With most movies that play at the annual Maryland Film Festival, if you don't catch them there, chances are you won't catch them anywhere; that's how far under the Hollywood radar most fly.
But beginning tonight, cable's Sundance Channel is showcasing a handful of movies from first-time filmmakers, people who may not be part of the cinematic elite yet, but are certainly knocking on the door. Tagged "New Voices for the New Year," the programming block showcases five movies that have won prizes or proven popular at film festivals over the past couple of years. Three of the five films have been shown as part of past Maryland Film Festivals.
Riders, from former Easton resident Doug Sadler (9 p.m. Tuesday) is the compellingly clear-eyed story of a teen-ager forced to grow up before her time. Bodine Alexander, born and raised in Denton, stars as Alex Stone, who's forced into an almost instant adulthood when she discovers that her mom's quick-tempered boyfriend, Ned (Don Harvey), may be sexually abusing her young sister (we're never sure whether he is or isn't). Determined to protect young Sarah (Sara Stone, also from Maryland), she grabs her and hits the road for New Orleans, where she believes their father is living. Surely, she reasons, he'll be able to protect them.
Riders is stubbornly ambiguous about many of its plot points; that sense of never being quite sure where the film is heading is one of its greatest strengths. But one thing that's never in doubt is the bond between Alex and Sarah, who alternate between loving and hating each other the way only real sisters can. The two girls turn in wonderfully understated performances that are showcased by Sadler's surprisingly sure-handed direction. Riders, which made its debut at the 2001 festival, is quite the find.
Eric Byler's Charlotte Sometimes (9 p.m. Monday), part of this year's festival, is a study in emotional distance. With a cast composed almost entirely of Asian-Americans (although, refreshingly, ethnicity is not essential to the plot), the movie is replete with characters who stubbornly refuse to take the easy way out and emotions that never seem able to break through.
Essentially the story of a love triangle, Charlotte Sometimes stars Michael Idemoto as an emotionally constricted auto mechanic whose love life has consisted of pining for the alluring Lori (Eugenia Yuan), who has little notion of his feelings for her. Strangely enough, he's become almost comfortable in this non-relationship; it enables him to love, even if it doesn't let him be loved. But when he meets the alluring Dracy (Jacqueline Kim) at a local nightspot and sparks start to fly, he has to decide whether he's willing to risk his complacency for the possibility of honest emotion.
Josh Apter and Peter Olsen's Kaaterskill Falls (9 p.m. Sunday) also played at this year's festival and was nominated for several 2001 Independent Spirit Awards. Inspired by Roman Polanksi's Knife in the Water, the film stars Hilary Howard and Mitchell Riggs as a young married couple who impulsively ask a hitchhiker they just met to share their vacation cabin with them. As inhibitions lessen and talk becomes freer, the relationship between the three takes all manner of twists and turns.
Other films in the Sundance series are Andrew and Alex Smith's The Slaughter Rule (9 p.m. Saturday), about a teen who loses his starting-quarterback job at a Montana high school but is recruited by one of the town's eccentrics to captain his six-man squad; and Bill Morrison's Decasia (9 p.m. tonight), a hallucinatory journey pieced together using silent-film footage, bits of film from any number of long-forgotten projects and patterns created by the decomposition of nitrite film stock.
'Shoes' at the Charles
Michael Powell's 1948 The Red Shoes, based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen and almost universally regarded as the best translation of ballet to film ever, will be this weekend's feature at the Charles' Saturday revival series.
Show time is noon, and admission is $5. Call 410-727-FILM.