John Turturro to be honored at Maine International Film Festival

WATERVILLE, Maine - The Maine International Film Festival has announced more than 100 films, 50 special guests and 20 countries from around the globe will be featured as part of this year’s programming.

Movie enthusiasts of all ages will experience a spectacular array of landscapes, cultures, languages and perspectives featured throught the festival.

Hosted at the historic Waterville Opera House and the Railroad Square Cinema from July 11 – 20, the 2008 Maine International Film Festival provides an expanded view of the world and a chance to meet some of the industry’s most exciting and innovative filmmakers from the Netherlands, Chad, Switzerland, Canada, France and throughout the United States.

For tickets and full details on the 11th Annual Maine International Film Festival, visit www.miff.org or call (207)861-8138.

The festival launches with the Opening Ceremony and a screening of Man on Wire, Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, on Friday, July 11 at 7pm at the historic Waterville Opera House, which is specially equipped with 35mm projection equipment for the festival.

Founded in 1998, the Maine International Film Festival offers much more than just movies with a unique opportunity for audiences to engage in dialog with some of the writers, producers, directors, actors and musicians who are in front of and behind the scenes. Each year, MIFF honors members of the independent film industry whose cinematic contributions deserve recognition. MIFF’s special guests have included Mid-Live Achievement Award Bud Cort (MIFF 2007), Ed Harris (MIFF 2004), Peter Fonda (2003) and Sissy Spacek (2001).

The Maine International Film Festival will present the 2008 Mid-Life Achievement Award to one of independent cinema’s finest actors and directors, John Turturro. Turturro is a Golden Globe Nominee, an Emmy Winner and a Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award Winner. He has appeared in over 60 movies and has become a regular in the thorught provoking films of Spike Lee, including his role as the highly agitated “Pino” in Do the Right Thing (1989), and as a confused boyfriend in Jungle Fever (1991). Turturro has also had an extended collaboration with the Coen Brothers, appearing in their films Miller’s Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Big Lebowski (1998) and most recently, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000.) He also appeared as a severely disturbed psychiatric patient of Jack Nicholson’s in Anger Management and played Johnny Depp’s Antagonist in Secret Window. He won his Cannes award and Golden Globe nomination for Robert Redford’s Quiz Show (1994.)

In addition to acting, Turturro is an original and brilliant writer, director and producer. He wrote and directed, as well as acted in Mac (1991) and Illuminata (1999), which also starred his wife Katherine Borowitz. He also wrote and directed the fiercely offbeat musical Romance and Cigarettes (2006), starring Susan Sarandon, James Gandolfini and Kate Winslet.

“We’re thrilled that John Turturro will be joining us this summer,” said Festival Programmer Ken Eisen. “He’s one of the strongest and most unique voices in the independent film world, and one whose directing, writing and acting always bespeak a fierce, intelligent and adventurous curiousity that we try to highlight every year in the films at the festival.”

The following is an outline of several of the featured highlights showcased throughout the 11th Annual Maine International Film Festival

1.) FILM: A Sense of Wonder

Special Preview Premier Screening, Kaiulani Lee in person

SHOWTIME: Wednesday, July 16 2008 ~ 6:30pm at the Waterville Opera House

INTERVIEW CONTACT: Kaiulani Lee

SYNOPSIS: A Sense of Wonder

USA 2008 Digital Projection 54 Min. In English

Director: Christopher Monger

Screenplay, Principal Cast: Kaiulani Lee

Producer: Karen Montgomery

Print courtesy A Sense of Wonder

When scientist Rachel Carson published her pioneering environmental book Silent Spring in 1962, the backlash from her critics thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Despite her private persona, her convictions about the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into the role of controversial public figure. Using many of Carson's own words, Kaiulani Lee embodies this extraordinary woman in A Sense of Wonder, set and shot (by no less a luminary than Oscar winning, legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler) on Southport Island on the Maine coast, principally around the actual cottage in which Carson lived and loved nature. Struggling with cancer, Carson recounts with both humor and anger the attacks by the chemical industry, the government and the press as she focuses her limited energy to get her message to Congress and the American people. The film is an intimate and poignant reflection of Carson's life, and she emerges as America's most successful advocate for the natural world. Suffused with the rich beauty of our state, more timely than ever in its realization of the peril the natural world is in, A Sense of Wonder is based on the play that Kaiulani Lee has been touring with for several decades. It's both an important warning about our environment and a gorgeous celebration of its beauty-and of the wisdom and foresight of one extraordinary woman who understands its value.

2.) FEATURED FILM: A Tout de Suite

Presented by Isild Le Besco

SHOWTIME: Saturday, July 12 2008 ~ 6:30pm at the Waterville Opera House

INTERVIEW CONTACT: tbd

SYNOPSIS: A Tout de Suite

France 2005 35 mm 95 Mn. In French with English subtitles

Director: Benoit Jacquot, based on the book "When I Was 19" by Elisabeth Fanger

Screenplay: Benoit Jacquot, based on a story by Elisabeth Fanger

Producers: Georges Benayoun, Raoul Saada

Principal Cast: Isild Le Besco, Ouassini Embarek, Laurence Cordier, Nicolas Duvauchelle

Print courtesy Cinema Guild

A Tout de Suite is an exceptionally perceptive film about what it's like to be 19 years old. Directed by Benoît Jacquot and based on a memoir by Elisabeth Fanger, it tells the story of a young woman who follows a romantic impulse that leads her into trouble. There's no decision involved in following this impulse. It's instinctive. Her capacity for caution has not yet been developed. The beauty of A Tout de Suite – aside from its being quite beautiful to look at, shot in a nostalgic black and white – is that it's neither romantic nor cynical. At all points in the story, you are aware of how our heroine, Lili (Isild Le Besco), sees her situation and also of how we see it. Where she sees romance, we see tawdriness. Where she sees adventure, we see turmoil. We know that, if we were 19, we'd probably see things her way. Most movies evoke the romance of youth, but A Tout de Suite gives us the whole picture: youth's splendor but also its ugliness, powerlessness and confusion. The emotional journey is told largely through close-ups of Le Besco, an actress blessed with a face worthy of contemplation. She can look very pretty and very ordinary by turns, and there's a maturity about her essence - or her thoughts, as expressed through her face - that makes her interesting. It's the same quality Scarlett Johansson has, except in Le Besco's case it's not spoiled by misbegotten vanity. Moreover, she's a real talent, who does something remarkable in A Tout de Suite, conveying the sense of a highly developed consciousness in embryo, a thinking person who hasn't yet learned the value of reason. It's 1975, and Lili is an art student from a middle-class family. She goes to a bar and falls in love with Bada (Ouassini Embarek), a naive Moroccan boy, in the way that people fall in love at that age. They look at each other and understand all, because at that age everything's on the surface. Within a few days she can't live without him, and so she's rather distressed when she finds out that he and his buddies have tried to rob a bank. A cashier is dead, and Bada is a fugitive. The rest of the movie traces Lili's odyssey. Bada, his criminal partner, his partner's girlfriend and Lili hit the road. Their only chance is leaving the country. A Tout de Suite becomes a detailed travelogue that follows a fascinating geographical and psychological trajectory. Lili's romantic delusion comes up against Bada's very real and well-earned case of adult guilt. The consequences are dire. At the same time, these folks are young and more or less on vacation. The cell door might shut at any moment, but in the meantime they're more free than they've ever been."-Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

3.) FEATURED FILM: In a Dream

SHOWTIME: Saturday, July 12 2008 ~ 6:30pm at Railroad Square Cinemas, Sunday, July 13 2008 9:30pm at the Waterville Opera House

INTERVIEW CONTACT: Jeremy Yaches (jeremy@hzfilms.com) 215 284 2624

(PRODUCER)

SYNOPSIS: In a Dream

USA 2008 Digital Projection 80 Min. in English

Director: Jeremiah Zagar

Producer: Jeremy Yaches

With: Isaiah Zagar, Julia Zagar

Print Courtesy Ro'Co International

Winner of the Emerging Visions Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival and Best Film Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival, In a Dream takes us into the world of artist Isaiah Zagar who, over the course of four decades, has covered more than 50,000 square feet of Philadelphia with stunning mosaic murals. In A Dream chronicles his work and his tumultuous relationship with his wife, Julia. It follows the Zagars as their marriage implodes and a harrowing new chapter in their life unfolds. Shot and directed by their son, Jeremiah, In a Dream is a journey into both art and soul.

PHOTO CREDIT/CAPTION: TBD

“My Life is filled with events. All become stories.”

4.) FEATURED FILM: Fail Better Farm

SHOWTIME: Saturday, July 12 2008 ~ 3:30pm at Railroad Square Cinema (in the Maine Shorts Showcase) and Sunday July 13 2008 07/13/2008 12:30pm and Friday July 18 2008 ~ 03:00pm at Railroad Square Cinema (with A Road Not Taken)

INTERVIEW CONTACT: Miranda Elmorsi (miranda.elmorsi@gmail.com) (718) 710 6159

SYNOPSIS: Fail Better Farm

USA 2008 Digital Video 25 minutes in English

Director, Print Courtesy: Miranda Elmorsi

Principal Cast: Clayton Carter and Kendra Michaud

We follow young couple Clayton Carter and Kendra Michaud, recent "farmers-in-residence" at an idyllic farm on the MOFGA grounds in Unity, Maine.

5.) FEATURED FILM: Skills Like This

SHOWTIME: Sunday, July 13 2008 ~ 3:30pm at the Waterville Opera House, Saturday, July 19 2008 6:30pm at the Waterville Opera House

INTERVIEW CONTACT: Producer Donna Dewey (ddewey@rmi.com 303.722.6065) director Monty Miranda montymiranda@mac.com

SYNOPSIS: Skills Like This

USA 2008 Digital Projection 88 Min. in English

Director: Monty Miranda

Screenplay: Spencer Berger, Gabriel Tigerman

Producer: Donna Dewey, Rock Obenchain

Principal Cast: Spencer Berger, Brian D. Phelan, Gabriel Tigerman, Kerry Knuppe

Print courtesy Shadow Distribution

25-year-old Max Solomon would like to be a writer, but has to admit he's just not going to make it with his pen when his play, The Onion Dance, meets with a catastrophic reaction in its opening performance. His best buddies are Dave, who brownnoses his way to a monumentally boring mid-level sales job with no future, and Tommy, a slacker best suited for hanging out in a coffee shop and being funny. With career options like these in front of him, Max commits an impulse bank robbery of an absolutely unique, but effective, sort. Holding a gun on his own head, he relieves interested teller Lucy of the cash in her register and rejoins his disbelieving but admiring friends. In the next three days, more unusual robberies happen and a compelling romance blooms between Max and Lucy while Dave and Tommy have their lives equally changed and Max has to question his newfound success. Skills Like This is a hilarious, original and freewheeling comedy with a real heart, winner of a well-deserved Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival.

PHOTO CREDIT/CAPTION: Max Solomon is always losing things. He’s lost his car, he’s lost his money, he’s lost his family and he’s lost the resepect of his friends.

“Unpredictable and raw…. A comedy that is actually funny.” Thelantern.com

6.) FEATURED FILM: Talking Guitars

SHOWTIME: Monday, July 14 2008 ~ 9:15pm at the Waterville Opera House, Tuesday, July 15 2008 3:30pm at Railroad Square Cinemas

INTERVIEW CONTACT: Director Claire Pijman (mail@clairepijman.nl) also subject Filip Scipio filipscipio@mac.com

SYNOPSIS: Talking Guitars

Netherlands 2008 72 Min. Digital Projection In English and in Dutch with English subtitles

Director, Producer: Claire Pijman

With: Flip Scipio, Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder and Buena Vista Social Club, Carly Simon, Ben Taylor, Paul Simon, David Lindley, Leni Stern, David Tronzo, Jan Obbeek, Henk Boonstra

Print courtesy Claire Pijman

"There is a certain sort of magic in the guitar," says Flip Scipio-and he should know. Guitar craftsman extraordinaire, Flip is the master of electric and acoustic alike. Talking Guitars, a fascinating behind-the-scenes music-documentary by Dutch director Claire Pijman, juxtaposes this quiet artist with the world of musicians who seek his expertise. His clients include Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder, David Lindley, Ben Taylor, Paul Simon, David Tronzo, Leni Stern and Carly Simon, all of whom perform fabulous on-the-fly music in the film. The music that flows out of the amazing artists in this film flows in, it seems, through Flip's extraordinary sensitivity to an instrument that he creates, repairs and seems almost one with.

7.) FEATURED FILM: The Reflecting Pool

SHOWTIME: Saturday, July19 2008 ~ 9:30pm at Railroad Square Cinemas

INTERVIEW CONTACT: Producer, actor: Joseph Culp (jc@josephculp.com) and Director, Actor Jarek Kupsc (jkupsc@yahoo.com)

SYNOPSIS: The Reflecting Pool

USA 2008 Digital Projection 106 Min. In English

Director, Screenplay: Jarek Kupsc

Producers: Jodie Baltazar, Joseph Culp

Principal Cast: Joseph Culp. Jarek Kupsc, Alex Hyde-White, Lisa Black

Print courtesy BW Filmmakers

The Reflecting Pool boldly questions the unquestionable by proposing the possibility that higher ups within the Bush Administration either helped conceive-or at very least, knowingly allowed-9/11 to happen. But since, much like the Kennedy assassination, the literal, detailed truth may never be known about this cataclysmic event and certainly cannot be unqualifiedly proven at this time, the makers of The Reflecting Pool have wisely framed their questions in a fictional wrapping, albeit one based on carefully established sources and verifiable records. The Reflecting Pool follows Alex Prokop (played by director Jarek Kupsc), a successful journalist, who receives a rare 9/11 videotape revealing new information about the attacks. The footage was sent by Paul Cooper (Joseph Culp, actor Robert Culp's son), a man who's become obsessed with the truth of that day because his daughter perished in the attacks. Traveling with Cooper to Washington and New York, Prokop uncovers suppressed information about the attacks and meets with crucial witnesses as the "official story" begins to crumble. Riveting cinema-and possibly world shattering politics.

PHOTO CREDIT/CAPTION: “Why are you so afraid to say the government set this up as another Pearl Harbor?”

“This is not just about my family any more, it is about what they are doing to our country!”

8.) FEATURED FILM: Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell

Presented by Matt Wolf

SHOWTIME: Sunday, July 13 2008 ~ 3:30pm at Railroad Square Cinema Tuesday, July 15 2008 ~ 9:00pm at the Waterville Opera House

INTERVIEW CONTACT: Matt Wolf (mail@mattwolf.info) 646.232.8736

SYNOPSIS: Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell

USA 2008 71 Min. Digital Projection In English

Director: Matt Wolf

Producers: Ben Howe, Kyle Morton, Matt Wolf

Print courtesy Matt Wolf

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell is a visually adventurous, amazing journey into the life and world of a nearly forgotten but seminal avant garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist and disco producer. After fleeing rural Iowa in the 1960s, Russell joined a Buddhist commune in San Francisco, and met his lifelong mentor and collaborator, Allen Ginsberg. The two collaborated on a number of recordings. But when the commune tried to take away Arthur’s cello, forcing him to secretly play in a closet, he followed his greater musical ambition, and joined Ginsberg in New York. Arthur began working with Philip Glass and other composers in the avant-garde music world and discovered the liberating social and aesthetic possibilities of underground discos. He produced playful and eccentric disco records that became hits of the pre-Studio 54 era. The rules and codes of established genres didn't apply to Arthur. The serialized patterns of minimalist symphonies resonated with the repetitive rhythms in dance music. Likewise, the utopian social settings of the early discos were like the Buddhist commune Arthur had once known. With childlike innocence and fun, Arthur ambitiously explored all of these possibilities, falling in love with his boyfriend Tom Lee, and moving in together in the East Village, next door to Allen in a building populated by poets, musicians, and artists. Arthur's transcendent solo cello-and-voice songs, "World of Echo," were like intimate diaries that fit somewhere between lullabies and art songs. But the devastation of AIDS cut Arthur's career short. When Arthur died, he was puzzlingly lost in obscurity. But now fifteen years after Arthur's death, his music is being rediscovered, Wild Combination explores the compelling cultural history of New York in the 1970s and '80s, the experience of being gay and confronting AIDS, and the cathartic process of making art and pursuing popular success at a time when those goals were mutually attainable.

9.) FEATURED FILM: Le Cedre Penche

United States Premiere

SHOWTIME: Monday, July 14 2008 ~ 9:30pm at Railroad Square Cinemas, Tuesday, July 15 2008 ~ 6:30pm at the Waterville Opera House

INTERVIEW CONTACT:

SYNOPSIS: Le Cedre Penche

Canada 2007 78 min. Digital Projection In French with English Subtitles

Director, Screenplay, Producer: Rafael Ouellet

Principal Cast: Viviane Audet, Marie Neige Chatelin

Print courtesy Rafael Ouellet

Call it the Quebecois Once. Of course, that's a distortion and a diminishment of what Le Cedre Penche (The Leaning Cedar) is and aims to be, but it gives you a sense of this marvelous film's musical centrality, intimate scale and honesty and freshness. Much of the film is set and shot in the gorgeous Quebec lake country that's the family home to two sisters, Brigitte and Candide (Viviane Audet and Marie Neige Chatelin, the former a blossoming music star in real life), estranged from each other, but both sharing the legacy of their similarly musical mother. Caught up in their separate words, the two sisters awkwardly try to connect. Distant and different, it's through their mother's music that they will discover the bond that ties them.

10.) FEATURED FILM: Owning the Weather

Special Work in Progress Screening

SHOWTIME: Wednesday, July 16 2008 ~ 9:00pm at the Waterville Opera House, Thursday, July 17 2008 6:00pm at Railroad Square Cinemas

INTERVIEW CONTACT: Director robert greene (robert@4throwfilms.com) 212 974 0082

SYNOPSIS: Owning the Weather

USA 2008 113 Min. Digital Projection In English

Director: Robert Greene

Producers: Robert Greene, Douglas Tirola

Print courtesy 4th Row Films

Here in Maine, we’re even more aware than people elsewhere about the way that weather effects our lives—sometimes more than anything else, So why not control it? If the urge has been with humankind forever, the technological means to do so is more recent. But now, with the immediate threat of cataclysmic climate change, water wars and intensifying meteorological disasters, that urge has turned into something much more immediately inviting—and perhaps equally immediately terrifying in view of the human-wrought ecological problems of our day. Owning the Weather tells the story and examines the future of weather modification in the U.S., talking to a gallery of individuals in the front lines of a crucial but largely unknown debate, from cloud seeders struggling for mainstream recognition to scientists with both positive and negative views on the idea of humanity trying to tame the weather, to activists who decry attempts to mess with the greater intelligence of Nature. From small scale questions (Will weather modifiers gain government funding?) to larger, philosophical issues (What does it mean to our society and to our consciousness if there are no longer any more acts of God?), Owning the Weather is fascinating cinema, animated by the reflections and knowledge of a wealth of experts including Bill McKibben, Dennis Kucinich, Ando Arike and Colby College Professor of Science, Technology and Society James Fleming.

PHOTO CREDIT/CAPTION: We’ve always wanted to control the weather. Now we may have to.

11.) FEATURED FILM: The Big Combo

SHOWTIME: Saturday, July 12 2008 ~ 9:00pm at the Waterville Opera House

INTERVIEW CONTACT: tbd

SYNOPSIS: The Big Combo

Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Screenplay: Philip Yordan

Producer: Sidney Harmon

Principal Cast: Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Jean Wallace, Brian Dunleavy

Print Courtesy UCLA Film and Television Archive

THE BIG COMBO Preservation Funded by The Film Foundation

This breathtaking new UCLA Archive print showcases one of the lesser known-and yet one of the greatest masterpieces-of film noir. John Alcot, who was to become Stanley Kubrick’s regular cinematographer, shot The Big Combo with panache, inventiveness and sultry immediacy, making every curl of cigarette smoke and every curl of Jean Wallace’s erotically obsessed body hover in the atmosphere with a charge. The Big Combo is undoubtedly the masterpiece of Joseph H. Lewis, who also directed the fabulous late ‘40s noir Gun Crazy. Its plot hinges on a determined cop (Cornel Wilde) grimly tracking a brilliant mob boss (Richard Conte), mirroring each other in their determination, power and disregard for others. Wallace is an unforgettable woman caught in between them, trapped in a web of shadow and light in one of the richest of late era noirs. Throw in an amazingly overt gay couple of henchmen, a corker of a grand finale and the rareness of the chance to see this astonishing, one-of-a-kind print and you have a must-see experience.