Next Thursday, Cinema St. Louis’ 16th Annual International Film Festival kicks off with a healthy mix of diversity in the line up.
For the 2007 festival, Cinema St. Louis opens with a special screening of the film Honeydripper as it honors independent filmmaker John Sayles and his partner Maggie Renzi at the Tivoli.
The film stars Danny Glover and features an ensemble cast of notables including Ruben Santiago Hudson, Charles S. Dutton, Lisa Gay Hamilton and Vonde Curtis Hall. While not necessarily known for their box office draw, each of them are acclaimed for their skills and talent as actors.
Kel Mitchell, Sean Patrick Harris and newcomer YaYa DaCosta represent on-screen for the new school of actors.
An interesting character study, the film is not for the generation who rely on action, sex and murder to transition from one scene sequence to the next.
Glover is Tyrone “Pinetop” Purvis; a formerly famous piano man who scrapes a life for himself through a fledgling juke joint called the Honeydripper in rural Alabama during the early 1950’s.
The Honeydripper is on the verge of folding when Pinetop puts all of his eggs in one basket by hiring a renowned bluesman to bring in the crowd and the dollars.
As pinetop struggles to make his big night come to pass, he is met by several seemingly insurmountable stumbling blocks that for a lesser man would mean the end of their endeavors.
Just as with the black experience, good down-home music is the backdrop for Honeydripper – playing right alongside the trials and setbacks.
The film is symbolic. The metamorphous of African American music and people, the importance of embracing change to remain viable in society, the importance of black people working together, black faith and survival instinct are all touched upon in some way or another.
A period piece, Honeydripper takes a look at the South back when Jim Crow still lived there, and the action in the film is understated. It plays a supporting role to the personalities, emotions, disappointments, hopes and dreams of its characters.
The performances within Honeydripper do not disappoint – especially those of Glover, Dutton and Hamilton. Actors effectively convey the message that Sayles was attempting to express through them in their respective roles.
In Honeydripper Sayles illustrate his ability to create a genuine experience that make the viewers feel as if they have been transported through time and transplanted among a day in the life of a group of regular folks in an ordinary town.
Regardless of the size of the on-screen presence, Sayles manages to make viewers aware of each character’s innermost thoughts and feelings and make them significant within the story.
The weakness of Honeydripper lies in its strength. The realism is somewhat anticlimactic. While it is written with suspense, viewers who have grown accustomed to plots, mysteries and love triangles may walk away feeling a bit cheated.
It doesn’t start, climax or finish in the way that most contemporary films – even independent ones – are structured. But the performances and beautifully written dialogue are reason enough to make Honeydripper worth watching.
Honeydripper is the first film to kick off the festival, which runs from November 8 – 18, but certainly not the only movie to reflect the African and African American experience. Film topics range from racial segregation in America (Banished) to a young Mozambique woman’s stumbling blocks as she attempts to study medicine (Another Man’s Garden) and St. Louis’ own take on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the African American community (Ruzzian Roulette) to name a few.
The 16th Annual St. Louis International Film Festival runs from November 8 – 18 at the Tivoli, Plaza Frontenac and Saint Louis Art Museum. For more information, visit www.cinemastlouis.org.