Screen gems

By KAREN MARTIN SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

LITTLE ROCK — Channel surfers can warm to some Gallic sizzle with French Gigolo, available on IFC’s video-on-demand platform. It stars Nathalie Baye as a cool, elegant TV personality. Focused on her work, she prefers to keep her sex life relationship-free by relying on male escorts for satisfaction - until she encounters married construction worker/part-time escort Patrick (Eric Caravaca). Complications ensue.

Another intriguing offering, this one from Canada, is Necessities of Life, which stars Natar Ungalaaq (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) as an Inuit hunter who, afflicted with tuberculosis, is forced into quarantine at a Quebec City sanitarium where news of a possible two-year hospitalization plunges him into misery. Help comes from an unlikely source.

French Gigolo and Necessities of Life will be available for three months on demand. They’re part of IFC Festival Direct, an electronic film festival that presents six films each month that have premiered at major film festivals. Visit www.ifc.com.

Decomposition is the title of a photograph by Damian DeLoach of Pocahontas that was chosen as the image for the 2010 Ozark Foothills FilmFest poster. It was selected from more than 50 entries that seek to capture the landscape, lore and lifestyle of the Ozark foothills.

Want to see it? Gotta wait. The poster will be unveiled at a news conference announcing the 2010 Ozark Foothills FilmFest lineup Feb. 19 at the Batesville Area Chamber ofCommerce. DeLoach’s work will appear on the cover of the festival program and on the home page of the Web site. The ninth annual Ozark Foothills FilmFest will be March 24-28 at a number of venues in Batesville. For more information, visit ozarkfoot hillsfilmfest.org.

Sometimes you can get something for nothing. Community Cinema, a joint undertaking by Hendrix College and AETN, is a free monthly documentary series showing films produced by the Independent Television Service. Screenings are held in the rotunda of Bailey Library at Hendrix College in Conway.

The series premiered Oct. 27 with D Tour, concerning rock musician Pat Spurgeon of the band Rogue Wave as he struggles to cope with a failing kidney. D Tour, directed by Jim Granato, will be shown at 11 p.m. Nov. 15 on AETN as part of the PBS series Independent Lens.

The next film, showing at 6 p.m. Nov. 17, is Copyright Criminals, a documentary on the effect of hip-hop sampling on copyright creativity and technological change. It’ll be followed with Between the Folds (6 p.m. Dec. 1), concerning a group of theoretical scientists and fine artists who have abandoned their careers to forge new lives as modern-day paper folders.

There are some 50 Community Cinema sites nationwide that host monthly screenings followed by panel discussions. The goal is to help viewers learn about social issues raised in the documentaries. For more information, visit www.aetn. org/engage/community cinema.

MovieStyle, Pages 47 on 11/06/2009

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