By ROBIN CAUDELL
MONTPELIER — One by one, Focus on Film has collected 75 films for its curated Green Mountain Film Festival 2010.
This year's offerings include "Conversations With My Gardener," a 2007 French film starring Daniel Auteuil as a Parisian artist who finds a pastoral refuge and rediscovers a boyhood friend, a gardener portrayed by Jean-Pierre Darroussin.
"It has never been released in the United States," said Donald Rae, festival executive director. "It's a tremendous feature film. We wanted it for last year and weren't able to get it. But we finally got it this year."
Most films screened at the festival are new productions.
"We have one or two classics, but that is a sidebar of the focus festival," Rae said. "This year, one of the classics is a film from the 1960s, 'Bonnie and Clyde.'"
Arthur Penn's 1967 film about infamous Depression-era outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. After the March 28 screening, Boston Phoenix film critic Gerald Peary will discuss the controversial film's impact on film criticism.
"Gerald is very interested in the sea change that occurred among critics," Rae said. "Essentially, critics either got it or they were indifferent. Bosley Crowther, a critic since the 1940s at the New York Times, thought this was the worst film ever made. Other critics like Pauline Kael (The New Yorker) thought it was the best thing they'd ever seen. It finished off Bosley as a critic."
FAMILY FILMS
There will be three screenings (March 20, 23 and 28) of "The Secret of Kells," the Irish-animated film nominated for this year's Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. Set in medieval times, says the description on the festival's Web site, "young Brendan plays a role in preserving the ancient Book of Kells, an intricately illuminated Latin gospel that is considered to be Ireland's greatest national treasure."
"It's a very well-known illuminated manuscript that is very rare and important in the history of Ireland and in early Christian history as well," Rae said. "This is an animation made in Ireland in an old-fashioned way. It's a film that has not been shown widely in this country."
Rae booked the film in November before the Oscar nominations.
"The fact that we're showing it at the festival has worked out," he said. "This film has a broad appeal from age 8 and up."
The festival doesn't specifically include children's films.
But, Rae said, "we always want one or two films for families, and this is one of them."
The other family-oriented film is "The Summer of Walter Hacks" by George Woodard, a Waterbury, Vt. filmmaker. "The year is 1952, every country boy's summer is supposed to be idyllic, but 11-year-old Walter is forced to grow up fast on his father's farm," says the description. "Walter and his older brother Clifford work hard, though Walter finds unexpected intrigue and adventure with his bicycle, his cowboy hat, and his sidekick Margaret."
Woodard and producer Gerianne Smart will talk about the film after the March 19 screening.
"We have the world premiere of that film," Rae said. "We're showing it only twice."
"Walter Hacks" was shot entirely in Vermont in black-and-white.
"It's a real period piece," Rae said. "It's been in production for five years. The music was composed here. The score was performed by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra."
Woodard, a first-time director, is an actor, musician and dairy farmer.
"He's a Vermont boy that went off to California for awhile and came back to take over the family farm," Rae said.
INDIAN FILMS
This year's festival includes a group of Indian films and filmmakers.
"Last year, we showed 'Sita Sings the Blues.' The director (animator Nina Paley) was going to come had to cancel at the last moment."
In her place, she sent one of the film's narrators, Aseem Chhabra, an Indian journalist based in New York.
"He had such a great time last year, he wanted to come back."
Chhabra will introduce Satyajit Ray's 1964 classic, "Charulata," "set in Calcutta at the height of the 'Bengal Renaissance' of the 1880s and based on a Rabindranath Tagore novel," says the Web site. "Charulata is the lovely, childless, intelligent, and neglected wife of a newspaper editor and political activist."
"In addition, Aseem will introduce us to two new Indian films, 'Bombay Summer' and a documentary, 'The Sky Below,'" Rae said. "In both cases, the filmmakers (Joseph Matthew and Sarah Singh) will come to Vermont."
E-mail Robin Caudell at: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
