BAMcinemaFest 2011

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 13 June 2011 05:00

Written by L E Shannon

BAMcinématek is presenting its third annual BAMcinemaFest June 16–26, 2011 at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn, New York.

BAMcinemaFest is a festival of American independents, international discoveries, and repertory classics that celebrates emerging voices in American independent and international cinema.

Opening the festival on June 16 is the New York premiere of Weekend, a film written, edited, and directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Tom Cullen, Chris New. Russell casually picks up an artist, Glen, at a bar on a Friday night and develops a strong bond with him over the course of 48 hours.

The closing night film is Mathieu Amalric’s Tournée (On Tour), the riotous story of an exiled impresario who returns to his native France with a troupe of American dancers -- Mimi Le Meaux, Kitten on the Keys, Dirty Martini, and others -- to unveil "the new burlesque" to an unsuspecting French public.

The world premiere of veteran hip-hop director Charlie Ahearn‛s Jamel Shabazz Street Photographer. This is the definitive portrait of the titular Brooklyn native who was documenting New York urban street culture for decades before being internationally discovered in 2005 through the publication of Back in the Days. Shabazz’s photographs have hundreds of (often tragic) stories behind them, and Ahearn articulates these images with dozens of detailed interviews with Shabazz himself and graffiti pioneer and hip-hop historian Fred "Fab 5 Freddy" Brathwaite, among others.

This year‛s Special Screening is a new 35mm print of an underrated British classic, Whistle Down the Wind, directed by Bryan Forbes (1961), starring Alan Bates, Bernard Lee, and Hayley Mills in one of her first non-Disney roles. A fugitive in a small town is mistaken by the local children as the second coming of Christ. This directorial debut by Oscar nominated actor-writer-director Forbes was produced by Richard Attenborough.

Other narrative films screening include:

The Catechism Cataclysm
dir. Todd Rohal
starring Steve Little, Robert Longstreet
An absurdist comedy about a confused Catholic priest and his high school idol on a canoe trip.

The Color Wheel
dir. Alex Ross Perry
This dryly funny feature follows the transformative road trip of a brother, played by the director himself, and sister (stand-up comedienne Carlen Altman).

Green
dir. Sophia Takal
starring Kate Lyn Sheil
The debut feature of actor-director Takal is a psychosexual drama breaking down the expectations of intellectual city dwellers in the countryside.

Jess + Moss
dir. Clay Jeter
starring Sarah Hagan, Austin Vickers
The first feature by child actor-turned-cinematographer/director Jeter is a series of expressionistic and elegiac vignettes about the bond between second cousins, all shot on Jeter’s family tobacco farm in Tennessee.

On the Ice
dir. Andrew Okpeaha MacLean
A tense, compelling drama with a nonprofessional cast about two Inuit teenagers who, while on a seal hunting trip in the Alaskan tundra, mistakenly kill a friend.

Septien
dir. Michael Tully
starring Tully, Robert Longstreet
A darkly comic tale from film critic Tully focuses on the unexpected return of a high school football star to his family’s dilapidated farm after 18 years.

Other documentary films screening include:

The Ballad of Genesis & Lady Jaye
dir. Marie Losier
A portrait of legendary musician and artist Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, her relationship with Lady Jaye, a conceptual artist and dominatrix, and how they transformed themselves to look like one another through body modification.

Dragonslayer
dir. Tristan Patterson
A gorgeously shot, expressionistic portrait of Josh "Skreech" Sandoval, a professional yet poverty-stricken SoCal skateboarder.

Elevate
dir. Anne Buford
First-time director Buford helms this moving documentary of four Senegalese teenagers with hoop dreams of playing in the NBA.

Last Days Here
dir. Don Argott, Demian Fenton
A harrowing and startling but redemptive portrait of Bobby Liebling, the self-destructive frontman of legendary doom metal pioneers Pentagram.

Separado!
dir. Dylan Goch, Gruff Rhys
Welsh rock superstar Gruff Rhys, of the irreverent Super Furry Animals, takes a psychedelic, time-warped transcontinental journey from his native Cymru all the way to Patagonia to look for his long-lost Argentine uncle, the poncho-donning Welsh-language flamenco singer René Griffiths, in this costume epic/western/doc hybrid. 

Where Soldiers Come From
dir. Heather Courtney
Shot over the course of four years, this revelatory documentary follows friends from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as they enlist in the National Guard, are deployed to Afghanistan, and return to their home and loved ones.

Also screening is a program of short films, including a program devoted to Sundance shorts.

For more information, go to www.BAM.org.

BAMcinemaFest
June 16–26, 2011

BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Avenue
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
New York
718-636-4129

BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
New York

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