DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Warrior ChampionsWhat it is: “The largest festival in the country dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities.”
Why you want to see it: The title of this festival turns around the dis of “disabilities” to focus on films that show the triumph of those who some might consider less capable. Opening night documentary Warrior Champions (Feb. 1 @ Avalon) follows Iraq war veterans who lost a limb for their country and hope to compete in the Paralympic Games. Other festival showcases include Zig-Zag Love (2/6 @ Cinema Arts Theatre, 2/8 @ DC JCC), about the companionship of a teenage cancer patient and a girl with cerebral palsy who take off on a motorcyle trip through the Scottish Highlands; Shooting Beauty (2/5 at DC JCC, 2/7 @ Rockville JCC) , about fashion photographer Courtney Bent, who “discovers a hidden world of beauty at a center for people living with significant disabilities”; and Henry O. (2/3 2 DC JCC, ⅖ 2 ARtisphere), about a blind man who calls baseball games for Tampa Bay radio.
View the trailer for Henry O.
February 1-9 at venues around town. Check the festival website for details.
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Cameron Mitchell and Terry Moore in Man on a Tightrope. Photofest/Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation © Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
Man on a Tightrope and Wild River
What it is: Lesser-known works from one of the great American directors.
Why you want to see it: Elia Kazanis best known for On the Waterfront and A Streetcar named Desire, one or both of which are on many favorite movie lists. Kazan’s signature pictures will likely hit local rep theaters again, but this weekend the National Gallery gives moviegoers a chance to see two seldom screened films on their big screen. Man on a Tightrope (1953) has a title that suggests film noir, but its drama is not criminal but political as Czech circus master Karel Cernik (Frederic March) tries to get his wife Zama (Gloria Grahame) and the rest of his troupe across the border despite Communist resistance. The film features members of the Circus Brumbach, a showbiz family that’s still in the business today. Shown with Kazan’s personal favorite Wild River (1960), starring Montgomery Clift as a New Deal overseer who is tasked with evicting a Tennessee family to make way for a dam.
View the trailer for Mud on the Stars, a documentary about the making of Wild River.
Saturday January 28 at 2:30 at the National Gallery. Free.
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Through the Olive Trees. Courtesy of the Freer. Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy
What it is: An acclaimed director’s self-reflexive surveys of a troubled part of Northern Iran.
Why you want to see it: Critics have called these three films among Kiaraostami’s greatest work, but the director himself does not see it as a trilogy. The films just happen to treat the same area – how many Upper West Side Trilogies has Woody Allen made? Whether or not they are geographically linked, the series progresses as a meditation on the nature of movies and reality. In Where is the Friend’s Home? (1987) a boy accidentally takes a schoolmate’s notebook, and, fearing punishment, travels to return it. In 1990; the Koker region was devastated by an earthquake that claimed 50,000 lives. And Life Goes On (1992) documents the director’s return to the region in search of the boys from his previous film. In Through the Olive Trees, an actor plays Kiarostami, a director casting amateur actors for a film called And Life Goes On.
View the trailer for Through the Olive Trees.
Where is the Friend’s Home screens Friday, January 27 at 7:00 pm. And Liufe Goes On screens Sunday, January 29 at 1:00 pm. Through the Olive Trees screens Sunday, January 29 at 3:00 pm. At the Freer. Free.
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What it is: Haitian politics as Shakespearean tragedy.
Why you want to see it: Director Raoul Peck (Lumumba) was appointed Haiti’s Minister of Culture in the 1990s, and raised half-a-million dollars to build an arts center. Fast forward to 2009: the premiere of Moloch Tropical, set high on a mountaintop, was cancelled due to the country’s devastating earthquake. A nation’s physical collapse is a fitting backdrop for this tale of political corruption, set in modern-day Haiti but inspired by the story of 19th century leader Henri-Christophe, who helped win the nation’s independence from France, yet found himself at the wrong end of the next revolution. The feature will be shown on DVD.
View a brief interview of Raoul Peck discussing Moloch Tropical.
Sunday, January 29 at 3:00 pm at La Maisone Française. Free, but eventbrite reservations are required.
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Monica Gayle as Patch/Iago.What it is: The girl gang as Shakesperean tragedy.
Why you want to see it: Director Jack Hill was in charge of a a veritable honor roll of exploitation movies, from Mondo Keyhole to Foxy Brown to The Big Doll House (one of the Philippine-located productions covered last year’s excellent doc Machete Maidens Unleashed!). Switchblade Sisters, also known as The Jezebels, finds Hill contemplating the power structure of a high school girl gang. Gang leader Lace (Robbie Lee, who went on to do voice work for Rainbow Brite) takes new recruit Maggie (Joanne Nail) under her wing. But the jealous Patch (Minoca Gayle, pictured) plants seeds of distrust that threaten to implode the sisterhood. Shades of Othello? Quentin Tarantino’sproduction company Rolling Thunder rereleased this 1975 action picture in the 1990s, and the video store employee turned director agrees with Hill that Patch is clearly a Iago figure. The Washington Psychotronic Film Society screens this film as part of Melanie Scott Memorial Movie Night, a tribute to their founder that also features a short film starring Scott.
View the trailer for Switchblade Sisters.
Monday, January 30 at McFadden’s. Free
