Irish cowboys galloping through Dublin? Biker chicks zooming into horse- and-buggy villages? Say, what?
" 'Displaced persons crossing cultural boundaries' does seem to be the theme of this year's festival," concedes Linda Blackaby, the PFWC's soft- spoken director. Indeed, there are even movies this year about Philadelphians' feeling displaced in their own city.
One of the blessings of an international film festival is that it enables local viewers to take the temperature of the world climate, to measure seismic shifts in the culture at large that have yet to register on the Richter scale.
Already, the PFWC has had a seismic effect on local culture. Last year's festival attracted more than 13,000 filmgoers, rehabilitating Philadelphia's reputation as a lousy movie town. This year, Blackaby and company are angling for 15,000. The festival bait ranges from the ultraviolent Hong Kong gangster flick Hard-Boiled, which will slake the bloodthirst of Jean Claude Van Damme fans, to the documentary Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a tender portrait of the psychologist whose perseverance helped destigmatize homosexuality. There's also a special children's program, "Kids' Stuff," that will be screened May 9 and 15.
So, how do you choose from the 41 features and 71 shorts that will be shown at a dozen different venues? Do you opt for Bodies, Rest and Motion because you like its stars, Bridget Fonda and Phoebe Cates? That's certainly a time- honored criterion. But according to projectionist Jamie Alls, PFWC's technical coordinator and veteran of the Roxy and TLA, "This year, the films with stars are not as interesting as the ones with unknowns."
