The sixth annual European Union Film Festival continues Friday, March 14, through Thursday, March 27, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State. Admission is $8, $4 for Film Center members. For further information call 312-846-2800. Films marked with an * are highly recommended. The schedule for March 14 through 20 follows; a full festival schedule through March 27 is available on-line at www.chicagoreader.com.
The Twilight Hour
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Hoping for an art-house release in the U.S., director Jason Figgis has been pitching this 2002 digital-video feature as an Irish Blair Witch Project, but it plays more like a slightly overlong History Channel program. Based on a book of photographs by Simon Marsden, the documentary surveys Ireland’s haunted castles and Celtic ruins, from the druids’ old stomping grounds on the Hill of the Witch in County Meath to Leap Castle in County Offaly, called the most haunted home in Ireland. Marsden leads the tour on-screen and also provides the sonorous voice-over; he collaborated with Figgis on the lighting, and both the color DV footage (shot in “Preternaturalscope”) and Marsden’s dramatic black-and-white stills conjure a spectral atmosphere. A few home owners appear on camera to tell spooky stories, and Figgis creates some chilling dream sequences for his leonine ghost hunter, but the real pull is Marsden’s gloomy obsession with the poetry of death: as in the stories of his hero, Edgar Allan Poe, the primary tone is one not of fear but of classical beauty. 80 min. (JJ) (8:30)
First Light of Dawn
“Morrison” is the legendary Doors front man, worshiped by “me,” a bulky Gen Xer and single father who smuggles and snorts heroin. This 2001 debut drama by Finnish director Lenka Hellstedt is seen from the perspective of Milla (Irina Bjorklund), a waif who becomes emotionally entangled with the drug runner and pays the price. A rock-laden sound track tries to compensate for what the script lacks: emotion and credible characters. The wan Bjorklund suffers exquisitely, but costar Samuli Edelmann (a Finnish pop singer) is no Jim Morrison. In Finnish with subtitles. 100 min. (TS) (6:15)
SUNDAY, MARCH 16
Gebertig
