Director Roman Paska with actor John Turturro present Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy
STF’s Winter 2013 season kicked off last Tuesday with a sold-out screening of Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy. Director Roman Paska follows actor John Turturro throughout Western Sicily as they research a future film project about traditional Sicilian puppeteering. In addition to his conversations with professional puppeteers, local historians, and young actresses, Turturro traces his maternal roots in the region, exploring the neighborhood where his grandmother lived before immigrating to the United States. Paska and Turturro’s trip coincides with preparations for the Day of the Dead, an annual celebration that, in the context of the film, provides Turturro with the opportunity to remember his recently-deceased mother and the ways in which he still feels their relationship when he visits Italy. Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy explores the connections between death, tradition, and memory, and the ways in which these themes inform one’s relationship to one’s familial and cultural identities. After the screening, Paska and Turturro joined STF’s Artistic Director Thom Powers for a Q&A.
I try to maintain a policy of not speaking publicly about films I don’t program. However, because Caveh Zahedi has accused me in a YouTube video of “blacklisting” his film The Sheik and I, I want to clarify certain facts before further misinformation gets out of hand.
Here is the background:
Prior to the SXSW film festival, Caveh Zahedi asked for my opinion of his film The Sheik & I. I wrote him a private letter detailing my grave reservations about the film and what I considered the disregard that he showed for the people filmed – in many cases without their consent – and the possible repercussions for their safety. I advised him not to show the film at SXSW in its current state. I shared that letter with SXSW programmer Janet Pierson, so that she wouldn’t be taken by surprise if Zahedi followed through on my advice; and because I thought the issues were serious enough to warrant further consideration on her part. That is the only occasion when I initiated any correspondence with a festival programmer about the film. As we know, that email didn’t change the course for SXSW. I also wrote to three journalists after they had written positively about the film to provide additional context. None of that correspondence resulted in any change of their positions.
Zahedi uses the term “blacklist” evoking the era of Joe McCarthy when filmmakers had their livelihoods threatened. That’s a far cry from this situation. On the contrary, it’s important to note that I curated his earlier film I Am a Sex Addict for SundanceNOW’s Doc Club for February 2013.
I’m hardly the only person who had problems with The Sheik and I. I’d point you to this substantial review out of SXSW in Collider.
Other critics have been more favorable and other festivals have embraced it. But Zahedi can’t seem to accept that he’s made a film with a mixed response.
This incident has been thoroughly raked over by other journalists including Violet Lucca of Film Comment who spent a lot of time looking into it in the spring before deciding it wasn’t really a story.
It’s ironic that Zahedi stands on the ground of free speech, yet wants to smear me for exercising mine.
STF is having a special eight-week fall season that kicks off next Tues. Sept. 27 and runs through Nov. 22 (note – we skip a week on Nov. 8 for DOC NYC). Early-bird season passes are available through Sept. 27 and cost $80 ($60 for IFC members). We hope you join us!
Full line-up below:
THE LAST GLADIATORS (2011)
FALL SEASON OPENING NIGHT – Tues. Sept. 27 @ 8pm
Q&A with director Alex Gibney
During its 6-year history, STF has never held a summer season until now; and I think it’s one of our best seasons ever. We kick off with a pre-season special on Thursday, June 2 with BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD with director Liz Garbus; followed by the official opening night on Tuesday, June 7 of the Sundance Audience Award winner SENNA about the Brazilian Formula One race car driver Ayrton Senna. The film brilliantly employs archival footage to trace the dramatic twists and turns of Senna’s career.
Overall the summer season features 10 Tuesday night films, plus 3 special screenings for a total of 13 films. We’re currently offering a season pass for the early bird rate of $99 ($75 for IFC members) that gets you all 13 films, plus free popcorn at every STF show, a free DVD from Docurama, and the ability to transfer your pass to a friend. Best of all, you never miss a sold out screening and you can bet a lot of these will sell out.
Other festival hits coming to STF include YOU’VE BEEN TRUMPED (July 7) which caused a sensation at its Hot Docs world premiere a few weeks ago. The film looks at Donald Trump’s scheme to build a golf resort on an environmentally sensitive piece of Scotland’s coast (the same setting for the fiction film LOCAL HERO). When locals rise up in protest, Trump exerts all of his power and public relations to defeat them. During the course of making the film director Anthony Baxter wound up arrested. BETTER THIS WORLD (July 26), jury prize winner at the San Francisco Film Festival, follows the case of two young protestors at the 2008 Republican convention in Minneapolis who were charged with domestic terrorism.
Another controversial title is BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (June 30) examining how the debate over Israel is causing divisions within the American Jewish community. Directors Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow will visit from San Francisco to discuss the film.
Among the highly lauded doc makers coming to STF this season are Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin who will present two episodes from BRICK CITY (June 14) and discuss the making of this ambitious series. Steve James, known for HOOP DREAMS and a strong Oscar contender this year for THE INTERRUPTERS, brings his deeply personal doc STEVIE (July 19) that was overlooked when its initial theatrical run coincided with the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
For a rare look at classic docs from the 1960s, don’t miss MISSION TO MALAY (July 5) made by the pioneering woman director Hope Ryden who’s previously appeared at STF with JANE; and a double feature of 16 AT WEBSTER GROVES and WEBSTER GROVES REVISITED (July 12) that Jonathan Franzen has written about as being iconic to his childhood in suburban St. Louis. Covering the other side of the tracks in St Louis, is THE PRUITT-IGOE MYTH (June 28) about a public housing project that started with great expectations and ended in infamy.
For pure summer movie pleasure, don’t miss Mexican director Carlos Hagerman visiting with BACK TO LIFE (June 21), a story of romance and shark hunts in Acapulco; and SOUL POWER (Aug 2), showcasing the legendary 1974 concert with James Brown and others in Zaire that accompanied the fight seen in WHEN WE WERE KINGS.
Don’t miss a single one. Get a season pass and spend your summer watching great films. Full line-up below.
As Robin Hessman’s MY PERESTROIKA opens this week in theaters across the country (some of you may have caught it at STF last May), we thought it would be an appropriate moment to publish an interview STF conducted with author Jonathan Brent back in January 2009 about his book Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the new Russia. Both MY PERESTROIKA and Inside the Stalin Archives make incredible use of Russian archives to illuminate the history and reality of Russia, then and now.
Below is a transcript of the conversation between STF artistic director Thom Powers and author Jonathan Brent.
As Robin Hessman’s