BFS screens A Fantastic Woman, others at Rialto & Ellen
Bozeman Film Society (BFS) is back on screen at the Rialto and Ellen Theatre in April with award-winning new releases and indies First up is the 2018 Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Language Film, A Fantastic Woman, screening at the Rialto Theater on Sunday, April 8th at 3:30pm. An additional showing is set for 7pm on Wednesday, April 11th at The Ellen Theatre.
Marina and Orlando are in love and planning for the future. Marina is a young waitress and aspiring singer. Orlando is 20 years older than her, and owns a printing company. After celebrating Marina’s birthday one evening, Orlando falls seriously ill. Marina rushes him to the emergency room, but he passes away just after arriving at the hospital. Instead of being able to mourn her lover, Marina is suddenly treated with suspicion.
The doctors and Orlando’s family don’t trust her. A woman detective investigates Marina to see if she was involved in his death and Orlando’s ex-wife forbids her from attending the funeral. To make matters worse, Orlando’s son threatens to throw Marina out of the flat she shared with Orlando. Marina is a trans woman and for most of Orlando’s family, her sexual identity is an aberration, a perversion. So Marina struggles for the right to be herself. She battles the very same forces that she has spent a lifetime fighting just to become the woman she is now – a complex, strong, forthright and fantastic woman. Rated R, A Fantastic Woman runs 104 minutes.
“In our increasingly polarized time, A Fantastic Woman bridges the gap between ignorance and understanding through the transcendent power of art.” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey screens at the Rialto twice on Sunday, April 22nd, at 6:15pm and 8:45pm.
Fred Beckey is the original American “Dirtbag” climber whose name has evoked mystery, adulation and vitriol since the 1940s. Beckey’s stubborn, singular quest to conquer peaks meant a solitary life on the road, where he left a long trail of scorned climbing partners and lost lovers in his wake. The groundbreaking life story of this rebel athlete, who inspired generations with his monumental first ascents, eloquent books and the lifestyle he fearlessly pioneered, is told for the first time in this exclusive documentary film. Filmed over a 12 year span, Fred Beckey, at age 83, allowed Colorado filmmaker Dave O’Leske intimate access to his life and archives. O’Leske spent the following decade at Beckey’s side making an extraordinary film about adventure, aging, sacrifice and a truly one-of-a-kind mountain character.
The film chronicles his climbs from 1939 to nearly today. Beckey made hundreds of first ascents – far more than any other North American – and wrote definitive mountain guides. But he remained an enigma. Rarely interviewed, always allergic to self-promotion, Beckey never landed on magazine covers or became a celebrity. He just kept climbing. There is only one Fred Beckey. His legacy in the mountains will live on forever. Not rated, Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey runs 99 minutes.
Later this month, Neither Wolf Nor Dog comes to Bozeman with two screenings of its own – at The Ellen on Wednesday, April 25th at 7pm, then the Rialto on Sunday, April 29th at 8:45pm.
Once known as the great unmade Native American film in Hollywood, Neither Wolf Nor Dog is adapted from the acclaimed Native American novel by Kent Nerburn and has soared to become the most successful non-Hollywood Native American film in years.
This funny and deeply moving film follows an author who gets sucked into the heart of contemporary Native American life in the sparse lands of the Dakotas by a 95-year-old Lakota elder. Kent Nerburn (Christopher Sweeney), a good-hearted, white American family man and writer, receives a mysterious call from a distant Indian reservation regarding an oral history book he made with Red Lake Ojibwe reservation students in northern Minnesota. Despite misgivings, Kent travels across America’s northern plains to arrive at the bleak, poverty-stricken reservation deep in the high plains of the Dakotas.
The old man, Dan (95 year-old Dave Bald Eagle, in an unforgettable final performance), who lives alone in a clapboard shack back in the hills with his only real companions – his dog, a close friend named Grover (Richard Ray Whitman) and his granddaughter, Wenonah (Roseanne Supernault) – interrogates Kent as to his motives for working with Indian people. Once satisfied he is not a turquoise clad “wannabe” spouting Indian philosophy, Dan recounts the story of American history from the Native point of view. As the stories pour from Dan, Kent’s understanding of the world is turned upside down. An inanimate landscape comes alive, and a history he thought he knew is called into question.
Directed by British filmmaker Steven Lewis Simpson and shot in 18 days on location at Pine Ridge, Standing Rock, and Cheyenne Indian Reservations, the film shows no sign of slowing its streak of sold-out screenings, bolstered by rave reviews from critics around the country such as Minneapolis StarTribune’s Colin Covert, who writes, “By the time the end credits arrive, the characters of this modest, crowd-funded feature are practically unforgettable. It’s immensely serious but no downer.” Not rated, Neither Wolf Nor Dog runs 110 minutes.
Visit www.bozemanfilmsociety.org for ticketing information, as well as further details about these and other upcoming screenings — “Keep ‘Em Flickering!” •
