DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most intersting films playing around town in the coming week.
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Now in its tenth year, the DC Shorts Festival highlights over 150 films from 22 countries. If that sounds like too many choices, even for films 20 minutes or less, you can narrow your decision down to the 17 90-minute showcases put together by festival programmers. Showcase 4 offers a typical variety, from the 16-minute Malaysian film “Sanzaru (Diffusion of Responsibility),” a dramedy about Kitty Genovese syndrome; to the Russian mockumentary “Legs-atavism,” about a Soviet plot to create shorter citizens; to the two-minute U.S. comedy “Cats in Space” (pictured). For a double sawbuck, you can view over 125 films from the festival online 24/7 throughout the festival week.
September 19-29 at venues around town. Check the festival website for details.
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Ringo, Freda, and George (Freda Kelly/Magnolia)Freda Kelly was sixteen when she fell in love with a band she saw at Liverpool’s Cavern Club. The starstruck but level-headed teen became that band’s secretary and fan club manager until the group’s untimely breakup. If you’ve seen any other Beatles documentary, you’ve probably seen a more exciting one. Good Ol’ Freda is neither hagiography (unlike a higher-profile documentary out this week) nor expose, and doesn’t offer any juicy revelations, but Kelly has a modest charm and unflappable integrity that won over the Beatles’ mums and make the Fab Four seem almost ordinary. The movie is a must-see for Beatles fans, but even the tone-deaf may appreciate the film as a quiet portrait of an ordinary Liverpudlian who remained a steadfastly devoted employee under extraordinary circumstances.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End CInema.
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(“Warren Sonbert with 16mm Camera”/The Estate of Warren)The National Gallery’s series From Vault to Screen, an annual showcase of recent film preservation efforts, continues this weekend with a new 35mm print of Chris Marker (a documentarian best known for the classic sci-fi short “La Jettee”) and Pierre Lhomme’s 1963 film. The filmmakers shot more than 50 hours of footage asking ordinary Parisians what they thought was the meaning of happiness.
View the trailer.
Sunday, September 22 at 4:30 pm at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Viola (September 19 and 21)The AFI’s 24th annual showcase of films from Latin America opens with the Washington premiere of a well-reviewed Shakespeare adaptation from Argentina. Director Matías Piñeiro’s Viola (September 19 and 21) is a reworking of Twelfth Night set among “Buenos Aires hipsters.” Other festival highlights include Rutger Hauer in The Future (September 28 and October 2), a Chilean adaptation of the novel by Roberto Bolaño; Viramundo (September 27, 28 and 30), a documentary about Brazilian musical star-turned-Ministry of Culture Gilberto Gil; and the Brazilian animated feature Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury (October 6 and 7).
View trailers for Viola and Viramundo.
September 19-October 9 at the AFI. See the festival website for a complete schedule.
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A Page of Madness
The Freer Gallery’s series Pages of Beauty and Madness: Japanese Writers Onscreen continues with a silent-era collaboration between Nobel Prize-winning novelist Yasunori Kawabata (Snow Country; Palm-of-the-hand Stories) and director Teinosuke Kinugasa. A Page of Madness, considered “a watershed moment in Japanese avant-garde art of the 1920s,” tells the story of a man who works as a janitor in an asylum to take care of his insane wife. Tatsu Aoki’s MIYUMI Quartet will provide live musical accompaniment for the film’s “clashing, hallucinatory images.” Aaron Gerow, author of A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan, will introduce the screening, presented in a 35mm print restored by the George Eastman House.
Friday, September 20 at 7:00 pm at the Freer. Free.
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Also opening this week, the effective, minimalist thriller The Henchman’s War, shot in and around the D.C. area and featuring local stage actors. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
