Critically Acclaimed Films this Spring at the Katharine Cornell Theatre...(scroll down please)


My Kid Could Paint That

Saturday, May 3
at 7:30 p.m.

Katharine Cornell Theatre
Spring Street

$8.00/$5.00 for Film Society members

Doors Open for admissions 30 min. prior to screening

Watch the trailer - click here



The truth lurking beneath My Kid Could Paint That is that your kid couldn't paint that.
---- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Bar-Lev goes to the heart of the issue -- that all art, but especially abstract art -- demands commitment on every side, but commitment takes many forms and has many motives behind it.
--- Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle

Amir Bar-Lev's engrossing film is as much about the stubborn ambiguities of art, truth, meaning, and relationships as it is about the authenticity of the Olmstead oeuvre.
--- Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly


In this fascinating documentary, filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev chronicles the rise and fall of child artist Marla Olmstead, the daughter of a dental hygienist and factory worker from upstate New York. Marla was all of four years old when she sold her first abstract painting. When the New York Times published a piece about her prodigious talent, she became an overnight media sensation, and her paintings quickly began to sell for up to five figures. While many lauded her amazing ability--and even likened her to Picasso--her success also sparked heated debates about the true value of abstract art.

Bar-Lev begins to explore this idea, as well as our culture's fascination with child prodigies, when the film suddenly takes a sharp and unexpected turn. The impetus is a piece on 60 MINUTES in which Charlie Rose suggests that Marla may not in fact be the sole creator of her work, and that her father--himself an amateur painter--is really the mastermind. The Olmsteads are stunned by the implication, and Marla quickly falls from grace with the art world. What follows is an unsettling but nonetheless riveting examination of Marla's family. Bar-Lev suddenly finds himself in a bit of an ethical conundrum: while he would like to get at the truth for the sake of the film, he is hesitant to cause further trouble for the Olmsteads, who have granted him intimate access to their lives. He ultimately leaves it up to viewers to decide what really happened--though for many, there will likely be little doubt as to the authenticity of Marla's work. As a documentary, the film works beautifully, raising a lot of big questions about truth in art, and even about the exploitive nature of documentary film. All this because of a four-year-old girl and her paint set.

2007 * 83 mins. * Documentary * Rated PG-13

KING CORN

Saturday, May 10
at 7:30 p.m.

Katharine Cornell Theatre
Spring Street

$8.00/$5.00 for Film Society members

Doors Open for admissions 30 min. prior to screening

Watch the trailer - click here



It should be required viewing before going into a supermarket, McDonald's or your very own refrigerator.
--- Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

King Corn insists that we recognize the Corn Belt's beauty and intelligence along with its somewhat self-induced plight.
--- Janice Page, Boston Globe

Aaron Woolf's we-are-what-we-eat documentary King Corn is a lively introduction to the corn industrial complex.
--- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly


King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.

In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eatÑand how we farm.

King Corn becomes an indispensable supplement to Spurlock's Super Size Me.

2007 * 88 mins. * Documentary * Not-Rated

DINNER & MOVIE NIGHT AT THE OUTERLAND, PRESENTED BY THE MV FILM SOCIETY

I'm Not There

Saturday, May 17
at 8:00 p.m.

The Outerland
MV Airport Road

$8.00/$5.00 for Film Society members


Dinner & Movie begins with a casual pub-style menu prepared specifically for the occasion by OUTERLAND. Come early, dine cabaret style from 6-8 pm on the main dance floor.

FOR DINNER RESERVATIONS CALL 508-693-1137 ext.13

For those who would like to just drop-in for the film only, please try to arrive before 8 pm to find seating and grab a beverage either on the main floor or on the mezzanine level - a great vantage point to watch this dynamic film, taking great advantage of the Outerland's surround sound system and large stage screen.

Watch the trailer - click here




I'm Not There feels like the most alive work to hit the screen in ages.
--- Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Among its many achievements, Todd Haynes's I'm Not There hurls a Molotov cocktail through the facade of the Hollywood biopic factory.
--- A.O. Scott, New York Times

What Haynes does is take away the reassuring segues that argue everything flows and makes sense, and to show what's really chaos under the skin of the film.
--- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times


Todd Haynes (VELVET GOLDMINE, FAR FROM HEAVEN) delivers this dazzling, experimental take on the life of popular music's most revered and enigmatic artist: Bob Dylan. In keeping with the impossible-to-pin-down nature of Dylan himself, Haynes chose to cast six different actors to portray several incarnations of the groundbreaking troubadour. The result is a challenging, sprawling work that spans several decades and genres. Woody (Marcus Carl Franklin) is a young black child with a folk music obsession; Jack Rollins (Christian Bale) is an upstart folksinger whose protest songs have ignited an entire generation; Arthur (Ben Wishaw) is a Rimbaud-esque figure who has begun to embrace a new form of lyrical poetry; Robbie (Heath Ledger) is a well-known actor whose marriage to the lovely Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) crumbles under the weight of his lifestyle; Billy (Richard Gere) is a slippery frontiersman who echoes Dylan's infatuation with the Old West and American folklore; and, finally, there is the substance-abusing, confrontational Jude (Cate Blanchett), who represents Dylan in the turbulent mid-1960s.

Much in the same way that Dylan appropriated a vast array of musical styles to create his own vernacular, Haynes does the same thing with I'M NOT THERE, using his expansive knowledge of movie history to pay homage to a variety of movements and genres (Godard, Fellini, Lester, etc.). While the cast all fare well in their roles, it is Cate Blanchett who runs away with the picture (she was nominated for an Oscar for this role), proving once again that she is one of the finest actors the movies have ever seen.

2007 * 135 mins. * Feature * Rated R

2008 Festival Dates - 11-14 September
Presenting over 50 films from 20+ countries

Presented by the Martha's Vineyard Film Society
Supported in part by a grant from the Martha's Vineyard Cultural Council, a local
agency of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

 

For additional information about the Martha's Vineyard Film Society or upcoming films, please contact Richard Paradise at 508-696-9369 or e-mail to rich@mvfilmsociety.com