In its sixth year, Roxbury festival celebrates a burst of local color
Billed as "the largest festival in New England dedicated to the work of filmmakers and film industry professionals of color," the Roxbury Film Festival, hosted by ACT Roxbury and the Color of Film Collaborative, gets underway on Wednesday and runs through next Sunday.
In the six years since its inception, the festival, which takes place at Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, has grown steadily and continues to attract professionals from both sides of the camera.
This year's theme, "Celebrating the Vision and the Voice of New England Filmmakers of Color," brings local talent to the festival, including Patricia Alvarado and Arturo Sheimberg, producers of WGBH-TV's "La Plaza." Other guests slated to appear include actor Ernest Hudson of HBO's "Oz," actress/producer Daphne Maxwell Reid, and Roxbury native Topper Carew, who will introduce his documentary "We Don't Die, We Multiply!" about the late comic Robin Harris.
Among the more than 50 features, shorts, and documentaries in the festival is the 1973 blaxploitation film "The Spook Who Sat by the Door," which opens the event on Wednesday at the MassArt Tower Auditorium. Sam Greenlee, who wrote the controversial book and then adapted it for the screen, will speak to the audience after the screening.
"Love, Sex, and Eating the Bones," starring Hill Harper and named best feature film at the Pan African Film Festival, will screen on Thursday at the MFA. Other notable showings include "Everything's Jake," starring Hudson; "Brother to Brother," about the gay presence in the Harlem Renaissance; and "What's the Point? The Hope of a Growing Community," a film made by 11 student interns from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.
Visit www.roxburyfilmfestivalorg or call 617-541-3900, ext. 223.
WORTHY PURSUITS: Local filmmaker Maryanne Galvin's film "The Pursuit of Pleasure" screens at the MFA Saturday at 12:45 p.m.; the South Boston resident will be on hand to discuss her film, an exploration of female sexuality that mixes interviews, historical footage, family photos, and original music.
"The Pursuit of Pleasure" is Galvin's fourth documentary since 2000: Her previous films are "Thanatos Rx: The Death Penalty Debate in America"; "Amuse Bouche: A Chef's Tale," about Barbara Lynch of No. 9 Park in Boston; and "High, Fast and Wonderful," about three priests who minister to circus performers, race car drivers, and migrant workers. "High Fast and Wonderful" will be shown Aug. 28 at 3 p.m. at the Boston Public Library.
FAMILY AFFAIR: Award-winning actor Tony Shalhoub (TV's "Monk"); actress Brooke Adams (who is married to Shalhoub); and Adams's sister, local screenwriter Lynne Adams, will present their 2002 comedy "Made-Up" tomorrow at 8 p.m. at the historic Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring Street in Vineyard Haven.
A hit on the local summer festival circuit, "Made-Up" gently spoofs the reality-TV "makeover" craze with its story of Elizabeth (Brooke Adams), a middle-age divorcee who agrees to be "made over" by her daughter (Eva Amurri), while Elizabeth's sister Kate (Lynne Adams) chronicles the whole thing. The film is loosely based on Lynne Adam's one-character play, "Two Faced," which ran for five years in Los Angeles. Brooke Adams directed the Los Angeles production and Shalhoub was one of its producers.
REMEMBERING SINGER: The Boston Public Library commemorates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer next month with, among other events, a screening of the 1989 adaptation of his novel "Enemies: A Love Story." Sara Rubin, executive director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, will discuss the film with the audience following the screening. The film, directed by Paul Mazursky and starring Ron Silver, Lena Olin, and Anjelica Huston, screens Sept. 1 at 6 p.m. in the Raab Lecture Hall.
SCREENS AROUND TOWN: The Boston Jewish Film Festival will present Margarethe von Trotta's 2003 film "Rosenstrasse," based on a true story about a handful of non-Jewish women in 1943 Berlin who secured the release of their Jewish husbands, on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the West Newton Cinema. Meyer Gottlieb, president of Samuel Goldwyn Films and a survivor of the Holocaust, will lead a talk after the film.
Boston's MFA continues its encore presentations of the Academy Award-nominated documentary feature "My Architect: A Son's Journey," directed by Nathaniel Kahn, today, Saturday and Aug. 28.
Loren King may be contacted at Loren.king@comcast.net.
