Ojai Film Society 2007 Spring Screening Schedule
We have three seasonal schedules each year: winter, spring and fall. Our current schedule is reproduced below. If you would like to advertise in future OFS printed schedules, please contact the Executive Director at ojaifilmsociety@sbcglobal.net.

Sunday afternoons at 4:30 p.m.
The Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai, CA

April 8, 2007 – “Notes on a Scandal”
UK 2006  (1 hr, 32 min)  Rated R

Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett face off with searing performances in this riveting tale of obsession and desire.  Based on the novel by Zoe Heller, it is the story of Barbara Covett (Dench), a hard-nosed spinster schoolteacher, and her poisonous friendship with fellow teacher Sheba Hart (Blanchett).  “This internalized dramatic thriller,” wrote film critic Rich Cline, “makes the most of subtly perceptive writing, directing and acting.”

When the young and beautiful Sheba shows up as the new art instructor, everyone is charmed by her, including the embittered Barbara.  Barbara is thrilled when her lonely life is shaken up by Sheba's overtures of friendship, as Sheba invites her to share in family dinners and opens up to her about her marital troubles and personal longing.

As Barbara narrates her own feelings of longing to us from her meticulously kept diaries, it becomes increasingly clear that her take on the friendship is uncomfortably intense, if not borderline delusional.  Things reach a fever pitch when Barbara happens upon Sheba dallying in the art room with a 15-year-old student.  Barbara decides not to report her and instead, uses her knowledge of the indiscretion to draw Sheba closer to her and put her in her debt.

Peter O’Toole earned a 2006 Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of an aging thespian in this film, which takes the traditional May-December romance and transforms it into a humane, tender exploration of maturing, rendered with dignity and irreverence. 

O’Toole’s Maurice, who now specializes in playing death scenes, spends most of his time hanging out with his fellow super-senior Ian and visiting his ex-wife (Vanessa Redgrave).  Then Ian’s grandniece Jessie, 19, moves in and has her granduncle “screaming for euthanasia.”  Maurice, however, senses a kindred spirit in Jessie, and a relationship begins. 

She reawakens his self-proclaimed “theoretical interest” in the opposite sex.  And, in a manner reminiscent of “Pygmalion,” he introduces her to a broader range of interests.  “This is a relationship unlike any we’ve seen, and it’s a measure of the film’s subtle gifts that it is easier to watch it unfolding than to precisely define what we’re seeing,” wrote Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

Although the war in Iraq has spawned a veritable cottage industry of films, this engrossing and visually stunning film is unique in several ways.  Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the film also received an unprecedented three awards from the Sundance Film Festival – for best direction, editing, and cinematography.  Above all, this deeply humanistic film is unique because its three-part story is narrated by Iraqis and told from their perspective. 

The title refers to the three disparate elements of Iraqi society:  The Sunnis are represented by an 11-year-old auto shop worker in Baghdad, a city caught between an idealized past, a dangerous present, and an uncertain future.  The Shiites are shown in their strongholds of Najaf and Nasiriya where we see the inner workings of Iraqi local politics as the conservative leadership enforces its rigid interpretation of Islamic law.  The Kurds, from the agrarian north, assert their bid for independence, rebelling against the past atrocities of Baghdad rule. 

Working in Iraq between February 2003 and April 2005, under harsh and often dangerous conditions, filmmaker James Longley has created what A.O. Scott of The New York Times called “a collage of images, sounds and characters, an intimate, portrait of an unraveling nation.  It is an invitation to look afresh at a country many Americans may be tired of thinking about, and be reminded of the complicated human reality underneath the politics.” 

How does a good man act when circumstances seem to rule out the very possibility of good behavior?  That is the central question in this powerful drama set in the Orwellian world of the German Democratic Republic, circa 1984.

Winner of this year’s Oscar for best Foreign Language Film, this incisive and perfectly structured story brings to life the grim, brutal world of East Germany and the paranoid, ruthless cruelty of its Communist government.  The film centers on two men: Gerd Wiesler, a Stasi officer, and Georg Dreyman, a successful playwright on whom Gerd is sent to spy.  The two could not be more different, yet at core, they are both decent human beings despite the ugly world in which they live.

Georg is well respected in the art community and circumspect enough to enjoy a level of official favor.  He lives with the stunning Christa-Maria, who often stars in his plays.  It is she who causes Georg to come under governmental scrutiny, when a government Minister becomes infatuated with her and orders Wiesler to spy on the artist in hopes of finding something that might incriminate him.

At first, Wiesler, a drab and unsmiling man, regards his prey with suspicion.  He is a “true believer” and cannot imagine that his government would target an innocent man.  Soon however, he learns the real reason for the investigation and moreover, begins to believe in Georg’s essential innocence.  His eyes opened to the evils of his government, he takes steps to try to protect the man he was supposed to destroy.

Winner of both the Grand Prix and the Glass Bear at Berlin International Film Festival, along with numerous other awards, this moving parable is set in a grim orphanage in post-Glasnost Russia.  When six-year-old Vanya Solntsev is chosen for adoption by an Italian couple, he is given the nickname “The Italian” by the envious children around him.  A handsome and sensitive kid, Vania is aware of his enviable position and longs to leave the Dickensian orphanage where the older kids survive through pimping, prostitution and theft.

When the mother of another orphan comes to reclaim her son, she is told that the son has already been adopted and is forcibly removed from the orphanage.  Learning that the woman has committed suicide, Vania fears that his birth mother would never find him if he goes to Italy with the kind couple.  With the help of Irka, a teenage prostitute, Vania learns to read enough to steal his records from the headmaster’s office and escapes to embark on a search for his birth mother.

But the greedy adoption broker known as Madam, who has a lot of money at stake in this adoption, is determined to complete her deal with the Italians and, with the help of her bodyguard and personal driver, tracks the young boy through the icy and gritty landscape of contemporary Russia.

Reminiscent of Vittorio de Sica’s neo-realist masterpieces, The Bicycle Thief and The Children are Watching, Andrei Kravchuk’s film transforms stereotypes into unforgettable characters while delivering a vibrant indictment of the values of post-Communist Russia.

May 13, 2007 – “An Unreasonable Man”
USA 2006  (2 hr, 2 min)  Not Rated

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.   Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”  This quote from George Bernard Shaw provides the title for this engaging and thought-provoking documentary on the life of Ralph Nader, idealistic crusader and at times, an extremely unreasonable man.

Nader, a Harvard Law School Graduate, believed he could make a difference by fighting “City Hall.”  He first drew public notice for his investigations into the auto industry and the publication of the book Unsafe at Any Speed, which angered General Motors so much that they hired private detectives, harassed his family and attempted to lure him into compromising positions.  They could find nothing and in the end, GM president James Roche made him a public apology.  He inspired a whole generation of young attorneys who tried to uncover governmental and corporate corruption wherever they could find it.

The ascetic, uncompromising nature which allowed Nader to do so much good, and inspire similar efforts in others, also caused him to lose friends and allies, particularly when he made his 2000 presidential bid.  His former supporters looked on him as a “spoiler,” taking votes they assumed would otherwise have gone to Al Gore.  Was his presidential bid the act of an egotistical traitor or an idealist who fervently believed the country needed a legitimate third party to challenge a moribund establishment that offered no real choices?

If you were told a Romanian film had screened at film festivals in Telluride, Toronto, Santa Barbara and Cannes (where it won the Golden Camera Award for best first feature), you might expect to recognize the title.  But this wry, buoyant little comedy has flown largely under the radar of contemporary world cinema in the U.S.

At 12:08 p.m. on December 22, 1989, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu abdicated power and fled the country.  Fast-forward 16 years to the anniversary of the revolution in 2005.  In a TV studio in an unnamed small town “east of Bucharest,” a hilariously pretentious TV host named Jderescu searches for guests to appear on a special anniversary episode of his talk show where the topic is to be whether the revolution actually “happened” in their town, or not. 

If protestors rallied against Ceausescu in their town square before 12:08 on December 22, 1989, the townspeople were “players”; if their rally only followed Ceausescu’s departure, their participation is reduced to a mere “afterthought.”  Jderescu can only scare up two dubious guests: an elderly, philosophizing pensioner, Piscoci, and a hard-drinking history teacher, Manescu, both of whom claim to have been heroic witnesses to a “timely” town rally.  When viewers begin to call in to refute the hero’s recollections, a hilarious on-camera squabble ensues.

This poignant and emotionally gripping story of a Bosnian woman struggling to survive in Sarajevo in the aftermath of the 1990s wars won the Golden Bear at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Single mother Esma lives with her 12-year-old daughter Sara in Sarajevo’s Grbavica neighborhood, where life is still being reconstructed after the war.  Unable to make ends meet with her job in a shoe factory, Esma takes a job as a cocktail waitress in a sleazy nightclub.  Haunted by violent events in her past, she attends group therapy sessions at the local Women’s Center and responds tentatively to the romantic pursuits of Pelda, a softhearted bouncer who also works at the nightclub.

For an upcoming school trip, Sara needs a certificate proving that her father died a shaheed, a holy war martyr, in order to receive a discount, but Esma says that the certificate is unavailable because his body was never found. 

Sara becomes extremely upset when classmates tease her for not being on the list of martyrs’ children.  Realizing her mother has paid full price for the school trip, Sara aggressively demands the truth, which Esma eventually reveals.  Through their painful confrontation, Esma takes the first real step toward overcoming her deep trauma and strengthening her relationship with her daughter. 

In 1983, The Islamic Fundamentalist Government in Northern Sudan attacked the villages of the Christian and Animist Dinka tribesmen in the South and in 1987, systematically began killing all their male children.  Twenty-five thousand boys, ages three to thirteen, fled on foot, covering more than one thousand miles of sub-Saharan wilderness.  Twelve thousand of them survived to reach the UN sponsored Kokuma Refugee camp.

With no families and no country, these “lost boys” created their own fraternal bonds, caring for each other and maintaining a decency and humanity at which we can only marvel.  For ten years they all languished in that camp, with meager rations, ragged clothing and little education, until 3,800 of them were eventually selected for relocation in the United States. 

Winner of the Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, this powerful documentary tells the story of three of these young men, as they attempt to navigate the sometimes bewildering new world in which they find themselves. 

Things that are commonplace in our world are strange and wonderful to the young men.  A well-stocked supermarket is overwhelming, and a doughnut covered with sprinkles elicits the question, “Is this food?”  They work hard, taking two or three menial jobs to survive and send money back to fellow refugees while also attending college.

This “delicately charming fable set in Paris,” says the Washington Post, “offers the kind of experience we secretly crave when we visit any great city: meaningful encounters with its people.”  Centermost to this film – France's entry for the Foreign Language Oscar – is Jessica, a sweet-hearted gamine from the provinces who has just arrived in the capital.

To this country girl, whose grandmother once worked as a chambermaid at the Ritz, Paris is the city of luxury, a picture-postcard world of hotels, expensive restaurants and fine living.  And she wants in.  When she gets a job waiting tables on the chic Avenue Montaigne, she gets her wish.  A new play, a concert and an art auction – all set to open on the same day in that perfect corner of the city – bring scores of artists and other interesting people to Jessica's restaurant.

As we become caught up in their personal dilemmas, Paris becomes increasingly cozy, precious and intimate.  An overwhelming metropolis is transformed into a friendly village with quirkily appealing characters.

There's an implied magic, brought about by the enchanting atmosphere of Paris (the sun-splashed bridges never seemed warmer) and the effect Jessica seems to have on everybody.  As people believe in her unvarnished purity, their lives are subtly transformed.

“Don’t worry, I’m just losing my mind,” Fiona Anderson (Julie Christie) quips, when her husband Grant catches her absently putting a frying pan in the freezer.  Fiona has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

In this tale of true devotion, one partner of a 44-year marriage watches helplessly as the other slips away.  Although physically vigorous, Fiona is growing confused and disoriented.  Insisting on going out with dignity, she checks herself into a nursing home despite Grant’s fears that the stay might hasten her decline.

When Grant arrives with flowers in hand like a young suitor, he is treated like one – it's not entirely clear whether Fiona knows who he is anymore.  Their time-tested relationship now seems less immediate than her doting bond with wheelchair-bound fellow resident Aubrey.  Grant is angry and jealous, but nonetheless visits every day.  In his darkest moments he fears she's just faking memory loss, punishing him for extramarital transgressions of many years before.

Intercut with these events are flash-forwards to the meeting Grant has with Marian (Olympia Dukakis), a seemingly severe woman who turns out to be Aubrey's wife – and to whom Grant turns in desperation when Aubrey's removal from Meadowbrook has a drastic effect on Fiona's well-being.

“Julie Christie gives a fabulous performance of mysterious, unclear depth,” says Film Threat, maintaining Fiona's inner light even as it changes shades, and Gordon Pinsent is mesmerizing as Grant.

Nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film, this solid, insightful and supremely well-made film explores the pain that is always a part of human relationships while also revealing the importance of the bonds that give our lives meaning. 

Jacob, a self-sacrificing idealist, left his home in Denmark years earlier to run an orphanage in Bombay.  As the movie opens, Jacob is desperate: there is no money left and the orphanage may close, leaving his young charges homeless.  Jacob and the children have real affection for each other, so he is consumed with anxiety over what might become of them.  Then a seeming miracle occurs – a wealthy Danish businessman makes Jacob an offer of a large sum of cash if he will come to Copenhagen and meet with him.

Jacob does not wish to leave the children or return to the western society from which he has disassociated himself.  He has no choice however, and the meeting with his potential benefactor, Jorgen, goes quite well.  But Jorgen then insists that Jacob attend his daughter’s wedding, and when he encounters the billionaire’s wife, Helene, Jacob discovers that there were motives other than charity involved in his summons to Denmark. 

The Ojai Film Society wishes to thank the following people for writing and editing this season’s Screening Schedule:   Fran Christiansen, Jim Christiansen, Steve Grumette, Vivian Sudhalter, Lucy Walker and Elio Zarmati