A feast of film

Way back in another millennium - 1992, to be exact - a cineaste by the name of Linda Blackaby, with support from International House, launched the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema.

There were growing pains over the years - new organizers and artistic directors (exit Blackaby), and then a name change, but the good news is that Philadelphians have been blessed with an ambitious, adventurous film festival for 20 years now.

Philadelphia Film Festival 20 - a seriously inspired two-week affair that started Thursday night with Like Crazy, the roller-coaster love story with a star-making turn from Felicity Jones - celebrates the festival's traditions, and looks to its future, too. Andrew Greenblatt, PFF's executive director, invited Blackaby back to coprogram and lead discussions on a documentary slate.

Artistic director Michael Lerman and his team dreamed up a terrific "From the Vaults" series: movies from (mostly) the early '90s, several paired with new work by the same filmmakers. Revisit Lars von Trier's Europa (1991), the Danish iconoclast's post-World War II espionage reverie, and then see his daunting masterwork, Melancholia - a study of depression and doom that won Kirsten Dunst the best-actress prize at Cannes in May.

David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (1991) takes a surrealistically subjective look at William Burroughs, while A Dangerous Method, straight from the Toronto Film Festival, finds Cronenberg in more restrained mode, exploring the inner demons of psychotherapy pioneers Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender).

Speaking of Cannes and Toronto, Greenblatt, Lerman, and company pulled off a string of coups, nabbing some of the strongest work from these top-tier fetes (and also from Sundance and New York): The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's much-buzzed homage to the black-and-white silents; The Descendants, Alexander Payne's funny, perceptive portrait of a husband and father (George Clooney) trying to cope with a wife in a coma and two messed-up daughters; My Week With Marilyn, with Michelle Williams channeling Marilyn Monroe; and Shame, a study in sex addiction from Hunger director Steve McQueen, starring Hunger's (and A Dangerous Method's) Fassbender.