Now entering its 16th season and making more and more noise on the national film festival scene with each passing year, the 2010 Cucalorus Film Festival is set to electrify downtown Wilmington once again, running from November 11-14 this fall. As in previous installments, the program will boast approximately 120 films selected from a record-breaking count of more than 1,100 submissions spanning 39 different countries. In addition to its panorama of international fare, Cucalorus will have no shortage of cutting-edge American features and shorts, including groundbreaking favorites from Sundance, South by Southwest and ample representation from a multitude of North Carolina filmmakers to boot.
Perhaps the most talked about film in the program is Frenchman Gaspar Noé’s “Enter the Void,” an existential and psychedelic epic set against Tokyo’s pulsating club scene and starring Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta. The film was accompanied by considerable buzz at both Cannes and Toronto this year, and headlines a list of around 25 feature narratives on display at Cucalorus, a noncompetitive festival by design. Other highlights among the feature narratives include “Barry Munday,” an edgy castration comedy starring Patrick Wilson and Chloe Sevigny that debuted at SXSW earlier this year, and “The Dry Land,” a drama about an Iraq War veteran struggling to reconcile his suppressed combat memories upon returning home which stars Wilmer Valderrama, America Ferrera, Jason Ritter and Academy Award nominee Melissa Leo (“Frozen River”).
On the nonfiction side, Cucalorus has about 20 fascinating feature documentaries to offer this year. “A Film Unfinished,” which screened in competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, examines a now infamous Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw ghetto with insight that includes commentary from ghetto survivors and, miraculously, even one of the original cameramen. No less intriguing but falling more on the lighthearted side, the films “Roll Out, Cowboy” and “The Erectionman” chronicle the lives of a rapping cowboy from North Dakota and an Austrian man exploring the cultural phenomenon of Viagra, respectively. The festival likewise features more than 70 shorts spanning no less than twelve short film blocks, colorfully designated as usual with the names of a variety of insects — hence their fascination with all things bug-related this year. (Last year’s theme was varieties of cheese!)
In addition to its immense program of films, Cucalorus has a whole slew of panels, technical seminars, parties and live performances to offer again this year, including the extremely popular opening night event Dance-a-lorus, a collaboration that fuses the work of local filmmakers with dance choreography from Wilmington’s Dance Cooperative. Another one-of-a-kind event that only a Wilmington-based festival could offer is The Blue Velvet Tour, an enlightening tour of locations featured in David Lynch’s legendary film “Blue Velvet” led by filmmaker and educator Ben Fancy. To add to its the multi-sensory initiatives, they’ll also host a performance of filmmaker Matt Hulse’s “Audible Picture Show,” a touring collection of audio pieces created for the cinema that will feature an original piece specifically commissioned for the Cucalorus edition. Hulse will also screen a work-in-progress of his narrative feature project “Dummy Jim” during his stay.
Festival director Dan Brawley recently confided that “we’re more excited than ever about the films and filmmakers who will be bringing their work to Cucalorus this year. Without a doubt, this year’s festival schedule will be the strongest in our history, with a sampling of the most significant works from the festival circuit and a handful of discoveries that will blow you away. I really think that Cucalorus is making a statement – solidifying its position as an important gathering of the most exciting artists working in film.”
If the last fifteen years are any indication of what’s in store for 2010, we likely have no reason to doubt him. For more information, visit www.cucalorus.org.
