Other locally-focused film highlights at MIFF this weekend include what ought to be a fine and raucous screening of local cult classic documentary Dead River Rough Cut (1976), about a pair of DIY hunters, fishers, loggers, and shack-dwellers. The screening will be accompanied by live music from the Gawler Family, who contributed work for the film’s revamped soundtrack. Another form of rough-cut is a double-feature of half-hours of two forthcoming local films: Lena Friedrich’s documentary Hermythology, about the infamous North Pond hermit Christopher Knight; and a feature-film version of Maine young-adult classic Lost on a Mountain in Maine, directed by Ryan Cook and Derek Desmond. A local doc for fans of the recent award-winner Marwencol is Jeremy Workman’s MagicalUniverse, about an elderly Saco native devoted to photographing his collection of Barbie dolls. Maine-set features screening this weekend include Lance Edmonds’s debut Bluebird, a small-town drama inspired by The Sweet Hereafter and starring Mad Men’s John Slattery and Girls’ Adam Driver; and The Guide, a potentially-preposterous but slick-looking backwoods thriller directed by John Meyers.
Arthouse-bound features and documentaries not to be missed are headlined by Viola, an inventive, female-focused Shakespeare riff directed by the young Argentinean prodigy Matias Pineiro. A double-award winner at this year’s SXSW film festival, MIFF closer Short Term 12, directed by Destin Cretton, is a dramedy about two counselors at a foster-care facility for teenagers. Dutch director Jos Stelling’s intriguing period drama The Girl and Death looks to owe a great and invigorating cinematographic debt to Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman’s Remote Area Medical, shaping up as one of the year’s notable documentaries, follows a volunteer crew organizing pop-up clinics at large public events.
Also keep a lookout for MIFF’s Re-Discovery sidebar of lesser-known films from major filmmakers screening on 35mm, this year featuring work by Martin Scorsese, Nicholas Ray, and the great silent comic Harold Lloyd.
Related:
Festival atmosphere, (10) days of celluloid, Cinema paradisos, More 
- Festival atmosphere
Summer traditionally has been the happy hunting ground for Hollywood studios — the time when they unleash their big-budgeted, f/x-heavy warhorses on armies of newly freed schoolchildren and frazzled adults trying to beat the heat.
- (10) days of celluloid
Among the many treats at last year's Maine International Film Festival were a future Oscar winner (James Marsh's documentary Man on Wire ) and one of the biggest art-house hits of 2008 (Scandinavian teen-vampire flick Let the Right One In ).
- Cinema paradisos
Here's the dilemma: you love movies, but you also love the idea of taking a vacation to one of the many inviting resorts that New England has to offer — the beaches of Cape Cod or the Islands, picturesque towns in Maine or Rhode Island, or even the cultural and historical enclaves of Boston itself.
- A world of cinema
The 13th Maine International Film Festival begins in Waterville next Friday, and along with the usual unusual array of (political, music, and eco-)documentaries, Amerindies, classic and foreign films, and a special night at the drive-in, MIFF has a couple new tricks up its sleeve.
- The film festivals of New England are no last resorts
Not only does our region offer some of the country's best vacation spots, but it also hosts some of the most innovative, manageable, illuminating, and entertaining cinephilic celebrations around.
- New England’s film festivals make great getaways
We can't complain much here in the Portland area about the films we get to see.
- Ascending filmmakers, dying formats
It's a precarious moment for lovers of classic films and, indeed, film itself.
- Nine Maine-made quickies light up Waterville
In this year’s Maine Shorts program at the Maine International Film Festival, nine films range from the silly to the elegiac.
- Less
Topics:
Features
, MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
