Scaring up a festival of cult thrillers

By Loren King, 10/12/2003

An advance preview screening of Ridley Scott's "Alien: The Director's Cut"; a showing of Robert Wise's 1963 chiller "The Haunting" introduced by editor, author, and international horror expert Steven Schneider; a new 35mm print of the original 1974 "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (screened on the eve of the release of the remake). These are some of the highlights of the first annual Boston Fantastic Film Festival at the Brattle Theatre.

The festival runs from Friday to Oct. 23. Other genre/cult selections in the fest (more will be announced) include the dark comedy from Japan "2LDK"; "In My Skin," from French director, actor, and writer Marina de Van; and the US premiere of "Visitors," an Australian film starring Radha Mitchell ("High Art").

CURTAIN CLOSES: Since June the Allston Cinema Underground has offered audiences offbeat films, series, and special screenings. But as of Oct. 8, the Underground is no more. Programmer Clinton McClung announced that "running the cinema has proven to be more than we can bear," citing rising costs for use of the theater and the diminishing returns of programs.

The Allston Cinema Underground was a primary venue for the Boston Underground Film Festival, which just ended. All films scheduled beyond Oct. 8 have been canceled, but the cinema will remain open as the Allston Bombay Cinema 2, featuring first-run Bollywood films on both screens. The Wednesday night series "Kung Fu Mania," organized and presented by Garo Nigoghossian, will continue at least through November.

Meanwhile, McClung, who will continue his programming duties at Coolidge Corner Theatre, vows that "there will be more crazy, inventive programming elsewhere in town as we work to collaborate with other venues, including the Coolidge Corner Theatre, of course, to find Boston a permanent home for underground, cult, and subversive cinema."

To that end, McClung has launched a mailing list called Boston Cult Movies (for information, visit www.coolidge.org and go to the "midnight" link) as a way "to help spread the word about all the different micro-cinemas and cult movie screenings all over Boston."

OLD TIES: New Jersey native Tom McCarthy, writer and director of the Sundance Film Festival award winner "The Station Agent," which opens Friday, credits a small theater troupe at Boston College with sparking his interest in acting.

McCarthy, 34, a 1988 graduate of Boston College with a degree in philosophy, used to tread the boards with Every Mother's Nightmare, an improvisational group loosely affiliated with the college. He continued working with the group after it relocated, first to Minneapolis and then to Chicago, until he left to enroll in the Yale School of Drama.

McCarthy shared the stage with another actor-turned-director, Campbell Scott, in a production of "Hamlet" seven years ago at Boston's Huntington Theatre Company. ("That was the last time I was in Boston," says McCarthy, in town recently to promote his directing debut.) McCarthy and Scott crossed personal and professional paths again when McCarthy directed Scott's partner, Patricia Clarkson, as a grief-stricken woman who finds solace, in "The Station Agent."

BJFF AT 15: The Boston Jewish Film Festival, which will run from Nov. 6 to 16 with some 40 films, celebrates its 15th year with a special fund-raising event Oct. 21. A buffet dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common at 6 p.m. will be followed by a sneak preview at 8 p.m. of the new documentary "Paper Clips" at Loews Boston Common. The film is about middle school students in Whitwell, Tenn., who collected one paper clip for each life lost in the Holocaust. Directors Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab and film editor Julia Dixon-Eddy, who lives in Framingham, will be on hand to discuss the film. Whitwell Middle School principal Linda Hooper will talk about the project. Tickets to the fund-raiser are $150; $50 for the film only. Visit the festival website at www.bjff.org/events for more information.

IN THE COMPANY OF MEN: The MFA presents two locally produced films about masculinity: John Badalament's documentary "All Men Are Sons" and "Wrestling With Manhood," a new film by Sut Jhally and Jackson Katz. The three directors will present their films on Friday at 5:30 p.m. and Saturday at 1 p.m.

Badalament is a counselor and behavior expert. "All Men Are Sons," his first film, aired on PBS stations across the country last Father's Day. Katz is the founder and director of MVP Strategies, an organization that provides gender-violence-prevention training to schools, corporations, sports teams, and the military. Jhally is a professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

SCREENS AROUND TOWN: "Morning Sun," a documentary by Carma Hinton, Geremie Barme, and Richard Gordon about the Chinese cultural revolution, uses rare archival footage and clips from communist propaganda films. The directors will present the film at the MFA on Friday and Saturday and participate in a free discussion with the audience on Saturday at 1 p.m.

Lunafest, a San Francisco-based national film festival that benefits breast cancer programs, returns to Boston for a third year on Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. at Simmons College. Lunafest, which spotlights women filmmakers, will travel to 25 locations including Smith College in Northampton on Oct. 24. Tickets are available online at www.lunabar.com or at the door, with proceeds from the festival going to the Breast Cancer Fund, a national nonprofit organization.

Loren King may be reached at loren.king@comcast.net.