Rising to new heights
Documentary about high-wire walker Philippe Petit opens Berkshire film fest
The first time director James Marsh met high-wire walker Philippe Petit, Petit told him "I have the mind of a criminal." Marsh writes that Petit "then went on to show me how he could kill a man with a copy of "People" magazine, and, before we parted, he picked my pocket."
On Thursday, the
In 1974, Petit and accomplices somehow smuggled hundreds of pounds of cable and rigging equipment into the buildings and set up a wire between them. (It boggles the mind today to imagine how they got it all past security.) For an hour, Petit walked, danced, and sat on the cable - no net, no safety harness.
He was arrested and then released after the glorious stunt; as the movie's website puts it, "there's a fine line between genius and madness," and authorities decided Petit was not on the madness side.
"Man on Wire" brings Petit and his team together to talk about how they pulled it all off, and folds in extraordinary footage from the event itself. (The title comes from Petit's arrest report; an officer recorded, in the "complaint" section, "man on wire.")
Petit himself is scheduled to be at the screening, at 8 p.m. at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington.
Also attending the festival will be actor Kevin Bacon, who's being feted with the annual Achievement in Film award on Friday at 8 p.m. at the Mahaiwe theater. The evening includes a screening of "The Big Picture," a 1989 movie directed by Christopher Guest starring Bacon as a very green film school grad just landed in Hollywood.
The full schedule for the four-day festival is online at biffma.com, or call 413-528-8030.
GAY FEST HIGHLIGHTS: The 24th annual Boston Gay and Lesbian Film/Video Festival is in mid-stride at the Museum of Fine Arts, and runs through next Sunday. Today's lineup offers the Israeli documentary "Jerusalem Is Proud to Present," about the struggles of the gay community in that city (6 p.m.), and "Water Lilies," a coming-of-age story about three 15-year-old girls on a synchronized swimming team in a Paris suburb (8 p.m.)
The MFA is signaling its favorites by offering extended runs over the course of the month to two movies: "Love Songs," a musical by French director Christophe Honoré, and "Black White + Grey: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe," by James Crump.
Honoré's "Love Songs" is a quirky and ultimately upbeat feature about a young straightish couple (Louis Garrel, described by the Toronto Film Festival as "rapidly becoming the planet's favourite art-house pin-up boy," and Ludivine Sagnier) who bring a young woman into their relationship. Darkness intrudes, though, and characters find surprising new possibilities as they grapple to carry on.
Honoré has said that, "For me, it was a big step to place emotion at the heart of a story. I've never been able to do it before. This led to the idea of a film in which the characters start singing as soon as they are in a state of love because they are incapable of expressing it otherwise."
It may sound goofy, but it got the movie nominations at the Cannes Film Festival and for France's César Awards (it won best music written for a film award at the Césars), and a special jury award at the Torino International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
"Love Songs" plays on Saturday at 8:45 p.m. as part of the festival, and six additional dates through the end of May.
James Crump has written in a Director's Statement that he was drawn to do a film about Sam Wagstaff - wealthy art collector, museum curator (he was at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford from 1961 to 1968), and lover and mentor to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe - because it "provided a rich opportunity to connect many of my passions - photography, twentieth-century painting and sculpture, Pop Art and Minimalism - with a character that I could identify with who represented near bullet-proof aesthetics."
The movie plays as part of the festival on Thursday at 4:30, Saturday at noon, and next Sunday at 10:30 a.m. It also screens on May 22 and June 21.
For other festival listings and details, call 617-267-9300 or go to mfa.org/film.
SCHNABEL IN BOSTON: Keep an eye out the next few days for painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"). The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, known as SMFA, will be honoring him tomorrow night at its 13th annual Medal Award ceremony, which features a sneak peak of Schnabel's new "Lou Reed's Berlin," a documentary of Reed's live performances in 2006 of his 1973 record, "Berlin." (Ticket sales closed last week.)
The Medal Award was first presented in 1996 and has been given to Nan Goldin, Robert Rauschenberg, and Kiki Smith, among others.
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.
