MIFF in the Morning

Please join us again this winter as we present an exciting series of films, including a new print of a rarely seen classic (ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS) and a work-in-progress (Ben Levine's LANGUAGE OF AMERICA). In addition, two films (SIR! NO SIR! and HEADING SOUTH) have not yet played in theaters in this country. Support the festival by purchasing festival passes for only $28.95 (that's $4.83 per film!) and consider giving festival passes as holiday gifts! For more info call 207-873-4021.
Individual Tickets: $7 at the door
Festival Pass (6 admissions): $28.95 each - available now at Railroad Square Cinema
Film Line-Up: SIR! NO SIR!, MACHUCA, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, DEAR WENDY, LANGUAGE OF AMERICA, HEAING SOUTH - Details and descriptions below.

SIR! NO SIR!
10am Saturday, January 7
10am Sunday, January 8
Vietnam Veteran David Zeiger's documentary chronicles the real front line of dissent against the Vietnam War. It was not on campuses in Berkeley, Cambridge, Ann Arbor, or New Haven. It was inside the ranks of those who served in uniform and suffered in Vietnam. Zeiger's film shows not only embittered vets protesting after being discharged but also active duty personnel vigorously resisting the war effort. The movie illustrates their elation then and the pride still felt about their efforts to stop a brutal and disastrous military intervention in Vietnam. This film demands that we, the citizens in whose name our troops fight, consider what is needed to truly "Support Our Troops." 85 Minutes. Winner, Audience Documentary Award - 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival Nominee, Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You - Gotham Awards

MACHUCA
10am Saturday, January 21
10am Sunday, January 22
Chile's representative for the most recent Foreign Language Academy Award was Andres Wood's Machuca. This film focuses on two eleven-year-old boys who meet at St. Patrick's English School. Gonzalo Infante is from a privileged, white upper-middle-class family, but he shares outsider status with Pedro Machuca, a poor Indian who attends the school as part of a deliberate program to integrate local students into the exclusive school. The coming-of-age story of youngsters from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum could by itself make for a very interesting film, but the poignancy is enhanced by being set in 1973 during the turbulent period leading up to the military coup that brought down the government of Salvador Allende. The result is a film that is "both sweet and stringent, attuned to the wonders of childhood as well as its cruelty and terror" (A. O. Scott, New York Times) and "is one of those special films that broadens and deepens as it goes on" (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times). In Spanish with English subtitles. 121 minutes.

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
10am Saturday, February 4
10am Sunday, February 5
Newly restored, Louis Malle's first feature film won the esteemed Prix Louis Delluc as France's best film of 1957. Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet star as lovers needing to eliminate one minor barrier to their happiness…her husband. A dangling rope, a stolen car, joy-riding teens, a pistol gone astray, and a pair of extra corpses mar their "perfect crime." Miles Davis's jazz score provides a haunting accompaniment to this classic film noir story. In French with English subtitles. 88 Minutes. "Unbearably Poignant. Exquisite Jazz." - DAVID DENBY, NEW YORKER "Cool Suspense! A Smooth Ride!" - WESLEY MORRIS, BOSTON GLOBE "Delectable! Nail Biting Tension!" - MELISSA ANDERSON, VILLAGE VOICE

DEAR WENDY
10am Saturday, February 18
10am Sunday, February 19
Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) directs a script written by fellow Dane Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dogville) that examines the American love affair with guns. Dick Dandelion (Jamie Bell) is a committed pacifist until he meets Wendy. Wendy is not a beautiful seductive woman. Dick's seductress is a gun. He soon finds himself immersed in and the leader of a gang of gun-loving youths known as the Dandies. Their first rule is "never draw your weapons," but love always will find a way. The movie is set in a mining community loosely placed in the American South, and Sheriff Krugsby (Bill Pullman) tries to maintain law and order in the face of the gun-toting populace. 105 minutes.

LANGUAGE OF AMERICA
10am Saturday, March 4
10am Sunday, March 5
What happens when a language dies? What happens when a language is reborn? Language of America is the story of Indian survival in New England and the plague of language death across the planet. Come join the filmmaker Ben Levine, Director of Waking Up French, as we look at a film in progress and discuss the amazing stories of the hidden cultures, religions, and languages that surround us still without our knowing it. Live Native music, film clips of dance, massacre ceremonies, and soggy Pilgrims. Everywhere we look there is a story about the founding of America and the destruction of a people that continues today, all in a language with secrets to share.

HEADING SOUTH
10am Saturday, March 18
10am Sunday, March 19
Director Laurent Cantet follows up his critically acclaimed Time Out (2001), set during an austere wintertime in France and Switzerland, with Heading South, set in Haiti during the late 1970s. Based on writing by Dany Laferriere (novelist and screenwriter of Le Gout des Jeunes Filles that showed at MIFF 2005), the heat comes not only from the summertime tropical setting. Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, and Louise Portal head a group of single middle-aged women who have come for sun, fun, and romance. They desire the solicitous attention of attractive young Haitian men, and teenaged Legba (Menothy Cesar, winner of the Marcello Mastroianni Award at the 2005 Venice Film Festival) is an especially prized companion for whom the women vie. The women tourists' Queen Bee, Rampling, "is the ideal actress to convey" her Wellesley professor's "liberated carnality, Bostonian snobbery and racism, plus a deep vulnerability" (Jay Weissberg, Variety). Heading South received the Cinema for Peace Award at this year's Venice Film Festival. In English and French with English subtitles. 105 minutes.

SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING:
MIFF in the Morning Sponsors - Children's Book Cellar, Wolf Moon Press Journal, Let's Talk Language School, Buen Apetito, and Railroad Square Cinema
Additional support provided by Joel & Alice Johnson
MIFF in the Morning Committee - Clif Graves, Laurie Graves, Alice Johnson, Joel Johnson, Alan Sanborn, Sam Sanborn & Serena Sanborn