KIFF provides a weeklong film feast
W hat … already?
Yep. The Eighth Kansas International Film Festival gets under way Friday at the Glenwood Arts Theatre with more than 50 feature films over seven days.
Look for full coverage of KIFF in Thursday’s FYI Weekend | Preview section. Meantime, here are a few tidbits to whet your appetite for a major-league pig-out of moviegoing:
•“Flash of Genius”: It’s headed for theaters next month, but KIFFers get an early peek at a true-life yarn about an inventor (Greg Kinnear) who risked everything — family, job, sanity — when he sued Ford for stealing his variable-speed windshield wiper.
•“Random Lunacy”: Killer doc about a bearded dude calling himself Papa Nutrino who raised a family while living totally off the grid (no house, no job, no money); he even sailed to Europe in a homemade raft.
•“Woodpecker”: Absorbing documentary (or is it?) about the search for the possibly extinct ivory billed woodpecker.
•“Under Our Skin”: Exposé of the Lyme disease epidemic and the medical profession’s foot-dragging.
•“Indestructible”: Diagnosed with the fatal disease ALS, a 31-year-old patient begins documenting his life.
•“Tammuz”: Probe into the 1981 suicide mission in which eight Israeli pilots took out a nuclear reactor in Iraq.
•“August Evening”: Superb slice-of-life drama about an undocumented Mexican worker in Texas, his widowed daughter-in-law and the grown children who now see him as an embarrassment.
•“Silhouette City”: Skin-crawling documentary about the militant religious right, centering on the notorious Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord compound in the Arkansas Ozarks.
•“Choke”: Sam Rockwell stars in this adaptation of Chuck (Fight Club) Palahniuk’s novel about a costumed employee of a Colonial era-theme park who is both a sex addict and a seasoned con artist. He deliberately chokes on food so he can be saved by strangers, who then feel obliged to look out for him. Could be politically incorrect. (Opens in theaters Sept. 26.)
•“Greensboro: Closer to the Truth”: An award-winning doc that investigates the 1979 murder of five communists by the Ku Klux Klan.
Full festival passes sell for $60. Individual tickets cost $6.50 (for showtimes before 6 p.m.) and $8.50 (after 6 p.m.). To purchase tickets in advance go to www.fineartsgroup.com.
•••
Actor and activist Richard Roundtree — beloved by baby boomers and fans of blaxploitation flicks as John Shaft — will be honored at the fifth annual Gordon Parks Celebration of Culture and Diversity next month in Fort Scott, Kan.
On Oct. 3 Roundtree will receive the Gordon Parks Choice of Weapons Award. Named after Parks’ autobiography, the award honors a recipient who has excelled in many of the same disciplines as Parks and who exemplifies Parks’ spirit and strength of character.
Parks was the world-renowned photographer, writer, musician and filmmaker who directed “Shaft” in 1971, choosing Roundtree to portray the role of an African-American private eye in New York City. The Gordon Parks Center for Culture and Diversity was created in 2004 by Fort Scott Community College to honor the city’s native son.
Roundtree’s acting credits include a stint with New York’s famed Negro Ensemble Company and films as varied as “Seven,” “Once Upon a Time … When We Were Colored” and this spring’s “Speed Racer.”
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