WEDNESDAY: ANOTHER BEST DAMN FILM DAY

by Joyce Marcel

I knew I was going to say, "Best film of the festival" more than once. I've already said it for "Time to Die," and now I'd like to add the Argentine movie "A Live-In Maid," written and directed by Jorge Gaggero, to the mix.
I guess I like dramas.
You know how sometimes a film just leaves you warm inside, like you're smiling for no reason that relates to anything in your own life? And you wake up the next morning and you're still smiling? That's this film.
I'm not the only one in love with it. The Web site Rotten Tomatoes gave it 100 percent.
Actress Norma Aleandro plays Beba Pujol, a wealthy woman of a certain age, a drama queen, a manipulator, an elegant and stylish and careless woman, quite lovely and totally helpless, living in Buenos Aires in the time of Argentina's economic collapse.
She has a daughter living in Madrid who appears to be estranged, and either a brother or an ex-husband - I couldn't quite get the relationship - whom she sees and who helps her out occasionally.
And she has a live-in maid, Dora, played by Norma Argentina in her first film. Dora is stout, phlegmatic, stoic, hardworking and loyal. She's worked for Beba for 28 years.
Beba and Dora have a strictly mistress-maid relationship, but things change when Beba slowly starts becoming poor. She can't pay Dora, and by the time she's behind by seven months salary, Dora has to leave.
To salvage her pride, Beba cashes in all her gold and diamond jewelry to pay Dora before she goes. Then she tries to disappear into a bottle of whisky, while Dora, living in her own home in the country with a cheating live-in boyfriend, tries to forget her.
But the women's bond is too strong either of them to deny.
From IMDb: "Both Beba and Dora are endearingly flawed - the former supercilious and unyielding, the latter torn between contempt and sympathy for her former boss. Argentina is gruffly impressive as the emotionally-contained maid, while Aleandro's monstrous but piteous snob is an equally sharp portrayal. In Gaggero's measured telling, the pair's not-quite-friendship rings all the more true for being revealed with unsentimental compassion."
And from Rotten Tomatoes: "Gaggero not only draws out such nuances from the two women but illustrates the complexities of their friendship with carefully constructed cinematography."
I won't spoil the ending, but if you see the film, you can guess how it's going to come out even before it is halfway over. And it's a lovely, true and just ending.
The movie moves slowly. We read the story through the faces of the actors, not through dialog. We feel what they feel. We love them in our own, individual way.
I loved this movie. It's playing again tomorrow, Saturday, at the Latchis at 4 p.m.
By the way, I took Thursday off to reconnect with my own life. Oddly enough, it's still there, although my husband said, "I wish you would come back, already."
How did I spend my night off? Watching "Law & Order" reruns on TV, as usual.
But today is Friday, and if this past week has been a movie sprint, the next three days are the marathon.
Stay tuned. Or come out and see some of the films. Enjoy this rich experience. It won't last too much longer. The festival is over on Sunday.

DAY SIX: DAYS OF OUR LIVES

by Joyce Marcel

Yes, today's Day Six of the Film Festival, and I'm just now writing about days four and five. I apologize. But like most of you, I have to make a living. And since I write for a living, it appeared for a time that my head was going to explode.
But I took a couple of naps, it didn't explode, and I'm back.
On Monday we got to see "Crazy Sexy Cancer," an autobiographical film by the lovely Kris Carr.
Young, and silly and beautiful and open and honest and smart, Carr is the kind of woman of whom they used to say, "her nerves run close to her skin."
When she was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, she started making a film about it. "Crazy Sexy Cancer" is, as she puts it, her journey from "looking for a cure to finding my life."
Carr is terrified and lighthearted at the same time. "It's Stage Four slow-moving cancer," she says. "But there is no Stage Five."
Carr was just starting to make her was as an actress - she did a Budweiser beer commercial that was shown at the Superbowl, for instance - when she received her diagnosis.
We watch her go from one off-the-wall "healing" experience to the next, from a macrobiotic diet to a raw food diet, from yoga to Buddhism, from an alternative healing convention to an upscale New Age resort. She calls herself, fittingly, a "healing junkie."
Along the way she meets - and we meet through her - some other remarkable and accomplished young hip women who are fighting their own battles with cancer, among them a red-haired magazine editor and her once-red-haired-but-mostly-bald-now sister. and a tough punk rock chick. (I have to say that wigs are a huge part of the cancer struggle.)
We see Carr and her friends cry. We see them supporting each other. We see them wrestling with their disease in original ways.
Today Carr is not cancer-free, but her tumors are slow-growing to the point where they are a sideline to her full, rich, funny life. In one of the last scenes in the film, she even gets married to her cameraman. She's totally adorable - the kind of heroine that a really good chick flick would be proud to call its own. And she has a completely fresh take on cancer that explodes the usual "fighting with dignity" stuff.
"I won't call it a gift," she says - and God bless her for it. "Because I wouldn't give it to you."
The title? Because "Life is crazy and sexy, just like cancer." Actually, life is crazy and sexy, just like Kris Carr.


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The next day, I settled in to watch two pictures - after all, a girl's got to eat, so I missed "Outsider - The Life and Art of Judith Scott,' by Betsy Bayha. I'll catch it next week.
But I did see "Still Kicking" by Amy Gorman, a group portrait of six women of artistic talent, well into their 90s, who are still making art.
From the "Still Kicking" Website (www.goldenbearcasting.com):
"Amy Gorman invited Frances Kandl to journey with her throughout the San Francisco Bay Area searching for female role models--very old women, still active artists, living with zest. While Amy chronicles their oral histories, Frances is inspired to compose songs for several of these women, many well past 90, culminating in concerts celebrating lives liberated by age.
"Do these elders energize themselves through their art, craft and musicianship? Whatever their degree of talent, they all embrace a daily routine in which their special art form is an essential part. Each woman is spirited and resilient--interpreting for herself a life worth living to the end. Through their encounters, Amy and Frances unveil the possibility of aging richly, not in spite of becoming very old, but because of it.
"Still kicking honors the gift of age, and poignantly illustrates that growing old can be a time of creative expression and satisfaction. Challenging the perceptions and attitudes towards being old, still kicking is certain to trigger dialogue and ignite the imagination of us all."
I'm not doubting that the women portrayed in this film are remarkable. Whether they're doing flower arrangements ("Flowers are the medium between the seen and the unseen world"), oil paintings, braided rugs, dolls or sculpture, they're all talented, lively and involved. I especially loved Lily Hearst, who played classical piano beautifully, and dancer and teacher Ann Davlin, who said, "Religion is perhaps the greediest art of all arts. The others don't spread war so much."
But.
After the show, Gorman spoke movingly about the gifts of age. "You are your essence," she said.
I took exception to all this worshiping of the extreme elderly. As many of my readers know, I write often about my own mother, who at 90 is still choreographing and dancing. She and her theatrical cohorts down in Florida, however, are dealing with things that I don't think I would have the strength to deal with: loneliness is the big one. But there's also the loss of faculties; the loss of loved ones; the loss of friends - a huge issue; the fear of becoming ill and/or helpless; the restrictions of life, especially after you have to stop driving; incontinence - the list goes on and on.
I often quote the comic Martha Raye about this issue. "Old age is not for sissies."
So I asked Gorman about this after the show. She agreed that she knows more than her share of very old women who are not "living with zest," or who are living with zest, but also fear and great sadness.
"But I was searching for women who would show the possibilities," she said.

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In "Olive Pierce: Maine Master" by Richard Kane, the photographer talks her work.
After a cold and lonely childhood, in which she never fit in with friends who enjoyed shopping, society, going to formal dances and marrying young, Pierce said she has always identified with the outsider.
But still, at the heart of her work is a search for community and communities.
In her search, she's taken many series of photos - of a fishing family, of her own three children (she never mentions a husband), and especially, of children in Iraq.
She said that she became concerned during the run-up to the first Gulf war - the one started by the first George Bush - and went to Iraq to take photos of the children. Their haunted, frightened and hopeful faces tell you everything you need to know about their terrible futures, as guaranteed by the second George Bush. It makes you wonder who the terrorist really is. (See Leila Khaled below.)
When Pierce's pictures are exhibited, she is told that someone says, contemptuously, "You can't even tell what side she's on."
Well, isn't that the point?
The other point?
"You don't crush people by photography," Pierce said. "You hold the spirit up."

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That's it for today. More to come. If you read my column in the Reformer tomorrow, you will see more thoughts about the festival. We'll probably post it here tomorrow. And yes, I plagiarize myself.
Now the big question. Is anyone reading this? Please let us know.

DAY THREE: FISTULAS AND FISTS

by Joyce Marcel

Before the films, some housekeeping.
From all accounts, one of the highlights of the festival so far has been "Run Granny Run" by Marlo Poros. It's a portrait of Doris Haddock, our New Hampshire neighbor Granny D. It ran on Sunday at the Latchis, with lively Granny D, now 98 - did I get that right? - sitting up front and center and answering questions. Sorry I missed it. I feel as if I've failed you as a blogger.
For those of us who seem to be living at the Hooker-Dunham this week, one constant has been Alex Gutterman. He's the latest in what feels like a long line of people trying to make something happen at the theater. He's working along with our own precious resource, Barry Stockwell, and he's trying to add events and music that will attract a younger, hipper crowd.
Before the delightful "Crazy Sexy Cancer," (more below) he told the audience that the festival has been "a transformative experience" for him. So naturally, I asked him why.
"I've been doing sound and projection for all the films," he said in an email. "I've found the series and its content, and the entire experience overall, to be transformative in at least two senses:
1) Deeply educational on women's issues - opening my eyes more widely to unique challenges and achievements of women throughout the world
2) Inspiring me with tales of integrity, courage and hope that have a significance beyond gender."
Thought you all would like to know.
Before I get back to the films, a warning. The Hooker-Dunham Theater, while a Brattleboro treasure, is death on subtitles. They're too low on the screen, and unless you're in the first few rows, you're going to have a hard time reading them. Alex knows about the problem, but because of technical problems, he can't really solve it. I've been sitting on the stairs, and that has made all the difference.

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Amy Bucher, the director, with Mary Olive Smith, of "A Walk to Beautiful," was at the Hooker Dunham for the first showing of the film. The house was packed, and she thanked us for "leaving your beautiful houses on a Sunday night to see a film about childbirth injuries."
At first, she admitted to us, she didn't like the title. "The women are already beautiful," she said. "I didn't understand." But she came around to it in time.
For the rest of us, it's not going to be as easy.
Set in the glorious back country of Ethiopia, as well as in a hospital in the capital, Addis Ababa, the film talks about a forbidden topic that is related to one that here, in our country, we would call child rape. In Ethiopia, it's just part of the culture.
According to the dictionary, a fistula is "an abnormal passage leading from an abscess or hollow organ." In simpler terms, it's a rip or tear or hole in an internal organ - in this case, usually the bladder or colon. It leads to fecal and/or urine incontinence.
In Ethiopia, Niger and other parts of the developing world, these fistulas are epidemic - Bucher called them "the modern leprosy." And they carry the same dreadful stigma.
Ethiopian girls are put to hard physical labor when they are very young - carrying huge filled water jugs for many miles, or working in the fields. So while they are well-fed, their growth is stunted.
They are also put out to marriage at a very early age - sometimes as young as four, but certainly by their teens. When they get pregnant, far away from such things we take from granted, like ob/gyns and hospitals, it is often the case that their public bones have not grown sufficiently to pass a child. In three, four or 10 days of excruciating labor, as they push to give birth, they tear their bladder or anus. The baby is often stillborn, and what they call a "doctor" removes it, piece by piece. Then, still mourning, they discover that they have a permanent "leak."
Those of us in Western societies who are incontinent put on panty liners or diapers and get on with our lives.
But these women are treated differently. They leak. They smell. And they are shunned by their friends, their families and their husbands. Usually, the family builds a shack in the back of the property for them, a simple shelter to keep them from being eating by hyenas, and there they stay, cut off from all human society, often for the rest of their lives. Some kill themselves. All suffer deep loneliness and have psychological damage.
What causes the leak is a fistula, a hole in the bladder or some other part of the elimination system. It's a hole that a surgeon can easily sew closed, but these women, living two- and three-day walks from a main road and days away from the capital, don't know that. They think they are unique, alone, damaged and flawed. And so they suffer in isolation.
Dr. Catherine Hamlin and her late husband, Dr. Reginald Hamlin, founded the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in 1974 to serve this hidden population.
"The Hospital has restored the lives and hopes of more than 32,000 women who would have otherwise perished or suffered lifelong complications brought on by childbirth injuries, specifically obstetric fistula," says their foundation Website, (fistulafoundation.org). "Today, the hospital provides free fistula repair surgery to approximately 1,200 women every year and cares for 35 long-term patients. Located in Ethiopia, it is considered the preeminent hospital dedicated exclusively to victims of obstetric fistula. They have developed the model program for fistula treatment worldwide, and have inspired numerous centers throughout the developing world. It is the world center for fistula treatment, long-term care, prevention, and training."
The hospital now has four satellites in the Ethiopian countryside.
The film is lovely to look at, but more importantly, as it follows a few women from their painful isolation in the countryside to their long journey to the hospital to their surgery to their recovery to their intense happiness, it somehow makes you feel more lovely inside - you take their walk to beautiful with them.
It is wonderful that this work is being done, that people like Hamlin and Bucher exist in the world (Bucher is now taking on the subject of child marriage), that this problem is now being named throughout the developing world, and is known and is being cured.
As one of the surgeons - a male - says of the work, "To do it is a good, good job."
But - and here's the but - there are over 100,000 women still living with this problem, waiting to be helped.

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The fist - raised, defiant, holding a rifle - belongs to the famous or infamous Leila Khaled.
"Leila Khaled: Hijacker," by Lina Makboul, is another of those films (see "Enemies of Happiness") where the subject is far more fascinating than either the filmmaker or the film.
In the early days of the Palestinian uprising, Khaled, born in Haifa in 1944 and stunningly beautiful as a young adult, successfully used hand grenades in to hijack TWA Flight 840 in 1969. Her goal was to make the world pay attention to her cause - the liberation of Palestine. And it worked.
The reason she and her team gave for the hijacking of that particular plane was that an "Israeli assassin" was on board. At the last minute, he decided not to travel. His name was Yitzhak Rabin.
Then Khaled disappeared, underwent a series of six plastic surgeries, and hijacked another plane in 1970. This one landed in London, where she was captured. But three other planes were hijacked at the same time and blown up. No one was killed. The British eventually traded her for the hostage passengers.
When the press got hold of her back then, she reports contemptuously, they asked her all the wrong questions. Had she ever been in love? Had she had sex? How long did she spend in front of the mirror every morning?
"They thought I wasn't human," she said. "I'm a fighter! Ask me about my work!"
Now stout and still defiant, she lives in Amman, Jordan with her doctor husband and two sons, where, somewhat stout but still attractive, she cooks, vacuums the living room in her pajamas, and continues the fight for Palestinian liberation. In the Arab world she is a hero. In the Western world, she is a terrorist.
What she wants? To return to the lost place of her childhood, Haifa. There is no question that this is sincere. Makboul visits Khaled's childhood home and brings her a tile. Khaled bursts into tears.
But the pilot of the El Al plane, who is interviewed in the film, says Khaled does nothing but lie. Her family was never forced to leave, he says. This difference is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by the way. If, at some point, it is not discussed, debated and eventually put to rest, there will never be peace in that part of the Middle East.
Makboul is another displaced Palestinian, but she grew up in Western Europe, where she idolized Khaled as a kind of rock star of terrorism. She is very shy in her interviewing. The film is shaky and not very interesting to look at. And the one burning question that Makboul wants to ask Khaled - did she think, when she hijacked those planes, that she would damage the reputation of Palestinians forever - she never has the nerve to ask face-to-face. Instead, after the filming, she calls her up and asks. And we're not allowed to hear Khaled's answer.
It's interesting to note that during two hijackings, Khaled never killed. She never even hurt anyone. She had strict instructions not to use the grenades, she said. And she strongly disapproves of the 9/11 hijackers. "I don't agree with the killing of civilians," she said.
So, freedom fighter or terrorist, what's it going to be? Well, the filmmaker says this: If your side wins, you're a freedom fighter. If you lose, you're a terrorist.
And what do you think of that?