Inaugural Black fest, the personas of PSH and film festival autumn

The inaugural Windsor International Black Film Festival gets underway Friday and runs through Sunday at the Windsor Armouries. Opening night is free with a panel discussion and short film The Cool and The Strong by Sheldyn Sam Moore. On Saturday films screen beginning 3 pm and the last one at 9.15 pm - $10 per person at the door. 11 films are on tap that day ranging from shorts to feature length and from Canada, the US, Caribbean and Africa. Closing night has a red carpet at 6 pm and awards presentation.

Watching a retrospective of the films of Philip Seymour Hoffman on the Criterion Channel I’m struck by the variety of different roles, personas and ages of the characters he plays. The best of the three I’ve so far watched is The Savages (Tamara Jenkins), a 2007-character study of two siblings (Hoffman and Laura Linney, photo) as they come to terms with the old age decline and death of their father (Philip Bosco). It’s a story that a lot of us have been through, dealing with a somewhat incorrigible parent and the depressing decision to take him to a nursing home. Rather pedestrian but the movie is saved by Hoffman and Linney's great acting. The second was David Mamet’s 2000 State and Main, with a great cast but incredibly stilted acting as if this was a stage play. It’s about a movie crew setting up a shoot in a small Vermont town with all the clichéd characters, from an obnoxious director played by William H. Macy and equally unsavory stars Alec Baldwin (channeling real life?) and Sarah Jessica Parker, fresh from her Sex and The City days. Julia Stiles is always great and Rebecca Pidgeon as PSH’s love interest a rediscovery. While PSH plays a gruff and arrogant professor in The Savages he’s a timid and baby-faced writer here. In Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002) Hoffman is a slam dunk villain, a detestable character in a film (along with Adam Sandler and Emily Watson) that’s as absurd as it is boring. I’ll be tuning into more PSH films this week.

Autumn (unfortunately?) is just around the corner. But it’s also film festival time. And I’ll be in Montreal for 10 days in October for the always cutting-edge Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (festival symbol left), as I have been for many years. Then I’ll be back in Windsor for the 20th anniversary of the Windsor International Film Festival Oct. 24 – Nov 3 - the entire festival this time as it befits the anniversary (I'm usually travelling). I can remember when this one-time small fest started out, with screenings on an inflatable screen in the drill hall of the downtown Armouries and at the lamented Palace Cinemas. No Toronto festival? I never do, having gone twice and found it cumbersome and extremely hard to get tickets. And why bother, since many of the films will be in Windsor two months later? And, this year, a bonus, Media City, the region's experimental fest, has shifted its dates to immediately after WIFF, so that will be three-three-three festivals running next to one another!