Cinema Paradiso Film Screenings

From May 29th though July 2nd, 2006On May 29th Cinema Paradiso will present the screening of Dark Water. Sponsored by The Sundance Channel, Dark Water is the return of Hideo Nakata, the filmmaker who ignited the current Japanese horror boom with 1998’s Ring. This is a disturbing chiller touching on fears of childhood abandonment and vulnerability. An emotionally fragile single mother (Hitomi Kuroki) and her six-year-old daughter (Rio Kanno) move into a seedy apartment building, where ghostly footsteps, a mysterious moldering damp patch on the ceiling and empty hallways convey an atmosphere of uncanny dread. On May 31st, Emerging Pictures will present Our Brand is Crisis. This is a documentary that examines what happens when an American political consulting group, one of whose members is James Carville, agrees to work for Bolivian presidential candidate Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, better known as Goni. Goni is campaigning in a country where the economy is in critical condition and political corruption and social disorder are the rule. Fortunately for Goni, Carville’s consulting group specializes in managing crisis. On June 2nd through June 4th, Look Both Ways will be presented by Emerging Pictures. This movie happens during one unusually hot weekend and shows how four friends struggle after hearing some life-changing news. On June 7th and 8th Emerging Pictures will presents How to Eat A Watermelon in White Company. A feature-length documentary on renegade filmmaker, novelist, musician and theater impresario, Melvin Van Peebles. From June 9th through 11th, Emerging Pictures presents Clean, where Emily Wang (Maggie Cheung) is a woman who wrestles with her dream of becoming a singer, her fitness as a mother, and daily life without her partner Lee (James Johnston). Her past is riddled with drugs and regrets, the result of which left Lee dead in a desolate motel room in Hamilton, Ontario, and landed Emily with a six-month jail sentence. The only thing that she desires for the future is a loving relationship with her son Jay, who is being cared for by Lee’s parents, Albrecht (Nick Nolte) and Rosemary (Martha Henry). While Rosemary blames Emily for the death of Lee, Albrecht recognizes the importance of the bond between a mother and her son, and his faith sets the standard for the faith Emily must find in herself. On June 12th, The Sundance Channel will sponsor Follow My Voice: With the Music of Hedwig. This is unique look at the year long creation of “Wig in a Box” (a tribute/ benefit album for the Hetrick Martin Institute, home of the nation’s first accredited gay high school, Harvey Milk), combined with the stories of compelling, complicated, gender-bending kids from the school. Record producer, Chris Slusarenko along with Hedwig creators, John Cameron Mitchell and composer/ lyricist Stephen Trask, tapped some of the biggest names in the indie-rock/ pop scene (Rufus Wainwright, The Polyphonic Spree, Cyndi Lauper, Yoko Ono, The Breeders, Sleater-Kinney, They Might Be Giants, Yo La Tengo, and many more) to pay tribute to the music of Hedwig and raise money for the Harvey Milk School. Through a dramatic and vibrant combination of verité documentation, student video diaries, graphics and rare in-studio song ecordings, Follow My Voice will offers a never before seen look at this irreverent intersection of gender and rock. (2005) On June 14th, Emerging Pictures will present Stolen. A movie where two thieves dressed as Boston police officers gained entrance to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston Massachusetts and successfully executed the largest art heist in modern history. Among the thirteen priceless works stolen was Vermeer’s “The Concert” one of only 35 of the masters surviving works. Not a single one of the works has been recovered. Stolen is a full exploration of the Gardner theft, and the fascinating, disparate characters involved: from the 19th century Grand dame Isabella Gardner to a private detective obsessed with finding the art to a terrorist organization with a penchant for stealing Vermeers Cast: Blythe Danner, Campbell Scott. On June 16th and 17th, Emerging Pictures will also present Twelve and Holding, a film where Rudy and Jacob Carges are two twin boys who are best friends, yet completely different. Rudy is athletic, brave and charismatic while his twin Jacob is quiet, timid and deeply affected by the unsightly birthmark on his face. Malee, a precocious only-child of a single, emotionally detached mother, and Leonard, an overweight boy from an obese family, make up the twins’ close-knit group of friends. When Rudy dies protecting his tree house that the local trailer park boys, Jeff and Kenny, set on fire, Jacob, Malee and Leonard each deal with this tragic event in different ways. On June 21st and 22nd, Emergin Pictures will present Why We Fight. He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning “military industrial complex,” foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests. From June 23rd through 25th, Emerging Pictures will present Mongolian Ping Pong. In this utterly charming, low-key comedy, three young boys from Mongolia’s remote heartland come to suspect that a ping-pong ball that floats into their lives – an artifact totally alien to them – is a Chinese national treasure. They hatch a plan to return it to a grateful nation by bringing it back to Beijing. On June 24th, Maroone Moonlight Movies sponsored by Auto Nation at Huizenga Plaza presents Independence Day. On June 28th and 29th, Emerging Pictures will present Undiscovered Gems: Four Eyed Monsters. A clever exploration of how the two filmmakers found each other, the movie smartly wonders how two creative hipsters can find a meaningful relationship today. Blending narrative and non-fiction elements, the film has been hailed as an innovative and ambitious debut. On June 30th, Emerging Pictures will present Three Times. Three stories set in three times, 1911, 1966 and 2005. Two actors play the two main characters in each story. Cinema Paradiso is located at 503 SE 6 Street in downtown, Ft. Lauderdale. For more information, please call: 954.525.film