Mainstream Flicks

Venues

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This article by Pete Mladineo was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper

on April 29, 1998. All rights reserved.

Film

Princeton and Philadelphia have a few things in common:

Ivy League schools, historic sites, and Paul Robeson. The athlete,

singer, actor, and sometime movie star (he withdrew from movies for

political reasons) was born in Princeton in 1898 and died in Philadelphia

in 1976.

Something that Princeton and Philadelphia don’t share, though, is

a place that actively shows international films. Princeton’s only

art house — the Montgomery Cinema — pretty much stopped showing

international films in 1996. But in Philadelphia, the foreign flicks

come hard and fast. This year’s Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema

opens on Wednesday, April 29, at the Annenberg Center with a party

and screening of "TwentyFourSeven," Shane Meadows’ meditation

on self-control starring Bob Hoskins.

It will also showcase Robeson’s work on the screen, commemorating

his hundredth birthday. They are each screened at the International

House, 3701 Chestnut Street. "Body & Soul" plays on Monday,

May 4, at 7:30 p.m. "The Emperor Jones" is screened on Saturday,

May 9, at 1:15 p.m., and "Jericho" plays on Sunday, May 3,

at 7 p.m.

Foreign flicks come to New Jersey for the Rutgers Film Co-Op’s New

Jersey International Film Festival, which begins in New Brunswick

on Friday, May 29. The Philadelphia fest is larger, and more international

than the New Jersey up-and-comer. In 12 short days there are 29 full-length

foreign films screening in Philadelphia (that’s not counting the independent

shorts or the American flicks), while New Brunswick’s festival shows

18 films not made in the U.S.A.

Philadelphia’s foreign films hail from such places as Chile, the Netherlands,

Honk Kong, Tibet, Bosnia, Ireland, and Romania. Human rights gets

a mini-spotlight at this year’s festival. For instance, "Frozen,"

an independent film by anonymous director Wu Ming, was smuggled out

of China. It’s about a performance artist in Beijing who makes his

own suicide his final work (Wednesday, May 6, at 9:15 p.m, or Thursday,

May 7, 8:15 p.m. at the Ritz at the Bourse). "Chile, Obstinate

Memory," Patricio Guzman’s film about Chilean amnesia, screens

on Wednesday, May 6, 5:30 p.m. and Thursday, May 7, 10:30 p.m. at

the Ritz at the Bourse.

This year’s fest will also showcase works of independent film and

video makers in the Philadelphia area, as well as spotlight Good Machine,

the U.S. company that produced titles such as "The Ice Storm,"

"The Wedding Banquet," "The Brothers McMullen," and

"The Sticky Fingers of Time." There will also be an homage

to Robert Lepage, the Quebecois director of "Needles and Opium,"

"Seven Streams," and "Elsinore."

Film critic Roger Ebert (of Siskel & Ebert) will provide an analysis

of the movie he considers to be the best of all time: Martin Scorsese’s

"Raging Bull," starring Al Pacino. This begins with a full

showing of the movie on Thursday, April 30, 6 p.m., at the International

House, and continues with three frame-by-frame discussions of the

film, led by Ebert, on consecutive days. The closing event is a Cajun

music concert by the Savoy-Smith Band, on Saturday, May 9, at 9 p.m.,

at the International House.