Maysles Institute
343 Malcolm X Blvd/Lenox Ave. between 127th & 128th Sts.
September 7-11, $10
212-582-6050
www.harlemfilmfestival.com
www.mayslesinstitute.org
The sixth annual Harlem International Film Festival gets under way tonight at the Schomburg Center with the world premiere of Cary Stuart’s The (R)evolution of Immortal Technique, a documentary about the controversial Harlem-raised hip-hop artist that features appearances by Chuck D., Ice-T, Cornel West, and Woody Harrelson. Stuart and Immortal Technique will participate in a Q&A following the screening. The festival then shifts to the Maysles Institute through September 11 with such films as Miller Bargeron Jr. & Arcelious Daniels’s Stubborn as a Mule!, which looks at reparations for African Americans; Renzo Zanelli’s The Dog in the Manger, which follows Peruvian artist Brus’s battle against an American oil company in the Amazon; Judy Jackson’s War in the Mind, which examines post-traumatic stress disorder and military suicide; the world premiere of Robert Small’s Tribute to Bernie Mac!, which will be followed by a Q&A with the director and Mac’s daughter, Je’niece McCullough; and Julian A. Renner’s The Three Way, which delves into love and infidelity. Organized around such themes as “The Pain of Violence!,” “Black Superman!,” “New York!,” “The Game of Love!,” “Musical Dreams!,” and “Second Chances!,” the festival also includes more than two dozen short films. The festival concludes Sunday night with a pair of free events, a reading of the winning screenplay and the Brownstone Awards celebrating the festival’s best works.
On the verge of being forced out of the company he has dedicated his life to, National Shoes executive Kingo Gondo’s (Toshirō Mifune) life is thrown into further disarray when kidnappers claim to have taken his son, Jun (Toshio Egi), and are demanding a huge ransom for his safe return. But when Gondo discovers that they have mistakenly grabbed Shinichi (Masahiko Shimazu), the son of his chauffeur, Aoki (Yutaka Sada), he at first refuses to pay. But at the insistence of his wife (Kyogo Kagawa), the begging of Aoki, and the advice of police inspector Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama), he reconsiders his decision, setting in motion a riveting police procedural that is filled with tense emotion. Loosely based on Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novel King’s Ransom, High and Low is divided into two primary sections: the first half takes place in Gondo’s luxury home, orchestrated like a stage play as the characters are developed and the plan takes hold. The second part of the film follows the police, under the leadership of Chief Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai), as they hit the streets of the seedier side of Yokohama in search of the kidnappers. Known in Japan as Tengoku to Jigoku, which translates as Heaven and Hell, High and Low is an expert noir, a subtle masterpiece that tackles numerous socioeconomic and cultural issues as Gondo weighs the fate of his business against the fate of a small child; it all manages to feel as fresh and relevant today as it probably did back in the ’60s.
When a pair of disaffected Parisians, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), meet an adorable young woman, Odile (Anna Karina), in English class, they decide to team up and steal a ton of money from a man living in Odile’s aunt’s house. As they meander through the streets of cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s black-and-white Paris, they talk about English and wealth, dance in a cafe while director Jean-Luc Godard breaks in with voice-over narration about their character, run through the Louvre in record time, and pause for a near-moment of pure silence. Godard throws in plenty of commentary on politics, the cinema, and the bourgeoisie in the midst of some genuinely funny scenes. Band of Outsiders is no ordinary heist movie; based on Dolores Hitchens’s novel Fool’s Gold, it is the story of three offbeat individuals who just happen to decide to attempt a robbery while living their strange existence, as if they were outside from the rest of the world. The trio of ne’er-do-wells might remind Jim Jarmusch fans of the main threesome from Stranger Than Paradise (1984), except Godard’s characters are more aggressively persistent. One of Godard’s most accessible films, Band of Outsiders will be playing a one-week engagement at Film Forum September 7-13, with no screenings on September 11.
