The 25th Starz Denver International Film Festival, October 10-20, 2002, has selected four films as gala premieres:
PERSONAL VELOCITY, director Rebecca Miller’s second film, stars Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, Fairuza Balk, and John Ventimiglia. Miller adapted the film from her own book of short stories. Accordingly, the film is structured in three parts of equal length and tells the stories of three very different women of various ages and circumstances. The past plays an important role in each story, and Miller uses a variety of cinematic techniques such as flashbacks, stop-image montages and an extremely observant camera to tell each tale.
BLUE CAR is the debut feature for writer-director Karen Moncrieff and stars David Strathairn, Agnes Bruckner, Margaret Colin and Frances Fisher. The film follows 18-year-old Meg (Bruckner) as she finds refuge in poetry following her father’s desertion of their family. With the encouragement of her English teacher (Strathairn), she enters a poetry contest, which later serves to pull her in very different directions. On the one hand, she recognizes an attraction building between teacher and student. On the other, she realizes the responsibility she has to her struggling mother and sister.
XX/XY was written and directed by Austin Chick, and stars Mark Ruffalo (whose breakout performance in “You Can Count on Me” impressed both critics and audiences), Kathleen Robertson, Maya Stange, and Petra Wright. The film tells the story of three friends as they start a perilous relationship that goes awry, then leads to severe consequences that follow them even 10 years later.
“THE EMPEROR’S CLUB” teams director Michael Hoffman and actor Kevin Kline for the third time, having previously worked together on Soapdish and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The stellar cast also includes Steven Culp, Patrick Dempsey, Edward Herrmann, and Rob Morrow. The setting, an exclusive American boys’ school in the early 1970s, finds Kline as Mr. Hundert, a gifted but emotionally damaged instructor who guides his young charges through the difficult years of adolescence. Conflicts arise as both Hundert and his students struggle to find integrity and honor in spite of their own human frailty and the troubled times they live in.
Blue Car and Personal Velocity will be shown on Thursday, October 17 at 9 p.m., followed by the Critics Reception at 11 p.m. XX/XY and “The Emperor’s Club” will screen on Friday, October 18 at 9 p.m., followed by the Directors Reception at 11 p.m. Both receptions feature light hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar.
For ticket and schedule information, visit the Denver Film Society website.
