Touching “Randy’s Canvas” to Premiere in September

September 18 will see the release of a touching Rhode Island film, Randy’s Canvas. Adam Carbone stars as a young man with autism, facing new dynamics in his personal life. Carbone relayed the genus of the idea and the film’s arduous road to production. With a cast of more than 50, the film allows audiences to peer into this unique landscape.

Carbone explains the origin of Randy’s Canvas. “The concept of Randy’s Canvas was created by director Sean Michael Beyer over 10 years ago. Sean brought on writers Matthew Andrews and Kevin G. Schmidt to co-write and really helped make it what it is today. After working with Sean on many other projects, he cast me as Randy against all odds; because he knew I was right for the part. We also ended up shooting it in Rhode Island, which was amazing for the film. (The state) became a character.”

Now using a character’s diagnosis – especially one that is (it hurts to say this, but…) “trendy” — currently, a cause celebre — can become a crutch. The misunderstood disease could easily be a tool to manipulate audience’s sympathies. Beyer and Carbone saw these trappings and decided to roll that into the character. Carbone agrees. “The film is really about an aspiring artist who is trying to find his place in the subjective world of art while falling for a taken girl at the same time. The fact that he has autism is almost a side note. (The film) is about an artist who happens to have autism.”

Approaching this role was a delicate trek for Carbone. He had to open himself to new experiences and visualize through a unique lens that most people do not consider. “Me being able to play Randy was such a humbling and eye opening experience. Before this movie came around, I really wasn’t too versed about the spectrum or the people on it, aside from a couple of friends. I did a whole lot of research and studying with the wonderful people at the Autism Project to help figure out what makes Randy tick.” Those unfamiliar with autism may have a myopic view of autistic behaviors. This makes any writer or actor subject to a labyrinth of tropes and stereotypes. Carbone continued, “I think the most challenging thing was keeping Randy on track to being likable. It was a fine line of him having outbursts and being sometimes selfish, because he has autism, and coming across not likable. I do believe we stayed on track based on the overwhelmingly positive reaction we got for the movie and Randy so far.”

Having shot 18 days in July and August of 2016, the following two years were meticulous and thorough exercises in post-production. Before seeking distribution, Carbone recalls, “Countless flights back and forth to LA for editing, sound designer studios, color correction, music placement, ADR and lots of TLC. I’m very picky with my edits, so I made sure that I sat next to all the different editors to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks.”

After the pre-release screening on August 24 at The Greenwich Odeum, the world will be able to view and ingest the particulars and journey of Randy as he copes with the trials of what every human explores. People have seen it, and Carbone is elated by the response. “The feedback has been nothing but stellar. We’ve had two screenings now and each one we’ve sold out and received standing ovations. We got accepted in to The Autism Society’s Film Festival: Autfest. We were sharing the night with the cast of “The Good Doctor” and “Atypical,” and to our surprise, we won best picture and I won best actor. Such an honor.”

Tre Maison Dasan: Three Boys Grow Up with Parents in Prison

Rhode Island filmmaker Denali Tiller directed a documentary named after three boys: Tre, Maison, Dasan. At the start of the film they are 13, 11, and 6 years old, and each has a parent (two fathers and one mother) incarcerated in the state prison, the Adult Correctional Institution in Cranston. The film is scheduled to make its Rhode Island premiere at the RI International Film Festival at 12:15pm on Saturday, August 11, at the Metcalf Auditorium in the RISD Museum. The boys in the film are expected to be at the screening, she said. Documentary subjects Tre, Maison, and Dasan with director Denali Tiller.

Tiller attended RISD where she now teaches as adjunct faculty. “I went to RISD for undergraduate and the film started as my senior thesis project there. I met a woman who is from Michigan and was incarcerated for 17 years in Michigan. She had two kids when she went in who were 6 and 8, and 23 and 25 when she came home, so she started a program when she got out looking into the stages of grief and trauma that children go through when a parent goes to prison. I met her, we became friends, and then I was really interested in her life story and her program that’s implemented in the Rhode Island Department of Corrections now, so I was going to the visiting hours and meeting these kids. As I got to know them, the film really shifted to be from their perspective in looking at the effects of incarceration on children,” Tiller said.

“It’s a film about relationships, the importance of parenthood and that people can be excellent, amazing parents despite their incarceration or circumstances. We’re developing an extensive outreach and impact campaign with the film that has its own screening schedule with communities and institutions. As we’ve been traveling to film festivals, we try and connect with local community groups or prisons. When we were in San Francisco, we went to San Quentin Prison and showed the film there as well as the juvenile detention center and the public defenders office. San Quentin was amazing: they have a newspaper they publish out of the prison and they wrote an article about the film and the inmates’ response to it, which is also on our web site. Those are the communities and people we made the film for and are trying to connect with,” Tiller said.

She has been working on the film for four years, beginning in 2014 and completing it in January 2018. It premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April and since has been screened a few times at festivals in Boston and elsewhere. It’s her first feature-length film, although it derived from a short film that she was able to use for fundraising and support. The reception has “been amazing, from a lot of different angles. We’ve had some fantastic reviews that are on our web site. People respond to it very powerfully because it’s not a ‘talking heads’ documentary and there’s not a specific call to action: you’re just led through these three boys’ lives as they’re growing up, so it’s an experiential, emotional film,” Tiller said.

“The main core team is three people: me, producer Rebecca Stern, and executive producer Andrew Freiband. But the list of support is long,” Tiller said. “The on-the-ground production crew was really small. It was usually just me and my cinematographer, Jon Gourlay.” The budget was a little less than a half-million dollars. “A significant part of the budget goes into the post-production and also includes some of our distribution and outreach funding as well.” Current distribution plans, she said, are exploring both traditional film channels and possible television. She hopes to use the film in support of social workers, educators, and others who serve the communities depicted, making it available in K-12 schools and colleges. “My biggest hope for the film is that it can build a larger conversation around the impact of incarceration on families and, specifically, children. The people left behind have a lot of stigma surrounding children who have parents in prison,” Tiller said.

She sees a nexus between the recently publicized separation of immigrant children. “It’s horrible what’s happening at the border, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that we’re separating children from their families every single day in this country, and that’s not just for violent offenders: that’s for people that can’t pay bail, people that were caught with a little marijuana. This has been happening in this country forever, but significantly over the past 30 or 40 years,” Tiller said. “When a parent goes to prison, a lot of times children are left in foster care, they’re left with grandparents, they’re put into the system themselves. It’s really no different in a lot of ways.”

Credit screen: “a film by” from Tre Maison Dasan

Currently, “We’re all still very close. I’m in close contact with the boys,” Tiller said. “The film is actually titled at the beginning as ‘a film by’ Tre, Maison, Dasan, and me. It was important for me to have the film be a collaboration with them, so there’s music in the film that they created, particularly Tre so his music is throughout the film. My interactions with them, especially at the beginning, were, ‘You take the camera, you play with the equipment, film what you want me to see about your lives,’” Tiller said. “The boys also own 10% of the film… It was important that they maintain ownership over their own stories, over their own lives, and therefore over the film.”

Website: tremaisondasan.com

RIIFF: film-festival.org ; schedule: prog.tsharp.xyz/en/riiff/36/film/2479/TRE%20MAISON%20DASAN

IMDB: imdb.com/title/tt8283704

Trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=uWCr1j7IYxI His Pen Is Smitier Than the Sword

Mr. Fish is the nom de plume of Dwayne Booth, an artist whose clever, biting, often funny, sometimes gut-punchingly painful work is the subject of the documentary Mr. Fish: Cartooning from the Deep End, scheduled to be screened at this year’s Rhode Island International Film Festival. I recently talked to Fish and he chatted happily about his daughters and wife and his successes and missed opportunities, but then we waded into the deep end.

Motif: How has reception for this film been so far?

Fish: It has been really good. Lots of people come up afterward and embrace me, essentially saying, “I thought I was alone.”

Motif: Alone in what respect?

Fish: I give them permission to think further left than the Democratic party. I think people are more radical than they show in public. To see that [thinking] demonstrated in public the way I do with my cartoons and conversation gives them permission to think and feel more deeply than polite society allows them to do.

Motif: Some of your work is pretty shocking.

Fish: Shock value — that is the currency. It’s either humor-based or it’s absolutely vitriolic and what I think is ugly. There are two different missions. There was this George Orwell quote: “Every joke is a tiny revolution.” That’s what joke telling does. It gives permission. It allows people to think outside the lines to consider alternatives. If you’re given permission to do that, you’re more liable to consider alternative points of view. But the ugly shock value — I do understand that there’s a lot of gore in some of my work — reflects the panic that I feel and that a lot of people feel. If you are trying to warn a population against an approaching doomsday, you don’t want to make that clever and cartoonish. You want to make that ugly and worthy of disdain. Ultimately, politics shouldn’t be about intellectual debate. You’re trying to communicate why human beings deserve safety, justice, freedom and life. And those are all emotional. That’s poetics. That’s poetry.

Motif: It seems like no one is immune to your pen. When it comes to politics, how do you remain objective?

Fish: Everyone’s relationship with life is a personal relationship. As far as judging who is right and wrong, everyone has different experiences and tastes, and that informs how you decipher life. I think it’s about being honest with how you think and feel about things. If you’re able to communicate that and someone has a contrary opinion, they will communicate that. At the end of the day, you might learn something and change your mind. If you are always objective, you pull your punches and are not as honest because you’re interested in decorum. Tommy Denucci Opens the Vault

I recently interviewed local film director Tommy Denucci about his most recent project, “Vault,” which stars Don Johnson, Theo Rossi and Samira Wiley. The film is based on the 1975 Bonded Vault robbery, which took place in RI and was, at the time, the biggest heist in American history — the thieves stole more than $30 million dollars of valuables from the mafia.

Tess Lyons (Motif): What made you take on this true story and make it into a movie?

Tommy Denucci: This story is actually a bit of a folk tale around Rhode Island. I first heard about it when I was a teenager, and I thought to myself, “Why isn’t this a movie?”

Eventually, I met [producer] Chad [Verdi] and my career started. Chad had always wanted to do a story on Raymond Patriarca, so we combined the two ideas and started creating a script for this movie.

TL: What attracts filmmakers to RI?

TD: I think it has a lot to do with Steve Feinberg and the Rhode Island Film and Television Office. We [also] have a very dynamic look — woods, oceans and downtown Providence, where we are filming this movie. You can drive from one end of the state to the other. We have a nice little hub here.

TL: How long did it take you to find your star-studded cast?

TD: Believe it or not, that stuff usually happens pretty quickly. Theo Rossi was attached to the project since August 2017. Then from there on out he was the only actor we had signed for months and months and months. It wasn’t until January that we brought in some other big names — the cast came together quickly in about a two-month process.

TL: Should audiences expect a lot of action in this film?

TD: There’s gonna be a little bit of action, a little bit of romance, a sense of adventure. There’s gonna be a feeling of needing to get away or escape. There’s gonna be a lot of exciting things for people who like the genre. They’re gonna get everything they want to get out of a movie like this, plus some surprises that make this movie unique.

TL: What’s the hardest part of setting a film in the ’70s?

TD: The looks of the actors. There’s a big difference between what we consider long hair today and considered long hair back then. There were thick mustaches and thick sideburns that take months to grow. You don’t really start casting until a month or two out, and it’s very hard to find those people just walking around. Not just the stars, but the background actors, too.

TL: How is this project different from your other projects?

TD: This is my first movie working with this many elements. It’s the biggest movie I’ve ever made. The budget is bigger than all of my other projects combined. On this budget we are able to do some of the more advanced things I wanted to do in my movies before, and just didn’t have the means. It’s fun to work with people who can make my wildest dreams come true.

And Now, for Your Feature Presentation

Shawn Quirk is the program director for the Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF), and this is his eighth year working at the festival. In 2011, Quirk had friends with films in the RIIFF, and he worked as a volunteer, an action inspired by his earlier attendance at Cannes. He applied for a position with the RIIFF and started screening titles, eventually heading the RI Vortex Festival, which is focused on sci-fi, fantasy and horror, before he began working with the main festival.

Quirk explains the RIIFF film screening process just one week before this year’s commencement. RIIFF does not have to spend energy recruiting filmmakers’ work. Quirk noted, “We program exclusively from our submission pool. We don’t really do promotions except typical social media. Everything we’ve done has been through word of mouth. Every year it seems to be growing at a steady pace.”

These submissions include films from Russia, Australia, Azerbaijan, France, Germany, Georgia, Singapore, Turkey, Japan and more. It may seem surprising that Rhode Island is a global destination, but after 35 years of screenings, the RIIFF heralds a stellar reputation. Quirk continued, “After so many years of selecting films from those areas, we have these pockets around the world and little niches. We may have awarded a feature from India five years ago. So then, they will build notoriety for the future when new people are submitting their films. Again, the process is reached organically. It just kind of happens on its own.”

A film then is judged, and a smaller pool of films is chosen. “Judges are based nationally and locally,” Quirk explains. “Each film is seen a few times by different judges.” They are rated, then the panels sift through the highest rated. The international judges are “based all over the world. We have more than 50.” Those well rated are then seen by local judges who start the unenviable task of selecting a smaller group of films. Because films come from around the world, those 50 international judges provide a global viewpoint so that films are not judged from a myopic lens.

“A culturally dynamic festival is part of what we stood for, our identity. We’re all about having balance. We have a lot of film industry judges along with local cinephiles and even film students. That creates a wide breadth of taste. It also helps give us a glimpse of our demographic — knowing whether a film works or not for a certain age group or population,” said Quirk.

Once selected, a film receives an acceptance letter and their laurels, and then they are included in the program and invited. Then a film is grouped by the thematic program. Quirk stated, “When we put them together, the films become part of a larger mosaic. The goal is to create a longer narrative of what the world is facing in the moment. On a lot of fronts. We’re trying to create a portrait of what 2018 represents, and we do that every year. Depending on the year, the themes change. This year we had a lot of refugees in Europe, racism in America, or say, artificial intelligence.”

Films like The Ape Man represent Belgium or #hashtag from Mexico. At RISD Museum on August 9, five films under the “Family Dynamics” banner will be shown, including August Sun from Argentina and Amour du Reel from Iran. Four films from Quebec will be at the Museum of Work and Culture on August 8, highlighting trends in that area. But as the world shifts its focus, we see what was once a boundary subject is now woven into a larger tapestry, such as with the Canadian Sylvia in the Waves, which is the story of a 40-year-old transgender woman and her family in “waves of memory and rebirth, death and survival.” Quirk said, “We’re not trying to be too overt. The best way to get your message across is to be nuanced. But, we have films that deal with issues head-on. We have a film that deals with the ban on conversion therapy.”

Plus, documentaries. Many documentaries, short and full features. Felix, Two Medusas, s t r e t c h, and The Ship of Gold and more show on August 8 at RISD Museum. August 9 boasts Angelica Huston speaking on the James Joyce documentary A Shout in the Street at Chamber of Commerce.

The theaters that hold screenings are partners who were cultivated over the years, and the fest depends on those partnerships. “We don’t make a lot of money doing this. We’re a non-profit.” So the festival is reliant on rooms like VETS, AS220, the Chamber of Commerce, Moses Brown and libraries throughout the state. And while Providence is where RIIFF is showing most of the films, the festival yearns to infiltrate each part of the state. Quirk said, “The goal is to get films seen elsewhere. We’ll be casting satellite screenings in Woonsocket, Narraganset, Warwick, Newport, NK and Wickford.” This is for the enrichment all of Rhode Island. “We do focus on Providence as we have filmmakers centered here and needing to walk, so we treat it like a campus.”

If any of this triggers excited Rhode Island denizens to become involved, Quirk advises, “The best way to get involved in the festival community is to volunteer. That opens up doors to other things.” RIIFF also has internships available. Quirk offers the benefits: “[Interns get] tons of hands-on experience and then they can apply that to work on festivals around the world. We can be their entry-level experience. This is a training ground. We’ve seen interns move forward to work at casting agencies, distribution companies and other festivals.”

The opening night is a platform for 10 films at PPAC — short films that are world and US premieres, including animation, live action and documentaries. Quirk confides, “Our goal is to showcase our love of the short film – the beauty of that medium. It’s an underappreciated medium, but it has been around since the beginning of cinema. You can trace it back to the Lumiere Brothers.”

Quirk continues on the theme. “We’re one of the only festivals that will dedicate its opening night to shorts instead of features. Most tend to showcase a feature. We do the opposite. We enjoy a group of short films. [That approach] works well with the event’s gala. When you see bunch of shorts back to back, it creates an energy that you don’t get with even a well-done feature.”

The Rhode Island International Film Festival takes place in multiple venues from Aug 7 – Aug 12. Go to film-festival.org for more information. Schedule is subject to change.

For more:

An interview with Mr. Fish

Local film folk pick

Tre Maison Dasan: Three boys grow up with parents in prison RIIFF highlights

Film Folk Recommend

We asked a few big-name film supporters, makers and lovers around the state which films they’d recommend people visiting our fine state watch to learn a little bit about Little Rhody. So if you’re planning to visit for the RI International Film Festival, consider watching these films your homework before you arrive.

Gary Glassman, Executive Producer/Director, Providence Pictures, providencepictures.com

Rhode Island is the smallest state in the US so this will be a small list of films – from high culture to very low – that will help illuminate the home we affectionately call Rogue Island.

Steven Spielberg, in Amistad, takes 18th century homes on Benefit Street and our State House, add dirt and more manure than usual, and you’ve got the US Capitol Building in Washington DC.

The Farrelly Brothers use Providence as launching pad for their comic masterpiece Something About Mary comic and their dumber Dumb and Dumber.

Providence has a supporting role, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Boston’s Hamlet, in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. Thankfully the days of RI mobsters as lethal numbskulls wreaking havoc on the street are over. Most now have jobs with the State.

Finally, you should know that one of the world’s leading documentary television companies has called Rhode Island home for over twenty years. Check out Providence Pictures! And enjoy RIIFF – it’s definitely an example of the best we have to offer the world.

Richard Griffin is the head of Scorpio Film, which boasts 16 films in its canon.

Complex World (1992); Dir: Jim Wolpaw. It was filmed at the original Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel and gives a perfect look at the beautiful freakshow that Providence used to be in the mid to late ’80s, before the city was overrun by money grubbing, soulless yuppies and hipsters who have turned the once- beautiful city into a haven for overpriced toasted cheese sandwiches and ugly condos for the disgustingly rich.

Toni Pennacchia is an avid supporter of film. She’s a DJ, creative director of MergingArts Productions and organizer of film festivals in RI and beyond.

High Society, back in 1956, was a musical comedy remake of the The Philadelphia Story with Newport as a backdrop that is treated almost as a character. Apparently, the filmmakers took advantage of filming around the Newport Jazz Festival. One of the main subjects in Murderball, from 2005, is Joe Soares, who lived in Providence. The film featured his career as a wheelchair rugby champion and his coaching of the rival Canadian team.

Breakfast With Curtis (motifri.com/breakfast-with-curtis-in-search-of-lost-time), from 2012, directed by Providence-based Laura Colella (motifri.com/scene-and-heard-a-profile-of-laura-colella/), was filmed in the Mount Hope neighborhood of Providence. Its action centers on two neighboring houses with one full of freewheeling bohemians and the other the home of an introverted teenager named Curtis and his family.

The 2018 coming of age film, Measure of a Man, was primarily shot at a camp in North Kingstown, which is a major part of the story loosely based on Robert Lipsyte’s semi-autobiographical 1977 young- adult novel One Fat Summer.

And for the documentary buffs among you, plenty have been made about Rhode Island. You Must Be This Tall is about Rocky Point, the late amusement park, the loss of which is still lamented by the kids who grew up having nightmares about the haunted house (pro tip: if you go to the former site and peer through the brush, you’ll find the steps that led to the attraction). If you’ve ever wondered why RI fire codes are so strict, watch 41, which documents the catastrophic Station fire that happened in 2003. Buddy follows the career of the late Buddy Cianci, the guy Rhode Islanders both love and love to hate. Happy Endings? explores the massage parlor industry that turned into a sex for money business that was legal because of a loophole in our laws. That “happy ending” loophole has since been closed. Sorry, tourists. If you’re coming for RIIFF, you would have just missed Jazz Fest and Folk Fest, but you can feel like you were there with the documentaries Festival and Jazz on a Summer’s Day. If you love lighthouses, Rhode Island has plenty of them, and long ago a famous woman lighthouse keeper kept ships off the rocks. Watch Ida Lewis, Keeper of the Light (motifri.com/idalewis) to learn her story. And you can’t leave town without trying a burger and cheese fries from Haven Brothers. Learn all about the nation’s first food truck by watching the film The Original Food Truck: Haven Brothers, Legacy of the American Diner (motifri.com/havenreview).

Cthulhu Grabs a Video Camera

Films arcane, weird, creepy and outright terrifying will travel from around the world to Providence to celebrate the profound influence of PVD author HP Lovecraft, whose work terrified in relative obscurity during his lifetime (1890-1937) and became an inspiration for everyone from Stephen King to Wes Craven to Guillermo del Toro to … the list is nearly endless.

This festival will feature weirdness, vendors, art and readings, but most of all, films both long and short (much like the tentacles of Lovecraft’s most famous creation, the aeons-old dweller of the deep named Cthulhu.

The HP Lovecraft Film Festival is three days of macabre film fun curated by the larger, 20-year-old annual Lovecraft Film Festival from Portland, Ore, (so the best of the creepiest) and spawned by the local Lovecraft Arts & Sciences, which runs the store by the same name in the PVD Arcade and creates the bi-annual NecronomiCon festival. It runs Aug 17 – 19, but may stay with you for all eternity, with screenings at RISD Museum’s Metcalf Auditorium, 20 N Main St, Fri 5 – 10pm, Sat noon – 9pm, Sun noon – 5pm.

Web: weirdprovidence.org/events.html

Facebook: facebook.com/events/262415187641140

Eventbrite (tickets): eventbrite.com/e/2018-h-p-lovecraft-film-festival-providence-tickets-47451298110

RIIFF 2018 Highlights

RIIFF programming director Shawn Quirk guided us through a selection of features and shorts. Opening night ceremonies on August 7 feature dedication of the 2018 festival to emerita professor Winifred Brownell “who was instrumental in creating the URI film program.” Short films are the “crème de la crème” of RIIFF, Quirk said, considering the Academy Award qualifier status of the festival, and two – The Collar and Fall River – have been scheduled to screen opening night. Films are feature-length and in English unless noted.

The Collar

The Collar, dir. Viktoria Runtsova. Russian with English subtitles. North American premiere. A 23- minute short set in 19th Century Russia, “This young woman sees this little collar in a dress shop and she buys it, and the collar starts talking to her and convincing her to buy more clothes, a downward spiral as she spends tons of money, almost a [surreal] Gogol story in a way.” Fall River

Fall River, dir. Jamil McGinnis and Pat Heywood. Short (7-minute) documentary about a family tragedy in an old Massachusetts mill town past its prime, seen from the perspective of one woman.

Tre Maison Dasan

Tre Maison Dasan, dir. Denali Tiller. Rhode Island premiere. A documentary about three young boys growing up into manhood, each with a parent incarcerated in the Rhode Island state prison.

Mr. Fish: Cartooning from the Deep End

Mr. Fish: Cartooning from the Deep End, dir. Pablo Bryant. East Coast premiere. About cartoonist Dwayne Booth (“Mr. Fish”) “who is very political with his drawing” as he is torn between softening his sharp satire that is critically admired but commercially disadvantageous, an issue often raised by his supportive but exasperated wife. The cartoonist’s web site is clowncrack.com. Back to Life: The Torin Yater-Wallace Story

Back to Life: The Torin Yater-Wallace Story, dir. Clayton Vila. Quirk said Vila is a Block Island native who “does urban skiing, the filmmaker himself, so he skis down sidewalks.” The subject of the documentary is a freestyle skiier in his early 20s who, after youthful success in the X Games, battles personal adversity: his father is sent to prison, his mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the athlete himself contracts a life-threatening infection of his liver and gall bladder. “It’s a comeback film.”

Maximilian

Maximilian, dir. Nicolas Greinacher. German with English subtitles. US premiere. “A documentary from Switzerland about a child prodigy who has got an IQ of 149 and is 13 years old, so he’s already doing college calculus. It’s by one of our veteran filmmakers… It’s really about the burdens of being a prodigy, how to properly raise a child who’s really smart.” Occupation 1968

Occupation 1968, dir. Evdokia Moskovina, Linda Dombrovszky, Magdalena Szymkow, Marie Elisa Scheidt, Stephan Komandarev. Various languages with English subtitles. North American premiere. “It’s a combination of five documentaries, done by five filmmakers from five of the Warsaw Pact countries [Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Russia]… that discuss the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968” that ended the Prague Spring. “The films are about the military members going back to where they served in Czechoslovakia and reliving the occupation from the occupiers’ point of view.” Quirk said Scheidt came from Munich to RIIFF last year: “I was talking to the filmmaker who said touring through Eastern Europe with this film has been pretty emotional.”

On Killer Robots

On Killer Robots, dir. Lorraine Nicholson. A 15-minute short dramatizes a hypothetical ethical dilemma, inspired by the real-life first known use by law enforcement of a remote-controlled robot to deliver a fatal bomb to a heavily armed, military-trained barricaded suspect who shot into a group of police officers, killing five and injuring nine. The Other Side of Porcupine Lake

The Other Side of Porcupine Lake, dir. Julian Papas. US premiere. Follows Canadian director Ingrid Veninger as she makes her sixth feature film, Porcupine Lake. “A documentary… so you see the processes of an independent film being made. It’s beautifully done and very well edited. It doesn’t play like a behind-the-scenes movie at all, it plays like a very artfully done film in itself.”

You Can Choose Your Family

You Can Choose Your Family, dir. Miranda Bailey. East Coast premiere. Comedy featuring Jim Gaffigan and Anna Gunn. “Young 17 year-old boy accidentally discovers that his father has a double life. He decides to blackmail his dad because his dad wouldn’t pay for college after he got into NYU… I wouldn’t call it a dark comedy although it plays on some dark issues, but it’s really funny.”

The Maestro

The Maestro, dir. Adam Cushman. East Coast premiere. “A budding film composer who moves to Hollywood to study with a master teacher… right after World War II. It’s a period film.”

The Etruscan Smile

The Etruscan Smile, dir. Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun. The directors are Israeli filmmakers who are nominated for a short film, Quirk said. “About an older man who lives on a remote [Hebridean Scottish] island and he goes to visit his son because he needs to see a doctor for the illness that he has, in San Francisco… and his transition from a fishing village… and how he finally gets to rekindle a relationship with his son and his grandson.”

Saving My Pig

Saving My Pig (Mon Cochon et Moi), dir. Frank Dobrin. French with English subtitles. US premiere. Comedy starring Gérard Depardieu as an elderly grandfather who, with his granddaughter, runs away from Bulgaria to Turkey smuggling a pet piglet to prevent its slaughter. Depardieu is controversial and his films are banned in Ukraine because of his expatriation from France and subsequent embrace of dictator Vladimir Putin who granted him Russian residency and citizenship. Snowbirds

Snowbirds, dir. Joannie Lafrenière. French with English subtitles. “About a [French-speaking] French- Canadian vacation colony… coming from Quebec and going down to Florida for the winter. It plays off on a lot of kitsch elements… all of the Florida tropes, like pink flamingos.”

Beyond Solo: Riding the Independent Wave of Film in RI This Summer

If you’re looking to move beyond Solo, super heroes and adults playing tag, consider these summer movie alternatives.

Let’s begin with a film that takes place in summer, Summer 1993, a Berlinale-winning film from Carla Simon taking us back 25 years, about a young girl named Frida sent to her uncle’s family in the countryside after her mother dies, who struggles to adapt to her new surroundings.

Bart Layton (The Imposter) returns with an exciting crime drama called American Animals, starring Barry Keoghan, based on events in Lexington, Kentucky, about four young men who orchestrated an incredibly ambitious heist. The film blends actors playing the young men with footage of some of the older and wiser men portrayed today.

In the vein of last year’s Patti Cake$, Brett Haley (The Hero) returns with Hearts Beat Loud, blending elements of coming-of-age and mid-life crisis with a father and daughter forming an unlikely songwriting duo in the summer before she leaves for college. It stars Nick Offerman, Kiersey Clemons and, yes, Ted Danson.

You can’t get more indie than a title like Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town, with Mackenzie Davis (Tully) as a woman finding her way across Los Angeles (hence the title) to crash her ex-boyfriend’s engagement party. David Robert Mitchell follows up It Follows with the bizarre comedy Under the Silver Lake, where a man’s obsession with the strange circumstances of a billionaire’s murder and the kidnapping of a girl take him on a strange, exotic journey. The Zellner brothers, of Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter fame, return with Damsel, a comedy-drama about a businessman who travels West to join his fiancée in the mountains. Into July, Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace presents a father and young teen daughter living an ideal existence in an urban park in Portland, Oregon, where a small mistake derails their lives forever. Comedian Bo Burnham (originally from Hamilton, Massachusetts) has his first feature, a Sundance favorite, Eighth Grade, starring Elise Fisher as a teenager in transition trying to survive the last week of her chaotic eighth-grade year before leaving to start high school. Further into July, we have a timely film, Generation Wealth, from Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles), investigating an obsession with affluence and its influence in creating the richest society the world has ever seen.

When the calendar pushes into August, you can catch the Best of Next! In Sundance, rising filmmaker Aneesh Chaganty’s winning first feature, Searching, about a desperate father breaking into his 16-year- old daughter’s laptop to look for clues to find her when she goes missing, starring John Cho. The Best of Next! Runner Up is from Josephine Decker, with art imitating life in Madeline’s Madeline, about a theater director’s latest project that goes too far when her young star takes her performance too seriously.

August continues with two must-see French co-produced films, each taking us to different parts of the world. A Prayer Before Dawn is based on a true story of an English boxer incarcerated in a prison in Thailand as he fights in Muay Thai tournaments to earn his freedom. Makala is about a young farmer earning a living making and selling charcoal in Congo and his aspirations and dreams.

We close out the summer with Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s The Bookshop, the story of a woman who decides, against polite yet ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision that becomes a political minefield in 1959 England. Finally, we have the long-awaited latest film from Lenny Abrahamson (Frank, Room), the horror mystery The Little Stranger, about a country doctor called to work on a mysterious country estate for a wealthy family in decline.

Additionally, for anime lovers, The Studio Ghibli fest continues via Fathom Events with Pom Poko, Princess Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies, as well as Fireworks from the producer of Your Name. From anime, we move to international women in animation as the 10th edition of Womanimation! travels north to Framingham, Mass, at the Amazing Things Arts Center on June 30. For other film festival events this summer, head to the beach to attend the 20th edition of the Provincetown Film Festival with honorees including actress Molly Shannon and director/writer Sean Baker from June 13 – 17, and the 22nd Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival from August 7 – 12.

The independent film experience will not be the same without the beloved Cable Car Cinema, which closed its doors as of May 27. We are toasting it on page XX in this edition to honor its mark on the community over the past 40 years.

Summer Blockbusters of 2018

Summer is here and the tent pole blockbuster movies are already in full swing. But there’s more coming! June will kick off with Adrift, a romance in the midst of disaster set at sea that looks to be equal parts touching and harrowing, while fans of action / sci-fi can check out Upgrade, a film about a man who received a computer chip implant that aids him in his quest for revenge. Mid-June will see two very different crime films, with the female-centered Oceans 8 focusing on the robbery of the yearly Met Gala in NYC, and SuperFly, which concerns the trials and tribulation of an inner city pimp in the remake of the 1972 blaxploitation classic. June wraps up with some family-friendly adventure with the long- anticipated Incredibles 2, a sequel to the hit 2004 animated film about a family of superheroes, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom brings our heroes back to the island to save the remaining dinosaurs from an active volcano.

July kicks right into high gear with The First Purge, the latest in the series surrounding the events of a yearly night without laws, while we also get the newest Marvel film, Ant Man and the Wasp, bringing back the hugely popular tiny hero. Skyscraper looks to be a fun throwback to the disaster films of yesteryear, such as The Towering Inferno; the same weekend sees the release of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, in which the Dracula family takes their own vacation in the third film in the popular children’s franchise. July serves up more sequels with Mama Mia! Here We Go Again, a sequel to the popular 2008 musical comedy, while Mission Impossible – Fallout brings back Tom Cruise and the gang for more international espionage and stunts.

The summer movie season will wrap up in August and continues the spy theme with the much- anticipated comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me, about a pair of women who become entangled in an international spy conspiracy. The Meg harkens back to the first summer blockbuster, Jaws, with this thriller about a massive prehistoric shark. That same week, we also get the return of director Spike Lee with The BlacKkKlansman, about an African-American sheriff who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. A modern age boogeyman hits the screen in Slender Man, in which the titular character is involved in the haunting and disappearance of children. And if that wasn’t enough to get you in the mood for fall, we’ll have Kin, an odd-looking sci-fi actioner in which an ex-con and his teenage brother have to defend themselves from other-worldly forces with the help of an alien weapon. So there you have it, this summer promises something for everyone and the films look bigger and more exciting than ever.