Language is a pliable resource. It can appear suggestively on the page or it can be animated as a moving-image impression. Barry Gifford has ventured through all variants as a novelist who has seen his words adapted, as the one responsible for such transformations, and as a writer of original screenplays that find their motivating medium in cinema. Gifford talks about the writer’s journey through the thicket of film production, from David Lynch’s inspired appropriation of Wild at Heart and the travails of Perdita Durango, to the richly humored The Phantom Father and perhaps to Gifford’s newest, the script for Robinson Devor’s You Can’t Win. Concludes with a Q&A session with the audience, followed by a complete screening of The Phantom Father beginning at about 8:30.

Followed by:
The Phantom Father
Lucian Georgescu (Romania, 2011) West Coast Premiere!

Introduction/Barry Gifford

College professor Robert Traum (Marcel Iures) journeys to Romania to research the obscure lives of his late father and uncle, one a respected novelist, the other a gangster back in the States. Traveling through the Carpathian Mountains, he meets Tanya (Mihaela Sirbu), a government archivist, who accompanies him as he encounters a new Romania that threatens to efface the old. A family friend and aging film projectionist (Valer Dellakeza) surfaces as a surviving relic of the past, as his movie palace is about to be replaced by a shopping mall. The Phantom Father is a gentler Gifford with a Transylvanian twist.

Written by Georgescu, based on the short story “Almost Oriental” by Barry Gifford. Photographed by Liviu Marghidan. With Marcel Iures, Mihaela Sirbu, Valer Dellakeza, Mihai Constantin. (90 mins, In Romanian and English with English subtitles, Color, Digital, From the filmmaker and Generic Audiovizual)