Screen Picks

The Inner Tour (Mon., March 31, 9 p.m., Sundance Channel) Sometimes, movies come along just when they're needed. With images of bloodthirsty Arabs crowding the cable box, Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention (see right) arrives in theaters to explore (if not explain) the roots of that anger, and with the U.S. aching to create our first bona fide colonial government, Ra'anan Alexandrowicz's documentary, airing Monday on Sundance Channel, examines the psychic fallout of colonialism. Shot in 2000, the film follows a group of Palestinians on a three-day bus tour of Israel (a program that's been discontinued since the start of the most recent intifadah). The occasion, of course, needs little embellishing; the film eavesdrops quietly on conversations and trails its subjects to sensitive sites, which can include everything from a former Arab village to Ben-Gurion airport. Wa'el, a young man who carries a video camera with him everywhere he goes, manages a family reunion of sorts, but can only get as close to his mother as the 20 feet of barbed wire and concrete barriers at the Lebanese border will allow. "If I could feel good any place I go, it would be better than to be connected here or there," he says.

Of the men on the bus, a good portion have been jailed in Israeli prisons, and one woman's husband is serving a life term for participating in the killing of an Israeli soldier. In a tense moment, a Palestinian man demands that a Tel Aviv cab driver take him to "where they killed your prime minister," and initially ignores the cabbie's inquiries into his choice of destination. But after he looks tenderly at the memorial -- on which someone has spray-painted "murderer" in Hebrew over a photo of Arafat shaking hands with Rabin -- the man tells the driver that he met Rabin while he was in prison, and describes an evenhanded discussion they had over the prison's living conditions.

"I don't know whether to cry for what was, or what will be," says one woman as her grandchildren play obliviously in the surf behind her. Even though it was filmed in a time when it seemed like peace in the near future might be possible, The Inner Tour presents little hope for a reconciliation: At a museum commemorating an Israeli victory over Arab forces, the museum guide delivers his spiel unadapted to his atypical audience, pointing to the pictures of Israeli soldiers who died. "How many Arabs died?" one tourist asks. He has no answer.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant/Chinese Roulette (Thu., March 27, 7 and 9:15 p.m., $8.50, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700) The Fassbinder retrospective goes out on a high note with the final screening of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). Adapted from Fassbinder's own play, the film hardly hides its theatrical origins, turning them instead to its advantage. Rather than camouflage the proscenium, Petra makes it a prison, a gilded cage of suffocating aestheticism. The symbolism is hopelessly over-determined: Petra (Margit Carstensen) is a fashion designer who lives in a loft cluttered with mannequins and the just-as-talkative Marlene (Irm Hermann, Fassbinder's stock punching-bag), her silently suffering maid. Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (who went on, of course, to a long career collaborating with Martin Scorsese) composes every frame within an inch of its life, trapping the figures with their own beauty. The exception is Karin (Hanna Schygulla), the comely young model who floats into Petra's life and becomes the subject of Petra's instant obsession. In a rare instance of a Fassbinder character actually deserving her fate, Petra becomes the victim of the same emotional cruelty she's shown Marlene, who is quite obviously in love with her mistress: Karin exploits Petra's amour fou but never returns her affection, setting her up for a cataclysmic fall. An incredible confluence of human insight and artistic expression, Petra is Fassbinder at his most over-the-top, but also his most exacting.

Shouts from the Crowd/Budget Liquor (Thu., March 27, 7:30 p.m., $8.50, Prince Music Theater) That said, if decadent aestheticism isn't your can of PBR and shot of Jim Beam, head upstairs to the Prince's Cinema Lounge for a perfectly assembled booze-fueled bill. Shouts from the Crowd profiles Bob & Barbara's house band Nate Wiley and the Crowd Pleasers, while the amiable Budget Liquor profiles a discount liquor store in Norwalk, Conn. Wiley and band will perform following the films, and Bob & Barbara's popular "special" will be available for quaffing.

Blowup (Fri., March 28, 8 p.m., free, Moore College of Art & Design, 20th and Race sts., 215-568-4515, ext. 4099, www.voicenet.com/~jschwart) For all its desperate counterculture-trawling, Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film has always struck me as a one-way ticket to Squaresville, pinning Swinging London under a microscope slide and consequently squishing the life out of it. (Brian De Palma wisely shifted the setting to the seedy world of B-movies in his superior quasi-remake, Blow Out). David Hemmings' flouncy fashion photog, surely the blueprint for Austin Powers, discovers the seedy underbelly of the lush life when he finds evidence of a murder in a seemingly harmless photograph. The resulting chase leads him to both The Yardbirds and Jane Birkin -- not bad for a day's work -- but Antonioni's Old World voyeurism puts a damper on the trip. But hey, it's free, and '60s model Veruschka (who's in the film as, natch, a model) will drop by afterwards for a Q&A.

Motion Pictures (Fri.-Sun., March 28 -30, $5-$8.50, Prince Music Theater) The Prince continues a busy pre-Film Festival weekend with this three-day extravaganza of films devoted to the dance. The program kicks off with In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.), a fascinating portrait of the dancer-turned-experimental filmmaker; even if you caught its recent run at I-House, you'll want to turn up Friday at 9:30 for a program of Deren's shorts (free with admission to Mirror) that includes Study in Choreography for Camera, Meditation on Violence, The Very Eye of Night and Deren's landmark Meshes of the Afternoon. Other programs include Nils Tavernier's documentary Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet (Sat., 2 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m.) and an evening of dance-themed short films (Sat., 7:30 p.m.), including locally originated shorts featuring dancers Myra Bazell and Ron Wood and Child Prodigies: Where Are They Now?, winner of the first Philadelphia 48 Hour Film Festival. Watch for a second installment of Motion Pictures in June.

Big Tea Party/DUTV Fundraiser (Tue., April 1, 8 p.m.- 2 a.m., free, Sugar Mom's Church Street Lounge, 225 Church St.) Support Philly's favorite home-ec mavericks and social commentators with performances by Amputation Nation's John Lumia, the More Fiends' Allen Fiend, standup by Termite TV's Anula Shetty, poetry by Aaren Perry and who-knows-what from drag rocker Helen Back. No entry fee -- bar proceeds go to the cause, so all you have to do is drink. Disclaimer: Even if she is on those City Paper bus ads, the whole "Juicy" thing is not Elizabeth Fiend's fault.

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June 8, 2006
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Screen Picks

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