Baltimore Film

The 25th Annual Baltimore International Film Festival will open Wednesday at the Senator Theatre with an 8 p.m. screening of "The Scent of Green Papaya," winner of the Camera d'Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.A champagne reception precedes the film at 7:30 p.m., and a desert reception follows at 10 p.m. Tickets for opening and closing nights are $12 general admission and $10 for seniors, students and members of the Baltimore Film Forum.All other festival films will show at the Baltimore Museum of Art ($6 general admission and $5 for seniors, students and forum members)

When “12 O'Clock Boys” director Lotfy Nathan brought his film to this month's South by Southwest film festival, one of his main goals was to find distribution for the documentary. Nathan didn't have to wait long, as deadline.com reported this week that Oscilloscope Laboratories had purchased the North American rights to Nathan's documentary on the West Baltimore dirt-bike riders. Oscilloscope, which was co-founded by deceased Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch, is considered a boutique film company.

No two more disparate films could be imagined than the odd couple that show today at the 26th Annual Baltimore International Film Festival at the Baltimore Museum of Art.The 7:30 screening is a dour, plodding Czech piece called "The Cow," which lays out the relentlessly depressing story of poor Adam, crippled son of a prostitute, who tries to eke out a living in the high mountains.Sisyphus had nothing on this kid. Each day after working in a coal mine, he loads up his knapsack with dirt to haul up to his farm in hopes of enriching the soil.

Baltimore is one city where crowds come out in the heat of the night to take in open-air movies. In mid-July last year, when the thermometer was hitting 95 in the day and stalling in the 80s past midnight, fun-seekers swarmed to Federal Hill to watch (what else?) "Some Like It Hot. " A month later, when it was 89 in the day and 80 throughout the evening, Baltimoreans in search of a Mediterranean getaway turned up in Little Italy for "Nine. " Even when Charm City itself isn't charming, its outdoor summer film festivals are, largely because of their block-party feeling.

The Baltimore Film Forum begins its 26th annual Baltimore International Film Festival today with a gala premiere of John Sayles' well-reviewed Celtic fantasy, "The Secret of Roan Inish" at the Senator Theatre.The festival, which runs through April 29, boasts 22 films representing more than 15 countries."The Secret of Roan Inish" follows an Irish fishing family as it comes to terms with the legend of the Selkies, half-human and half-seal. The 8 p.m. screening is preceded by a 7:30 p.m. champagne reception and will be followed by complimentary desserts provided by Spike & Charlie's.

Film animator T. Carlos Williams of Baltimore recently won $2,500 award from Sony Corp. as part of its annual Sony Innovators Awards Program, a national competition recognizing African-American achievements in music and film/video.Mr. Williams was named 1993 Sony Innovator in Animation for his film "Da Bridge." His award includes a mentoring seminar conducted by film and video professionals."Live, Gifted and Black," a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra open rehearsal featuring the world premiere of "Festival Music," a piece by African-American composer Adolphus Hailstork, will begin at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

Though it will end its 26-year life in January, the Baltimore Film Forum is going out in style. Tomorrow at 7 p.m., at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Forum will screen "Giant," the epic George Stevens film with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, in commemoration of World AIDS Day. Professor David Bergman, editor of "Men on Men," will discuss the significance of Hudson as the first major celebrity "outed" by AIDS.Admission is $4 for BMA and BFF members, seniors and students; $5 otherwise.

To celebrate its 54th anniversary, the Senator Theatre is rolling back its prices and its feature film more than 50 years. Tonight, the Senator will present the 1942 classic "Now Voyager," starring Bette Davis and Paul Henreid. Admission is 25 cents. Popcorn and soda will also be 25 cents each.The Senator traditionally features a film from 1939 each year on its birthday, but this year the theater is breaking tradition in memory of the former president of the Baltimore Film Forum, the late Helen Cyr, whose favorite film was "Now Voyager."

The Baltimore Film Forum continues its premiere series this weekend with two more films drawn from short stories by the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.These films, which Marquez himself adapted for Spanish television in the mid-'80s, are surprisingly fanciful and erotic.Tonight's performance at the Baltimore Museum of Art is "A Very Old Man with Enormous Arms." Tomorrow's will be "Fable of the Beautiful Pigeon Fancier."The screenings begin at 8 p.m. Admission is $4 for Film Forum and Museum members, students and seniors, and $5 for all others.

The 24th annual Baltimore Film Festival opens tonight at the Senator with the grand-prize winner of the Cannes Film Festival, "Il Ladro di Bambini" ("The Stolen Children") by director Gianni Amelio.An opening night reception begins at 7:30 p.m., and the film will be screened at 8 p.m.Over the next four weekends, the Film Festival will show 26 features from 17 different cultures. Among the highlights are the new work, "Simple Men," by the American independent filmmaker Hal Hartley; "Cousin Bobby," a documentary by Academy Award-winner Jonathan ("Silence of the Lambs")

Are there any delights so sublime, so dependable, as those derived from watching -- and deriding -- a really bad movie? Not for Mark Colegrove, a founder and organizer of the monthly Mondo Baltimore film series . The first Thursday of every month, he and his fellow connoisseurs of cinematic dreck -- and we're talking films that are mind-numbingly bad, to the point where they may actually kill brain cells -- take over the Windup Space for...

Watching "Eichmann" on Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Baltimore Jewish Film Festival will remind viewers of the power movies can get from timing and circumstance. It's not a crackerjack film, but it's a strong conversation-starter. (Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin will be the guest speaker.) It centers on an Israeli police interrogator, Capt. Avner Less, who relentlessly questioned Adolph Eichmann, a prime engineer of Hitler's Final Solution, from May 29, 1960 (shortly after Eichmann's capture in a Buenos Aires suburb)

Are guys really that hard to understand? They are, at least according to He's Just Not That Into You, a romantic comedy in which young, excessively attractive Baltimoreans struggle to understand dating, relationships and their significant others. The premise is pretty simple: When it comes to matters of the heart, women steadfastly refuse to see what's right in front of them. The same holds true for guys, by the way, but let's let the gals believe in their uniqueness, at least until the movie's over.

Founder Claudine Davison said the Baltimore Jewish Film Festival began in 1988 with three films and "a lot of apprehension and anxiety." So the fact that organizers are preparing to show 10 films to several thousand viewers for the 20th anniversary season Tuesday through May 18 "is a very, very good feeling," she said. "The proof is in it lasting so long." The festival, now named for the William and Irene Weinberg Family and sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore and the Senator Theatre, has moved from its early home at the Baltimore Museum of Art to the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills.

Halloween is just a couple weeks away, and once again it looks like Baltimore will have to do without the classic horror filmfest the day so richly deserves. Someday, somewhere, somehow, Baltimore is going to have itself an all-night (or even all-day) horror-movie marathon around Halloween. Maybe at the Charles. Maybe at the Senator, or the Bengies. Maybe even at the soon-to-open Landmark Theatres at Harbor East. Or even at the BMA. Heck, have it at the corner of Howard and Centre streets, but have it somewhere.

Seven years into her job putting together film festivals throughout the world, Marisa Cohen noticed that they rarely featured work by women. "There has been a real lack of female filmmakers," says the Baltimore native, who works for the Florida-based HD Fest, organizers of high-definition film festivals in New York, London, Australia and Seoul, South Korea. "Especially in mainstream films, you don't see a lot." Galvanized by the low profile of female filmmakers, she and a friend have organized the inaugural Baltimore Women's Film Festival.

George Udel, who almost single-handedly created the Baltimore film culture he was such a crucial fixture of, died yesterday. He was 69. Udel, who had fought heart disease for 20 years, succumbed to kidney failure at Union Memorial Hospital.At a time when Baltimore enjoys a bustling film culture -- with the Maryland Film Festival, a rejuvenated Charles Theatre, the Cinema Sundays series and countless other opportunities to screen rarely seen films -- it's easy to forget that when Udel became involved with the newly founded Baltimore Film Forum in 1969, local filmgoers had far fewer choices at their disposal.

The Baltimore Film Forum launches its Directors Showcase series in honor of Jean Renoir and John Ford tonight with the former's "The Crime of Mr. Lange" and tomorrow with the latter's "Grapes of Wrath." Both will be screened at 8 p.m. at the Baltimore Museum of Art's Meyerhoff Auditorium.A highlight of the series, Nov. 15, will be screening of a double feature of Renoir's "A Day in the Country" and Ford's "Stagecoach."Other Renoir films, screened Thursday nights, are: "The Grand Illusion," Nov. 29; "The Human Beast," Dec. 6; "Rules of the Game," Dec. 13. Other Ford films, presented Fridays are: "My Darling Clementine," Nov. 30; "The Searchers," Dec. 7; "The Last Hurrah," Dec. 14.Admission prices are $4 for Film Forum and BMA members, senior citizens and students, and $5 for the general public.

Baltimore writer-director Mark Redfield's The Death of Poe, a dramatization of the famed mystery writer's final days (he died in Baltimore, under circumstances still not fully explained, on Oct. 7, 1849), will have its world premiere Wednesday at The Charles, 1711 N. Charles St. Redfield plays Poe; others in the cast include Kevin G. Shinnick, Jennifer Rouse, Tony Tsendeas, Kim Hannold and J.R. Lyston. Tickets are $10. Information: 410-409-5465 or thedeathofpoe.com. Focus on cinematography Director Lodge Kerrigan and cinematographer John Foster will be on hand Monday night to discuss their 2004 film, Keane, the tale of a man who loses his daughter at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal.

From working the beat with the Baltimore police to warding off alien invasion, an assortment of roles for area actors are popping up as Baltimore becomes a popular filming location. Two major projects, the HBO series "The Wire" and the upcoming film "Invasion," are auditioning hopefuls for filming this September. "The Wire," a Baltimore-based police drama written and produced by David Simon of "Homicide: Life on the Street," will begin filming 13 episodes for its fourth season in September.