LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth

CAMP Film

Rehoboth's Art House Theater Celebrates the Arrival of Spring

The need to stay dry from spring rains makes a great excuse for going to the movies. However, the wonderful upcoming films at the Art House Theater are justification for any film enthusiast to go to the movies regardless of weather conditions.

Persepolis (Mar 720)

Persepolis is the poignant story of a young girl in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is through the eyes of precocious and outspoken nine-year old Marjane that we see a people's hopes dashed as fundamentalists take power, forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. Clever and fearless, she outsmarts the "social guardians" and discovers punk. Yet when her uncle is senselessly executed and as bombs fall around Tehran in the Iran/Iraq war, the daily fear that permeates life in Iran is palpable.

As she gets older, Marjane's boldness causes her parents to worry over her continued safety. At age fourteen, they send her to school in Austria. Vulnerable and alone in a strange land, she endures the typical ordeals of a teenager. Over time, she gains acceptance, and even experiences love but after high school she finds herself alone and horribly homesick.

Marjane decides to return to the tyrannical society of Iran to be close to her family. The difficult adjustment and the ongoing hypocrisy she witnesses cause Marjane to make a heartbreaking decision about her future. Persepolis was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. [2007, Runtime: 95 minutes, Rated: PG-13]

The Diving Bell & The Butterfly (Mar 21Apr 3)

From one of the most emotionally exhilarating and luminous bestsellers ever written comes the true story of a man who took an adversity beyond all imagining and transformed it into a testament to the irrepressible human urge to love, create and dream. Shot entirely on location in France, director and artist Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) forges a visually stunning, heart-stirring ode to what drives a man to go on when all truly seems lost.

The Diving Bell and the Butterly tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), AKA "Jean-Do," the high-flying editor of French Elle and father of two, who was renowned for his sense of humor, style, and amorous energy, when, in an instant, his world was plunged into the depths of catastrophe.

Faced with a harrowing predicament, Jean-Do will use enormous courage and determination, and his soaring imagination to escape from his trap. Tapping into the limitlessness of his memories, fantasies, wit and wishes, he finds a way to race through experiences of wonder and grief, sex and love, fatherhood and childhood, faith and questioning, ecstasy and absurdityand touches the very essence of what it is to be human. Along the way he is buoyed by a quintet of remarkable women: Cline (Emmanuelle Seigner), the mother of his children who remains devoted to him despite his betrayal; Ins (Agathe de la Fontaine), the girlfriend who still haunts him; Henriette (Marie-Jose Croze) and Marie (Olatz Lopez Garamendia), who give Jean-Do the power to re-connect with the world and his loved ones; and Claude (Anne Consigny), who becomes his ravishing literary assistant. The cast of French stars includes Max Von Sydow, Patrick Chesnais, Niels Arestrup, the late Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Marina Hands. [2007, Runtime: 112 minutes, Rated: PG-13]

Art House Theater, #14 in the Movies at Midway complex, features independent films programmed by the Rehoboth Beach Film Society. For more information about the films, please visit the Film Society website at www.rehobothfilm.com. For screening times, call the Movies at Midway, 302-645-0200.

LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 18, No. 02 March 07, 2008