Arts & Entertainment

Bey Watct,

Reel in many flicks of Jewish interest at Traverse City Film Festival.

Suzanne Chessler

Special to the Jewish News

A

dam Elliot, an Australian writer-
director who has developed
award-winning animated films,
creates characters whose problems are
instantly apparent and whose finer quali-
ties take time to know.
Mary and Max, his new feature-length
animated clavmation film, follows the
lives of pen pals Mary Pinkie, living near
Melbourne, Australia, and Max Horowitz,
living in New York City. A correspondence
begins between Mary — chubby, lonely
and 8 years old — and Max, who is obese,
lonely and in his 40s.
The two share a 20-year friendship that
uplifts both of them and derives from an
actual, longtime friendship through cor-
respondence shared by the filmmaker,
who is not Jewish, and a Jewish man deal-
ing with Asperger's syndrome, a form of
autism.
Elliot, 37, who will be represented by
Mary and Max at the Traverse City Film
Festival, expresses a special goal for the
screening of his film in Michigan.
"I am really thrilled to have Mary and
Max coming to ]an area] near Detroit," he
says."' hear people there have been having
it tough during the financial crisis, and
so I hope that our film can nourish their
spirits. Friendship doesn't cost anything."
The nonprofit festival, in its fifth year
and running Tuesday-Sunday, July 28-Aug.
2, offers more than 100 films and activities
to affect the spirits of participants — new
cinema from around the world screened in
five venues, classic films shown outdoors,
film-industry panels with names familiar
to movie fans, parties and a fundraising
costume run.
Films run the gamut from lighter fare
— like the Midwest premiere 6 p.m.
Sunday, Aug. 6, at the State Theatre of
Jewish director Norah Ephron's much-
anticipated Julie and Julia, about the
early days of chef Julia Child's career and
Julie Powell's attempt more than 40 years
later to cook and blog her way through
all of Child's recipes in Mastering the
Art of French Cooking — to more seri-
ous subjects — such as Daniel Mermet's
documentary Chomsky and Company
about one of the world's best-known
Jewish-born intellectuals, screening 3

Adam Elliot's animated film Mary and Max tells of the longtime friendship that develops between two pen pals, Mary Dinkle of

Australia and New Yorker Max Horowitz.

p.m. Wednesday, July 29, at the Old Town
Playhouse.
Israel enters into the content of films
like A Matter of Size, Defamation, Lemon
Tree and Waltz With Bashir.
While there are fees for attending the
screenings and parties, the classic films
and panel discussions are free.
The festival is now in its fifth year and
founded by issues-oriented filmmaker
Michael toore (Bowling for Columbine,
Fahrenheit 9/11 and the upcoming
Capitalism: A Love Story). Moore will
take part in a panel discussion,"40 Years
of Documentary Filmmaking," 9:30 a.m.
Wednesday, July 29, at the City Opera
House, where all the special presentations
will be held. The panel includes Emily
Kunstler, who will discuss the showing
of the film about her father — William
Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe.
In a tribute to Hollywood filmmak-
ing legend Paul Mazursky (born Irwin
Mazursky to a Jewish family in Brooklyn,
N.Y.), the director and actor will pres-
ent and talk about his classic films Bob
6- Carol 6- Ted c.,1- Alice, An Unmarried
Woman and Enemies: A Love Story 9:30
a.m. Sunday, Aug. 2.
A meeting of the Michigan Film Office
Advisory Council begins 9:30 a.m. Friday,
July 31. Members include local Jewish
filmmakers Sue Marx and Jim Burnstein
as well as Marcia Fishman, executive
director of the Detroit Branch of the
Screen Actors Guild.
Besides Moore, the festival directors

include festival co-founder and author
Doug Stanton, co-founder and photogra-
pher John Robert Williams, actress-direc-
tor Christine Lahti and filmmakers Terry
George, Larry , Charles (the Jewish director
of Bruno will be showing outtakes from
the Sacha Baron Cohen film currently in
theaters) and Sabina Guzzanti.

Mary And Max
Adam Elliot, a 2004 Academy Award win-
ner for his short animation film Harvie
Krumpet, continues his exploration of
desires for acceptance and love among
people who could be labeled "different."
The clavmation figures in Mary
and Max — the opening film at this
year's Sundance Film Festival — find
voice through Toni Collette as Mary
and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Max.
Jewish Australian actor-comedian Barry
Humphries (best known for playing his
alter ego, Dame Edna, in drag) is the
narrator for the production being shown
6 p.m. Friday, July 31, at the City Opera
House and noon Sunday, Aug. 2, at the
Lars Hockstad Auditorium.
"For me, the most important part
of any film is not the animation or the
technique but the story," says Elliot, who
designs the figures. "I was always the kid
who made friends with the kids who got
picked on at school, and I'm trying to get
others to see what I see to provoke com-
passion."
Elliot, interested in painting and crafts
as he was growing up, spent five years

hand-painting T-shirts before studying
animation at the Victorian College of the
Arts, where he made his first film, Uncle.
After graduating in 1997, he completed
Cousin and Brother for his cinema trilogy.
"My aim with those films was to tell
very droll, minimal, static and short
biographies that enioin the audience to
see and celebrate the unique qualities of
ordinary people:' Elliot explains. "Harvie
Krumpet, the next film, was a much
longer and thorough exploration of a
person's life?'
Part of the reasoning behind giving
Max in Mary and Max a Jewish heritage
had to do with the idea of difference.
"Whether the difference be physical
(Mary's birthmark, Max's obesity), emo-
tional (Mary's sadness, Max's anxiety)
or spiritual, I want to remind the audi-
ence that while everyone is different, we
are all deserving of love and respect:' he
explains.
"I don't think of myself as having a par-
ticular religious point of view — except
tolerance and understanding of all."
Elliot hopes he is telling universal
stories with moments of humor and mel-
ancholy.
"I always try to keep the variety of colors
to a minimum," Elliot says about the tech-
nical side of his work. "This ensures the
visual style is strong and acts as a point of
difference to the wacky, zany, color-filled
world of most animated films?'

Bay Watch on page C9

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