30 August Today's films in competition: *One Night Stand* by Mike Figgis (USA) and *Vor*/*The Thief* by Pavel Chukhrai (Russia), Figgis's film is premiering at the festival and will open in the US in November. As the title suggests, the film recounts a passionate night between Max (Wesley Snipes) and Karen (Nastassja Kinski) who have met by chance. Having decided that their encounter was nothing but a one night stand, they put it behind them. However, something begins to erode their relationship with their respective spouses (Mimi--Ming-Na Wen and Vernon--Kyle MacLachlan). When Max and Karen meet again a year later--again by chance, at the deathbed of Charlie (beautifully played by Robert Downey Jr.), Max's friend and Karen's brother in law, they are forced to face the predictable consequences of that one night they spent together. Figgis has said of the film: "It's not a judgmental film about guilt, but rather about life going through a period of crisis. There are three short films about marriage in *One Night Stand.* The first is a bitter sweet comedy on a one night stand between two married people. The second is on the pressures of careers and emotional crises that can lead a married person to seek a fling. The third is on the consequences of that fling on those directly and indirectly involved." For some strange reason, the accredited journalists booed at the screening I attended, which both surprised and enraged me. On the other hand the same people cheered enthusiastically at the film *Gummo* directed by Harmony Korine (US), the screenwriter of *Kids,* despite (or maybe because of) its characters' racism, homophobism, and disturbing attitudes towards the physically and mentally disabled. Similar in style to *Kids*, *Gummo* is a cinema verite exercise in which a group of aimless white trash youths are paraded in front of the camera for all to gawk at. While the 23-year old Korine claims that Jean-Luc Godard is his idol, the film implies that it may actually be P.T. Barnum, as it has dozens of distorted humans to look at, but nothing of much value to say. Of *Vor*, set in 1952 in the Soviet Union, the director says, "The idea for *Vor* came to me three years ago, when I heard the story of a thief who pretended to be a military officer, set himself up in a popular quarter of the city together with a woman and her young son [editor's note: Misa Filipcuk, who looks like Kolja's brother] and started burgling his neighbors. This film partly arises from my personal desire to shoot a film in the areas of my childhood. The film is about the childhood of an entire generation that has had a key influence on the present day life of the country. For me, it was very important to explain why the post-war generation grew up the way it did." Also screening today was *The Second Civil War*, an HBO production directed by American Joe Dante. It imagines a situation in which the governor of Idaho (played by Beau Bridges) closes the borders against immigration to end ethnic conflicts within his state. Dante says, "Imagine if this had happened in 1850. It would have taken months for people to hear about it. Now news spreads instantaneously." The film is based on the first draft of a book by Edward Lutvak, "The Thirdworldizaion of America", which takes an apocalyptic view of the results of American immigration policy. Besides Bridges, it also features Dan Hedaya, Elizabeth Pena, James Coburn, James Earl Jones, and Denis Leary. The bad news is that it is played as a farce -- and not a very funny one at that, infantilizing the spectator throughout. gloria monti ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.sa.ua.edu/screensite