Flickerings Travels To “New New Europe,” Imaginarium Gains Superpowers

Flickerings — the film festival component of the annual Cornerstone Festival — has just announced its 2009 theme — “The New New Europe” — and schedule.

The fall of the Berlin Wall — the joy, the promise — seems so long ago, on the far side of another divide between dreams of the Old Europe and an abruptly digitized and globalized new one. East vs. West gives way to North vs. South as immigrants from former colonies pour into open societies. Our Featured Screenings program revisits Krzysztof Kieslowski’s post-Cold War reclamation of European values as a basis for a new Europe — while films in our “New New Europe” section signal the rise of a truly reconfigured West. A third track moves along another North-South axis to find common themes in an informal trilogy of faith, religiosity, and community.

Among the films that will be screened will be Michael Winterbottom’s In This World, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy, Car Dreyer’s Ordet, and Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast. You can see the full Flickerings schedule here.

Meanwhile, the Imaginarium — Flickerings’ more cult and underground-oriented sister festival — will be taking a look at superheroes this year.

For our 2009 program, the Imaginarium @cornerstonefestival considers SUPERNESS, weighing our hunger for EXTRA-ORDINARY powers against both the Incarnation’s vindication of the ORDINARY (and the Gospel’s bias for the weak, broken, least and last) and our deep longing for Truth and Justice (if not necessarily the American Way). Humanity’s insatiable longings for the INFINITE birth endless hero myths that spellbind us with inklings of grandeur or delusions of same. What is our Secret Identity? (Magical or Muggle?) Where is our real home (Kansas or Oz)? Our evening film program is “Heroic Fantasies” — exploring the whole range of meanings or “fantasy:” lies, delusions, madness and faith. Closing night spotlights that anno mirabilis of the Studio Era on its 70th anniversary — 1939: with newsreels, cartoons and a sing-a-long Wizard of Oz (come dressed as your favorite character).

Films screened will include Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, Matthew Ogens’ Confessions of a Superhero, Mabrouk El Mechri’s JCVD (which I recently reviewed over at Filmwell), and Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore’s Special. You can see the full Imaginarium schedule here.

Once again, it looks like Mike Hertenstein and Co. have done a bang up job with putting together a list of films that is bound to be as thought-provoking as it will be accessible and enjoyable. Suffice to say, I’m immensely jealous of those of you who will be making it out to Bushnell this year.