Program Guide - Cleveland International Film Festival

PROGRAM UPDATES > www.clevelandfilm.org < TICKETS > Call 877.304.FILM FILMS A –Z 75
NESNADNY + SCHWARTZ
DOCUMENTARY FILM COMPETITION
WOMEN OF THE WORLD
GEORGE GUND III MEMORIAL
CENTRAL AND EASTERN
EUROPEAN FILM COMPETITION
First Comes Love
Directed by Nina Davenport
USA 2012
105 minutes
Wednesday, April 10 Thursday, April 11
8:30 PM I Code FIRS10 4:00 PM I Code FIRS11
When director Nina Davenport found herself single and childless
in her early 40s, she set sail on a journey of becoming a
single mother in New York City. And FIRST COMES LOVE is an
intimate and in-depth look at the struggles and joys of her passage
to motherhood. Raised by a traditional father who favored
her two older brothers, Nina clung to the all-accepting love
of her mother whose death left a void Nina seems destined to
fill with her own motherly instincts. With the help of her best
friend (also single, 40, and childless) and the sperm donation
of her gay friend Eric, Nina chronicles her journey as she faces
the opposition of her father, brothers, and society to become
a single mother. FIRST COMES LOVE is an incredible and
vulnerable look at a woman’s search for meaning, documented
in the autobiographical style that Nina has mastered in her
earlier films. Touching and warm, it’s a courageous portrait
of a woman’s quest to redefine family for herself. —T.W.
Producer~Nina Davenport Screenwriting~Nina Davenport Cinematography~
Nina Davenport Editing~Nina Davenport
Print Source~Baby Pictures / nina.davenport@gmail.com / www.ninadavenport.com
About the Director~Raised in Detroit, Michigan, Nina Davenport received her B.A.
in Visual Studies from Harvard University and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Filmography~“Hello Photo” (1995), “Always a Bridesmaid” (2000), “Parallel
Lines” (2004), “Operation Filmmaker” (2007), FIRST COMES LOVE (2012)
Flower Buds
(Poupata)
Directed by Zdeněk Jiráský
CZECH REPUBLIC 2011
91 minutes
Wednesday, April 10 Saturday, April 13
4:00 PM I Code BUDS10 1:25 PM I Code BUDS13
FLOWER BUDS, winner of four top Czech film prizes, is a
grimly comedic family drama. It’s Christmastime in a nameless
small industrial town whose salient feature is its smoking
chimneys. Jarda is an indifferent train signalman more intent
on fashioning matchstick ships in bottles than attending to his
duties. Once his shift ends, he takes his meager earnings and
deposits them into slot machines at the neighborhood pub.
Jarda’s gambling addiction renders him oblivious to his family’s
needs: son Honza, in love with an exotic dancer, grows pot in
an abandoned warehouse; daughter Agata discovers she’s pregnant;
long-suffering wife Kamilla cleans toilets at the train station.
Meanwhile, the local women are working on a dance show
they hope will recapture their crowning glory from 1987 when
they were “Flower Buds” at a state-sponsored “festival of physical
culture.” Nobody’s going anywhere on those trains that
pass through the night. Still, hope springs eternal; maybe life
will improve once winter is over. (In Czech with subtitles) —B.B.
Producers~Viktor Schwarcz, Jaroslav Kucera, Jordi Niubo Screenwriting~
Zdeněk Jiráský Cinematography~Vladimír Smutný Editing~Petr Turyna
Principal Cast~Vladimír Javorský, Malgorzata Pikus, Marika Šoposká, Josef Láska,
Aneta Krejčíková
Print Source~Czech Television / jitka.prochazkova@ceskatelevize.cz /
www.ceskatelevize.cz
About the Director~Zdeněk Jiráský, born in Jičín, Czechoslovakia, is also a writer
and documentary filmmaker. He graduated in Screenwriting and Script Editing
from Prague’s Film Academy (FAMU) in 2004. Filmography~FLOWER BUDS (2011)