Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed) and his family live in the dunes not far from Timbuktu, but their peaceful existence is threatened by the Draconian rules imposed by Islamic fundamentalists who have banned music and football (even though there are fans among their ranks) and require women to wear gloves and socks at the market. The local imam tries to reason with the new regime, but tragedy strikes when a neighbor kills one of Kidane’s cattle. Director Abderrahmane Sissako (Bamako) uses wide-angle compositions to show the expanse of the desert and man’s small place in this troubled land. A violent film set in a beautiful, lyrical land, Timbuktu is one of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Film.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark Bethesda Row
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Washington Jewish Film Festival
This 25th annual festival returns next week with over 80 films in 11 days. Tickets are still available for opening night feature Magic Men (February 19 at the AFI) about a seventy-something atheist (Makram Khouri) who travels from Israel to Greece with his “estranged Hasidic rapper son” to look for the magician who saved his father’s life in World War II. Opening night party with director Guy Nattiv will take place at the Silver Spring Civic Building at Veterans Plaza immediately after the screening. Festival highlights include a centerpiece screening of the documentary Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem (February 21 at the AFI) that will include a Q&A with Theodore Bikel; a WJFF Visionary Award screening of Hester Street (February 24 at the AFI), with star Carol Kane in person;a Q&A and live music set featuring Israeli-Palestinian singer Mira Awad, songwriter Steve Earle, and singer-songwriter David Broza after the screening of the documentary East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem (February 26 at Sidney Harman Hall); and much more. See the festival web site for a complete schedule.
Watch the trailer for Magic Men.
February 19-March 1 at venues around town.
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This weekend, the AFI Silver’s series Leading Ladies of Hollywood’s Golden Age puts the spotlight on Katharine Hepburn with two of her finest moments and at least one of the greatest movies of all time. Cary Grant plays second banana to Hepburn in director Howard Hawks’ 1938 urscrewball comedy, a delirious Freudian romp of man vs. nature that features a dinosaur skeleton, a mischievous dog, and two live cheetahs. The AFI will be showing a 16mm print. The Silver will also be screening a 35mm print of director George Cukor’s 1940 classic The Philadelphia Story.
Watch the trailer.
Bringing Up Baby screens Saturday, February 14, Sunday, February 15 and Tuesday, February 17. The Philadelphia Story screens Saturday, February 14 and Sunday, February 15. At the AFI Silver.
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The AFI SIlver launches the series Hollywood Exiles in Europe this weekend with a re-mastered and re-edited blu-ray presentation of this 1996 essay film by co-directed by Thom Andersen (who made the excellent Los Angeles Plays Itself) with film critic Noël Burch. Red Hollywood looks at films made by artists placed on the the Hollywood Blacklist and offers a radically different perspective on a key period in the history of American cinema. The series continues through April with screenings of films from blacklist victims, including Jules Dassin, Joseph Losey, Cy Endfield, Ben and Norma Barzman, and Donald Ogden Stewart.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, February 15 at the AFI Silver.
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This weekend, the Freer—with thanks to organizers at the National Gallery of Art—screens a 35mm print of director Nikoloz Shengelaia’s silent epic from 1928 as part of the series Discovering Georgian Cinema. Susan Oxtoby describes the film as “[a] historical epic [that] evokes the tragic fate of Georgia, a nation pacified in 1864 by the Tsarist Russian Empire. When authorities begin to appropriate arable lands, the peasants are forced to evacuate under terrible conditions. In the village of Verdi, we find Eliso, whose love for Vazho is encumbered by differences of class and religion. Yet the most overwhelming passion in this cherished classic is the depiction of Georgia’s majestic landscape and the deep-rooted traditions of its people.” With live musical accompaniment by Trio Kavkasia, performing a new score commissioned by BAM/PFA and adapted from traditional folk songs by Georgian music expert Carl Linich.
Friday, February 13 at 7 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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Also opening this week, Colin Firth and Samuel L. Jackson star in the sharp-dressed coming of age spy-movie Kingsman:The Secret Service. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
