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Science
fiction, foreign films, satire and music all part of 2007 'Ebertfest'
Craig Chamberlain,
News Editor
217-333-2894; cdchambe@illinois.edu
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Click
photo to enlarge |
| Alan
Rickman, star of “Perfume:
The Story of a Murderer” (2006), is
among the guests scheduled to attend "Ebertfest."
"Perfume" will be shown Thursday. |
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Released
3/28/07
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —
The festival will begin in a troubling future world of made-to-order
babies. Later it will travel to a tradition-bound African village,
to horrors in 18th-century Paris, to a silent Pago-Pago, the streets
of Rome, an odd Wisconsin, a gritty American South, and finally to
Roger Ebert’s own satirical vision of ’60s-era Hollywood.
The stops are just a few in a five-day, 13-film trip through the ninth
annual Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, or “Ebertfest,”
coming April 25-29 to Champaign-Urbana.
The festival will open on a Wednesday evening with “Gattaca,”
a science fiction thriller, and close on Sunday with the 1970 cult film
“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” written by Ebert. Following
“Dolls” will be a performance by Strawberry Alarm Clock,
a ’60s rock band that appears in the film, the original members
reuniting after almost four decades.
Among the guests
scheduled to attend the festival are Alan Rickman, who plays the
character Severus Snape in the "Harry Potter" films, and Joey Lauren
Adams, who played the title role in "Chasing Amy."
In between the opening and closing days, the festival will feature
films by renowned foreign directors, documentaries focused on two very
different musicians, personal films dealing with disappointment and
loneliness, an African film about the continuing practice of female
circumcision, and a free family film about a bizarre juvenile detention
center that makes boys dig holes in the desert.
Also on the program, as usual, is a silent film, which will be accompanied
for the first time by the Champaign-Urbana Symphony.
The 13 screenings will take place at the 1,500-seat Virginia Theater,
a 1920s-era Champaign movie palace, with other events at the University
of Illinois. The festival is a special event of the College
of Communications at Illinois.
 |
Click
photo to enlarge |
| "Come
Early Morning" (2006), a character study starring
Ashley Judd, will be shown on Friday of the festival.
Director Joey Lauren Adams and actor Scott Wilson
will be festival guests. |
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Ebert is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning
critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and co-hosts “Ebert & Roeper,” a
weekly televised movie-review program. He also is a 1964 Illinois
journalism graduate and U. of I. adjunct journalism professor.
Ebert selects films for the festival that he feels have been overlooked
in some way, either by critics, distributors or audiences, or because
they come from overlooked genres or formats, such as documentaries.
Guests connected with the selected films are invited to attend, and
many appear on stage for informal discussions after the screenings.
In past years, Ebert appeared on stage and interviewed the guests,
but his role at this year’s festival will be limited to that
of an audience member as he continues to recover from a long illness.
This year’s schedule of films, with the current lineup of guests
(many of Ebert’s comments are from past reviews):
Wednesday, April 25
7 p.m. – “Gattaca” (1997), about a future world in
which test-tube babies are made to order for looks, brains and long
life span, and the naturally born are second-class citizens. It stars
Ethan Hawke, Jude Law and Uma Thurman, and “is one of the smartest
and most provocative of science fiction films, a thriller with ideas,”
according to Ebert. Producer Michael Shamberg will be a guest on stage
after the screening.
Thursday, April 26
12:30 p.m. – “The Weather Man” (2005), “a stunning
portrait of a sad loser in crisis,” according to Ebert. The film
stars Nicolas Cage, with Michael Caine as his father, a famous author
who has always been disappointed in his son and cannot forgive failure.
Writer Steven Conrad and actor Gil Bellows will be guests.
3:30 p.m. – “Moolaade” (2004), “a story vibrating
with urgency and life,” according to Ebert, even though it centers
on the difficult subject of female circumcision in an African village.
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembene, sometimes called the father
of African cinema, the film was Ebert’s pick as the best at the
2004 Cannes Film Festival. Professor Samba Gadjigo, whose research focuses
on Sembene’s work, and actress Fatoumata Coulibaly, who plays
the film’s lead character, will be guests.
8:30 p.m. – “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” (2006),
a very dark film about a man with an acute sense of smell who can
create the finest perfumes, but whose obsession leads him down a gruesome
path. Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman play supporting roles. “You
may not savor (the film), but you will not stop watching it, in horror
and fascination,” Ebert says. Rickman will be a guest.
Friday, April 27
Noon – “Sadie Thompson” (1928), this year’s
silent film, accompanied for the first time by the Champaign-Urbana
Symphony. Gloria Swanson, in an Oscar-nominated role, plays a woman
trapped on the tropical island of Pago-Pago, confronted about her lifestyle
by a crusading missionary played by Lionel Barrymore. On stage afterward
as guests will be symphony conductor Steven Larsen, composer Joseph
Turrin and film scholar David Bordwell.
 |
Click
photo to enlarge |
| “Moolaade” (2004), “a
story vibrating with urgency and life,” according
to Ebert, even though it centers on the difficult
subject of female circumcision in an African village.
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembene, sometimes
called the father of African cinema, the film was
Ebert’s pick as the best at the 2004 Cannes
Film Festival. Professor Samba Gadjigo, whose research
focuses on Sembene’s work, and actress Fatoumata
Coulibaly, who plays the film’s lead character,
will be guests. |
|
|
3 p.m. – “Come
Early Morning” (2006), a character
study starring Ashley Judd as a small-town woman caught in a pattern
of drunkenness and one-night stands, but who also holds down an
important job and goes to church with her father. Ebert says Judd’s
performance is among her best work, and first-time director Joey
Lauren Adams “has
the assurance of a thoughtful filmmaker who knows her characters and
how to tell their stories.” Adams and actor Scott Wilson
will be guests.
7:30 p.m. – “La Dolce Vita” (1960), among the best-known
films by the renowned Italian director Federico Fellini. It follows
a gossip columnist who chronicles the lives of “fading aristocrats,
second-rate movie stars, aging playboys and women of commerce,”
Ebert says. The film was shot on the Via Veneto, a Roman street of nightclubs
and sidewalk cafes, and “leaps from one visual extravaganza to
another.” Guests will be David Poland, writer of the daily online
column The Hot Button, and Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures
Classics.
11:30 p.m. – “Freddie Mercury, the Untold Story” (2000),
a television documentary film about the late rock musician, best known
as the lead singer and pianist for Queen. The film follows the future
Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, through his childhood and youth in Zanzibar,
India and London, and then chronicles his music career and personal
life. The film features interviews with Mercury’s fellow band
members and with members of his family. Director Rudi Dolezal will
be a guest.
Saturday, April 28
11 a.m. – “Holes” (2003), about an odd juvenile correction
center in the middle of the desert that requires the boys sentenced
there to dig 5-foot holes day after day. Based on the much-honored and
-loved young adult novel by Louis Sachar, who also wrote the screenplay,
the film “jumps the rails, leaves all expectations behind, and
tells a story that’s not funny ha-ha but funny peculiar,”
says Ebert. Director and Illinois alumnus Andy Davis, who also directed
“The Fugitive,” will be a guest. The film is this year’s
free family matinee.
2:30 p.m. – “Man of Flowers” (1983), about a lonely
middle-aged man who channels his repressed sexual desires into a world
of art and fantasy, and about his involvement with an attractive young
artist’s model who undresses for him. According to reviewer Denis
Schwartz, it is an “intelligently provocative, lyrical film about
how fantasies can enrich our lives and how damning loneliness can be.”
The respected Australian director Paul Cox and actor Werner Herzog
will be guests.
7 p.m. – “Stroszek” (1977), a film by Herzog, a critically
acclaimed German director, about three people with nothing in common:
a retarded ex-prisoner, a little old man and a prostitute. The story
follows them as they travel from Germany to begin a new life in a house
trailer in Wisconsin. It is “one of the oddest films ever made,”
according to Ebert. “It is impossible for the audience to anticipate
a single shot or development.” Herzog once again will be a guest
on stage.
10:30 p.m. – “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus”
(2005), a documentary that follows an “alt-country” singer,
Jim White, in his travels through the South and his encounters with
a slice of white Southern culture. Along the way, he meets other musicians,
and his stops include churches, prisons, truck stops, biker bars and
coal mines. Director Andrew Douglas will be a guest and White will
perform on stage after the screening.
Sunday, April 29
Noon – “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” (1970), a
film written by Ebert and directed by Russ Meyer, about three young
women seeking their fame and fortune in Hollywood, and their encounters
with sex, violence and drugs. Ebert describes it as “pure movie
without message” and “a satire of Hollywood conventions,
genres, situations, dialogue, characters and success formulas,”
overlaid with extreme violence. The movie was rated X, but a “very
mild X,” according to Ebert, and probably could have been rated
R in later years with a few small cuts. Guests will be Actress Marcia
McBroom, who played one of the three women, and film critic Peter Sobczynski.
Strawberry Alarm Clock will perform on stage afterward to close the
festival.
Other festival events, including panel discussions held on the U. of
I. campus, will be announced soon. Updates on the festival will be posted
on the festival Web site: www.ebertfest.com.
Tickets for individual films will go on sale April 6 through the theater
box office; phone 217-356-9063; fax: 217-356-5729. The price will be
$10 each for regular admission and $8 each for students and senior citizens.
The 1,000 festival passes, covering all 13 screenings, went on sale
Nov. 1 and sold out within two weeks. It marked the third year in a
row that passes were sold out before the films were announced.
Those seeking additional information and updates on films, guests and
festival events should contact either Mary Susan Britt, at 217-244-0552,
or by e-mail at marsue@illinois.edu,
or festival director Nate Kohn, at 706-542-4972, or by e-mail at nate.kohn@gmail.com.
