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October 3- 9, 2002 screen picks Screen PicksEl Festival Cubano (Fri., Oct. 4 and Thu., Oct. 10, free, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org, www.elfestivalcubano.com) The monthlong, citywide celebration (see p. 69) features several film events, including two International House screenings and an accompanying panel. This Friday at 8 p.m. is a screening of Karim Dridis Cuba Feliz!, a loosely structured performance film featuring the talents of 76-year-old Miguel Del Morales, better known as El Gallo, presented as a wizened troubadour who sows music wherever he goes. As edited, the film implies that jam sessions spring up wherever El Gallo roams, though some are obviously staged for the camera. You can only stave off the Buena Vista Social Club comparison for so long, at which point you may begin to grow frustrated with the films almost haphazard progress, and its near-total lack of context -- the recurring tableaux of dirt-poor people suddenly breaking into song begins to seem more forced than fortuitous. Still, the film cooks up more frisson than its better-known cousin when El Gallo goes head to head with an enthusiastic young rapper who muscles past the older musicians objections and adds a traditionally themed freestyle to their ages-old beat. The film is shown with Laurence Salzmanns Imagining Cutumba, a backstage portrait of Santiagos Teatro Oriente dance company. Next Thursday, the festival continues at 7 p.m. with a panel discussion on the state of Cuban cinema, including Scribes Louis Massiah, Drexels Dr. Gabriella Ibieta, Bryn Mawrs Dr. Enrique Sacerio-Gari and documentary filmmaker Jos Antonio Jimenez. Thats followed at 8 p.m. by a screening of the classic Death of a Bureaucrat, by Toms Gutirrez Alea. Picture Me an Enemy (Thu., Oct. 3, 8 p.m., free, International House, www.visavisproductions.com) If you didn't get a chance to see Nathalie Applewhite's bracing documentary when it showed on WYBE in June, don't miss this chance to immerse yourself in the stories of Natasa Borcanin and Tahija Vikalo, women who emigrated from the former Yugoslavia and landed in Philadelphia. Vikalo is a Bosnian Muslim, Borcanin a half-Serb, half-Croat atheist, but Enemy purposefully uncovers far more similarities than differences. Borcanin recalls how she'd watch TV and see the same shot used to represent Bosnian corpses in one report and Serbian corpses in another, and scorns the accuracy of either claim; corpses, she says, make no claims on nationality. Picture Me an Enemy complicates as often as it depicts; when Vikalo recalls fleeing gunfire, the film inserts black and white footage of her sprinting down a peaceful street, a smile on her face. The result undercuts simplistic notions of victimhood -- on one hand, Vikalo recalls how her mother had chunks blown out of her body by an explosion; on the other, how they've learned to joke about her being "80 percent invalid." Without pushing for transcendence, Picture Me an Enemy finds a balance between reportage and expressionism. Even if you have seen the film before, you'll want to consider turning up all the same, given the impressive lineup that's been arranged for the post-film panel discussion, which extends Enemy's critique to the hysteria of the "war on terror." Haverford's Ashok Gangadean, co-founder of the Global Dialogue Institute, moderates a panel that includes Giandomenico Picco, former U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs; Dr. Jack Shaheen, author of several books on the stereotyping of Arabs in popular culture; Al-Hassan Conteh, a research fellow from Penn's Asch Center for the Study of Ethno-Political Conflict; and Susan Koscis, of D.C.'s Search for Common Ground. It's hard to think of a better illustration of the power of film to bring people together than the image of such a distinguished group gathered on International House's stage. And, of course, there's no time like the present.
Sonic Cinema (Fridays in October at 11 p.m., Sundance Channel) Capping off each night of Sundance Channel's "Hi-Fi Fridays" -- four nights of music-themed programming including the Sonic Youth doc Silver Rockets/Kool Things (Oct. 11) and the fascinating Speed Racer: Welcome to the World of Vic Chesnutt (Oct. 18) -- are four new episodes of the ever-mutating series that explores the interface between indie rock and indie film. Sundance looks to be aiming to turn the series into a regular event rather than an annual one, which might account for the new variety of regular features -- interviews with directors who've drifted into music video from other art forms, like photographer Melodie McDaniel (represented by a haunting video for Jazz Lee Alston's blunt "Love Never... That") as well as directors who've moved from video to longer forms, like Human Nature's Michel Gondry, represented by snippets of the brilliant, Lego-fied video for the White Stripes' "Fell In Love With a Girl," as well as "Bachelorette," Gondry's most recent Björk clip. Episode 2 offers a quick look into Sonic Youth's flirtations with film scoring, as well as Tamra Davis' legendary infomercial for the Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty. (Like a lot of legendary things, it's a little disappointing.) Given the manifold crossover between the worlds of music and film, Sonic Cinema's subjects sometimes seem to be chosen a bit haphazardly. It's one thing to "Meet Randall Poster," the music supervisor responsible for some of moviedom's tastiest soundtracks (whether from good movies like Rushmore, or bad ones like the forgotten A Matter of Degrees), it's another to dread in advance week four's "Meet Mike Figgis," devoted to the pretentious musician-turned-filmmaker. (Like the guy doesn't get enough ink.) It's not that the added content isn't appreciated, but given that MTV so rarely plays videos at all, let alone good ones, and you need to be independently wealthy to afford M2, we'd settle for a half-hour each week devoted simply to groundbreaking videos -- then we wouldn't have to wait a year for it to come around again. 
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