PRESS RELEASES – PAGE 8

SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY PROGRAM:
A LOOK BACK
Wednesday, September 5, 2001

We are pleased to provide further details of our Anniversary program of archival films, A Look Back. The series will consist of eight films: five chosen by noted directors who are friends of the Festival, and two "audience favourites" that screened to much acclaim when first presented, now returning to Vancouver for the first time since. The last film is a special Archival Screening of John Cassavetes’ masterpiece A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, which will be presented by actor Gena Rowlands, who received an Oscar nomination for her spellbinding performance as a housewife driven insane by the agonies of the human heart. (Rowlands also features in Charles Kiselyak’s A CONSTANT FORGE: AN EXPLORATION OF THE LIFE AND ART OF JOHN CASSAVETES, an invaluable documentary on the late filmmaker, screening at VIFF as an International Premiere.)

Prairie iconoclast Guy Maddin will be on hand to present famed animator Jan Svankmajer’s first feature ALICE, a surreal adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s work, first presented as a Canadian Premiere at the 1988 VIFF. Svankmajer’s new film, LITTLE OTIK, will also be receiving its Canadian Premiere. Speaking of Maddin, Bruce Sweeney, whose LAST WEDDING screens as Closing Gala, has selected and will present Maddin’s extraordinary film, CAREFUL, which screened as a Western Canadian Gala in 1992. Writer-director-architect Patrick Keiller’s fascinating study of a culture in decline, LONDON, presented as a Canadian Premiere at the 1994 VIFF, is an extraordinary juggling act of fiction, documentary, political satire, literary history, meditative reflection, sleuth story and absurdist humour; LONDON will be presented by special guest Peter Lynch, on hand to introduce his latest documentary, the brilliant CYBERMAN. And John Pozer, director of THE GROCER’S WIFE, will introduce Aki Kaurismäki’s dark, mordant and moral masterpiece THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL.

The last director’s pick comes from Jim Jarmusch, who has selected Alan Greenberg’s overlooked poetic documentary, THE LAND OF LOOK BEHIND, which screened at the 1984 VIFF. As Jarmusch notes in our program, "Filmed in Jamaica in May and June of 1981, Greenberg’s initial intention, to my knowledge, was purely to capture Bob Marley’s funeral, and the impact of his death on the island’s culture. But somehow, like an unusual tropical blossom, the film unfolds into something more striking and beautiful than maybe even Greenberg himself expected. It becomes an organic portrait of the very soul of Jamaica, and the earthy, pervasive substrata of Rastafarianism."

The two programmers’ selections are audience favourites that both screened at the "Expo" 1986 VIFF. Amir Naderi’s revelation THE RUNNER is a visually stunning and remarkably intense account of a street urchin’s life in large port city on the Persian Gulf. Reminiscent of Italian neorealist films of the 40s, this unsentimental and powerful portrait builds steadily toward a breathless, elemental climax. Elem Klimov’s controversial COME AND SEE, about a young Russian boy crossing Nazi-occupied territory in 1943, is among the most powerful films ever made, a must see for anyone interested in the possibilities of cinema at the edge of its limits.

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