Gearing up for SLIFF 2007

Well, SLIFF (The St. Louis International Film Festival) is coming up next week and I’m getting psyched up. For you St. Louis natives, here is some information: it runs from Nov 8th (Thurs) to Nov 18th (Sun) and has more than 70 features, 30 documentaries and what seems like 100+ shorts.

You can find more information here:
http://www.cinemastlouis.org/

And the full schedule here:
http://www.cinemastlouis.org/2007/sliff_schedule.html

I’ve read over all the descriptions of the film and done a bit of research. While excited, I do have some reservations as there seems to be fewer films, less big-name (amongst festival faves) and not many exciting premiers. I made snarky comments to friends after this year’s Venice Film Festival booked an unprecedented number of English language films, but now I have to admit that SLIFF is doing the same thing and, to be honest, many of the most interesting films are US features.

The most exciting special events include a screening/QA with John Sayles on the 8th and Peter Greenaway (probably my favorite living director) on the 18th. Sadly they are showing “Drowning by Numbers” for Greenaway, which I’ve already seen, rather than “Nightwatching” (2007) his first feature film in eight years. I’m also looking forward to the retrospective of “Crossroads” (1928) by Teinosuke Kinugasa, but I really wish they could have gotten “A Page of Madness” instead, which I hear is also touring with a new print. At least it will probably hit DVD within a year.

Cannes Jury prize-winner “Persepolis” (2007) is at the top of my agenda for regular features and there are quite a few others on my high priority list. I’m going to stick with my usual plan of aiming for variety and I intend to take in at least one shorts package (for which SLIFF is probably most famous), documentary and retrospective.

Here’s my tentative agenda. I probably won’t make it to everything on the list, but I’ll see as many as I reasonably can and probably a few that are unreasonable. I hope to see some of you there or at least politely and unobtrusively share the theater with you while timidly keeping to myself.

8th
7:00 Honeydipper (QA with Sayles)

9th
4:30 The Collector
7:00 Grace is Gone
9:30 Low and Behold

10th
12:30 Darius Goes West
2:30 The Memory Thief
4:30 Hear and Now
7:00 Crossroads OR Lovely by Surprise
9:30 Jamie Travis Shorts

11th
2:00 We Are Together
4:30 Getting Home
7:15 The Method OR Banished
9:45 No Regret

12th
5:00 The Waiter
7:15 The Ploy
9:45 Music Shorts

13th
5:00 The Sacred Family
7:00 OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
9:30 Big Dreams Little Tokyo

14th
7:00 Juno
9:30 Animated Shorts

15th
7:00 Rainbow Song
9:30 The Savages OR Fresh Air

16th
4:45 Beauty in Trouble
7:15 Emma’s Bliss
9:30 Manual of Love

17th
12:30 21st Century Shorts
5:30 Tuya’s Marriage (2007 Golden Bear)
7:00 Persepolis (2007 Cannes Jury)
9:30 The Walker

18th
2:30 Drowning By Numbers (Reception and QA with Greenaway)
6:00 Fine Dead Girls

Oh, and of course I'll try and post what coverage I can on the festival. I don't know about night-after updates and reviews, but we'll see if my endurance and adrenaline are up to it.