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Topic: sffs screen at the sundance kabuki

Wings of satire: "Wind Man" is a crazy-quilt of absurdism, pathos, mysticism and satire. (Photo courtesy SFFS)

Take Two

The fantastical imagination of "Wind Man"

When Wind Man appeared on the SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas’ schedule, moral crisis ensued. I’d seen and loved this big-screen directorial debut by veteran Russian screenwriter Khuat Akhmetov last year at the Montreal Festival du Monde, reviewing it for the trade magazine Variety without ever imagining it would find any berth (at least in North America) outside the fest circuit. I mean, when was the last time an earthy parabolic whimsy of the once internationally-popular Soviet Block (think Parajanov, Jakubisko, etc.) surfaced on U.S. arthouse screens? Er, 1970? Certainly long ago—long before the Iron Curtain fell.

Yet here is Wind Man, such a throwback it feels like the rediscovery of an exotic, presumed-extinct species, now unexpectedly perched for a week at the Kabuki. And its arrival trumps my capacity for the informative neutrality I’ve been asked to use in my approach to films on the SFFS Screen, which is programmed by the publisher of SF360.org, the San Francisco Film Society. Forgive me, but this will be a rave.

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Downturns: Italian flm "Days and Clouds" on the SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki looks at tough economic times. (Photo courtesy SFFS)

Insider

"Days and Clouds" finds changes in the weather

It’s said those who’ve never known it think love is the key to happiness; the poor know it is money. Those who espouse the more selfless kind of love are either monks or have never known real, suffocating, no-visible-way-out poverty. Even a drop from one economic strata to another that might still be positively luxurious in the Third World can cause serious anxiety or worse in the First.

Particularly now, with the economy (are we past that “Don’t call it a recession” stage yet?) having displaced terrorism and the war in Iraq as Americans’ biggest worry, it gives pause to realize how seldom our popular entertainment deals at all with that which so often concerns us most. Namely, why are we working harder, yet it keeps getting harder to make ends meet? The U.S. bedrock is supposed to be its middle class—yet that population bulk has slipped around on less-than-terra firma lately while the rich/poor gap widens, tipping more and more working-class folk increasingly toward a future as The New Poor.

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Given the pink slip: Two men handle unemployment in SFFS Screen's Canadian comedy "Hank and Mike." (Photo courtesy SFFS)

Insider

Of bunnies and backstories: SFFS Screen's "Hank and Mike"

Thomas Michael remembers well the birth of Hank and Mike, the titular blue-collar Easter bunnies in director Matthiew Klinck’s absurdist workplace comedy on the SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki starting Friday. It was a decade ago and the then 19-year-old writer/actor was spitballing ideas with the rest of the writing staff of Y B Normal?, a Canadian Comedy Network sketch show.

"I said, ‘Hey, what about an Easter bunny and I pretended to take a drag on a cigarette, ‘Those fucking kids and their fucking chocolates!’" Michael relates in a conference call with SF360.org and his writing partner and co-star Paolo Mancini. "That got a big laugh. Then Paolo and I locked ourselves in the basement for a few hours and came up with the actual characters."

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