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NEWS OF ATHENS’ CINEMA SCENE Wagons West: The director Kelly Reichardt and her screenwriting partner, Jon Raymond, are interested in frontiers. In their first two fea tures together, Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008), protagonists venture into remote or unknown physical territories, where less tangible boundaries are reached, as well: the outer limits of a rekindled male friend ship in the former, and Great Recession-era America's economic precipice in the latter. So, it's appropriate that, for their latest col laboration, they have chosen to work within the genre that is singularly best suited for the exploration of such themes: the western. It's fortunate, too: Meek's Cutoff, like any great western should be, is a richly (though not bla tantly) symbolic work of American historical fiction that seriously examines the means and ends of our civilization. The story is simple; even minimal: a tiny group of settlers is being led across a bar ren Oregon plain by Stephen Meek, a grizzled frontiersman whose expertise as a guide has become gravely in doubt. The members of the wagon train, desperately short of water, cap ture a lone Indian and must decide whether to entrust him—whose language they don't understand and whose motivations are a mystery—or Meek with their survival. The pri mal democracy necessitated by the situation gives rise to a subtle but definite shift in the dynamics of power in the group, along racial and gender lines alike. It's a revisionist western, to be sure, but not in the manner of the violent, perverse and aggressively ambivalent films made by Peckinpah, Leone, Eastwood and others in the 1960s and 70s. Rather, as the 1.33:1 ratio of the frame seems meant to suggest, Reichardt's film can be seen as rejecting those films' advances in favor of a direct, though still entirely modem, response to the genre as established by the likes of Walsh, Ford, Hawks, Mann and Boetticher. It isn't as if there were any psychologi cal complexity or moral ambiguity lacking in that. Meek's vicious mistrust of the Indian, for instance, unmistakably echoes the virulence of John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in Ford's The Searchers, a film in which an old, implacable and brutally simple societal order is replaced by one that prioritizes the messy, imperfect but (once) treasured American values of com passion and compromise. But the questions that remain at the end of Meek's Cutoff— Why are our enemies our enemies? Who are we following? Will we survive?—point to a level of pertinence that brings it beyond historical relevance and into the arena of current politi cal urgency. Finally, it can't be overlooked that the per spective in Meek's Cutoff is decidedly female, with most of the action centered on the char acter played by Michelle Williams, a young settler wife who gradually steps into a leader ship role on the caravan. That's notable in and of itself—Google "feminist western" and see what you find. In fact, someone's going to have to remind me of the last western to be directed by a woman; I can't think of a single one. Anyone? Long-Awaited Update: The application by the Athens Film Arts Institute, the non-profit educational entity associated with Cine, for 501(c)3 tax-exempt status has been approved. The AFAI board will now begin fundraising in prepa ration for its assump tion of management and programming responsibilities at the downtown theater, beginning in 2012. • Brigitta Hangartner, Cine's founder and executive direc tor, will serve as an officer on the AFAI board, but will no longer be in charge of the theater's day-to- day operations. It's not yet clear exactly how all the details of the new arrangement will shake out, but Hangartner's excited. "After almost 10 years of creating and launching Cine," she says, "I am ready to move on to a nrw project and feel very good about handing over the manage ment of Cine to AFAI." The AFAI's next event will be the Summer Classic Film Series, which will run for six weeks beginning July 8. The films are being chosen by local film and music folks, who will each introduce a Friday evening screening of the film they select. I'm doing one, as are Pam Kohn, Richard Neupert, Patterson Hood, Tony Eubanks and Sanni Baumgartner. The film selections haven't been finalized, but I'll keep you posted—this should be really good. As for Now: Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris, which looks like his best is years, is scheduled to open at Cine this Friday, June 10, as is Rubber, a low-budget horror film that's gotten ecstatic reviews from folks who are into that sort of thing. It's about a tire that kills people by blowing up their heads. If sword-slashings are more your bag, you'll be rewarded a week later when 13 Assassins, a magnificently bloody new samurai epic from the redoubtable Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer, Sukiyaki Western Django), is scheduled to open. Go to www.athenscine.com for more info. Last, Never Least: The next iFilms screening at the ACC Library will be Best Worst Movie, a documentary tribute to Troll 2, at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 16. Check www.clarke.public. lib.ga.us to learn more. Dave Marr film@flagpole.com Meek's Cutoff, the new film by Kelly Reichardt starring Michelle Williams (right), is playing at Cine. Jkiehdtiect Boa twMCor me j SINGING / COWBOY!/ fsivni fiRIDAV <£QKEuO classic orr BOUUEB QUELS Arra PARTY I^VaT iVt t mMI nUI c 706-549-1010 • 50 GAINES SCHOOL ROAD TACEBOOK.COM/ALIBI BAR J ooc S CUTOFJ [j' Allen’s \idnight 'Paris "TIBER WWW.ATHENSCINE.COM 706 353 3343 234 W. 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