C ornell Cinema is Ithaca’s international film festival, and each calendar includes foreign films that would not be shown in our area otherwise. In addition to some films included in other series, the Late Spring 2008 calendar includes three foreign film premieres of note.
We begin with a free screening on April 8 of the Vietnamese film, The Little Heart with Director Nguyen Thanh Van, actress Hong Anh and cinematographer Nguyen Huu Tuan in attendance. The lure of high paying jobs in an embroidery factory in Saigon is a compelling reason for young girls to leave their villages, and 17-year-old Mai considers herself lucky when the local broker sets her up with such a job. Things are not what they seem, though, and soon she discovers she’s landed inside a very subtle web of brothel operations. With no one to turn to, she surrenders to prostitution, but when she learns that her younger sister is planning to join her, unaware of the real situation, she rushes back to her village to stop her sister from making the same mistake. Winner of a Global Film Initiative Award in 2007. Cosponsored with the Institute for Vietnamese Culture & Education, and the Cornell Vietnamese Student Association. Funded by the Department of Asian Studies, the Southeast Asia Program, the Einaudi Center, OMEA, and ISPB.
The Violin hails from Mexico, the story of a father and son who are musicians and humble farmers, and support the campesina peasant guerilla movement's armed efforts against the oppressive government. When the military seizes the village, the rebels flee to the sierra hills, forced to leave behind their stock of ammunition. The old man returns to the village daily to play his violin after discovering the military captain’s love of music, in hope of recovering the ammunition hidden in his corn field, but his plan goes terribly awry in this powerful film.
The Yacoubian Building comes to us from Egypt, “A sprawling, boisterous, at times unruly movie that tracks the up-and-down-turns of Egyptian society over the years through the tenants of a decaying downtown Cairo residence. The best-selling novel by Alaa Al Aswany and now the film version offer a revealing window into the secular world of a modern Islamic country—its indulgence in alcohol, sexual promiscuity, political corruption and personal betrayals. From such ‘deformities,’ the movie argues, Islamic fundamentalism gains its most passionate adherents.” (Hollywood Reporter)