Fest is ready to roll in Rhode Island
Providence opens its collective arms to the film world this week as the 10th annual Rhode Island International Film Festival moves in and fans out across the city with six days of screenings -- that's some 283 films and videos culled from more than 2,000 submissions -- at seven sites. The festival also features parties, ``Breakfast With the Stars" sessions, a scriptwriting seminar, and free outdoor events.
It all launches Tuesday at 7 p.m. with an opening- night program of 10 short films that are all-ages-appropriate. They include the East Coast premiere of
The festival also includes W.C. Rogers's ``Flying Downhill: Bode Miller," about the skier's journey from Franconia, N.H., to the 2005 World Cup Finals; RIIFF board member Q. Allan Brocka's ``Boy Culture," a feature about gay 20-somethings; and Rick Stevenson's black comedy ``Expiration Date," about a young man about to turn 25 whose father and grandfather both died on their 25th birthdays. That film has won awards at five other festivals.
If you feel like really getting your goof on, the ``Sing-Along Mary Poppins" takes place on Saturday at 2 p.m. -- the customized version of the movie includes onscreen lyrics so that everyone can join in. Costumes are encouraged.
Pawtucket native Michael Corrente will receive the festival's annual Creative Vision Award. Corrente directed ``Outside Providence" and David Mamet's ``American Buffalo," and is working on ``The Prince of Providence" about the former mayor Buddy Cianci (with Russell Crowe reportedly in the running to play Cianci).
Cicely Tyson will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award and her film ``Fat Rose and Squeaky" will have its world premiere Friday at 7 p.m.
The festival takes place at venues across Providence as well as sites in Newport, Kingston, Bristol, and Cranston. The festival's schedule is online at www.RIFilmFest.org, or call 401-861-4445.
MARTHA'S VINEYARD AFRICAN-AMERICAN FILM FEST: Ben Vereen will introduce an advance screening of ``Idlewild," Bryan Barber's all-star Prohibition-era musical, on Thursday at 9:30 p.m., the opening night of the fourth annual Martha's Vineyard African-American Film Festival. The film's cast includes OutKast members André Benjamin and Antwan A. Patton, Patti LaBelle, Terrence Howard, Ving Rhames, and Cicely Tyson. Vereen also will be around for a ``Conversation With" event Saturday at 7 p.m. The four-day festival runs through next Sunday. Full details are at www.mvaaff.com or 877-682-2334.
PUPPET MAGIC HONORED: Gary Henoch and Chris Schmidt's 32-minute film ``The Puppeteer," about the late Harvard Square street performer Igor Fokin, was awarded the Citation of Excellence this past week by the US chapter of UNIMA, the Union Internationale de la Marionette.
UNIMA was founded in 1929 to link puppeteers internationally and stimulate interest in the craft. Jim Henson started the citation program to recognize live performers, with the citations later expanded to include films, videos, and television.
``The Puppeteer" is the only ``recorded media" work to receive a citation this year. Previous winners include ``Sesame Street" (the entire body of work), the movie ``Being John Malkovich," and the Pets.com advertising campaign -- remember the sock puppet?
``The film itself I found so charming in so many ways," says Marianne Tucker, who chairs the UNIMA-USA citations committee. She doesn't get to vote on the nominees, but had praise for the documentary nevertheless. ``What Igor was doing just took your breath away, and the film is so evocative."
Fokin trained in St. Petersburg under a teacher from the Russian Marionette Theater. After moving to the United States, he performed marionette shows in Harvard Square with the creatures he built by hand. He died of a heart attack in 1996. A bronze statue of one of Fokin's puppet creatures is perched on a granite pedestal near where he entertained crowds, just outside the doors of Eastern Mountain Sports at 1 Brattle Square.
Henoch, who lives in Lexington, and Schmidt, who lives in Arlington, had begun their film before Fokin's death, and so were able to preserve a record of his performances and artistry as a puppet builder. They also captured the impact that Fokin's death had on the Cambridge community that was so fond of his work. The filmmakers have continued collaborating , most recently on a documentary for ``Nova" about airline safety.
``The Puppeteer" was released on DVD earlier this year. Information about the film is online at www.puppeteermovie.com, while information about the puppetry community -- both live and on film -- is online at www.unima-usa.org.
BRATTLE FUND - RAISER: Another benefit will be held Saturday to raise money for the Brattle Theatre. B-Line Films will present its ``Buffalo Soldiers," a documentary about the lives of Jamaican migrant workers who farm tobacco in New England. (Don't confuse it with a 2001 film of the same name that stars Joaquin Phoenix and Anna Paquin .)
This ``Buffalo Soldiers" was reportedly made for just $250 by Peter Scheehle, Allan Shinohara, Nozomi Ito, and Aoife Nugent , and was the opening-night film at last October's New England Film & Video Festival. The screening will be at the Lily Pad in Inman Square in Cambridge at 7 p.m. and will also feature music by the Boston trio Riding Shotgun and a clip from B-Line's new film ``Fist." Information is at 617- 876-6837 and www.brattlefilm.org.
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: Two weeks ago, something called the Animation Block Party film festival was held in Brooklyn, N.Y. Friday and Saturday, an exclusive ``best of ABP" selection of independent, student , and professional animated shorts comes to the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Both shows are at midnight. Information is at 617-734-2500, www.coolidge.org , and www.myspace.com/coolidgemidnites .
The Bollywood film ``Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna" (``Never Say Goodbye") opens nationally and at the Somerville Theatre on Friday. At the film's website, director Karan Johar writes that there are three kinds of married people in the world -- those whose marriages are arranged (``I've never quite understood that, but I'm sure they know what they're doing"), those who marry for their parents or for money or for the security of settling down with a friend, and those who fall in love and marry their soul mates. ``These few, I believe, are the most fortunate people in the world," he writes. His film looks at what happens when people find their soul mates only after tying the knot with other people.
Also: A new collection of outtakes and alternate scenes from the original footage for David and Albert Maysles's 1975 ``Grey Gardens" -- about Edith Bouvier Beale , her daughter ``Little Edie," and their life in a falling-apart Hamptons mansion -- is presented in the 2006 ``The Beales." It gets its area premiere Friday through Monday at the Brattle Theatre (617-876-6837 and www.brattlefilm.org ).
And ``Changing Times," a love story about a man who tracks down the woman he had a great romance with 30 years earlier, will play the Museum of Fine Arts starting Friday through Aug. 24. In French with English subtitles, it stars Ge rard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve (617-267-9300 and www.mfa.org/film).
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 
