Plymouth's film festival goes green
In the book business, when several titles about the same topic hit the shelves simultaneously publishers both wince and shrug. On the one hand, there's extra competition for the attention and dollars of the audience. On the other, hey, maybe bookstores will give the category its own shelf. There can be power in numbers that can help individual titles get noticed.
Filmmakers who have poured their blood, sweat, time, and talent into works about environmental issues have to be hoping for the same kind of cumulative effect on the psyche of moviegoers. Because on the heels of last weekend's Live Earth concert (a.k.a. the Concerts for a Climate in Crisis), there is a wavelet of films on the calendar that are totally earth-focused.
At the third annual Plymouth Independent Film Festival, which opens Wednesday and runs through next Sunday, the festival's main focus is on movies that tackle environmental issues. "An Inconvenient Truth," is, of course, on the schedule (it plays Saturday at 10 a.m.), but so, too, is a movie you might not have heard of called "Everything's Cool," which also is about what people know, don't know, believe, and don't believe about global warming.
The setup is this: During the fall of 2004, during the last weeks of the presidential campaign that reelected George W. Bush, filmmakers Judith Helfand and Daniel Gold set up a cross-country tour to see if polls were right: Did Americans really not care about global warming? Did they believe it wasn't real?
What the film captured were pockets of both the converted -- like activists marching in Vermont to raise interest in the issue -- and the, well, what do you call the woman, bedecked in Mardi Gras beads in New Orleans, who says, "I think that it's probably true, but I don't think that we're causing it. I think it's the nature of things. Like, before Noah? We had global warming." The very, very hopeful?
The filmmakers previously collaborated on the eco-tour "Blue Vinyl," in which Helfand went on a quest to track down just how toxic the vinyl siding was that her parents wanted to put on their Long Island home. "Everything's Cool" has the same kind of dark yet perky voice. It played at this year's Sundance Film Festival as well as the Nantucket and Provincetown festivals and will be at the Plymouth fest Saturday at 8 p.m.
Other movies on Saturday, which has been designated Green Day, include Steven Zaillian's "A Civil Action," with a conversation afterward with activist Jan Schlichtmann, who was played in the 1998 film by John Travolta (at 4 p.m.); Chris Paine's "Who Killed the Electric Car?" about the 10-year rise and fall in cars that ran without gasoline (at 6:15 p.m.); and "Cartoneros," Boston College professor Ernesto Livon-Grosman's look at some of the estimated 25,000 people in Buenos Aires who struggle to survive by collecting garbage and then selling it to recycling companies (at 10:45 p.m.).
One non-environmental film on the docket that sounds particularly intriguing is "Club Soda," a 23-minute short by Paul Carafotes with an impressive cast including James Gandolfini, Joe Mantegna, Louis Gossett Jr., and 19-year - old Steven R. McQueen (grandson of Steve McQueen), about a young actor who moves from Boston to New York. That plays Friday at 8 p.m. and next Sunday at 7 p.m.
Festivities kick off with an opening-night reception with a live Cuban band and hors d'oeuvres. There's also an awards party on Saturday. All films will be shown at the Plimoth Plantation Museum. Information about all the panels, social events, and movies is online at plyfilmfest.org, or call 508-801-2530.
CONVERSATION WITH: Director Phil Grabsky will be at the Museum of Fine Arts with his 2005 documentary "In Search of Mozart" Saturday at 10:30 a.m. The movie includes commentary from scholars, excerpts from Mozart's letters, and snippets from 80 of his works, with performances by the Vienna Philharmonic, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields , the Staatskapelle Berlin, and the Lausanne Opera. The movie also plays on Aug. 2. Call 617-267-9300 or go to mfa.org/film for more information.
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The Boston French Film Festival continues this week and next at the MFA ; highlights include "Family Hero," with Catherine Deneuve today at 5:15 p.m., and the romantic comedy "Love Is in the Air" Thursday at 4:10 p.m.
Today and tomorrow, the Brattle Theatre is presenting new prints of Werner Herzog's classic films "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" and "The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser." (The director's newest, "Rescue Dawn," is playing at the Kendall Square.) The Brattle is spot-on when it says, in its write-up of the 1972 "Aguirre," that it's "one of the most memorable films of all time" and "there are few more indelible images in cinema than a mad and alone [Klaus] Kinski ranting at a raft full of monkeys." Check the cinema for showtimes (617- 876-6837 and brattlefilm.org).
And the Harvard Film Archive's program of summer double features continues this week with a delightful evening of 1970s comedy on Thursday: Elaine May's "A New Leaf," starring Walter Matthau and May herself, at 7 p.m.; and Peter Bogdanovich's "What's Up Doc?," with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal at 9 p.m. (617-495-4700 and hcl.harvard.edu/hfa).
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 