Women’s film saluted in first-ever Palm Beach festival

Last year, when Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker, that marked the first Oscar to go to a woman for Best Director. Women have made strides in the film industry, however slowly, but to see the range of movies — from deadly serious to downright frivolous — that female directors and screenwriters are generating, there is now the Palm Beach Women’s International Film Festival, opening tonight and running through Sunday.

Director and writer Larysa Kondracki appears tonight at the Muvico complex in West Palm Beach’s CityPlace with her film, The Whistleblower. It is a somber, terribly well-meaning movie about conditions in Bosnia, human trafficking and the dangers of calling attention to government involvement in a corrupt system. It has an impressive cast, including Academy Award winners Rachel Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as such reliable performers as David Strathairn and Monica Bellucci, not bad at all on an independent budget.

The dour tone suggests the high road artistic director Karen Davis is taking with this festival, even if the opener feels too heavy-handed with the delivery of its message.

Opening night tickets, which include the film, a post-screening Q&A session with Kondracki and a rooftop party afterwards at Roxy’s 329, cost $50, and are still available at www.PBWIFF.com.

In addition to the Muvico, films will be shown at Lake Worth Playhouse’s Stonzek Theatre and the PGA Cinamax in Palm Beach Gardens. By the time this inaugural festival ends Sunday, 12 feature films, eight documentaries, 24 shorts and 16 entries in a young women’s film competition will have screened.

Here is a brief look at a few of the features:

LEADING LADIES, Muvico Parisian CityPlace, Sunday, April 10, 7 p.m. (Grade A) — A cross between all those dance competition reality TV shows (but without the reality), the Broadway musical Gypsy, and any lesbian coming-out fable you’d care to mention. There is plenty to like about Daniel and Erika Randall Beahm’s first feature film, including an involving story line and several high-energy dance turns.

Stage mother Shari Campari dotes on her prettier daughter Tasi (Shannon Lea Smith), grooming her to be the next ballroom queen. But when Tasi gets pregnant, Shari then focuses on her other, plain-looking daughter, Toni (Laurel Vail), for the first time. Toni blossoms from the attention, and from her acceptance of her sexual orientation, indoctrinated by more experienced club regular Mona (Nicole Dionne). All that plus an explosive 11 o’clock supermarket dance number.

STARRING MAJA, PGA Gardens Cinamax, Friday, April 8, 5 p.m., Lake Worth Playhouse Stonzek Theatre, Saturday, April 9, 6 p.m. (B) — Ever seen a Swedish Afternoon Special before? Starring Maja, the tale of a clumsy, overweight teenager with aspirations of becoming an actress, is very reminiscent of that lesson-laden televison genre. Of course Maja is socially inept and the butt of jokes from her insensitive fellow students, but deep inside she knows there is a talented girl waiting to be discovered and perhaps loved.

To reaching those goals, Maja allows a untrustworthy wedding videographer-filmmaker wannabe to follow her around, recording her life. Improbably, Maja gets cast on a Stockholm sitcom, but only because the show needs a “hideously obese creature” to ridicule. The film, written and directed by Teresa Fabik, has a few other predictable twists, but it is saved by an endearing performance by Zandra Andersson, a plus-sized beauty who really can act. Check her out in a brief excerpt from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night — with Maja as Malvolio, no less — and you too will probably come under her spell.

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN, PGA Gardens Cinamax, Friday, April 8, 7 p.m., Muvico Parisian CityPlace, Saturday, April 9, 3 p.m. (B+) — An adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur’s feminist political novel, Women Without Men, concerns four women of diverse social stations caught in the struggles of 1953 Iran. First-time director Shirin Neshat invokes the past with this material to illuminate the current situation in her native country. The film is brutal, by necessity, yet acclaimed photographer Neshat contrasts the violence with visuals of striking monochromatic beauty.

The women range from a general’s wife to a lowly, painfully thin prostitute, each taking refuge in a rural orchard, a magic realism safe zone. Much of the time the film seems more interested in the cumulative effect of its imagery than its loose narrative, but if manages to effectively pay tribute to those who have fought in the ongoing struggle for democracy in Iran.