Word of mouth gets 'Four Eyed' on screens
It's a movie, it's a podcast, it was created by a Massachusetts native, and it's coming to the Somerville Theatre.
``It" is a film called ``Four Eyed Monsters," which was put together by Framingham native Susan Buice and her boyfriend, Arin Crumley. The film retells their experiment of communicating without directly speaking in the early months of their friendship.
``On our first date we met up on the pretense of only communicating by artistic means -- videos, e-mails, written notes," says Buice, 28, who got a BFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. ``That continued for four months, and we though it was such a wacky experience that we could turn it into something. Would it be a video installation? An art piece? We ended up with a movie." (They also ended up with a relationship: They met in September 2002 and have been together since.)
They marketed the film with a standalone website , a MySpace.com site, clips at YouTube.com, and a series of podcasts (mini movies viewable on an iPod) that took people behind the scenes. That built word of mouth enough to get the film into 18 festivals worldwide. In April, it played the Independent Film Festival of Boston , where the filmmakers were on hand to give a talk about alternative means of distribution.
Their innovation continued when they asked fans to put in requests to get the movie in theaters in their cities. Based on response (there were 256 requests for Boston), ``Four Eyed Monsters" will play the Somerville Theatre on Thursdays in September, starting this week. IFFB is helping promote the release, and Buice plans to attend on either Sept. 14 or 28. Details and sneak peeks are online at www.foureyedmonsters.com.
SYRIAN FILMS: A program of 12 films from Syria comes to the Museum of Fine Arts this week and will run through Sept. 30. Mohammad Malas's 1992 ``The Night" opens the series on Friday at 7:45 p.m. Malas received the Silver Palm at the Valencia Film Festival in 1993 for the movie, which is about processing and dealing with the humiliations that war and occupation bring.
Featured throughout the program are the documentary films of Omar Amiralay , including his 1974 ``Everyday Life in a Syrian Village," which plays Saturday at noon.
The movies are drawn from a touring exhibition called ``Lens on Syria: Thirty Years of Contemporary Syrian Cinema," which was organized by ArteEast , a nonprofit arts group based in New York. On its website, ArteEast says that ``one of the most compelling feats of Syrian filmmakers has been their ability to craft an unabashedly independent voice despite the fact that their films are produced by the state, a stellar achievement in Arab cinema. Films do not shy away from making poignant and social and political critique."
The schedule is at www.mfa.org/film, or call 617-267-9300.
CONVERSATION WITH: Dr. Alfred DeMaria , the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's chief medical officer and state epidemiologist, will introduce the 1971 science-fiction thriller ``The Andromeda Strain" tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner (617-734-2500 and www.coolidge.org).
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The new ``Broken Bridges ," starring country music star Toby Keith and Kelly Preston and featuring Willie Nelson and Burt Reynolds, will have an international premiere on Thursday night at 9 , with screenings in more than 100 cities and U S military bases. In the film, Keith plays a country singer (he described the character to Billboard magazine as ``an old country songwriter that drank himself into a career coma") who reunites with his high school sweetheart and now-teenage daughter.
The event will feature musical performances via satellite by Keith and Lindsey Haun , who plays his daughter. It will be presented locally at the Solomon Pond Stadium in Marlboro and the Swansea Stadium in Swansea. Details and ticket information are at www.brokenbridgesmovie.com.
The Brattle Theatre has put together a one-week, eight-movie retrospective of the work of Terry Gilliam, the American-born writer/director who left the country to join the Monty Python circus. It starts Wednesday and runs through the following Tuesday. The program opens with ``Brazil" and includes ``Time Bandits," ``The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," ``Monty Python & The Holy Grail," ``Jabberwocky," ``Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas," ``The Fisher King," and ``Twelve Monkeys." (No ``Brothers Grimm," alas.)
Gilliam's newest film ``Tideland," featuring Jeff Bridges and 10-year- old Jodelle Ferland , will get an advance screening at the Brattle in October, during the theater's Boston Fantastic Film Festival. That fest, in its fourth year, brings a slate of horror and fantasy films to town before Halloween (617 876-6837 and www.brattlefilm.org).
The Allston-based Brazilian Women's Group is co-hosting a screening of ``Vinicius de Moraes," Miguel Faria Jr.'s 2005 documentary about the songwriter and poet, on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Regent Theatre in Arlington. De Moraes is perhaps best known in non-Brazilian circles as the lyricist of the bossa nova classic ``The Girl from Ipanema." The film plays as part of the three-day Brazilian Independence Day Festival, which takes place throughout the Boston area Thursday through Saturday (www.verdeamarelo.org or call the theater at 781-646-4849).
Local rockers Cul de Sac, who have been performing an avant-garde blend of Middle Eastern- and German-influenced music since 1990, will accompany two silent short films Friday at 8 p.m. at Union Square Plaza in Somerville. They're playing with the 1934 animated film ``Mascot," about a toy stuffed dog in Paris, and 1928's ``The Fall of the House of Usher," a 12-minute cacophony of surrealist imagery. The event is free, with the band Bright playing between movies. If it rains, the event moves to the next evening (617- 625- 6600 ext. 2985 and www.somervilleartscouncil.org).
Local filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan will present her documentary ``All Kindsa Girls," about the Boston band the Real Kids , on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the MIT St ata Center, room 32-141. The screening launches the fall schedule of the free monthly ``Chicks Make Flicks" film series, put on by Women in Film and Video / New England (781-788-6607 and www.womeninfilmvideo.org).
And Dutch director Aliona van der Horst's documentary ``The Hermitage Dwellers," about the people who keep the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, ticking, is at the MFA Friday at 6:15 p.m., Saturday at 10:30 a.m., and next Sunday at 1:30 p.m.,with additional screenings this month. The film won the Grand Prize at the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal in March.
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com 
