Friday
Normally, I'd recommend kicking off the 2007 Maryland Film Festival with the 11:30 a.m. showing of Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett's 1977 underground classic of frustration and resilience.
But since the film will be getting a theatrical release later this month, I think I'll put off seeing it for a couple weeks and opt, instead, for the 10:30 a.m. showing of Ry Russo-Young's Orphans, the story of estranged sisters (James Katharine Flynn and the late Lily Wheelwright, who died in March at age 22) reuniting five years after the deaths of their parents. The film won a Special Jury Prize at this year's South by Southwest film festival, for its "personally crafted visual aesthetic." It's also part of the nascent "mumblecore" film movement, propelled by a group of filmmakers whose work eschews conventional narrative in favor of intense character studies and more realistic storytelling.
After lunch at the indispensable Sofi's Crepes, one door up from the Charles' front entrance, it's time to trek to one of this year's new film venues, the University of Baltimore's Student Center, for a 2 p.m. showing of Kurt Kolaja's Charlie Obert's Barn, detailing the filmmaker's determination to preserve a small part of this region's less-hurried (and harried) past. His mission: transport an aging barn built by his grandfather from Crawford County, Pa., an area where things seem to have changed little in the past century, to Kent County, where Kolaja now lives.
Following that, I plan to stay at UB for a 4:30 p.m. showing of Julie Bayer and Josh Saltzman's Time and Tide, a documentary on how modern civilization is encroaching on the Pacific island of Tuvalu - in ways both cultural (as outside financial interests find ways to profit off the island's isolation) and environmental (rising water levels attributed to global warming are threatening much of the coastline).
It's back to the Charles at 6:30 p.m. for one of the festival's annual highlights, the film chosen and introduced by Baltimore's resident incorrigible bad boy, John Waters. This year's pick is Bobcat Goldthwait's Sleeping Dogs, a rumination on just how much honesty a relationship can really handle. Goldthwait, a comedian known equally for his subversive directorial debut, Shakes the Clown, and for voicing the part of a dog puppet on the TV series Unhappily Ever After, will be on hand.
