Benefit Screening of Iron Jawed Angels

The San Diego Film Critics Society and the San Diego Women's History Museum present a special benefit screening of Iron Jawed Angels on Saturday August 30 at 5:00 pm at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. The event is part of an annual celebration of Women's Equality Day. The film, directed by Katja von Garnier, serves up a passionate tale of the amazing efforts of fierce young suffragettes fighting for a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. The film stars Hilary Swank as Alice Paul, and Frances O'Connor Alice Burns - real-life women who challenged Congress. In 1912, Paul and Burns take the reins of the National American Women's Suffrage Association's (NAWSA) committee in Washington, D.C., where they organize a landmark parade on President Wilson's inauguration day. The march is violently disrupted by men on the sidelines. Anjelica Huston won a Golden Globe Award for Supporting Actress as one of the old guard in the women's movement. With the Democratic Convention concluding and a historic presidential election ahead, maybe this is exactly the kind of film we need to get people fired up about exercising their right to vote.

There will also be a raffle to raise funds for the San Diego Women's Film Festival, whose event is coming up October 2-5 at Reading Gaslamp. The raffle basket will contain DVDs of films directed by women as well as books, t-shirts and other movie goodies. I hope you will come out and show your support for these three non-profit organizations. Tickets are a $10 tax deductible donation. You can check out the trailer above.

You can reserve tickets by emailing me at filmclub@kpbs,org.

The Rape of Europa

The documentary The Rape of Europa looks at recovering art tresures from the Nazis. (Menemsha Films)

The Rape of Europa (opening June 20 at Landmark's La Jolla Village Theaters) is a documentary about World War II. Now before you start rolling your eyes and thinking that between PBS and the History Channel you know all you need to know about WWII, let me just say that this documentary serves up something that's genuinely fresh. The Rape of Europa, which played a couple years back at the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, offers something of a detective tale as it seeks to tell the story of the great art treasures that vanished during the war and then turned up years later. The impact of what Hitler and the Nazis did during the war still resonates today as more works of art resurface, heirs sue for restitution, and ownership is disputed. The case of Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer serves as bookends to the documentary with one of Adele's relatives seeking to regain possession of the famous portrait that once hung in the family home. (Although the film doesn't point out that the relative, after winning back the painting, quickly sold it for $100 million, but that raises a whole other issue about art.)

Mongol

Tadanobu Asano stars as Genghis Khan in the new film Mongol (Picturehouse)

Genghis Khan is probably best remembered as a bloody conqueror. But to Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov the Mongol ruler was much more than that. Bodrov attempts to correct some misconceptions about the 13th century leader with his Oscar nominated film Mongol (opening June 20 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas. (You can listen to our KPBS Film Club discussion of the film and to my interview with the director for The World.)

Genghis Khan is a well-known name in Russia, though the Mongol conqueror is not remembered fondly there, says director Sergei Bodrov.

SERGEI BODROV: "He was described as the cruelest person in the world but he was so bad in all my school books that when I was growing up that I started to be suspicious. His history was written by his enemies. And you have to question this."

And that's what Bodrov's new film Mongol does. It questions how history has depicted Genghis Khan. The film focuses on the Mongol ruler's youth, when he was known simply as Temudgin (played by an impressive Odnyam Odsuren as a boy, and with quiet confidence by Japan's Tadanobu Asano as an adult).

Jodhaa Akbar

Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan in Jodhaa Akbar (UTV Motion Pictures)

The Museum of Photographic Arts kicks off an Indian Film Series on May 3 that's designed to complement its new exhibit Humanitas: Images of India by Fredric Roberts. For the kick off event, MoPA will be partnering with Goldspirit Films, the sole exhibitor of contemporary Indian language films in San Diego, to present a free encore screening of the epic Jodhaa Akbar. The screening begins at 6:00 pm at the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theater. If you have ever wanted to sample a contemporary Indian film this is the perfect opportunity since the event is free and the film is a lush romantic and historical opus. MoPA will also be partnering with the San Diego Museum of Art for additional films in the series. SDMA is currently running its own Indian-themed exhibit Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose. The first film of the MoPA/SDMA collaboration will be Satyajit Ray's Two Daughters (1961) screening Tuesday May 6. Ray's gift for nuanced comedy is superbly demonstrated in this exquisite adaptation of a pair of short stories by Indian literary giant Rabindranath Tagore. So if you want to spend a wonderful day and evening in Balboa Park enjoying all things Indian, come early and take a tour of both museum exhibits and then settle in for an evening of grand cinematic entertainment. 

Now to Jodhaa Akbar. This lush $10 million dollar historical romance favors legend over facts as it chronicles the sixteenth century love story between the famous Mughal Emperor Akbar and the Rajput Princess Jodhaa that he marries. Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker (an Academy Award nominee for his cricket epic Lagaan), Jodhaa Akbar stars hunky Hrithik Roshan as the emperor and the lovely Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan as his Hindu wife. Politically, Emperor Akbar is revealed as a savvy ruler, extending his empire as far east as Afghanistan and as far west as the Bay of Bengal, and from the Himalayas to the Godhavari River. As emperor, he displays tolerance and generosity backed by strength and military force. Akbar marries Jodhaa in order to strengthen his relations with the Rajputs. But Jodhaa is not about to be some mere political pawn. So she places two demands on Akbar before she will agree to marry: She will not be forced to convert to his Islamic faith and she will be allowed a small shrine to Krishna in her private quarters. Akbar agrees. But on their wedding night, he's turned away from her bed. Until he wins her heart, Jodhaa refuses to consummate their marriage. So in between battles, Akbar focuses on the domestic challenge of winning his wife's love and trust. He embarks on a courtship that leads to true love - despite court intrigues and prejudices that threaten to pull them apart.

The Counterfeiters

Catching up with The Counterfeiters (Sony Pictures)

My apologies for not getting to The Counterfeiters (opened March 7 at Landmark’s La Jolla Village Theaters) sooner but I’ve been overwhelmed (and happily so) by the San Diego Latino Film Festival and haven’t had the time to focus on this serious film. (It’s much easier to quickly review mindless fodder like 10,000 B.C.) The Counterfeiters, an Austrian-German co-production, picked up the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar last month and I’m sure that helped the film find a bigger audience more than my review could ever have helped. But in case you missed this film in its opening week, I just want to belatedly  highlight it since it will be held over for at least one more week.

The New World/Interview with Q’Orianka Kilcher

Everyone probably knows the story of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.

JOHN SMITH: At the moment I was to die she threw herself upon me

Pocahontas is celebrated for saving the life of Smith, an English soldier in Jamestown who was to have been put to death in 1608 by the Indian princess father. Filmmaker Terence Malick uses this famous incident as the leaping off point for a lyrical mediation on love in The New World.

Despite a long career, Malick hasnt made many films. In fact, hes only made four in three decades. But with each successive work, hes been more inclined to dispense with dialogue and instead to rely on images to tell his story. So his visually stunning films Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and now The New World have become progressively more poetic.

The Best and Worst of 2006

South Korea's A Bitter Sweet Life

As 2006 comes to an end, it's time to reflect back on the films that came out during the year to sort out the best from the worst. First of all, in determining the best of the year there are always a few films that have quirky releases, and I never know whether it's fair to include them or not. But two films that played for only a day each at the San Diego Asian Film Festival deserve mention even if they never received a theatrical release here.

Hou Hsiao Hsien is quite simply one of the world's premier filmmakers. For Three Times, the Taiwanese director serves up three segments involving a romance and each set in a different time period but with the same pair of actors (the lovely Shu Qi and Chang Chen) performing the leads. Hou's film explores how the culture and social limitations of each era affect the relationships of the characters. The film is ravishing to look at, with Hou crafting a dazzling and deceptively complex work. A film of a very different nature but equally worth checking out is Kim Ji Woon's A Bittersweet Life from South Korea. With A Bittersweet Life Kim delivers an action film with a dark soul and aching vulnerability buried at its heart. If you can find either of these on DVD, check them out. They would make my Ten Best in any year.