Editor

CLEVELAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL TO PRESENT CULTURAL JOURNEYS WORLD CELEBRATION EVENT
Saturday, March 27, 9:00 pm to 1:00 am
At Colonial Marketplace, ARTcade (Enter at 503 Prospect Ave.)

Founded in 1977, the Cleveland International Film Festival is the premier film event in the region. For eleven days every March, the Film Festival presents a full survey of contemporary filmmaking from around the world. Close to 90 feature films and more than 70 short subjects from over 50 countries are shown to an audience that is expected to surpass 40,000.

The CULTURAL JOURNEYS program encompasses six films from around the world, as well as the annual WORLD CELEBRATION EVENT:


CULTURAL JOURNEYS is a multicultural program that welcomes new audiences from a broad spectrum of ethnic and national backgrounds. Comprised of six films from vastly different cultures and dealing with widely varying issues, Cultural Journeys brings people together to learn about each other’s customs, lifestyles and traditions through the shared language of film. This year the line-up is:

DREAM CUISINE
Aji
JAPAN, 2002 - 134 minutes
Directed by Li Ying
Showing Monday, March 21 at 4:30 pm and Wednesday, March 24 at 2:15 pm

Hot. Sour. Salty. Sweet. The tongue's four basic sensations, as identified by Asian culinary artists more than a millennium ago, could also chart upheavals in Chinese history during Hatsue Sato's life. Japanese by ethnicity, she was born in Jinan, China, where Chinese cuisine is said to have begun, the first cookbook written. She learned traditional Shandong cuisine in the 1930s before the brutal Japanese occupation of WWII and Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution eradicated such ancient customs. Now Hatsue and Koroku, her husband of 40 years, run an authentic Shandong restaurant in Tokyo. Feeling too old to "swing the wok" in the kitchen, Hatsue considers returning to Jinan to teach true Shandong for a fresh generation at an eminent chefs' school, where the little woman and her food skills are revered. But Koroku doesn't want to uproot himself. And repeat visits to Jinan leave a bitter aftertaste, as Hatsue learns the fates of peers from the old days and finds her status as a "living fossil" of Chinese cuisine is not exactly a compliment. A feast for both epicures and non-gourmets alike, the ingredients on the menu of Li Ying's documentary recall the finest
dramatic work of Ozu and Zhang Yimou. (In Mandarin and Japanese with English subtitles)

HARD GOODBYES: MY FATHER
Dhiskoli Apoheretismi: O Babas Mou
GREECE, GERMANY, 2002 - 108 minutes
Directed by Penny Panayotopoulou
Showing Sunday, March 21 at 7:00 pm and Wednesday, March 24 at 2:30 pm

July 1969. As Apollo astronauts lift off for the moon, Elias Manolopoulos delightedly follows their progress. He's a space-minded ten-year-old in Athens who makes an oft-harsh homeworld gentler with flights of wishful imagination. Elias is closest to his father, a traveling salesman whose long business trips take their toll on the household, leaving his wife bitter and argumentative. Elias' older brother Ari seems to feel almost no connection to dad. He hardly shows emotion when he takes the phone call informing them that Mr. Manolopoulos has perished in a car wreck. Elias refuses to accept his father isn't coming home. After all, he still has the last note that papa left, the one that said he'd be back before the lunar landing... HARD GOODBYES: MY FATHER compassionately portrays a child coming to terms with an incomprehensible black hole of grief. (In Greek with English subtitles)

JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM
Patuvane kam Erusalim
BULGARIA, 2003 - 112 minutes
Directed by Ivan Nichev
Showing Sunday, March 21 at 2:15 pm and Thursday, March 25 at 7:30
Sponsored by The Cleveland Jewish News
The year is 1942 and Elza and David are two German-Jewish youngsters, brother and sister fleeing the horrors of Hitler's Holocaust with their uncle. They get as far as Sofia, Bulgaria where their adult protector dies. Stranded, penniless and alone in a country whose language they don't understand, the two children are "adopted" by a trio of vaudevillians who tour the small towns of the Bulgarian countryside with a threadbare magic show. It will call upon all the tricks and talents these illusionists can muster to pull off the ultimate disappearing act: get the children safely to Jerusalem. JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM shows the difference ordinary citizens can make in the face of tyranny. Director Ivan Nichev states his feature is based on a true story, and offers it in tribute to the righteous gentiles who helped save 50,000 Bulgarian Jews. (In German and Bulgarian with English subtitles)

DEEP BREATH
Nafas-E Amigh
IRAN, 2003 - 82 minutes
Directed by Parviz Shahbazi
Showing Thursday, March 25 at 12:00 pm and Saturday, March 27 at 5:15 pm
Live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse. We associate that nihilistic credo with western decadence, not with one of the world's most prominent Islamic-fundamentalist republics.
Get ready to have your preconceptions shattered. Get set to take a DEEP BREATH. This feature dramatizes the malaise of young Iranians whose parents may have fought the Revolution against the Shah, but who are themselves rebels without a cause, enjoying native rock and roll rather than traditional music, living for kicks and for the moment. A Tehran engineering student, Kamran is byronically handsome (actor Saeed Amini has been called a Persian Tom Cruise or Ethan Hawke) but utterly indifferent. He forsakes a wealthy family to spend nights with his penniless buddy Mansour. When Mansour is evicted they make an easy, downward transition to stolen cars, dingy hostels and acts of petty vandalism. Then they run across Aida, a schoolgirl from an all-female dormitory, frequently jacked into her walkman. Mansour thinks he's made a love connection. Kamran has hit upon another form of quiet defiance; he's given up eating. James Dean would understand. (In Persian with English subtitles)

THE HANDCUFF KING
Kahlekuningas
FINLAND, 2003 - 90 minutes
Directed by Arto Koskinen
Showing Friday, March 26 at 7:15 pm and Sunday, March 28 at 12:00 noon
To fantasy-prone Esko, growing up in Röyttå on the Finland-Sweden border in the 1970s, the links in his heavy personal chains are squabbling parents on the verge of separation, an aloof brother only concerned about his aspiring punk-rock career and ostracism by his buddies
after a trick Esko plans on their hated Swede rivals badly backfires. Then a potential escape appears in Esko's unexpected friendship with Patrick, an affluent but semi-invalid Swedish kid, also lacking companionship. They share a summer making home movies, comparing their crazy relatives and practicing Houdini tricks. Winter is coming and with it a stark turning point in the two young lives. Be assured THE HANDCUFF KING has a padlock on being counted among such bluesy, bittersweet portraits of boyhood as "My Life as a Dog" (11th CIFF, 1987), "The Slingshot" (18th CIFF, 1994), "Odd Little Man" (25th CIFF, 2001) and "Sweet Dreams" (26th CIFF, 2002). (In Finnish and Swedish with English subtitles)

THE BOOKSHOP
El Kotbia
TUNISIA, FRANCE, MOROCCO, 2002 - 100 minutes
Directed by Nawfel Saheb-Ettaba
Showing Saturday, March 27 at 7:30 pm
On his way to a job arranged for him by an uncle, Jamil follows a siren-like female singing voice through the crowded streets of modern Tunis, to his goal, a large bookstore run by the same family for generations. Business subsists on very few customers (mainly gossips from the marketplace) thanks to a cheap, rent control situation. Present owner Tarik, eager to move out, grooms the down-on-his-luck Jamil to succeed him as manager-in residence, Oh, the siren? That's Tarik's sensuous young wife Leila, who idolizes great Arab vocalists like Um Kulthum, and pressures Tarik to free her from the solemn, constraining shop so she can have children and perhaps a performing career herself. A workable plan...until you factor in the unpredictability of human nature. And the limits of sacrifice that people can make for the
ones they love. Soon the Tunis market gossips will have even more to chatter about, in a page-turning, romantic drama of destinies bound between two covers. (In Arabic with English subtitles)