MUNICH (dpa) – The accent is international at Munich’s annual film festival this year, whose traditional Hollywood to Hong Kong lineup has become a global platform for new directors and movies in and outside the mainstream.
Festival chief Eberhard Hauff and his staff have selected more than 150 films in all genres for the 19th Filmfest Munich, which are scheduled to unspool from June 30 to July 5 at the festival’s Gasteig center, the nearby Maxx multiplex, and six other cinemas throughout the Bavarian capital.And just three days before the French box office hit “Amelie” opens the festival, fledgling directors from 27 countries will begin presenting their latest productions at the 21st International Festival of Film Academies, slated to run parallel to the fest.Highlights of the World Cinema section include director Christopher Nolan’s thriller from Hollywood, which some critics describe as a modern variation of the classical film noir, and one of the year’s most fascinating films. The festival will stage the world premiere of a new filming of “The Magnificent Ambersons,” which director Alfonso Arau adapted from Booth Tarkington’s novel and used the legendary script from Orson Welles dating back to 1942.The original “Ambersons” from Welles himself was truncated before its release by the RKO studio and only year’s later came to be regarded as a major achievment of the American screen. A further highlight in the section includes Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia’s “La Comunidad,” which stars Carmen Maura, and pays homage to Roman Polanski and Alfred Hitchcock.Others in the international section include movies showing the hard reality of post-communist Europe from Polish director Waldemar Krzystek and Russian director Alexander Zeldovich’s “Moscow.” From Italy comes Marco Tullio Giordana’s “I Sento Passi” (The Hundred Steps), whose Mafia background caused raised eyebrows in its homeland after it received an Academy Award nomination.And two films in the section recall the late Stanley Kubrick’s contribution to the cinematic art, a documentary “Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures” and the master’s own 1952 documentary “The Seafarers,” screened for the first time in Europe at the Munich festival.The section “New Asian Cinema” toplines movies from young directors from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, India and Iran, some of whom will be present at the festival. Two films from Asia focus on the situation of women, the episodic film “Roozi Keh Zan Shodam (The Day I Became a Woman) from Iran’s Marziyeh Meshkini and Taiwan director Vivian Chang’s “Xiao Bai Wu Jin Ji” (Hidden Whisper).As in every Munich festival, the American Independents section shows low and no-budget movies, whose portraits of life in the U.S.A. begin with Randy Redroad’s debut film, “The Doe Boy,” a love story shot in Tahlequah, the homeland of the Cherokee Indians. Penelope Spheeri’s “We Sold Our Souls For Rock’n Roll” accompanies rock icon Ozzy Osbourne on a bizarre tour through 30 cities.Jonathan Parker’s “Bartleby,” a Kafkaesque comedy based on a short story by Hermile Melville, and Tom DiCillo’s latest black comedy “Double Whammy” round off the section.The Visiones Latinoamericanas offers Hispanic buffs the winning film of the San Sebastian festival, “La Perdicion de los Hombres,” from director Arturo Ripstein, whose films were celebrated in a retrospective at the 1989 Munich festival.“The Cuba Coup,” a turbulent crime comedy from Cuban director Daniel Diaz Torres, features German actor Peter Lohmeyer in the leading role. And from the new generation of Argentine filmmakers comes “Solo Por Hoy,” Ariel Rotter’s debut film.Oskar Roehler, who took the HypoVereinsbank director’s promotion award in 1997 (this year’s prize totals 80,000 marks), will present his Freudian grotesque “Suck My Dick” over male sexual anxieties.Roehler’s cast includes the cream of German actors, Edgar Selge in the lead, backed by stars Katja Flint, Eva Mattes, and Hannelore Elsner, as well as fashion designer Wolfgang Joop. The section’s highlights include “Mondscheintarif” (Moonlight Tariff) from Ralf Huettner, based on Ildiko von Kuerthy’s best-selling love story novel.In the Retrospective Section, the festival pays tribute to Jean- Pierre Jeunet, whose 1991 debut film “Delicatessen” has become a cult movie. The festival will also screen “La Cite des Enfants Perdus” (The City of Lost Children), which the director made with his partner Marc Caro. Jeunet’s Hollywood movie, “Alien – Resurrection,” will also be shown.The festival committee also selected his “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain” to open the festival. Despite its enormous popularity in France “Amelie” failed to obtain a nomination at this year’s Cannes festival, which sparked angry protests from critics and cineasts alike.British director and author Terence Davies will personally be present when the festival screens his “The House of Mirth,” which American film critics praised as the year’s best film of 2000. The movie was based on novelist Edith Wharton’s portrait of New York high society. One of Davies’ biggest success was the 1988 “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” which will complement the section along with “The Long Day Closes” (1992) and “The Neon Bible” (1995).This year’s “Cine Merit Award” will go to British actress Jacqueline Bisset.
