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WEST
VIRGINIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
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  9 Countries, 5 Continents, 4 Days! Travel
the World During the April 25 - 28, 2002 WVSC
Capitol Center Theater
SPONSORS:
ADMISSION
PRICES TO PURCHASE ADVANCE TICKETS: Tickets go on sale Monday, April 22 at the Box Office during regular business hours. It is suggested that you call the theater before you arrive to ensure someone is present. Theater phone is 304-342-6522 and the location is 123 Summers Street in downtown Charleston. Because of possible delays, tickets will not be available by mail or by phone reservation. If you have additional questions, contact the festival office at 304-342-7100.
OUR GUESTS BETSY
SULLENGER MIKE
LILLY RUSS
MCCUBBIN MOLLIE
BROWN
BRIEF HIGHLIGHTS **Join us for the World Premiere of "Correct Change," a film that was shot entirely in West Virginia with a WV cast and crew! The director, Mike Lilly, and the cast (including Mollie Brown and Russ McCubbin) and crew join the WVIFF on April 27 for a very special presentation. Come out and show your support for West Virginia filmmaking! **Culturally significant films play a prominent role in the 17th Annual Spring Film Festival. The Iranian film KANDAHAR, the Oscar-nominated documentary PROMISES, and the winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, NO MAN'S LAND (Bosnia), will all be shown. **And don't forget to support West Virginia's young artists during the Annual Student Filmmaking Competition to be held Sunday April 28. More than 100 students from numerous high schools and colleges around the state participated in this year's competition.
SCHEDULE Thursday, April 25 6:30
pm
8:30pm SAFAR
E GHANDEHAR (Kandahar)
Friday, April 26 6:10pm A
DOG'S LIFE 6:15 pm THE
MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
8:30 pm LANTANA
10:45 pm AKAI HASHI NO SHITA NO NURUI MIZU (Warm Water Under a Red Bridge) (http://www.akaihashi.com)
Saturday, April 27 1:30pm TILLSAMMANS
(Together)
3:30 pm ITALIENSK
FOR BEGYNDERE (Italian for Beginners) 6:00 pm CORRECT
CHANGE Crimes of passion are never repeated . . . . unless a drug addicted hooker uses her fatherly pimp's past obsessions as the ultimate weapon for her suicide. Told by a convicted murderer in Moundsville Prison to an unsuspecting naive probation officer and filmed on the gritty streets of Charleston, West Virginia. Filmed entirely in West Virginia by an all-WV cast and crew. Lilly includes music by two West Virginia musicians - Bob Taylor and John Lilly - as well as his son, Jonah Kai who penned the title song. 8:20 pm PLATA
QUEMADA (Burnt Money)
10:35 pm LE PACTE DES LOUPS (Brotherhood of the Wolf) http://www.brotherhoodofthewolf.net/
"A
wild thriller! A true original! Keeps your eyes popping and your adrenaline
flowing."-Rex Reed, NEW YORK OBSERVER
Sunday, April 28 12:30 pm to 3:30 pm STUDENT
FILMMAKING COMPETITION "for list of student entries and screening info, click here" 4:00 pm PROMISES
6:00 pm NO
MAN'S LAND
8:00 pm MULHOLLAND DRIVE
"Fans of Lynch will find much to savor here: the ripe detail, the arch humor, the hallucinatory enigmas, the eroticism, the terror."--Steven Rea, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER "David
Lynch is the sandman of American cinema, and Mulholland Drive is his
most mesmerizing dreamscape yet." - Scott Von Doviak, CULTUREVULTURE.NET
2001 AND 2000 STUDENT CONTEST WINNERS Spring 2001 Film Festival  |
Winner
of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, Jim Broadbent plays John Bayley
(young John played by Bonneville), the husband of the great British
novelist, Iris Murdoch, who is played at the beginning of her life
by Kate Winslet (Oscar-nom for Best Supporting Actress), and at the
end by Judi Dench (Oscar-nom for Best Actress). Based on Bayley's
book ELEGY FOR IRIS, biopic tells the inspiring and heartbreaking
story of the writer's 40-year romance with Iris. The film cuts back
and forth between the young Iris and John at the height of their romance
as Oxford students in the 50s and the elderly couple struggling with
Iris' decline, as her brilliant mind is ravaged by the effects of
Alzheimer's.
From
the director of "Gabbeh" and "The Silence", Makhmalbaf
presents a partially fictionalized documentary that illustrates the
personal and socially conscious tale of life for women under Taliban
rule in Afghanistan. Filmed before the U.S. invasion of Afghanastan,
the quiet, stark, powerful film follows Nafas (Pazira), an Afghan
native who left years back and got a journalism degree in Canada,
upon which she built a career reporting the plight of women in oppressive
nations. When she receives a letter from her sister, who has decided
that she will kill herself on the night of the next eclipse, Nafas
decides to sneak back inside the border to rescue her. As an Afghan
woman, she cannot speak out loud, travel without a husband, or show
her face, elements which make her journey nearly impossible.
Oscar-nominated
for Best Cinematography and tied for Best Director at the Cannes Film
Fest, this Coen Brothers' masterpiece is a brilliantly photographed
black-and-white absurdist noir set in Santa Rosa in 1949. Ed Crane
(the outstanding Thornton) doesn't seem to want much out of life and
his wife, Doris (McDormand) seems to have more fun with her boss,
Dave (Gandolfini). But when a strange character looks for a silent
partner to finance his dream business, Ed sees a possible way out
of his doldrums. Just like any good James M. Cain novel (which the
Coens cited as a major influence on the story), blackmail, deceit,
violence, murder, and double crossing ensue, all with the magic Coen
twists and turns.
Based
on Andrew Bovell's play "Speaking in Tongues" and winner
of 7 Australian Film Institute Awards, the film opens with a slow
pan over a dead body. Leon (LaPaglia), a Sydney police detective who
is assigned to the case, is cheating on his wife with a married woman
from their dance class. There's something missing from his life, but
he's not sure what. His relationship with his son is strained, and
even his partner knows something is wrong. As his affair heats up
and the murder investigation gets more complicated, he is forced to
reexamine his future both as a family man and a cop. "Lantana
never veers off its course, but its path twists and turns with a frantic
glee reminiscent of 'Magnolia'." - Jeanne Aufmuth, PALO ALTO
WEEKLY
Twice
a Cannes Palme d'Or winner with "The Ballad of Narayama"
and "The Eel", septuagenarian Japanese auteur Shohei Imamura
returns with this charmingly bizarre slice of magic realism. Adapted
from Henmi Yo's novel by Imamura and his co-screenwriters Motofumi
Tomikawa and Daisuke Tengan. Tipped off by a dying tramp in Tokyo,
unemployed Yosuke (Yakusho) travels to a small town on the Noto Peninsula
where a golden Buddha statue has supposedly been hidden in a house
near the red bridge. There, Yosuke encounters a senile fortune-teller
and her beautiful granddaughter. The latter is a young woman whose
body secretes gallons of water when she makes love, a discharge which
irrigates the garden and replenishes the local river. The two begin
a passionate affair. Rumours abound, however, as to the fate of her
last boyfriend, who drowned in mysterious circumstances. 
''Together,''
a sly, satirical Swedish film, shows the '70s coming apart as early
as 1975. In a commune in Stockholm, a mixed bag of adults, some with
children, try to live according to their ideals, while human nature
does its best to force them toward compromise, corruption, and, worst
of all, realism. It's a film about people trying to living together.
Sometimes is works well. Sometimes is doesn't. It's all about love
and divorce and family happiness and family unhappiness and about
children and adults and friendship and sex and football.
From
Danish director Lone Scherfig ("On Our Own"), Scherfig is
the first woman to direct a Dogme-95 film (an ascetic filmmaking code
advanced by Danish filmmakers). In this beautiful, understated film,
every character possesses a naive, heartbreaking honesty and every
line communicates the sweet simplicity of basic human longing. Not
about learning Italian (though the six characters meet each other
at an Italian class); the film is about real life, hardship, hope.
As the characters begin to reveal themselves and their problems, they
form a bond and a network that is both a safety net and a new reason
to live.
Based
on a book by Ricardo Piglia and inspired by a true story of a famous
bank robbery in Buenos Aires in the 1960s. When two gay thugs, Angel
and El Nene (Noriega and Sbaraglia) join a plan to hold up an armored
truck with a group of seasoned gangsters, their love and loyalty to
each other is tested. When the robbery goes terribly wrong, the gang
escapes to Uruguay. Eventually, the gang begins to bicker. Things
become more complicated when El Nene roams the streets and meets Giselle
(Bredice), a prostitute in whom he begins to trust. A delicate balance
of a gripping bloodbath and a moving, tender love story. 
In
this country, French movies are mostly known for being artistic and
airy. Gans has elected to defy this reputation by making a film that
owes more to American and Asian cinema than it does to the traditions
of Godard, Truffaut, and Rohmer. Any attempt to take this movie seriously
will have the average movie-goer convulsed with laughter. Brotherhood
never pretends to be something that it isn't. So what is Brotherhood?
It's a period-piece action/adventure movie with elements of martial
arts, horror, and mystery/intrigue thrown in for good measure. Inspired
by actual events during the reign of King Louis XV, Brotherhood revisits
the myth of the "Beast of Gevaudan" which killed a number
of persons before being vanquished under mysterious circumstances.
Delegated by the Royal Court, Gregoire de Fronsac arrives in Gevaudan
to find and destroy the Beast, and is accompanied by the taciturn
Mani, a Mohawk Indian he met during the Seven Years War. Nothing will
prepare them for what they discover. 
Co-director
Goldberg is an American who grew up in Jerusalem and was a journalist
during the intifada. Shot over the course of four years, the filmmakers
were welcomed into the daily lives of seven children, ages 9-13, and
their families. Each child offers a dramatic, emotional, and sometimes
funny portrait of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict by expressing
their views on their country, war, religion, life, and each other.
The film draws viewers into the hearts and minds of Jerusalem's children
by giving voice to those captured by the region's hatreds as well
as those able to transcend them. The children are less self-conscious
and polite than teenagers and adults and they speak directly and without
self-censorship.
Winner
of the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language
Film. A tragic-comic parable of war, the films takes place, literally,
in the trenches of Bosnia. A Serb (Bitorajac) and a Croat (Djuric)
find themselves abandoned in the same trench. They can't kill each
other and they can't escape, but they are, after all, enemies, so
what are they to do? Fortunately, there is something to distract them:
another Croat, whom they thought was dead, is alive and laying on
a landmine. If he moves, all three of them are dead. Into this mess
stumble two more provocateurs: a cable news reporter (Cartlidge) and
a UN Peacekeeper (Callow). Then the real tragedy begins.
Oscar-nominated
for Best Director and winner of the Palme d'Or for Best Director at
last year's Cannes Film Festival, David Lynch strikes again with this
literal nightmare of a motion picture--a brilliant, scathing, hysterical,
and haunting ode to Hollywood. A mysterious dark-haired woman (Harring)
emerges from an accident with a purse full of cash and a head full
of amnesia. Meanwhile, Betty (Watts) has just landed in Los Angeles
from Ontario with dreams of celebrity. When Betty finds the nameless
beauty in her aunt's apartment, she is deeply intrigued by the situation
and offers to help her. This sends the two women on a bizarre search
for the truth through the macabre, sun-soaked streets of the City
of Angels, where the mob, a young film director (Theroux), a studio
executive with a tiny head, and an enigmatic figure named the Cowboy
all float into the picture, then out again, until there is no longer
any distinction between what is dream and what is reality. This is
a movie to surrender yourself to.