Ms Piff presents the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival

It must be almost spring because here comes MSPIFF (the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival).  From April 9 to 25 there will be 200 films shown from all over the globe.  The Film Society   has been showing other than mainstream films since 1962.  
To see the full list of films, go to http://prod3.agileticketing.net/WebSales/pages/list.aspx?epguid=02bcf1bd-86b9-4d4d-9d0d-a11ff2a158b2&

All of the films in our reviews will show at St. Anthony Main Cinemas, 115 Main St. S.E. (55414), between S.E. 3rd Ave. and Merriam Street. 612-331-4723. stanthonymaintheatre.com.

The Dinner
(I Nostri Ragazzi)
This daring Italian film by Ivano de Matteo takes a Dutch bestseller and skillfully changes it for the better to produce an artful work of social critique and psychological drama. Instead of setting the action in a single restaurant dinner, as does the novel and the 2013 Dutch film of the same name, this film seeks to build our understanding of the four characters at the dinner—a lawyer, his younger second wife, his younger surgeon brother and his wife—through their jobs, apartments and actions over time. The Italian name of the movie means “our kids” and they—the lawyer’s daughter by his first wife and the other couple’s son—are the moral pivot. The kids remain enigmas up to near the end, but we think we know how each of the parents is going to act. We only think we know. This is a hypnotically beautiful look at some ugly truths.  (Debra Keefer Ramage)
92 minutes. Monday, April 20, 5:20 p.m.

Beyond the Divide
The film addresses the continuing impact of the American war in Vietnam among those Americans who fought it and those who protested military killing.  It is a sweet story of reconciliation, very rooted among special people in a special place, Missoula, Mont.
The Missoula community supports a peace center named after Jeanette Rankin, the Montana congresswoman who voted against both WWI and WWII. As part of their active peace-making, these peacemakers reached out to the local Vietnam veterans who blamed protesters for their suffering from PTSD and moral injury after returning home.  The Missoula vets felt that the iconic guerilla graffitied peace sign on a highly visible hill was intended to offend them.
Neither this documentary nor the reconciliation efforts try to uncover the “facts” of who called whom “babykiller” or who might have been part of baby-killing in Vietnam.  Instead person to person connection—people who learned to like each other even as they disagreed—heals the divide.
This is not a documentary that finds lessons for today from the mistakes of making war in Vietnam other than to realize how long the veteran and foreign civilian suffering continues.  Dan Gallagher, the Irish-ancestry bard and veteran’s advocate featured, notes his continued remorse over leaving landmines that have been hurting children over the decades. The viewer is left to wonder why his anger is directed at the people who told him not to do it, instead of those who ordered it done.
I once challenged Marv Davidov, a legendary local war protester now of beloved memory, about a local story I’d been told of a particular incident of a protester harassing a vet (that I found difficult to believe). “Never happened,” Marv emphasized, “It’s projection.”  Marv thought that the veterans confused their own internal, often unrecognized, conflicted feelings over what they’d collectively done as coming from their critics.   The film gives hope that this admittedly great suffering can be transformed into better future actions. (Amy Blumenshine)
85 minutes. Music by Chris Koza. Tuesday, April 21, 4:45 p.m.

The Lesson  
Nadezhda, an elementary school teacher in a small Bulgarian town has her life turned upside down by her alcoholic husband who squandered their mortgage payments. Trying to stave off foreclosure, she is confronted by cold, cruel, vile scumbags who prey off her misery. She finds herself doing things to survive and save their house that were unthinkable to her only a few short weeks ago. A life lesson painful to watch that you can’t turn away from. (David Goldstein)
107 minutes. Tuesday, April 21, 4:15 p.m.

Finding Gaston
Documentary director Patricia Perez tells the story of Gastón Acurio, world renowned Peruvian chef. Acurio and his wife rose to fame through their self-named restaurant, Astrid and Gaston, located in Lima.  Originally serving French cuisine, they gradually shifted to authentic Peruvian fare. Today they own restaurants throughout the world. Acurio is not just a chef.  Several interviewees referred to Gaston’s work as a revolution, as he has not only transformed their national cuisine, but he has also elevated Peruvians’ sense of national pride. The film portrays his almost God-like status in Peru; he is admired by people of all walks of life. He is  known for many social justice-based ventures, including funding a culinary school for low-income chefs and constant outreach to the farmers and fisherman who provide food for his restaurants. The great camera shots of delicious, award-winning food will make you very hungry. (Raina Goldstein Bunnag)
Wednesday, April 22, 3:15 p.m.

Warren MacKenzie: A Potter’s Hand
This review is mixed with a discussion of potters whom I knew (Stephen Mickey and Bob Stein) and Bernard Leach’s pottery. Bear with me, it’s all related.
I’ll start from the beginning. In May of 1969, I was a lost Minneapolis West Bank hippie. I became rather a burden to Dennis Hansen, an older man who I hung out with and occasionally lived with. I was waiting for Dennis to do something different with his life, so that I could follow. No ideas of my own.
Dennis proposed riding our bikes from Minneapolis to visit the Georgeville artist’s commune, 100 miles west on Highway 55. That took about a day-and-a-half. The first person I saw, out on the street, was Stephen Mickey. I wasn’t an artist, so I tried to be useful by providing manual labor to help build the pottery kiln that Stephen was directing. Ball clay had been salvaged from the closing of the Redwing Pottery works. I started out pulverizing the clay by dropping a 12-pound sledge hammer on it, for hours at a time.
We mixed the pulverized clay with water and straw, and pushed it into a ladder-like wooden form, to make square bricks.
We assembled the kiln, consisting of two domed chambers, and cure-fired it using used crankcase oil from a 300-gallon tank. The fire burned out the straw, creating insulating voids in the bricks. Stephen, and Bob Stein, another accomplished Georgeville potter, began firing and selling pots in our little store, formerly a bank in the large brick building where we lived.
I did manual labor, much of it gathering wood for the intimidating rural Minnesota winter. When winter came, I had less to do, so I intruded on the pottery studio, and began fooling with clay. We had two Bernard Leach pottery wheels, made by Woodley’s Joinery in Devon, England. Stephen had a copy of Bernard Leach’s book, “A Potter’s Book,” perhaps on loan from the Rochester Public Library. I have it, now. I hope it’s not overdue, I’d need to mortgage my house to pay the interest on the fine. Stephen revered Bernard Leach and his works. Bob Stein was a bit more art-oriented, I believe. He made beautiful pots, and probably considered them art, and himself an artist. He was.
I did not make elegant pots. I made a lot of bowls and cups, a few pitchers, a teapot. I remember crossing the street to the studio in the morning and starting a fire in the wood stove. I’d break the ice in the pottery tray, and start working, eight or more hours per day, every day. I think I made 200 bowls, alone, for one firing. Stephen’s daughter was being born during the firing, so he couldn’t participate much. That was a 33-hour firing. My hair was grey from the smoke. We sold all of it, in our store and in a little store in St. Cloud. We raised a bit of cash for the commune with our work. I still have a few of the bowls.
The ethic espoused by Bernard Leach, as explained to me by Stephen, was to create pottery that was for every day use, and inexpensive. That was our stated goal at Georgeville. Pots should be nicely shaped, and often glazed beautifully, but they should be practical. Cups, bowls, pitchers, teapots, jars. As Susie Shroyer told me, when I was beginning, “It’s just dishes.” Keith Ruona said, “You know what I think of art? Art-fart!” I said, “Pretty smart?”
That’s the ethic, the attitude, of Warren MacKenzie, in the beautiful video “Warren MacKenzie: A Potter’s Hand.” He explains his attitude toward pottery, which very much coincides with Bernard Leach’s, with whom MacKenzie apprenticed. Warren MacKenzie does make beautiful, but functional, pots. He learned to regard pottery-making as a craft, or skill, like that of an auto-mechanic. He’s 89 at the time of the video. Energetic, goes through the many techniques of pot-making while telling his story. He’s articulate, laughs a lot, a very useful attitude for everyday life.
MacKenzie goes deeply into Leach’s attitude toward art. This video will be very useful for potters, and anyone interested in the making of art. The viewer can easily pick up techniques and attitudes from MacKenzie. He loves what he does, and he shows you how he does it. It amazes me to see those Bernard Leach wheels, identical to the Georgeville wheels, at work. The same structure, the same levered wheel, the same counter-clockwise rotation.
Leach studied pottery in Japan. His pots reflect Japanese influences. I have seen one of his vases, shaped and glazed like a fish, in an exhibit which included the Arts and Crafts movement in Japan. The Arts and Crafts movement, also known as Craftsman, and very similar to Mission, involved architecture and furniture. Basic, utilitarian, for everyday use, but still elegant in its simplicity. We see in some of its manifestations, the Japanese influence. I made a rather extreme Craftsman oak table lamp. Rice paper shade. A visiting woman from Taiwan told me that it was the best thing I’d ever made. It appealed to her aesthetic.
So, all of these things—“Warren MacKenzie: A Potter’s Hand,” working on Georgeville Pottery with the attitudes passed down from Bernard Leach, Stephen Mickey, Bob Stein, the pottery wheels themselves, the very similar Craftsman ethic, my making Craftsman furniture, living in New Mexico and seeing Mission furniture—tie together for me. (Bob Kauten)
46 minutes. Wednesday, April 22, 4:50 p.m.

Just Eat It
If you like Michael Moore films but think they could be less confrontational, or if you like Morgan Spurlock films but think they could be more serious, “Just Eat It” will be the perfect documentary for you. Especially so, if you are already concerned about the amount of food wasted in our modern industrialized food distribution system. Canadian Grant Baldwin and his spouse, Jen Rustemeyer, with a documentary under their belts already and a passion for food justice, go a year without buying “new” food, but only eating what would have been thrown away, including by their friends. They buy the leftovers of excellent veg in the farmer’s market for a few bucks, they take the refrigerator contents of a friend who is moving, Grant dumpster-dives (and gets addicted to it) and they discover a gourmet food waste restaurant in Copenhagen. This is interspersed with snippets of interviews with activists, producers and restaurateurs, each with their own urgent appeal to reason in the face of senseless waste. (Debra Keefer Ramage)
75 minutes. Wednesday, April 22, 5 p.m.; Friday, April 24, 2:20 p.m.

The Keeping Room
At the end of the Civil War, two rural South Carolina sisters and their female slave have to fend for themselves against two drunk, sadistic Yankee scouts and their vicious Doberman, who are raping, pillaging and killing their way toward the women’s homestead. Suspensful, apocalyptic and well acted, this movie is equal parts horror story, Eastwood western and feminist celebration. A very well done, out-of-the-ordinary thriller that will stay with you for a while. (David Goldstein)
95 minutes. Thursday, April    23, 10 p.m.

Veve
In northern Kenya there is a plant called khat, or “veve,” which generates huge sums of money, a kind of narcotic leaf chewed by many, many people. “Veve” is a film about an ambitious, corrupt aspiring politician named Amos whose power is based partly on his hand in the khat trade.  But when a man named Kenzo appears to exact payment for Amos’ past crimes, the plot picks up pace and becomes more complicated. This story of fathers and sons, of ends and means, of violence and love, is well acted and well written and culminates with an oddly moving twist. It also shows that Africa’s film industry continues to gain technical and artistic ground. (Frank Bures)
95 minutes. Friday, April 24, 9:30 p.m.

The Iron Ministry
There are over 100,000 miles of railways in China. In 2013, there were more than 2 billion passenger trips. Those trains are, in some ways, a country unto themselves, as J.P. Sniadecki shows in this documentary, which he spent three years filming on trains across the country.  The result is a full sensory experience with the noises, sounds and sights of the rails, filled with people from all levels of society, from peddlers cutting up meat in the spaces between cars, to young people on their way to better jobs and lives, to some of China’s minority Muslims in a heated discussion with other passengers.  The people Sniadecki interviews bring a life to the film, and you get the real feeling of  being there on the train with them. He asks one woman what her dream job is, and she looks out the window and says, “It’s so difficult to find a dream job,” while the countryside rolls by. (Frank Bures)
82 minutes. Friday, April 24, 12:30 p.m.

Chagall-Malevich  
David Goldstein and Ed Felien disagree:
David: Following artist Marc Chagall from his birth and detailing his partnership/rivalry with painter Kazimir Malevich, this movie strives for greatness but disappoints throughout. I so wanted to like this as I love his paintings, but the movie never accomplished what it set out to do and became almost cartoonish.
Ed: I liked the film.  It was an attempt to show the chaos, horror and redemption of revolution.  I think it was a brave film for Russia to produce.  I agree it was flawed and the style contrived and confusing.
David:  You review it instead. It would be better to give it a positive slant.  But, just to keep things in perspective—you also liked “Masked and Anonymous”!
Ed: Didn’t you love life in the shtetl?  I would have thought you would have been charmed by it.  But, you’re right, I am a sentimental old fool, easily seduced by earnest love and enthusiasm.  And, yes, I did like the effort of “Masked and Anonymous.”  Maybe I just cannot help but admire when someone attempts impossible things.  My palms start to sweat when they climb so high.  I refuse to believe they’ve fallen.
David:  I also believe that nothing is impossible and I admire it in others. But I couldn’t like him for some reason, I thought they cast badly. (Ed Felien & David Goldstein)
120 minutes. Saturday, April 25, 4:15 p.m.

Secrets of War
“Secrets of War” is a movie I could have watched as a small child in the late 1940s or early ’50s—against all odds, three Dutch kids outsmart the Nazis and help the Resistance.  It is a beautiful, heart-wrenching melodrama that makes you part of the struggle of good versus evil.   I have some reservations about the message of the film—that the survival of the Resistance was due in part to “good” Nazis.
The new Greek government is attempting to collect more than $600 billion in reparations from Germany for the murders of civilians and the destruction of property during World War II.  Records we have of the Resistance in Greece and elsewhere show there were precious few “good” Nazis and a lot of bloody reprisals.  When Italian Partisans in Gubbio assassinated the Nazi mayor and his aide, the German authorities rounded up 50 people at random and murdered them.  We should all be willing to forgive.  We should never forget. (Ed Felien)
95 minutes. Saturday, April 25, 11 a.m.