St. Louis film fest rolls with other cities' winners
By Joe Williams
POST-DISPATCH FILM CRITIC
Friday, Sep. 29 2006


From late August to late September, the world's movie critics expend a lot of eyedrops and frequent-flier miles jetting to and from film festivals in Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York. But the cherry on top of this movable feast is that many of the festival highlights then are ticketed for St. Louis.

This week, organizers of the annual St. Louis International Film Festival announced most of the movies and special guests for this year's event, scheduled for Nov. 9 to 19. More films and events will be finalized in the next few weeks, but it's already a stellar lineup, with marquee attractions than include some legendary documentarians.

Nonfiction filmmakers Albert Maysles and Les Blank will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards. Maysles, who has documented the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Truman Capote and door-to-door Bible salesmen in his 50-year career, will be screening footage from his long collaboration with fabric-hanging artist Christo.

Blank, whose "Burden of Dreams" followed filmmaker Werner Herzog into the Amazon jungle, will show some of his work in progress about the history of tea. He also will screen outtakes from "Always for Pleasure," his 1978 documentary about New Orleans music.

Also on the schedule are topical documentaries about anorexia, the F-word, Iraq and Colombian drug lords, as well as locally made documentaries about the late St. Louis Mayor A.J. Cervantes and the Gateway Arch.

St. Louis connections

Locals also will be represented among the feature films:

— Director George Hickenlooper ("Mayor of the Sunset Strip") will return to his hometown to showcase some of his work as a Hollywood producer, including "Canvas," a sailing-themed drama starring Joe Pantoliano.

— For the first-time, a locally made movie will compete in the New Filmmakers Forum. Brian Jun's "Steel City," shot in Alton in 2004 and well-received at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is one of five debut films that will face a jury headed by film critic David Edelstein of National Public Radio.

— Former St. Louisan Sarah Clarke (Nina Myers on the TV series "24") co-stars in the comedy "The Lather Effect" with Eric Stoltz.

— Honorary St. Louisan Gerard Butler, who filmed the soccer movie "The Game of Their Lives" here, stars in the Anglo-Saxon epic "Beowulf & Grendel."

Into the heartland

Other star-powered vehicles will be announced as contracts are finalized, but we can confirm a slot for "Candy," starring Heath Ledger as a poet with an insatiable appetite for life.

Prestige directors who will be represented include Terry Gilliam, whose
"Tideland" is a fantasy about a girl's troubled upbringing; brothers Timothy and Stephen Quay, whose "Piano Tuner of Earthquakes" is their animated answer to "The Phantom of the Opera"; and Terry Zwigoff, who will be in town to screen the uncensored director's cut of his "Bad Santa."

Some of these movies eventually will play a regular run in a St. Louis theater, but the real value of a film festival is exposing audiences to works that would not otherwise come to the American heartland.

The most promising imports include the South African films "U Carmen
E-khayelitsha," a Xhosa-language adaptation of the Bizet opera, and "Son of Man," a retelling of the life of Christ; the surreal Thai musical "Citizen Dog"; and "Summer Palace," a love story that got director Ye Lou blacklisted in his native China for alluding to the 1989 uprising in Tiananmen Square.


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