Must-see movies at Kansas International Film Festival
It’s good to be the movie critic.
It has been especially good the last month because I’ve been spending my weekends watching some of the films screening at the Kansas International Film Festival, starting Friday at the Glenwood Arts.
I can say without fear of contradiction that this year’s KIFF features the best lineup of any local film festival in memory.
Usually I write a piece about my 10 must-see films of each fest. Today I’m offering 15, and even with that inflated number I must omit some very strong work.
For example, I haven’t yet seen “Greensboro: Closer to the Truth,” a documentary about the Ku Klux Klan’s 1979 murder of five Communist Workers Party members. The film has won awards at the DeadCenter Film Festival in Oklahoma City and at the Rome International Film Fest. I never got around to it.
Nor am I including on this list Hollywood films like “Flash of Genius,” the real-life David-vs.-Goliath story of an engineering prof (Greg Kinnear) who sued Ford for stealing his invention, a variable speed windshield wiper.
In the spirit of indie cinema, I’ve picked only very small, micro-budgeted movies that demonstrate just how much you can accomplish with a good idea and a bit of talent.
You’ll note that most of my choices are documentaries. What can I say? As a rule, docs far outshine the nonfiction films in terms of storytelling, artistic creativity and emotional impact. Still, there are a couple of narratives among my picks.
Here we go:
“Random Lunacy: Videos From the Road Less Traveled”: Papa Nutrino is a bearded nomad who raised a family of adopted and biological children while wandering all over the U.S. and Mexico.
They paid their way by putting on musical performances, often residing on a variety of watercraft constructed from cast-off materials. Once they sailed to Europe on a homemade raft.
Through it all Papa inculcated in his brood his conviction that you don’t need money to survive, that you can live off what others throw away. Today those now-grown kids say it was a great experience … ironically, most are now living solidly middle-class lives.
Stephanie Silber and Victor Zimet’s doc, based largely on home movies made by Papa’s brood, is an inspiring/exasperating look at a true rebel. Both directors will attend the screening.
Showtime: 7:30 p.m. Friday.
“August Evening”: With his first feature, writer/director Chris Eska hits one out of the park.
“August Evening” is a low-key but overwhelmingly moving study of Jaime (Pedro Castaneda), a graying widower, and his widowed daughter-in-law, Lupe (Veronica Loren). When Jaime, an undocumented worker, loses his job at a factory chicken farm in central Texas, the two find themselves depending on the mercies of Jaime’s other children. These are thoroughly Americanized individuals who find their uneducated, Spanish-speaking father an embarrassment.
The film succeeds on many levels — as an evocation of poverty in this land of plenty, as a meditation on the immigrant’s plight and as a love story as the stubbornly pouty Lupe finally caves to the romantic entreaties of a decent suitor (Walter Perez).
Nobody seems to be acting here … Eska’s camera appears to catch life on the fly.
Showtime: Noon Saturday.
“Art From the Streets”: It’s a doc about a program in Austin, Texas, that allows homeless people to create art and then sell it in a once-a-year exhibition.
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