Best of the AFIFEST--The Films and the Tributes

The following are the top picks of this year’s AFIFEST, from the screenings so far, as selected by Times reviewers Kevin Thomas and Michael Wilmington. The individual movie picks are followed by the Fest’s series picks. Showings are at Laemmle’s Monica, the Motion Picture Academy and the AFI campus. Information: (213) 466-1767. Innocents Abroad (June 21). Les Blank is the perfect documentarian to record an American group on a two-week bus tour of Europe. Whereas most filmmakers would condescend to the tourists, Blank instead listens to them; the hero of his piece is acutely perceptive tour guide Mark Tinney. (K. T.)

Il Capitano (June 21). The latest by Sweden’s Jan Troell (“The Emigrants”): a real-life crime spree, re-created with harrowing sensitivity. (M. W.)

Bob Roberts (June 25). The writer-directorial film debut of star Tim Robbins, who gives us American electoral politics fueled by money and opportunism, in a series of press and TV maneuvers designed to deceive. (M. W.)

In Search of Our Fathers (June 25). Marco Williams’ record of a seven-year quest for the father he has never known, takes us through an African-American family with four generations of unwed mothers. (K. T.)

The Suspended Stride of the Stork (June 27). This stunning parable of borders and divisions, love and separation, searching and despair may not win the great, and difficult, Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, any new converts. But it’s one of his best: another cryptic, painterly landscape poem, crafted in exquisitely designed and virtuosic long takes. (M. W.)

A Brighter Summer Day (June 27). Another surprising film from Taiwan, the country of Hou Hsaio-hsien’s “City of Sadness”: Edward Yang’s three-hour epic of juvenile delinquency in early ‘60s Taipei. Based on a real-life incident, it portrays city and people--caught in illusions, turmoil and social change--with razor-sharp acuity. (M. W.)

Two by Satyajit Ray. The late Satyajit Ray’s last two films include his curious but heartfelt adaptation of Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” (July 1) and his final work, “The Stranger” (June 29), a serene study of a puzzlingly reunited family. These final works by India’s greatest director testify to his earthy naturalism, his enduring love of cinema and people. (M. W.)

The Great Day on the Beach (June 29). Swedish director Stefan Olsson gives this period portrayal of Danish childhood almost as much charm as “My Life as a Dog.” This story of a blustering Danish father, his Swedish wife and the child who hero-worships him, is full of humor, ribaldry, pain and irony. (M. W.)

Brother’s Keeper (June 29). From Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, a compelling documentary about a real-life courtroom drama: An Upstate New York farmer, shy and simple, barely literate, is tried for the death of his brother. A thoughtful, touching account of how our system of justice can work. (K. T.)

Children of Nature (June 30). Fridrik Thor Fridrikkson’s Icelandic drama--a foreign language Oscar nominee--gives us the plight of two elderly people on the road, their flight into strange wilderness and dream-like adventure. (M. W.)

Happy Birthday! (June 30). A comedy film noir with a twist, from Germany’s Doris Dorrie (“Men”): A Berlin private eye of Turkish descent takes on a case that exposes him to the culture he’s abandoned and the prejudice he can’t escape. (M. W.)

Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron (June 30). Anyone who knew or cared about Peckinpah and his films will rediscover him in the words of people nearest to him: those who appreciated his gifts as man and filmmaker, but were not blind to his escalating paranoia or terrible capacity for self-destruction. Paul Joyce’s film reveals how hard it is to do good work in Hollywood, how hard it can be to handle success. (K. T.)

The Hairdresser’s Husband (July 1). A droll, quirky, thoroughly distinctive fable on perfect love--with Jean Rochefort as a middle-aged man transfixed by a beautiful hairdresser--from Patrice Leconte, whose “Monsieur Hire” also dealt with romantic obsession. (K. T.)

Venice/Venice (July 2). Henry Jaglom’s romantic, witty consideration of the chasm between real-life romance and the movies: his most ambitious, structurally complex work, ranging from the Venice Film Festival to Venice, Calif. (K. T.)

The Noh Mask Murders (July 2). An amusingly complex puzzle plot, backdropped by Noh theater: Another of Kon Ichikawa’s playful murder mysteries--which, in homage to Agatha Christie, he co-scripts under the pseudonym “Kirishiti” (M. W.)

AFIFEST 1992 SPECIAL SERIES

Retrospective: Manoel de Oliveira. One of the most remarkable figures in contemporary cinema is Portugal’s De Oliveira, the leading filmmaker in his country’s history, and, at 82, still directing. Winner of many international prizes, from Venice, Cannes and elsewhere, De Oliveira, mostly unseen in the United States--is “difficult.” His work is heavily stylized, literary, often long and stagey--but also romantic, intellectual and lush: profound or comic studies of aristocratic or national perversity. The seven De Oliveira films here include a macabre opera of upper-class lust, The Cannibals (June 24); the stately anti-war pageant No! or The Vain Glory of Command (June 25); a harrowing vivisection of obsessive love, Past and Present (June 19), and two masterly period epics of thwarted romance Ill-Fated Love (June 20) and Francisca (June 21). This introduction to a great, little-seen film artist is AFIFEST’s major ’92 coup. (M. W.)

Retrospective: Mike Leigh. Ten neglected features, mostly made for British TV before 1986, by the “director-deviser” of “Life Is Sweet,” the National Society of Film Critics’ choice as best film of 1991. Leigh, a true original, specializes in ordinary lives ranging from the upper to the lower classes--he prefers the latter. He’s both scathingly humorous and rendingly compassionate. Bleak Moments (June 24) is his darkest work; Nuts in May (June 26) a droll comedy of vacationers, Hard Labors (June 24) a devastating study of sexism and poverty, Four Days in July (July 2) an unvarnished look at life in divided Ulster. Best of the lot is Meantime (July 1), a powerful 1983 portrayal of skinheads and life on the dole, with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman. (M. W.)

Retrospective: Francois Truffaut. The late Francois Truffaut would have been 60 this year. AFIFEST’s tribute includes nine films: ranging from his poignant debut feature, The 400 Blows (June 19), through the raffish David Goodis adaptation, Shoot the Piano Player (June 20), his best-loved work Jules and Jim (June 22) and its Henri Roche-inspired companion piece, Two English Girls (June 24). Two underrated Truffauts: the 1964 Soft Skin (June 23) with Francoise Dorleac and 1981’s The Woman Next Door (June 28), a tragic romance with Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant. An overrated one: The Last Metro (June 26). (M. W.)

Retrospective: Stefan Jarl. Jarl’s The Threat (June 28), screened four years ago at the Anthropos ecological film festival, is one of the great documentaries of our time: a portrayal of the destruction of Lapland reindeer herds by Chernobyl radiation, which is both disturbing and shatteringly beautiful. Five other documentaries, and Jarl’s fiction feature, Good People (June 28)--complete this tribute to a neglected poet-realist. (M. W.)

Special Series: Armenian Cinema. Of eight Armenian films, the gem is the director’s cut of Sergei Paradjanov’s The Color of Pomegranates (June 19): a surreal visionary tableau film of awe-inspiring beauty, illuminating the spiritual odyssey of poet Sayat Noya. (K. T.)

Special Series: Music in the Cinema. Pupi Avati’s richly evocative bio-drama on the self-destructive ‘20s cornet genius, Bix (June 27), leads a strong lineup. Among the section’s top-chop documentaries: Robert Levi’s Duke Ellington: Reminiscing in Tempo (June 20), a warm portrait of jazz’s all-time top composer-maestro, whose last years were sadder than we knew; Josh Waletzky’s Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann (June 21), on Welles’ and Hitchcock’s peerless composer. (M. W.) Also: Last Date: Eric Dolphy (June 22), Akka Volta’s engaging and comprehensive Dutch documentary on the late jazz virtuoso; Saturday Night, Sunday Morning: The Travels of Gatemouth Moore, (June 28), Louis Guida’s portrait of the blues singer-composer turned traveling evangelical singer. (K. T.)