[ThisWeek] American Indian Film Festival and Hotel Rwanda at the Kenworthy

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre-

University of Idaho presents
American Indian Film Festival

Sponsored by UI American Indian Studies Program, Idaho Humanities Council
and UI President¹s Diversity Initiative Grant.

FREE admission
Discussions follow the shows

-- Wednesday, March 30, 7:00 PM

The ceremonial opening includes a welcome by a tribal elder and keynote
messages from UI Professor Georgia Johnson and Washington State University
Professor Michael Hays.

"With Hearts, Hands and Bells: The Story of the Sister Building on the Coeur
d¹Alene Indian Reservation," documentary written by Georgia Grady Johnson,
directed and produced by Michael Hayes. It depicts life from the late 19th
century to the present at the Catholic missionary school in Desmet.
 
-- Thursday, March 31, 7:00 PM

"American Indian Graffiti," co-directed and written by Steven Judd (Choctaw)
and Tvli Jacob (Choctaw/Kiowa); set in contemporary Oklahoma, the ensemble
drama tells about the intertwining lives of four Native Americans. It¹s a
story about friendships that falter, dreams that come true, families that
fall apart, and the struggle to survive.
 
-- Friday, April 1, 7:00 PM

"Moccasin Flats," directed by Randy Redroad (Cherokee). A Native youth is
caught between his chance at a college education and his conflict with the
"home boys." This gritty drama depicts urban and rural Indian communities
across North America.

"Chiefs," directed by Daniel Junge, this documentary shows how basketball
provides youth with a sense of belonging and camaraderie, a means of
achieving victory, and an opportunity to explore life off the reservation.

"49?" directed by Sherman Alexie, a short six-minute film on the dance
tradition called the 49.
 
-- Saturday, April 2, 7:00 PM

The Experimental Films of Mohawk Filmmaker Shelly Niro, from Niagra Falls,
New York and currently living in Brantford, Ontario. Storytelling through
film and installation art, Niro creates roles for native women that give
them a voice of strength and community. Her work addresses questions of
identity. 

"It Starts with a Whisper" follows a young Iroquois woman who has grown up
on a reservation and her decision about which path to follow in life.
 
"Overweight with Crooked Teeth" frames issues of Native identity by
reversing Native stereotypes.
 
"Honey Moccasin," an all-Native comedy-thriller, is part of the Smoke
Signals new wave of films that examine native identity in the 1990s. Set on
the Grand Pine Indian Reservation, the melodrama, performance art, cable
access, and ³whodunit² unfold.
 
"The Shirt" is an experimental video featuring Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie that
uses the tee-shirt to express history and irony.
* * *

THIS SUNDAY ONLY-

Hotel Rwanda (PG13)
Sunday, April 3
1:30/4:15/7:00 PM
$5 adults, $2 children 12 and younger
KFS passes accepted for Sunday shows
(see Review below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy-

The U.S. premiere of a romantic comedy by Uniontown playwright, Bruce Gooch

Sirius Idaho Theatre
in conjunction with new fangled  stages,
 presents
Random Acts of Love by Bruce Gooch
Directed by Forrest Sears

Opening night- Wednesday, April 6 at 7:30 pm
Sponsored by Above the Rim Gallery and One World Café
Reception following the show at One World Café

Thursday, April 7, 7:30 pm
Sponsored by Moscow Realty

Friday, April 8, 7:30 pm
Sponsored by Wells Fargo, Moscow Main Branch

Saturday, April 9 at 2:00 pm
Sponsored by Latah Co. Title Company

Saturday, April 9 at 7:30 pm
Sponsored by the Itani family

Tickets available at BookPeople of Moscow or TicketsWest
(www.ticketswest.com <http://www.ticketswest.com/> 800-325-SEAT,
208-885-7212)
$15 adults and $9 seniors/students (plus applicable fees)

Recognized as ³Outstanding New Play² at the Toronto Fringe Festival 2004,
Random Acts of Love features Bruce Gooch, a Uniontown native and University
of Idaho alum, and Lynn Vogt, co-founders of Toronto-based new fangled
stages.

Forrest Sears, University of Idaho Professor Emeritus of Theatre, is working
with Sirius Idaho Theatre to bring this production to the Palouse. Sears, in
speaking about his former student Bruce Gooch, says, ³Bruce¹s new play,
Random Acts of Love, is the most romantic, gripping and compelling of all
his many fine scripts. For lovers of Shakespeare, it is a must. For those
new to the bard, it will lure you into his works like nothing else I know.²

Synopsis
Having had the audacity to age, Victoria Daniels, played by Vogt, has been
³let go² from her daytime drama. She ditches trash-for-cash television and
agrees to star in a two-character play of Shakespeare¹s greatest hits called
The Seven Ages of Love. Confident in this decision for herself and her
children, she runs head long into her co-star, Russell Thomas, played by
Gooch, an actor with whom she had a passionate encounter fifteen years
earlier. They battle and brawl their way through rehearsals, threatening to
ruin the show. Random Acts of Love links the past and present into a love
story about the theatre, Shakespeare and second chances.

Audition workshop for actors
Thursday, April 7, 2:30 ­ 5:00 pm
FREE admission
For anyone interested in learning more about the life and livelihood of an
actor.

Lynn Vogt and Bruce Gooch audition for their livelihood up to 10 times a
week. They know what casting directors are looking for in film, TV, stage
and commercials. They coach actors for individual auditions. They will teach
what you need to know about auditions, from walking into the room to walking
out. Gooch and Vogt will work with ten students. Observers will gain almost
as much as the participants on stage and are encouraged to attend.

For more information about the play, audition workshop, or to sign up as an
usher for one performance, call Pam Palmer at 883-3741 or visit the web site
of Sirius Idaho Theatre http://www.siriusidahotheatre.com/
* * *
Kenworthy Film Society presents

The Life Aquatic (R)
Sunday, April 10
1:30/4:15/7:00 PM
$5 adults
KFS passes accepted for Sunday movies
* * *
Also in April at the Kenworthy-

An evening of Bluegrass music with
the Spokane-based band, South Hill Ramblers, and local favorites, Blackberry
Jam and Steptoe
April 15, 7:00 PM
Tickets $10/adult, $7/child under 13

The concert is a fund-raiser for future bluegrass concerts at the Kenworthy.
Tickets $10/adult, $7/child 12 or younger
Available April 1 at BookPeople of Moscow.
Tickets may also be purchased with Visa or MasterCard by calling the
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre at 208-882-4127.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (PG)
April 16, 1:00/3:45/7:00 PM
April 17, 1:00/3:45

Borah Symposium presents
About Baghdad
April 17, 7:00 PM
FREE
(more information below)

A Very Long Engagement (R)
April 22, 7:00 PM
April 23 - 24, 4:15/7:00 PM

Born into Brothels (NR)
April 29, 7:00 PM
April 30 - May 1, 4:45/7:00 PM

Coming in May:  The Sea Inside, Hard Goodbyes My Father, Lost Embrace.

Regular Movie prices:  $5 adults, $2 children 12 and younger.
KFS passes accepted for Sunday movies

Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
For more information, call 208-882-4127 or visit http://www.kenworthy.org
* * *
This week¹s review-

Hotel Rwanda

Directed by Terry George
Running time: 2 hours
Rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for scenes of violence and mild
gore.

As reviewed by Stephen Holden writing for the New York Times

Early in "Hotel Rwanda," a cynical television journalist (Joaquin Phoenix),
who has just videotaped a massacre a few blocks from his hotel, shows the
damning video to the hotel's worried manager, Paul Rusesabagina (Don
Cheadle). Paul becomes elated. He is certain that these images, when
televised abroad, will force the West to intervene in the ethnic strife
consuming his country.

But the reporter knows better. "If people see this footage," he growls,
"they'll say, 'Oh my God, that's terrible,' and they'll go on eating their
dinners." Ten years after the fact, those remarks come as a stinging slap in
the face, for he was right.

"Hotel Rwanda" is a political thriller based on fact that hammers every
button on the emotional console. At the very least, this wrenching film
performs the valuable service of lending a human face to an upheaval so
savage it seemed beyond the realm of imagination when news of it filtered
into the West. 

The feverish euphoria of the Rwandan violence is strikingly different from
Nazi Germany's cold-blooded prosecution of its Final Solution. The savagery
is carried out in a spirit of mad jubilation. Military trucks packed with
cheering, machete-waving soldiers of the Interahamwe (the Hutu militia)
barrel through the streets of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The murderous
orgy suggests a rampaging mob celebrating a soccer triumph.

"Hotel Rwanda" radically downplays the actual gore, which is observed either
through a fog or from a distance. Bodies are strewn everywhere, but the
streets don't run with blood, and no hideous mutilation is shown. Even the
beatings seem tentative. Still, the movie does its job. You are left with
the uncomfortable suspicion that if the conditions for such a perfect storm
of hatred were right, a similar catastrophe could boil up almost anywhere.

Observing the killing, first in disbelief, then in anguish, Paul, the
stubbornly humane manager of the Mille Collines, the Belgian-owned luxury
hotel in Kigali, is the movie's designated hero and moral grounding wire.
The movie is based on the real-life experiences of this polished,
soft-spoken Hutu who, with his Tutsi wife, Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo), and
children, narrowly escapes death several times. Mr. Rusesabagina was
directly responsible for saving the lives of more than 1,200 Tutsis and Hutu
moderates by sheltering them in the hotel and bribing the Hutu military to
spare them. 

As reviewed by Mick LaSalle writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

Nations, like people, can go mad. "Hotel Rwanda" depicts a spasm of madness
that went through Rwanda 10 years ago. It's an extraordinary and effective
film with many distinct merits. It's important, in that it documents for a
mass audience what it was like. It's useful, in that it shows how it can
happen. It's even hopeful, in that it shows that it's possible -- not
guaranteed, but possible -- for people to maintain their humanity in the
face of unhinged barbarism.

The film tells the true story of Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), the
manager of the Hotel des Milles Collines, a four-star hotel in Kigali,
Rwanda. His virtues, at first, seem merely those of a good manager -- he's
punctilious, industrious and tactful. He knows what people are like. He is
always impeccably groomed. But where on most people, a suit and tie is just
a kind of uniform, on Paul, we come to realize, it's the emblem of a refined
soul. 

The conflict in Rwanda is between the Hutus and the Tutsis, entities
artificially created by the Belgians, who, in colonial days, arbitrarily
divided the populace into two tribes. The taller, lighter people were
designated Tutsis and the smaller, darker people were designated Hutus.
Needless to say, generations later it's difficult and sometimes impossible
to tell a Hutu from a Tutsi. Paul is a Hutu. His wife (Sophie Okonedo) is a
Tutsi. When the Hutu death squads begin their homicidal rampage, Paul's wife
is in danger, and so are his children.

What makes the film not just harrowing but transcendent is Cheadle. He does
nothing traditionally heroic. He just presents a picture of basic decency,
showing how, when combined with courage, decency can result in an awe-
inspiring moral steadfastness. He depicts someone calling upon conventional
strengths, such as resourcefulness, in a struggle to achieve nearly
impossible ends. And he shows the emotional cost of the effort. Paul's
brief, sudden breakdown, played by Cheadle and filmed by director Terry
George in one long take, crystallizes the character and is the stuff of
movie legend. Remarkably, Okonedo, as Paul's wife, is Cheadle's equal. The
scene in which her terror and anger overtake her is unforgettable.

As reviewed by Xan Brooks writing for The Guardian (UK)

Terry George's potent political melodrama rumbles in with a two-pronged
agenda: to slam the west's discreet non-involvement in the 1994 Rwandan
genocide and to salute one man who stood up and made a difference.

Paul Rusesabagina was a Kigali hotel manager who turned his Belgian-owned
resort into a sanctuary for some 1,200 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, and Don
Cheadle plays him with a wonderful lack of swagger, as a solid citizen and
an excellent hotel manager - diplomatic and rampantly westernised (an issue
the film addresses only briefly). He flits quietly around the lobby, finding
rooms for each fresh truckload of orphans, while Nick Nolte's UN commander
blusters on the sidelines and the corpses stack up in the road outside.

Hotel Rwanda is at its best in the early stages, when it resembles a cross
between Graham Greene's The Comedians and one of those paranoid horror films
of the 1950s and 60s (Invasion of the Body Snatchers perhaps, or Night of
the Living Dead). Outwardly, everything is normal, but there's something
wrong with the picture. The white tourists are sunning themselves by the
swimming pool, and the local big-wigs are puffing on cigars on the veranda.
But behind the reception desk, the Hutu worker isn't talking to the Tutsi
worker and the radio in the kitchen is spewing poisonous propaganda and out
of the corner of his eye, Rusesabagina spies a butter-fingered delivery boy
spill a crate-load of machetes on to the concrete floor. In these moments,
George's drama has a surreal, nightmarish momentum. Its sense of menace is
like a blade against your throat.

Reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart
* * *

Borah Symposium presents ³About Baghdad²

The Borah Symposium this year, "Voices of Peace," is planned for April
17-April 20, 2005. The community kick-off event is a screening of the
documentary "About Baghdad" and meeting with the co-producer, Adam Shapiro.
The film is free and open to the public, 7:00 pm, April 17.  The
documentary, 'About Baghdad' is an hour and 30 minute documentary, shot in
totality in Baghdad in July 2003 (3 months into the occupation), and thus it
reveals a quite interesting place in time.

"About Baghdad" received numerous accolades and prestigious recognition; The
New York Times stated that it "manages to present a true diversity of
opinion. . . emotionally and intellectually challenging." It won Best
Documentary at the Big Apple Film Festival 2004 (NY), the Official Selection
of  IDFA 2004 (Amsterdam),  Montreal World Film Festival --Official
selection, Festival do Rio 2004 (Rio de Janeiro), International Film
Festival of Human Rights of Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Girona &
Viranoz) and now it will be showing in Moscow, Idaho.

About Baghdad is an independent film of eyewitness testimony about and from
Iraqi people.  The documentary portrays a yearning for peace, reflections on
the complexity of the conditions for peace, and in essence portrays a drama
that is still unfolding.  In July 2003, Sinan Antoon, an exiled Iraqi writer
and poet, returned to Baghdad to see what has become of his city after wars,
sanctions, decades of oppression and violence, and now presence of foreign
power.  

The documentary will be introduced by one of its producers;  Adam Shapiro
(Please note the change form Dr. Rania Masri who regrettably is unable to
attend) Comments and conversation with Co-Producer Adam Shapiro, currently a
Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at American University in
Washington, DC.  He holds an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University
and an MA in Politics from New York University.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Adam is a founding member of InCounter
Productions, which produced the film "About Baghdad" (www.aboutbaghdad.com),
a documentary filmed in Baghdad, Iraq in July 2003.  Adam co-produced and
co-directed the film, and was in Iraq as part of the on-location film crew.
His current film project is focusing on Darfur (www.darfurfilm.org), where
he filmed in October/November 2004.  The documentary film is due to be
completed in March 2005.

Previously Adam served in numerous capacities for Seeds of Peace, notably as
the first Director of the Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem, where he
oversaw all youth programs in the region.  He also worked as a consultant
for Civic Forum - a Jerusalem-based Palestinian NGO working on developing
civil society and democracy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  Adam
has traveled the region extensively and in addition to the West Bank has
lived and worked in Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus and Iraq.  Additionally, he
has organized youth conferences in Villars, Switzerland and Prague, Czech
Republic.

Adam has spoken widely about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and about the
post-war occupation of Iraq, appearing at universities and other public
forums throughout the United States and the Middle East, and has been a
guest on many television and radio programs and interviewed for newspaper
articles, including CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, Pacifica Radio and the New York
Times.  He has also published articles in The Nation.

For more information about the film and to view the film trailer please
visit the website at www.AboutBaghdad.com <http://www.aboutbaghdad.com/>
* * *

Sign up for this weekly email on events and movies at the Kenworthy by
logging onto our website
http://www.kenworthy.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAMELA PALMER, Volunteer
Mailto:ppalmer at moscow.com
Film and Events Committee
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

http://www.kenworthy.org
To speak with a KPAC staff member,
call (208) 882-4127
Mailto:kpac at moscow.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  

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