presence of Rastafari and the friendly people and places where the uplifting spirit of the movement can be found. At its heart, the film is a soulful work that follows and celebrates a young woman's quest as she comes into her own as a Rasta empress. —Various sources

Special Guest, Subject, Donisha Prendergast

Sunday, April 15th, 5:00 pm, Landmark’s E Street Cinema’s
Monday, April 16th, 6:30 pm, Landmark’s E Street Cinema’s

Website
filmfestdc.org