Son of a Lion
(Benjamin Gilmour, Australia/Pakistan)
A sensitive 11-year-old thinks he'd like to go to school and perhaps, if he were to allow himself to dream, make music one day. But his hard-case, war-vet dad insists he follow in the family gun business. Is this Mississippi, or Idaho? Chechnya, perhaps, or Uganda? In fact, we're in northwest Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, the kind of place where men test potential weapons purchases by stepping out onto the street and firing into the blue distance. Working with nonprofessionals on their home turf, first-time director Benjamin Gilmour (a medic by training) crafts a structurally familiar yet deeply involving coming-of-age tale about reconciling one's nature with family demands and societal conventions. On a larger scale, the film asks what kind of future Pakistan, or any country, can have if education is valued less than revenge, tradition, or war. Generously strewn with conversations ranging from politics to movies, Son of a Lion provides Westerners with a taste and the texture of a culture often demonized but rarely visited. The movie's POV is unmistakably post-9/11, post-Iraq War, and, most intriguingly, post-Bush. Michael Fox
Saturday, April 25, 6 p.m.; Wednesday, April 29, 9:30 p.m., at the Sundance Kabuki; Monday, April 27, 8:35 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive.
Soul Power
(Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, U.S.A.)
Jeffrey Levy-Hinte has assembled this hour-and-a-half concert film from reams of hitherto unseen footage of 1974 performances in Zaire meant to accompany the classic Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "rumble in the jungle." The powerhouse musical lineup of James Brown, B. B. King, Miriam Makeba (especially good), Bill Withers, Celia Cruz, and many others are all seen to advantage. The filmmakers have the wit to pick out key details, from street musicians interacting with the visiting stars to precisely cut-in close-ups of B. B. King's monogrammed jewelry. Despite more than three decades of neglect, the footage is in wonderful shape, its sonic remastering impressive. The film also fascinates as a Watergate-era time capsule of black nationalism, featuring impassioned addresses by Ali (sincere) and impresario Don King (carried away with himself). The omnipresent images and slogans of host dictator Mobutu Sese Seko add their own comment. "Black power is sought everywhere, but is already present here in Zaire," one sign reads. Gregg Rickman
Sunday, April 26, 5:45 p.m., at the Sundance Kabuki.
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A Week Alone
(Celina Murga, Argentina)
Imagine a more subtle, less arch Lord of the Flies, set in a well-to-do Buenos Aires suburb. Okay, yes, that is hard to imagine. And it wrongly implies, besides, that A Week Alone is preoccupied with some kind of saleable high-concept. It isn't, but it is indeed a movie about what happens in a gated community when the grown-ups go away on vacation together, leaving their kids and young teenagers supervised, sort of, by a 22-year-old family maid (Natalia Gomez Alarcon). What happens isn't really all that much, at least not until the maid's younger brother (Ignacio Gimenez) shows up and reminds the rest of them that there is such a thing as a poorer neighborhood. Director Celina Murga, writing with her husband and producer Juan Villegas, has a light enough touch to explore adolescent ennui and melodrama without indulging in it, and enough respect for her audience not to goad rhetorical class warfare. She makes the point without belaboring it that, as far as the construction of character is concerned, a laissez-faire attitude works much better in plotting than in parenting. Jonathan Kiefer
Saturday, May 2, 6:15 p.m. at the Sundance Kabuki; Tuesday, May 5, 3:30 p.m., and Thursday, May 7, 8:45 p.m., at the Clay.
Zift
(Javor Gardev, Bulgaria)
Two decades of Communist-era hard time prove the truth to parolee Moth (Zahary Baharov) of Dante's injunction "Abandon all hope," repurposed here as an injunction to prisoners upon their release. Bulgarian filmmaker Javor Gardev tracks his camera around like a helpful Virgil as the freed Moth is immediately seized by an old comrade in crime, out to locate some still-missing loot. Chases, escapes, and double-and-triple-crosses follow in a film noir pastiche equal parts Old Hollywood (Gilda, D.O.A.) and hipsterish. The overall frenetic energy is that of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Trainspotting, while the femme fatale's musical number is pure David Lynch. Gardev's satire of state propaganda slaps on another layer of ironic varnish. Out of this welter of influences, he forges a moving tale of emotional dislocation and loss, adding up perhaps to an allegory of nostalgic regret for the lost prison state of Iron Curtain–era Bulgaria, which may indeed look good to its former inmates compared to the hideous world of modern capitalism. Gregg Rickman
Saturday, April 25, 11 a.m.; Monday, April 27, 2 p.m.; and Thursday, April 30, 3:30 p.m., at the Sundance Kabuki.
Q&A with David Lee Miller
My Suicide director talks about death and the Internet.
On Location
Films with Bay Area ties.
Star Power
Special events at the fest bring out the celebrities.
