For seven days, starting next Thursday, Regal's Green Hills megaplex will serve as a microcosm of the split-level movie market. The upstairs screens—the big ones, up there with all the neon—will be showing blockbuster Hollywood product. Take the escalator downstairs, walk down a hallway, and there will be four screens parceled out for something called "indies."

Something similar happens at Green Hills every week. The difference is that starting next Thursday, more than 10,000 people will turn out for the indies alone. Now in its 36th year, the Nashville Film Festival—don't say "NIFF," it's officially the "NaFF"—has become a link in a widening alternative distribution circuit made up of local and regional film festivals. The good news: it's your chance to see terrific movies that are too risky, too unconventional, too specialized, or simply too far outside the mandates of exhibitors and distributors to reach those top-level theaters. The bad news: In many cases, it's your only chance.

To get the most out of the festival, whether you're a first-timer or a hardcore iron-butt cinephile, the Scene offers this guide to many of the films showing at the 2005 NaFF. In addition, we offer a few practical tips:

Buy advance tickets. First, assume that anything with a visiting star—like the opening-night gala screening of The Thing About My Folks, hosted by Peter Falk and Paul Reiser—will sell out fast. Get those first. Same goes for personal-appearance events such as the talks with Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman (1:30 and 7:30 p.m. April 16), Closer producer Cary Brokaw (7 p.m. April 19), indie-film legend John Pierson (11 a.m. April 16), and Billy Ray Cyrus. (You laugh, but the dude did work with David Lynch.) Second, bear in mind that the weekend and nighttime weekday slots fill up faster. The best time to beat crowds: weekday afternoons. Now go to www.nashvillefilmfestival.org or call (800) 965-4827 and order; online will be cheaper.

Watch out for single screenings. Movies that have distribution or a heavy buzz will often show only once, since their distributors or makers anticipate a regular run. This year, those include the Jia Zhangke drama The World (see the sidebar), the French festival favorite The 10th District Court (see below), and the well-received closing-night doc Townes Van Zandt: Be Here to Love Me (not available for review). Get those ahead of time.

Anything local will sell out. This year, that includes the documentary A Reawakening in Cayce Homes; the Tennessee Film Nights of shorts by local filmmakers (two programs' worth); and the locally produced feature Dear Mr. Cash. As Bob Dylan sang, if you gotta go, go now.

Arrive at least a half-hour early. There will be lines to buy popcorn. There will be lines to buy tickets. There will be lines to pick up tickets. There will be lines into the theaters. Do not fight these: talking to other people in line is one of the best parts of the festival. (When else will you find 200 people in line for a film from mainland China?) But don't show up five minutes before showtime and expect to get a seat that's not in someone's lap.

Stay for the filmmaker Q&A's, if possible, and ask good questions. Nothing makes the city look better to visiting talent, or strengthens the festival's chances to attract more.

Be nice to the festival staff. Most are volunteers. They did not build the goofy parking garage (park high, take the elevators), and they did not create the traffic jam getting into or out of it. They are not intentionally slowing down the ticket computer. And festival coordinator Mandy McBroom is, like, way cute and a sweetheart to boot.

Finally, ride the buzz. Ask people what they've seen, and if you hear about something you hadn't considered, give it a shot. If nothing else, you'll have lots of pleasant conversations with complete strangers you'd never meet otherwise. At a film festival, you can get past a lot of awkward social conventions with just this simple icebreaker: "What've you seen?"

On with the show.

♦ = Highly recommended.

Thursday, April 14

♦ Hustle & Flow (9:30 p.m.) A last-minute addition to the fest (and an eleventh-hour coup), Memphis filmmaker Craig Brewer's drama about a Bluff City pimp (Terrence Dashon Howard) who takes an all-or-nothing shot at becoming a rapper caused a sensation earlier this year at Sundance. (After a well-documented bidding war, it eventually sold to Paramount and MTV Films in the biggest deal to come out of the festival in a decade.) Brewer, whose fine debut film The Poor and Hungry swept the NaFF awards in 2001, and native Nashville actor DJ Qualls will attend; no word on whether producer John Singleton will make it out.

Friday, April 15

Rhythm Is It! (1:30 p.m.; also 2:30 p.m. April 17) The rhythmic savagery of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" provides the backdrop for a collaboration between the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and 250 young dancers, most of whom have never set foot in a rehearsal studio. With only weeks to go, the project becomes a kind of modern-dance boot camp that tests the students' endurance on every level. The fast cutting favored by filmmakers Thomas Grube and Enrique Sanchez Lansch doesn't work for dance: it chops and scatters the big finale when we just want to see how the pieces finally fit. Still, it's hard not to be moved by conductor Simon Battle's boyish enthusiasm, by the kids' growing pride, and by the inherent excitement of music that after almost a century still sounds raw and newly born. —Jim Ridley

♦ The Last Victory (1:45 p.m.; also 1 p.m. April 16) Every June, over 100,000 spectators gather in the Tuscan city of Siena to watch Il Palio, the centuries-old horse race that pits the city's 17 districts against each other for bragging rights. It may be just an 80-second bareback jaunt around Siena's town square, but the race obsesses the citizens of Civetta, the city's smallest district, which hasn't fielded a winner since 1979. Using individual stories to weave Civetta's social fabric, John Appel's documentary engagingly recounts the 2002 race, capturing every nuance of the buildup—and the district's struggle for identity and self-determination—with a light touch. In Italian with English subtitles. —Ryan Norris

♦ Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (4:30 p.m.; also 9:15 p.m. April 17)

An absolute must-see. As the commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda, Canadian Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire arrived with noble intentions; after sitting by, hands tied by distant bureaucrats and indifferent diplomats, while Hutus butchered Tutsis by the hundreds of thousands in 1994, he left a disillusioned and suicidal man. Peter Raymont's devastating film follows Dallaire 10 years later as he treks back to Rwanda, where all he sees are the signposts of genocide and international apathy—and the memorials to his fallen troops, whose deaths were placed by many on his head. Aside from scarifying footage of corpse-lined streets and Hutus efficiently slaughtering their prisoners with machetes, the movie's most haunting images are of the retired Dallaire returning to sites that confront him with the vastness of the atrocity—including a bunker where table after neatly lined table serves as a repository of skulls. If you watched Hotel Rwanda wondering why Nick Nolte's UN commander never just, hell, started shooting, Dallaire's anguished decency comes as a fierce rebuke—and a solemn reminder that while the West fiddles, the devil is busy shaking hands in Darfur. —Jim Ridley

♦ Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (4:30 p.m.; also 9:15 p.m. April 17)

Conspiracy of Silence (6:45 p.m.) Director John Deery explores power relationships and sexual repression in an Irish Catholic seminary in this uneven but occasionally penetrating melodrama. When an HIV-positive priest commits suicide, a young man is expelled from the institute for being in a fellow male student's room after hours. An upstart reporter for the local paper smells a rat and tries to expose the hypocrisy of those involved—which isn't hard, since the clergy are painted as a cabal of gangster-ish politicos who cling to power by invoking scripture. The film lurches awkwardly from conspiratorial intrigue to WB-tinged domestic drama, the latter underpinned by a soundtrack that suggests Wyndham Hill Classics: Celtic Legacy. —Ryan Norris

♦ Lipstick and Dynamite: The First Ladies of Wrestling (7:30 p.m.) As dramatized in Million Dollar Baby, there's always a career path for poor women with no prospects: throw 'em in a ring and let them beat the hell out of each other. Except the salty survivors in Ruth Leitman's vivacious documentary make Hilary Swank look like Hilary Duff—they come from a postwar, pre-feminist era when women wrestlers were expected to priss around in lipstick before they mauled each other in the ring, with half the take going to shady promoters. Leitman has amazing archival footage, but the real draw is the tough-as-nails oral history provided by such pioneers as The Fabulous Moolah, The Great Mae Young and the hilariously blunt Gladys "Killem" Gillem, all of whom testify to wrestling's capacity for self-invention. The cool alt-country soundtrack features Kelly Hogan and Neko Case—who learned after watching the rough cut that wrestler Ella Waldek was actually her aunt. —Jim Ridley

The Last Mogul (9:00 p.m.; also 4:30 p.m. April 21) "Studio head" isn't a job with a lot of security or long-term power, but the late Lew Wasserman turned his dual positions at Universal and the MCA talent agency into a rare fiefdom, clandestinely controlling organized labor and the star system in Hollywood for a half-century. This documentary details how Wasserman forged his business strategy in the '20s, while working at Prohibition-era speakeasies and brothels. He handled no paperwork, and left no trails. Of course that also means that The Last Mogul contains little of the late Wasserman's own words and opinions. Director Barry Avrich relies almost exclusively on talking heads, file photos, and clips of old movies, in a rigidly conventional structure that offers plenty of interesting facts but little hard analysis. —Noel Murray

♦ Lbs. (9:30 p.m.; also 4:30 p.m. April 18) A touching, frank feature-film debut for both director Matthew Bonifacio and lead actor Carmine Famiglietti, who co-wrote this semi-autobiographical piece about eating addiction and obesity. The movie details the struggles of Neil Perota, a man who abandons his worldly comforts and comfort food after a heart attack that ruins his sister's wedding. In an effort to lose weight himself, Famiglietti wrote himself into the lead role, and his physical transformation over the movie's running time is astounding. But it's the movie's sentiment and good humor that make it truly impressive. Famiglietti will attend the screening. —Brittney Gilbert

Sexual Life (9:45 p.m.) In a series of interlocking, character-driven vignettes, writer-director Ken Kwapis (a TV vet whose credits include Freaks and Geeks and the American version of The Office) offers an entertaining if facile glimpse into the lives of a group of sexually maladjusted Reality Bites types. The cast (featuring Anne Heche, Kerry Washington and Kevin Corrigan) plays musical beds in a plot that folds back on itself like a sub-par Seinfeld episode. But when the film transcends voice-overs and typical relationship clichés, it manages to be both insightful and droll. In Kwapis' world, everyone cheats and all are prone to moral backsliding; as a 19-year-old prostitute puts it, "A penis has a simple agenda." Indeed. —Ryan Norris

The Curse of El Charro (10 p.m.) Wholly sophomoric, this gory bloodfest by former Nashvillian Rich Ragsdale retains many staples of the standard-issue low-budget slasher film: flat acting, increasingly implausible back-story, half-naked girls in peril. The story involves a troubled college coed who keeps seeing visions of her sister, a recent suicide victim, and an evil undead 18th-century land baron named El Charro. Charro has a rather obsessive grudge against those, such as our heroine, who resemble a certain woman who spurned him long ago and triggered his murderous zombie hate. There is some interesting experimental photography during the Guy Maddin-derived dream sequences, as well as an angel-of-mercy apparition that resembles Billy Baldwin. But that is not enough to lift the curse of this over-the-top mess. Ragsdale will attend the screening. —Jonathan Flax

Saturday, April 16

♦ The Devil Probably (1:15 p.m.) Robert Bresson's late-period (1977) masterpiece, his most Godardian offering, seems deliberately inscrutable. It opens with paired headlines: A youth has committed suicide; no, in fact, he was murdered. As we later learn, both are correct. The film captures the last flickerings of the '60s generation's fading idealism; Bresson's young protagonists struggle vainly for answers, even as the world around them marches inexorably toward annihilation. When the group's brooding nihilist attempts an act of affirmation, his efforts end in defilement. Yet with death imminent—the ultimate negation—he's surprised the event isn't accompanied by revelation. In a sense, The Devil Probably is the inverse of Bresson's A Man Escaped, its cinematic sacrament ending in profound quandary rather than transcendence. Selected for the festival and introduced by filmmaker Harmony Korine. —Scott Manzler

♦ Mutual Appreciation (1:45 p.m.)

Writer-director-co-star Andrew Bujalski's first film, Funny Ha Ha, drew lots of comparisons to early Cassavetes: the debt seems obvious in his second—a smart, incisive character study shot in glorious black-and-white 16 mm that has the feel of improvisation, yet captures the emotional solipsism of the indie-pop era as acutely as Shadows did beatnik-jazz anxiety. The imperceptible plot—wanna-be rock star (Justin Rice) comes between old friend (Bujalski) and friend's girlfriend (Rachel Clift) matters less than Bujalski's sharp-eared sensitivity to conversational nuance: to awkward pauses that mask sexual curiosity, to the self-conscious banter of left-of-the-dial radio interviews, to small talk between longtime friends choking back secrets. And Justin Rice, who plays the popster, fuses smarm, sincerity and self-interest so precisely you'll want to kick him off your couch. —Jim Ridley

Writer-director-co-star Andrew Bujalski's first film, Funny Ha Ha, drew lots of comparisons to early Cassavetes: the debt seems obvious in his second—a smart, incisive character study shot in glorious black-and-white 16 mm that has the feel of improvisation, yet captures the emotional solipsism of the indie-pop era as acutely as Shadows did beatnik-jazz anxiety. The imperceptible plot—wanna-be rock star (Justin Rice) comes between old friend (Bujalski) and friend's girlfriend (Rachel Clift) matters less than Bujalski's sharp-eared sensitivity to conversational nuance: to awkward pauses that mask sexual curiosity, to the self-conscious banter of left-of-the-dial radio interviews, to small talk between longtime friends choking back secrets. And Justin Rice, who plays the popster, fuses smarm, sincerity and self-interest so precisely you'll want to kick him off your couch. —Jim Ridley

After the Day Before (3 p.m.) Come see Attila Janisch's enigmatic film if you like beautiful shots of the countryside and don't care much about their context. A soporific, non-linear Hungarian mystery, it's an inert series of pretty pictures that makes Wim Wenders' road movies look like Michael Bay. A middle-aged man comes to a rural village looking for a house that he has inherited from a distant relative, but becomes involved in a murder case. For almost all of its 120 minutes, Janisch's film feels like the opening of a potentially potent thriller. However, the creepy atmosphere dissipates into pretension long before the genuinely surprising resolution. —Steve Erickson

♦ The Real Dirt on Farmer John (3:30 p.m.; also 4 p.m. April 18) When John Peterson was just a toddler on his father's 300-acre farm, his mother bought a video camera and began filming the family's life. As a teen, when his father died, he took over the farm and the camera, regularly recording his successes and failures. What emerges in this award-winning doc, as shaped by director Taggart Siegel, is the tale of a good and honest man castigated by his neighbors and made a pariah for daring to be different in a tiny rural town. As Siegel listens empathetically, Farmer John chronicles the loss of his farmland, his parents and his lovers. The result is a phenomenal memoir—and a testament to how integrity combined with a great deal of effort can change an individual as well as an entire community. Former Vice President Al Gore will present an award to Peterson and director Siegel at the Saturday screening. —Brittney Gilbert

♦ Czech Dream (4:15 p.m.) Hey, Prague—you got Punk'd! In this subversive Central European slice of reality TV, a kind of I Club Huckabees, Czech film students Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda protest the kudzu creep of globalization with a stunt that's worthy of the Yes Men. As "hypermarkets" (i.e., homegrown Wal-Marts) invade the Czech Republic, the directors commission a massive ad campaign for an everything store called "The Czech Dream." Thousands show up for the grand opening, expecting implausibly huge discounts on everyday staples—only to get a rude surprise. At that point, the emptiness of "The Czech Dream" takes on a whole new meaning. The filmmakers sometimes come off as smug jerks, but that doesn't mean they're wrong about the insidious effects of chain colonization, or the infernal effectiveness of something-for-nothing come-ons even in political pitches. If their outrage about the evils of advertising seems ho-hum, no wonder: to Americans, shilling is like air. —Jim Ridley

A Midwinter Night's Dream (7:15 p.m.) In this allegorical drama by Goran Paskaljevic (Cabaret Balkan), a convicted Serbian deserter (Lazar Ristovski) returns home after 10 years in prison to find his mother dead and his home inhabited by two Bosnian refugees, an autistic girl (Jovana Mitic) and her mother (Jasna Zalica). After an aborted attempt to leave the two at a refugee safe house, the exiles are allowed to stay and serve as the deserter's surrogate family, while he naively hopes to wake the girl from her "sleep." Though offered as a metaphor for contemporary Serbia, Paskaljevic's film is more absorbing as an examination of emotional distance and the lengths to which individuals will go to eradicate those distances. —Ryan Norris

Hank Williams First Nation (9:00 p.m.; also 12:45 p.m. April 18) In writer-director Aaron James Sorensen's debut film, an Alberta reservation is abuzz over a pair of locals who've gone on a bus trip to Nashville to determine if Hank Williams is really dead. The plot's more a metaphor for fading glory than a compelling story in and of itself, and Sorensen succumbs too often to the indie cutes, depicting his Native Americans characters as overly wide-eyed. The movie also cheats on the Hank Williams angle, using none of his music or even any by Hank III (who figures in the story but doesn't appear). But Sorensen gets a lot of mileage out of running other people's music over gorgeous landscape shots, and the film has a magnificent sense of place. It draws on two of the primary virtues of regional cinema: local color and fresh faces. Sorensen will attend the screening. —Noel Murray

♦ The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (9:45 p.m.)

Asia Argento's hellacious adaptation of the JT LeRoy cult novel will likely be the most polarizing movie at the festival, but if the director-star is an exhibitionist before the camera, she shows surprising formal rigor behind it. Her portrait of a traumatized prepubescent boy yanked through a world of sadistic, pedophilic, irresponsible adults by his gutter-trash mom (Argento, in full-on Courtney Love mode) never lets us out of the boy's splintering psyche for a second—even when the gender-scarred kid is seducing his mom's latest sicko boyfriend (a well-cast Marilyn Manson). A vortex of unrelenting perversity, scuzzy film stocks, assaultive music (X-rated David Allen Coe!) and anonymous American-nowhere grungescapes—it was shot in Knoxville—it made my skin crawl, but out of empathy more than repulsion: it manages to be both corrosive and tender as it shelters the boy's flickering inner light from the darkness outside. I don't want to know what Argento did to get the harrowing central performance out of young Cole and Dylan Sprouse, but they're awfully convincing; the supporting cast includes Peter Fonda, Winona Ryder, Michael Pitt, Lydia Lunch, Ornella Muti and rockabilly wildhair Hasil Adkins. Producer Lilly Bright will attend the screening. —Jim Ridley

Sunday, April 17

Sunday, April 17

♦ Lomax: The Songhunter (12:45 p.m.; also 4:30 p.m. April 20) Alan Lomax, the Library of Congress' fabled folk music archivist, was truly a larger-than-life figure. Supremely driven, his quixotic life's ambition was to record all the musics of the world. In 2001, a severe stroke rendered him all but unable to communicate, so Rogier Kappers' documentary assembles his life story much as Lomax pursued his grand project: from town to town and person to person. As the director's loose, discursive portrait unfolds, the viewer is struck by the enormity and significance of the archivist's endeavor. Lomax didn't just collect indigenous songs; he gave voice to the voiceless, creating a snapshot of their customs, environment, language and culture. The film's poetic recurring image is of the aged, stricken songhunter transported by the magic of his earlier field recordings, by his enduring love for the people and their music. —Scott Manzler

♦ Film Beyond Boundaries (1 p.m.) This year's program of experimental shorts is impressively varied, ranging from pure visceral formalism to poetic documentary. The first and shortest film in the package is also one of the best. Dutch filmmaker Francien van Everdingen's Monologue Exterieur at first vaguely resembles an interior by Matisse, but gradually gives way to a pulsating, multilayered nature study, every form in the film a fragment of mobile flora. Another standout is Dominic Angerame's Anaconda Targets, a bracing and unusually direct found-object missive from this typically lyrical filmmaker. (As you watch, remember that our tax dollars financed this lo-tech snuff film.) Monteith McCollum's Lawn is an impressive open-form documentary about lawn care as an expression of the human fear of nature. The piece's narration tends toward overexplanation, but McCollum's tracking shots, along mist-covered glens and through fog-shrouded trees, are as sumptuous and elemental as vintage Tarkovsky. The program concludes with Luke, the latest from avant-garde master Bruce Conner. A departure from Conner's signature style, this video is assembled from footage Conner shot in 1967 on the set of Cool Hand Luke. Culled from the margins of the film world, Luke invests this marginality with a plangent grandeur. —Michael Sicinski

♦ Reel Paradise (1:30 p.m.)

Reality television has nothing on documentarian Steve James, who in three features—Hoop Dreams, Stevie and now Reel Paradise—has shown an uncanny ability to find an interesting story and settle into it, sweating the small details and catching people at their most exposed. The new film seems initially to be kind of a lark. Indie film entrepreneur John Pierson spent a year on a Fijian island showing the natives free movies—mostly recent Hollywood fare with a few classics and indies stirred in—and James showed up for the final month, when Pierson and his family were both settled into and getting annoyed by the island lifestyle. The Piersons are warm, funny people, but James works their quirks into a sometimes troubling examination of what well-intentioned do-gooders owe to the people they're helping. It's a powerful theme, one that unites all of James' documentaries. Pierson will attend the screening. —Noel Murray

♦ The Liberace of Baghdad (3 p.m.; also 1:30 p.m. April 18) This harrowing BBC documentary explores the aftermath of the American occupation of Iraq through the eyes of Iraqi concert pianist Samir Peter. Post-Saddam, Peter is seen reduced to playing nightly to a few journalists in a hotel lounge in central Baghdad. The heart of the film, which was awarded a special prize at Sundance this year, is the relationship between the moody, engaging Peter and his documentarian, Sean McAllister. Caught in a series of tight spots during the peak of the Iraqi insurgency, the two forge a strong and believable bond. Though he refers to himself as the "Chopin of Iraq," Peter is perhaps more compelling as a human being (witness his bemused give-and-take with his Saddam-admiring daughter) and a conflicted Arab-Christian than as a pianist. —Jonathan Flax

♦ His Girl Friday (2:45 p.m.) This breakneck newsroom farce, one of the fastest (and darkest) comedies of all time, blithely dances across a roiling sea of cynicism and tragedy. Ben Hecht's whip-smart dialogue ricochets off a backdrop of murder, blackmail, attempted suicide and capital punishment, while Howard Hawks' remarkable cast wheedles and prevaricates against the void. As editor/con-man Walter Burns, Cary Grant double-deals with roguish charm and gleeful indifference, and Rosalind Russell (in a career performance) backslides to the rhythm of her own crackling asides. But character actor Ralph Bellamy, the Sideshow Bob of screwball, deserves special note as he takes one verbal pie to the face after another with uncommon humility and good cheer. A cable-TV staple, the film is nonetheless best enjoyed with an audience—preferably a large one. Selected and introduced by Variety scribe Joe Leydon, who included the movie in his book Joe Leydon's Essential Guide to Movies You Must See If You Read, Write About or Make Movies. —Scott Manzler

♦ The Liberace of Baghdad (3 p.m.; also 1:30 p.m. April 18) This harrowing BBC documentary explores the aftermath of the American occupation of Iraq through the eyes of Iraqi concert pianist Samir Peter. Post-Saddam, Peter is seen reduced to playing nightly to a few journalists in a hotel lounge in central Baghdad. The heart of the film, which was awarded a special prize at Sundance this year, is the relationship between the moody, engaging Peter and his documentarian, Sean McAllister. Caught in a series of tight spots during the peak of the Iraqi insurgency, the two forge a strong and believable bond. Though he refers to himself as the "Chopin of Iraq," Peter is perhaps more compelling as a human being (witness his bemused give-and-take with his Saddam-admiring daughter) and a conflicted Arab-Christian than as a pianist. —Jonathan Flax

In Good Conscience: Sister Jeannine Gramick's Journey of Faith (4 p.m.; also 1 p.m. April 18) Sister Jeannine Gramick, an advocate for gays and lesbians in the Catholic church, received notification from the Vatican in 1999 that she must cease speaking and ministering on homosexual issues. Barbara Rick's video documentary offers a humane look at an unlikely rebel as she attempts to deliver a copy of her book to Cardinal Ratzinger, the man who ordered her silenced. The film is inspired by the humane, clear-eyed aesthetic of the Maysles brothers, and in fact Albert Maysles contributed to its photography. Clearly this gentle woman, who approaches "God Hates Fags" protesters and eminent bishops with the same message of inclusion, will not stop speaking her conscience. Sister Gramick and Rick will attend the screening. —Donna Bowman

Murderball (4:45 p.m.; also 12:15 p.m. April 19)

Stunned to have ceded their long-held championship title to Team Canada, the wounded men of the U.S. Paralympics rugby squad vow to "reclaim what's ours"—sans helmets, yet. One of the gung-ho murderballers even becomes a recruiter for the payback mission, though the obvious allegory seems to escape documentarians Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, who strap cameras to the wheelchairs, synch up raucous speed-metal for the head-on collisions, and keep the blood pumping all the way to the climactic "USA! USA!" chant. When an able-bodied female lover is acknowledged for her "mothering instinct," box-office victory appears assured. —Rob Nelson

The Special (7 p.m.; also 4 p.m. April 19) Ervin Rouse's "Orange Blossom Special," the fiddle tune inspired by the famous train, is the subject of Beston Cramm and Mike Majoros's documentary, which serves also as a Rouse biography, bluegrass tribute and train history. More a master fiddler and gimmick-meister than songwriter, Rouse conceived the tune as a vehicle for wild improvisation wherein a fiddler would exercise his ability to mimic the sounds of a train. The song gets reinterpreted on camera numerous times—most amusingly by Mark Wood, who renders the tune on electric violin with wah-wah and distortion. It's the type of scene that's been played out countless times in Nashville music stores, but its potency is nevertheless undiminished. Producers Miguelangel Aponte-Rios and Zach Stauffer (and perhaps some surprise guests) will attend the screening. —Ryan Norris

Highway Courtesans (5:15 p.m.) Despite the title conceit, this is essentially the story of one young woman, Guddi Chauhan, forced into prostitution by her family in deference to debased tradition. The film chronicles Guddi's struggles over almost a decade as she bravely rejects custom to begin a liberating, if somewhat uncertain career in teaching, the physical and emotional strains of her decision reflected in her time-worn features. Director Mystelle Brabée fleshes the portrait out with parallel accounts from sisters and neighbors and several clumsy attempts at broader contextualization, but the documentary is most affecting at its most hands off, simply recounting Guddi's difficult, ultimately inspiring journey. Brabée will attend the screening. In English and Hindi with English subtitles. —Scott Manzler

Loggerheads (6:45 p.m.; also 3 p.m. April 18) Because writer-director Tim Kirkman grew up in North Carolina, he has a better feel than most for the rhythms and characters of the civil South. Here he weaves together three stories, avoiding the stereotypes of overbearing, overly hickish Carolinians. His characters, like his stories, are more genteel. In fact the movie can be too genteel at times—and forced, and predictable. One story has two gay men bonding on the beach, one has a woman pining for the son she gave up for adoption, and the third has a preacher's wife regretting her prideful choices; and though the plot unfolds like a novel, it's not hard to see where it's headed. Nevertheless, Bonnie Hunt gives a stirring performance as a middle-aged woman coming to grips with the idea that she gave away something precious to someone who didn't take good care of it. Kirkman will attend the screening. —Noel Murray

The Special (7 p.m.; also 4 p.m. April 19) Ervin Rouse's "Orange Blossom Special," the fiddle tune inspired by the famous train, is the subject of Beston Cramm and Mike Majoros's documentary, which serves also as a Rouse biography, bluegrass tribute and train history. More a master fiddler and gimmick-meister than songwriter, Rouse conceived the tune as a vehicle for wild improvisation wherein a fiddler would exercise his ability to mimic the sounds of a train. The song gets reinterpreted on camera numerous times—most amusingly by Mark Wood, who renders the tune on electric violin with wah-wah and distortion. It's the type of scene that's been played out countless times in Nashville music stores, but its potency is nevertheless undiminished. Producers Miguelangel Aponte-Rios and Zach Stauffer (and perhaps some surprise guests) will attend the screening. —Ryan Norris

Robbing Peter (7:15 p.m.; also 2:15 p.m. April 19) A tale of crime with three threads that languidly unfold, then intertwine, against a dusty desert backdrop, writer-director Mario F. de la Vega's film draws heavily from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino with its Southwestern setting, pop culture references and non-linear storytelling. If the first-time filmmaker had cribbed Tarantino's humor or Rodriguez's flair for pacing, perhaps this would have been engaging; instead, it's a lazy, derivative sprawl of a film whose interlaced plot lines converge far too late in the game. Long, unedited shots of beautiful desert blues and browns might have salvaged this piece—if they hadn't been filmed with blurry digital video. Mario de la Vega will attend the screening. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. —Brittney Gilbert

♦ Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (7:30 p.m.) Just as Park Chan-wook's Cannes prize-winner Oldboy blasts its way into commercial theaters (it opens here next month), Nashvillians get to sample his eminently superior 2002 film, an immersion into the cruel, soul-crushing senselessness of revenge. A deaf-mute factory worker is fired due to a misunderstanding, and he and his radical Marxist girlfriend decide to kidnap the factory owner's daughter. Naturally, the scheme goes horribly awry. The film is bifurcated, resulting in a harrowing experiment in filmic codes of identification. Suddenly, perspectives shift, and a purely functional character becomes an emotionally complex figure in his own right. The film does veer into escalating, systematic brutality, but Grand Guignol it's not: though certainly not for the squeamish, the violence is clinical in its application, joyless, bled of all spontaneity. And this is precisely why Sympathy is ultimately so mournful. "Mr. Vengeance" is less a single character than a social force, a macho zeitgeist run amok. Park shows us that within this world, everyone has their reasons, however inscrutable or ill-conceived they may be. The Korean Cinema of Cruelty may already have its share of Artaudian splatter-punks, but in Park it appears to have found its Renoir. In Korean with English subtitles. —Michael Sicinski

♦ Revolution of Pigs (9:45 p.m.; also 12 noon April 21) The title suggests some forbidding piece of agitprop; a more accurate name would be Estonian Pie. Jaak Kilmi and Rene Reinumagi's raunchy satire is cut from the same cloth as Porky's and Meatballs—only here the summer camp is a socialist getaway for teens in 1986 Soviet Estonia. And here the wacky shenanigans involve open revolt, which leads the camp's Stalinist party-poopers to call in the militia. Is it an allegory of the desperate waning days of communist oppression? Absolutely. Is it a teen sex comedy? Hell yes it is, albeit with a darker tone and higher stakes (and frankly, more breasts). Now if only our own latter-day Porky's clones realized how potent a political cocktail you can shake from sex, teenage hormones and punk rock. In Estonian with English subtitles. —Jim Ridley

Weird, Wild & Wonderful (10 p.m.) And disturbing. And creepy. Oh, and entertaining, too. This collection of shorts exploring the thematic and stylistic fringes of filmmaking features a movie called "Herbie!" and a movie about a VW Bug—but Disney it ain't. "Fear LESS," from Norwegian filmmaker Therese Jacobsen, is a whimsical and visually stunning child's-eye view of the world from the backseat of a car. The romantic snippet "The Man Without a Head" recalls the surrealism of Brazil-era Terry Gilliam. Putting the "fun" in dysfunction are "King's Inn," "Rodéo" and "Herbie!," which between them cover incest (unless you think the step-father doesn't count), ax-murdering, alcoholism and that old French cinema standby, a man who masturbates while he watches the rodeo and caresses his wife as she hangs herself, all while wearing a "FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKIN' FUCK" wifebeater. Bring a date. —Jack Silverman

Monday, April 18

♦ Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque (5:15 p.m.) At 210 minutes, French director Jacques Richard's documentary about film archivist Henri Langlois is exhaustive, yet it doesn't cover much ground not already treated in biographies and other documentaries. All the same, it's absorbing and well-paced: a treat for francocinephiles and anyone nostalgic for the French New Wave nurtured by his Cinematheque Française. It follows the Cinematheque's history from its beginnings to its fate after Langlois' death, devoting much time to the 1968 protests sparked by his dismissal. Using archival footage of Langlois and an extensive selection of present-day interviews, Richard creates an indelible portrait of a man who changed cinema history without making a feature. —Steve Erickson

The Aryan Couple (6:45 p.m.) Set in 1944 Hungary, this clunky yet well-acted historical thriller details the plight of the fictional Krauzenberg family, which is led by Martin Landau as a wealthy Jewish steel magnate, and two of their staff posing as Aryans who are in truth members of the anti-Nazi resistance. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's second-in-command, has offered Krauzenberg participation in Himmler's "Europa Plan," which allows rich Jews and their families to essentially buy freedom and safe passage to Switzerland and then Palestine in exchange for all their worldly possessions. The entire film builds to a climactic dinner at the Krauzenberg estate, with Himmler (a slithery Danny Webb) and Adolf Eichmann in attendance. Meanwhile, our titular heroes consider their dwindling options. Daly (whose company Hemdale backed films such as Platoon and The Last Emperor) will attend, perhaps with a special guest not confirmed at press time. —Jonathan Flax

Mardi Gras: Made in China (9:15 p.m.; also 4;15 p.m. April 19) Roger Wong owns a factory in Fuzhou, China, that makes over 5,000 pounds of Mardi Gras beads every day. There, he employs mostly women (95 percent of his workforce) to work 14-hour shifts because "it is easier to control lady workers." Thanks to the forthcoming Wong, first-time director David Redom exposes the stifling conditions under which the cheap, plastic necklaces are made, talking at length with four teenage girls who work there. Never didactic or heavy-handed, the documentary offers a sobering, sometimes funny juxtaposition of the lives of young women in wildly differing cultures: the most revealing segment has Redom showing the factory workers photos of the beads being used as currency on the streets of New Orleans. The film occasionally meanders, but it's an engrossing glimpse at the ramifications of globalization. —Brittney Gilbert

Obstinato: Making Music for Two (9:30 p.m.; also 2:15 p.m. April 19) Fans of double-bassist Edgar Meyer and banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck will not want to miss this fly-on-the-wall account of the musicians on a three-week tour. Even those who've never heard of the pair will find it compelling to watch these immensely talented performers practice the same complicated measure for hours, politely debating who's dragging but never raising their voices. Filmmaker Sascha Paladino recognizes the strength of his subjects and includes entire songs in the film, simply allowing cameras to capture collaborative genius at work. The look of sheer delight on the men's faces when they finally nail a gnarly piece is worth the price of admission alone. Paladino will attend. —Brittney Gilbert

Tuesday, April 19

♦ 10th District Court: The Moments of Trials (10e chambre: instants d'audience) (7:15 p.m.)

If Raymond Depardon's entertaining courtroom documentary doubles as an arthouse reality indulgence, then its "star" Michèle Bernard-Requin registers as a mildly bemused, no-nonsense Judge Judy. The audience is initially invited to laugh as predominantly middle-class, predominantly educated defendants attempt to navigate the sometimes bewildering formalities of the French legal system. But as the ensuing charges prove more serious (stalking, drug dealing, robbery) and the subjects increasingly disenfranchised (illegal immigrants, an ex-con, a borderline schizophrenic) the tone becomes more ambiguous. What ultimately emerges from Depardon's crisply edited, remarkably well-crafted film is a complex portrait of Parisian society and the rigidly fixed system that helps maintain the status quo. In French with English subtitles. —Scott Manzler

Don't Fuck With the Lewises (10 p.m.; also 3:30 p.m. April 20) The tone of this Southern Gothic gawkfest is set from the get-go by Norwegian filmmakers Ronny Kristoffersen and Nils Waerstad in the opening clip reel. But if it's a European portfolio of Dixie weirdness they wanted, they hit the jackpot when they stumbled into Ferriday, La., and the drive-in liquor store of Frankie Jean Lewis, who's made an edgy peace with being Jerry Lee's little sister by converting her home next door into a shrine. Over the course of 12 hours, they drink, drink, and drink some more while Frankie Jean muses about her brother (just how many of his marriages did end in death?) and spars with her equally belligerent husband. Although it's compulsively watchable, there's not much more to this Confederate Grey Gardens than the filmmakers standing around gaping at Frankie Jean's painful candor—until a would-be robber shows up. At that point, the Lewis clan whips out their weapons on camera, and I confess to a certain satisfaction at watching the color drain from the auteurs' faces. You can take that liquor to go, boys. —Jim Ridley

Men Without Jobs (9:15 p.m.; also 2:15 April 20)

Disarming, well-acted comic sleeper by writer-director Mad Mathewz, who captures the slow drift of longtime friends stuck in a self-perpetuating rut. College dropout Ish (Ishmael Butler) and compulsive gambler Oz (Bonz Malone) spend their days talking about the band they'll never start and telling each other that they're fighting the system, when really they're just holding out against work. The ending's weak, but Matthewz's ear is as sharp as his feel for the shifting dynamics of a friendship—especially once an ambitious graffiti artist (Anita Kopacz, in an arresting debut) turns Ish's head—and the movie's one of the bright spots of recent African American indie cinema. If nothing else, it has the festival's funniest deus ex machina: a bird crapping on the hero's head. Mathewz will attend the screening. —Jim Ridley

Sweet Honey in the Rock: Raise Your Voice (7:15 p.m.; also 2:30 p.m. April 21) With interviews, archival stills, behind-the-scenes footage and concert clips, director Stanley Nelson (The Murder of Emmett Till) weaves the story of sensational a cappella singing group Sweet Honey In The Rock into the larger context of African-American music and various social movements. Nelson portrays his Grammy-winning subjects as deeply political and spiritual women—as well as very serious musicians. Indeed, the focus of the documentary is the group in live performance, blending elements of African music, gospel, blues, hip-hop, jazz and slave songs. These inspiring scenes dominate the film, though detours such as showcasing the group on the road, at soundcheck, and in one inspiring sequence, rehearsing a song with no lyrics, only sounds, enriches the tale. Nelson will attend the screening —Jonathan Flax

House of the Tiger King (9:35 p.m.; also 12 noon April 20) In this odd expedition documentary, director David Flamholc follows questionable explorer and travel writer Tahir Shah into the jungles of Peru. Shah, who oozes pretense and who seems to blend fact and fiction (as does this strange, lengthy pseudo-doc), is on the hunt for a lost Incan city of gold called Paititi. Flamholc and his brother/producer Leon actually bankroll Shah's quest, though their eventual distrust of their subject is tipped off in the opening scene. A saving grace, besides the richly captured scenery, is the humorous portrayal of three different guides who join and quit the project respectively—one of whom, an acerbic Vietnam vet named Richard Fowler, appears even more misguided and self-reverent than Shah himself. —Jonathan Flax

Don't Fuck With the Lewises (10 p.m.; also 3:30 p.m. April 20) The tone of this Southern Gothic gawkfest is set from the get-go by Norwegian filmmakers Ronny Kristoffersen and Nils Waerstad in the opening clip reel. But if it's a European portfolio of Dixie weirdness they wanted, they hit the jackpot when they stumbled into Ferriday, La., and the drive-in liquor store of Frankie Jean Lewis, who's made an edgy peace with being Jerry Lee's little sister by converting her home next door into a shrine. Over the course of 12 hours, they drink, drink, and drink some more while Frankie Jean muses about her brother (just how many of his marriages did end in death?) and spars with her equally belligerent husband. Although it's compulsively watchable, there's not much more to this Confederate Grey Gardens than the filmmakers standing around gaping at Frankie Jean's painful candor—until a would-be robber shows up. At that point, the Lewis clan whips out their weapons on camera, and I confess to a certain satisfaction at watching the color drain from the auteurs' faces. You can take that liquor to go, boys. —Jim Ridley

Wednesday, April 20

♦ Watermarks (7 p.m.; also 1 p.m. April 21) Yaron Zilberman's documentary about the women of Hakoah Vienna, a Jewish swim team in Austria that was shut down by the Nazis in 1938, won't likely be name-checked for its trendsetting directorial approach, but that's to its credit. A story this powerful is best left to tell itself, and the former Hakoah members, all in their 80s, are compelling subjects—vibrant, articulate and still deeply affected by their experience together. Their recollections of humiliation and defiance are delivered with the offhand ease of adults talking about their college days, but deep wounds reveal themselves through awkward silences and choked-back tears. The specter of Austria's dark history hangs over the proceedings, particularly in the film's most telling scene: on her way to her hotel for a Hakoah reunion in Vienna, Greta has a brief conversation with an Austrian cab driver that, in a few brief lines, illuminates the country's shame, denial and still virulent anti-Semitism. The moment, like the film, is more affecting for its understatement. Highly recommended. In English and German and Hebrew with English subtitles; co-sponsored by the Nashville Jewish Film Festival. —Jack Silverman

Sweet Honey in the Rock: Raise Your Voice (7:15 p.m.; also 2:30 p.m. April 21) With interviews, archival stills, behind-the-scenes footage and concert clips, director Stanley Nelson (The Murder of Emmett Till) weaves the story of sensational a cappella singing group Sweet Honey In The Rock into the larger context of African-American music and various social movements. Nelson portrays his Grammy-winning subjects as deeply political and spiritual women—as well as very serious musicians. Indeed, the focus of the documentary is the group in live performance, blending elements of African music, gospel, blues, hip-hop, jazz and slave songs. These inspiring scenes dominate the film, though detours such as showcasing the group on the road, at soundcheck, and in one inspiring sequence, rehearsing a song with no lyrics, only sounds, enriches the tale. Nelson will attend the screening —Jonathan Flax

♦ Cowboy Jack's Home Movies (Or: Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan) (7:30 p.m.; also 4 p.m. April 21)

The exploits of Cowboy Jack Clement could fill five documentaries, and this one by Morgan Neville and the gifted Memphis music writer Robert Gordon tries to make them all, serving as biography, career overview, character study and free-associative archival dip. None completely satisfies, but the ambitious, rambling whole is never less than entertaining: all the filmmakers really need is the lens cap off. Other than Clement's Falstaffian presence, the movie's drawing point is the legendary writer/producer's cache of rascally home movies, where the likes of Bono and the late Johnny Cash let down their hair with pig snouts, Brando imitations and impromptu slapstick routines. (An unforgettable image: Cash sprawled across the grave of A.P. Carter, smoking the cigarette they never shared in life.) Attempts to mimic or mirror Clement's experimental-prankster streak come off as forced, but what registers most strongly is the subject's barely concealed melancholy—well, that and clips of rolling heads from his notorious horror opus Dear Dead Delilah. —Jim Ridley

♦ Give Me Your Hand (9:15 p.m.) Give this another chance if you were at last year's ill-fated NaFF screening, where the tape broke. On Sunday nights, a New Jersey storefront called La Esquina Habanera transforms into a social club for the area's homesick Cuban population. The social agent is the rumba, the dance whose sinuous pulse breaks down worries and inhibitions. The documentary's director, Heddy Honigmann, spends nearly an hour and a half following various émigrés through their jobs, homes and kitchens: the meticulous prelude pays off in a riotous, cathartic half-hour rumba party, where all the people we've seen seize the spotlight with hip-shaking abandon. Honigmann's marvelous finale could put a swing in the stodgiest stride. —Jim Ridley

♦ 20 Fingers (9:30 p.m.) The minimalism of Abbas Kiarostami's Ten, shot on DV entirely inside a car, thrilled some spectators and left others shaking their heads about the death of cinema. Now its lead actress, Mania Akbari, has directed a film that crosses Kiarostami with Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. 20 Fingers, in which Akbari also acts, follows 7 conversations between a married couple, shot in very long takes from a camera constantly moving back and forth in a very small space. Driven by performance and dialogue rather than visuals, it feels a bit theatrical and claustrophobic, yet the acting achieves a rare intensity. In Persian with English subtitles. —Steve Erickson

Missionary Positions (9:30 p.m.; also 1:30 p.m. April 21) Called by the Lord to combat porn—in the shower, no less—California pastor Mike Foster enlists his friend and fellow minister Craig Gross to found xxxchurch.com, a subversive website that lures Internet smut-seekers but delivers an anti-porn message. Soon the pastors are setting up booths at adult-film conventions and traveling abroad to red-light districts, while director Bill Day takes at face value that their focus is strictly above the waist. (Tellingly, the only skeptical note is raised by one pastor's wife.) The documentary is most interesting when examining how even well-intended spiritual messages get co-opted and seduced under the secular mass media's gaze—a situation that reaches its Lewis Carroll zenith when an anal-porn auteur volunteers to shoot their commercial. Gross and Day will appear at the screening. —Jim Ridley