Film festival gathers the best of the globe

The Global Film Initiative

Staff report

The Global Film Initiative’s Global Lens 2011 film series will be shown at Kent State University at Trumbull in Warren and at the Lemon Grove, 122 W. Federal St., Youngstown, in November and December.

Global Lens includes nine award-winning narrative feature films from Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, India, Iran and Uruguay. All screenings are free and open to the public at both locations.

“This year’s lineup really does break new ground for the series,” said Susan Weeks Coulter of the Global Film Initiative. “The films are unusual and intriguing, wildly creative, experimental at times and quite different from previous editions of Global Lens.”

Global Lens 2011 will premiere a number of festival-headliners, including Federico Veiroj’s homage to Uruguayan cinephile culture, “A Useful Life”; Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof’s visually arresting cultural mythology “The White Meadows”; and Zhang Lu’s brooding and timely portrait of Chinese-Korean border politics, “Dooman River.”

The upcoming series also features the U.S. premiere of Diego Lerman’s dystopian portrait of sexual psyche in mid-80s Argentina, “The Invisible Eye”; veteran Kyrgyz director Aktan Arym Kubat’s entrepreneurial charmer “The Light Thief”; and “Belvedere,” Ahmed Imamoviƒá’s picturesque image of post-war life in a Bosnian refugee town.

The 2011 series is rounded out by Georgian newcomer Levan Koguashvili’s ironical tale of daily life and drug addiction in Tbilisi, “Street Days”; Sergio Bianchi’s noir-like visage of urban tension in a S £o Paulo suburb “The Tenants”; and Sidharth Srinivasan’s fiercely independent chronicle of caste and class in rural India, “Soul of Sand.”

The Global Film Initiative’s Global Lens 2011 film series

Here is the schedule:

“Dooman River” (2009, 89 minutes): 2 p.m. Nov. 7 at Kent-Trumbull; and 6 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Lemon Grove.

A window into a rarely seen corner of rural China which revolves around 12-year-old Chang-ho, living with his grandfather and mute sister along the frozen river-border with North Korea. An exquisitely detailed story of compassion and strife across an uneasy geopolitical border.

“Belvedere” (2010, 90 minutes): 6 p.m. Nov. 2 at Kent-Trumbull; and 7 p.m. Nov. 6 at the Lemon Grove.

Ruveyda is like most residents of the Belvedere refugee camp: a widow yearning to forget the tragedy of war, fifteen years after the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But unlike those around her, she spends most of her days in a bittersweet routine of caring for her extended family, and searching for the remains of her husband and son.

“The Invisible Eye” (2010, 95 minutes): 6 p.m. Nov. 9 at Kent-Trumbull; and 7 p.m. Nov. 27 at the Lemon Grove.

Set against the backdrop of Argentina’s military regime of the 1980s, a beautifully acted exploration of the totalitarian urge opens with a portrait of Mar a Teresa, a lonely and deeply repressed assistant teacher at an elite Buenos Aires private school. But her head professor’s words about the “cancer of subversion” and need for total surveillance soon feed an unhealthy obsession with one of her students, leading to an ensuing spiral of degradation and breakdown in discipline.

“The Light Thief” (2010, 80 minutes): 2 p.m. Nov. 14 at Kent-Trumbull; and 6 p.m. Nov. 20 at the Lemon Grove.

A humble village electrician devotes his compassion and ingenuity to destitute neighbors in a wind-swept valley of Kyrgyzstan. The trusting Mr. Light strikes a suspect bargain with a rich developer running for local office, as unemployment threatens the survival of the community. Stoking a dream to supply wind-generated electricity to the whole valley, the modest visionary comes up against an increasingly dark cloud of corruption.

“Soul of Sand” (2010, 98 minutes): 6 p.m. Nov. 28 at Kent-Trumbull; and 7 p.m. Dec. 4 at the Lemon Grove.

A watchman and his wife living at an abandoned mine find themselves trapped in the brutal schemes of their tyrannical landlord in this suspenseful, visually striking drama set on the urban outskirts of Delhi. When the landlord offers his daughter to a wealthy potential buyer of the mine, she and her lower-caste lover run away. The watchman reluctantly helps them, but a sinister masked killer dispatched to hunt down the runaways endangers them all.

“Street Days” (2010, 86 minutes): 8 p.m. Nov. 20 at the Lemon Grove; and 6 p.m. Nov. 28 at Kent-Trumbull.

A group of policemen blackmails a struggling heroin-addict into entrapping the son of his wealthy friend. He and his wife are unified by the uncertainty of their deepening moral dilemma, and a series of worsening foul-ups, in the lightly humorous yet realistic drama about the fate of a generation left behind in Georgia’s post-Soviet era.

“The Tenants” (2009, 103 minutes): 6 p.m. Nov. 1 at Kent-Trumbull; and 7 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Lemon Grove.

A manual laborer and night student, Valter, live a relatively content life with his family in working-class S £o Paulo. But when three young criminals move in next door, a bunker mentality sets in and Valter soon discovers he is not the only one perversely affected by the mounting chaos of a city under siege, or the unsettling presence of his new neighbors.

“A Useful Life” (2010, 63 minutes): 8 p.m., Nov. 13 at the Lemon Grove; and 2 p.m. Nov. 15 at Kent-Trumbull.

After 25 years, devoted employee, Jorge (real-life Uruguayan critic Jorge Jellinek), still finds his inspiration in caring for the films and audiences that grace the seats and screen of his beloved arthouse cinema. But when dwindling attendance and diminishing support force the theater to close its doors, Jorge is suddenly forced to discover a new passion that transcends his once-celluloid reality.

“The White Meadows” (2009, 93 minutes): 6 p.m. Nov. 17 at Kent-Trumbull; and 7 p.m. Dec. 18 at the Lemon Grove.

In this dreamlike yet earthbound film, Rahmat the boatman navigates the increasingly brackish waters of a coastal land, collecting the heartaches and tears of its inhabitants. But he remains powerless against their misguided attempts to appease the gods and make the land green again. This poetical film is a gorgeous allegory of intolerance, brutality and mystified routine that resonates far beyond any one state’s borders.