A warm welcome for Turkish film 'Climates'
One of the most acclaimed recent films from Turkey gets its New England premiere tonight as part of the 11th annual Boston Turkish Festival. "Climates" stars writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan as an Istanbul architecture professor whose life is dominated by ruins -- the physical ones of places like the Ishak Pasha palace, and the emotional ones of a crumbled relationship with a girlfriend (played by his real-life wife, Ebru Ceylan).
This very quiet film moves from the hot seaside village of Kas to the gray urbane worlds of Turkish academia to the spectacular snowy mountains of Dogubeyazit. It's wrapped in the interior of a man whose distance, charm, and infidelity have made everything go sour and whose moods, like the climates the film travels through, run hot and cold. It won the 2006 Fipresci Award for the best film in competition at the Cannes festival.
"I think man is the weakest creature in the world, especially the educated man," the director told the Times of London, in a recent interview. "They are always afraid of something."
"Climates" plays at at 7 p.m. today at the Museum of Fine Arts. It will return to the MFA Jan. 5-17.
The month-long Turkish festival also wraps up this week with two other film programs -- a selection of short documentaries and features today at 5:30 p.m. and Thursday at 6 p.m. Both programs are also at the MFA. The Boston Turkish Festival also has a separate film festival every April at the MFA, and events throughout the year, organizing with the Turkish American Cultural Society of New England. Details are at bostonturkishfestival.org.
CONVERSATIONS WITH: A new stage production of "Wings of Desire" opened this weekend at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, and in collaboration, Wim Wenders's 1987 film "Wings of Desire" will play tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. It will be introduced by ART associate artistic director Gideon Lester, who will lead a conversation about adapting the film to the stage with director Ola Mafaalani and lead actor Bernard White, who plays the angel Damiel who falls in love with Marion, the trapeze artist (617-734-2500 and coolidge.org).
"51 Birch Street," a documentary Doug Block made about his parents' marriage after his widowed father married a former secretary and Block read his mother's 35 years of diaries, returns to the MFA after a sold-out show at the recent Boston Jewish Film Festival. Block's sisters Ellen Block and Karen Engwall will be present at a number of screenings this week, including today at 1:45 p.m., Saturday at 10:30 a.m., and next Sunday at 3:30 p.m. (617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film).
Iranian actress-director Niki Karimi will be in town next Sunday to receive the ILEX Award on the closing night of the Boston Festival of Films and Music from Iran. The presentation will be followed by a 7:30 p.m. screening of Karimi's new film "A Few Days Later . . ." about a woman struggling with whether to leave her boyfriend and her career as a graphic designer. The presentation and screening are at the MFA.
RHODE ISLAND FEST FUND-RAISER: The Rhode Island International Film Festival is presenting a "Film Industry Networking Party" on Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. at Gallery Z, on Atwells Avenue in Providence. Among those scheduled to attend are producer-director Michael Corrente ("The Door in the Floor"); Steven Feinberg, the director of the Rhode Island Film and Television Office; and casting director Anne Mulhall of LDI Casting. Ticket information is at 401-861-4445 and film-festival.org.
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: "From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema" is the name of a film series that comes to the Harvard Film Archive on Friday and runs through Dec. 13. The HFA says that many of the movies -- which combine sci-fi, fantasy, and horror -- are making their US debuts. According to press materials, "visually inventive and insanely imaginative, with artistic values that may come as a shock to Western audiences expecting camp (although you won't be disappointed there, either), the films in this series reflect the creativity and diversity of vision of the Russian film industry throughout its history."
The series opener, "Stalker," is a 1979 film by Andrei Tarkovsky about three men in search of something called "the Zone," a space that offers knowledge about their secret desires. The 7 p.m. screening will be introduced by John Gianvito, editor of the new book "Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews" (617-495-4700 and hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/).
Also on Friday, Thom Fitzgerald's "3 Needles" will open for a weeklong stay at the Brattle Theatre. The movie, about people dealing with AIDS, stars Lucy Liu, Chloë Sevigny, Shawn Ashmore, Sandra Oh, and Olympia Dukakis. In conjunction with World AIDS Day on Friday, proceeds from screenings during opening weekend will go to the Boston Living Center on Stanhope Street (617 876-6837 and brattlefilm.org).
And on Saturday at the Coolidge at midnight, it's Rodman Flender's documentary "Let Them Eat Rock," about Boston glam rockers the Upper Crust (a.k.a. Nat Freedberg, Dave Fredette, Ted Widmer, Chris Cote, Jim Janota, and Marc Mazzarelli). Flender will be on hand to talk about life in the fast lane with the powder-faced, bewigged faux royalty and about his work as a television director of "Ugly Betty," "The O.C.," and more.
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 
