The Circuit

by Steven Rosen
This year’s 31st Starz Denver Film Festival, which continues through Sunday, has high goals. Last year’s festival saw a 17 percent growth in attendance, selling 45,000 tickets. This year, despite the tough economy, organizer Denver Film Society is hoping for another slight increase.

“Our red-carpet events might see a decline, but our other screenings are selling out quickly,” said Britta Erickson, festival director. Red-carpet events, which are held at the 2,250-seat Ellie Caulkins Opera House and include options for parties and receptions, cost more than the $8-$11 general-public ticket price for screenings at the eight smaller theaters of Starz FilmCenter, which the film society operates year-round.

Erickson added that the festival also is lucky to have steadfast support from its premier sponsor, Denver-based Starz Entertainment Group, as well as from associate sponsor Anna & John J. Sie Foundation. (Sie is a retired Starz CEO.)

At Saturday night’s opera-house screening of Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” before what looked like a packed and enthralled house, Starz CEO Robert Clasen used the opportunity to tout the company’s year in remarks to the crowd.

He noted that Starz has a new original cable series “Crash”; that its Overture Films has the festival’s closing-night presentation, Joel Hopkins’ “Last Chance Harvey” featuring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson; and that the star of Overture’s hit “The Visitor,” Richard Jenkins, was in the audience. “We hope we are a place where talent can come and do its best,” Clasen said.

During an earlier-in-the-day Excellence in Acting tribute to Jenkins, the actor laughed when Denver Post film critic Lisa Kennedy asked how he’s adapting to the buzz about being a candidate for a Best Actor Oscar nomination. He said he was amazed “The Visitor’s” writer/director, Thomas McCarthy, created a lead part just for him. And he was candid in assessing his future.

“I’m 61,” he said. “I’m a character actor and they don’t write a lot of lead parts for 61-year-olds. There are not a lot of Tom McCarthys out there. So I’m no fool. I’m enjoying it while I can.”

During its first weekend, some of the festival’s highest-profile films addressed global urban alienation and even breakdown. “Slumdog” followed two outcast Muslim boys as they try to find safety amid the crime, poverty and garbage of Mumbai; the glum graphic-novel-like animation of Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” depicted the Israeli invasion of a war-torn Beirut; and Matteo Garrone’s verite-style “Gomorrah” methodically showed how organized crime grips the housing projects (and beyond) of Naples.

Also, Majid Majidi’s comparatively gentler “The Song of Sparrows” nevertheless revealed how the booming, bustling Tehran operates literally on the backs of motorcyclist-laborers who strap on boxes with heavy appliances in order to deliver them around town.

The Iranian director, who previously had been Oscar-nominated for “Children of Heaven,” attended the festival. It was his fifth U.S. visit, although organizers were worried he’d get through Customs.

Speaking through a translator before a screening of “Sparrows,” Majidi acknowledged that tension. “But I separate the U.S. government from the people,” he said. “Though they bothered me again this time, I came to the U.S. with a much better feeling due to the new President-elect, who I hope will usher in a new era of peace and security throughout the world.”

Majidi’s appearance, a major coup, was an early dividend of the film society recently naming Bo Smith as its new executive director. For the past 21 years, he has been in charge of film programming at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

“That was a piggyback off of what we had in Boston,” Smith said. “There’s an organization that supports our (Boston’s) Iranian Film Festival that not only paid for his plane ticket but also gave him a cash award (of) $2,500. That was a real enticement to get him to come to Boston. I was delighted when I proposed, ‘Would you like to go to Denver, too,’ and got a positive response. It was just a case of Denver Film Society having to pay roundtrip Boston-Denver, so it worked out very nicely.”

Majidi was the subject of one of several festival tributes or "evening with" events – other recipients included animator Bruce Bickford, cinematographer Wally Pfister, and Zurich-based filmmaker Thomas Imbach. In addition, avant-garde filmmaker Carolee Schneemann was pegged for the Stan Brakhage Vision Award and Federico Bondi for the new Maria & Tommaso Maglione Italian Filmmaker Award for his narrative feature “Black Sea.” And Bill Pullman is due in town Saturday to receive the John Cassavetes Award and screen his latest film, Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s “Surveillance.”