Arts & Culture

Savannah Film Festival special screenings: a list, links, a couple of previews

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According to the Savannah Film Festival website, the entire schedule for the Oct. 27-Nov. 3 event will be available on Monday, October 1 at 10 a.m. Tickets will go on sale at exactly the same time.

Passes have been available for some time through the Savannah Box Office.

Earlier today I posted about some of this year’s special guests, an impressive list that includes James Gandolfini, Matt Dillon, and Diane Lane.

Click here for the previously released list of competition films.

The Savannah Morning News and Connect have also both reported the list of special gala screenings — the films typically shown to a packed Trustees Theater each evening during the 8-day festival. Other special screenings are offered during the day sessions, often to coincide with the appearance of a particular film’s cast or key production team members.

Sam Riley in “On the Road”

(By the way, for a number of years I’ve been suggesting to anyone who will listen that the festival should also show evening films at the Lucas, since so many Savannahians would like to see the competition films but cannot do so during the day and since Trustees always sells out early for its early evening screeenings.)

This year’s special screenings include:

  •  Amour, winner of Palme d’Or at Cannes, written and directed by Michael Haneke, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert
  • On the Road, Walter Salles’ adaptation of the Jack Kerouac classic starring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart
  • Violet & Daisy, directed by Geoffrey Fletcher and starring Alexis Bledel, Saoirse Ronan and James Gandolfini
  • No Woman, No Cry, a 2010 documentary by former super-model Christy Turlington Burns about the half million women who die each year due to inadequate health care during pregnancy
  • David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, winner of the top prize at the Toronto Film Festival
  • Flight, a new film by Robert Zemeckis, starring Denzel Washington, John Goodman and Don Cheadle, slated for release on Nov. 2nd
  • Quartet, directed by Dustin Hoffman and starring Maggie Smith
  • Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone
  • Wayne Blair’s The Sapphires, about a quartet of Australian Aboriginal girls whose band entertains U.S. troops in Vietman
  • and Rise of the Guardians, a new 3D film that I blogged about earlier

I’ll try to get trailers for all those films into a single post over the weekend sometime, but I’ve got to say that I’m most excited about On the Road and Amour.

How does one turn the Kerouac classic — a book so much about the poetry of words — into a film? I don’t know, but Walter Salles’ credits include The Motorcycle Diaries, a poetic road movie if there ever was one.

Here’s the trailer:

Amour sounds like it could be a tough film to sit through — it’s an about an elderly couple who face a crisis. But Haneke’s work — including his most recent film The White Ribbon make him a force to be reckoned with. And the cast should be amazing.

The trailer: