American Movie

A Phoenix pick

Who isn't tired of American independent filmmakers with yuppy bank accounts and film-school pedigrees? Meet Mark Borchardt, Milwaukee high-school dropout with three kids, impossible debts, a drinking problem, and part-time jobs as a paperboy and a janitor at a cemetery. He's the improbable protagonist of Chris Smith's marvelous feature documentary, and he's been struggling all through the 1990s to get his low-budget splatter movies finished, for which he's the writer, director, editor, and overacting star. American Movie is alternately hilarious black comedy and a very sad story of a screwed-up chronic overreacher who is always involving his peculiar family, his children, his girlfriend, and his lawbreaking drinking buddies in his Ed Wood-like movie schemes. Mark: "The American Dream stays with me every day . . . and thank God they've extended my phone bill until Friday." Screens at the Copley Place Wednesday, September 15 at 7 p.m. and Thursday, September 16 at 1:30 and 4:45 p.m. Director Chris Smith, producer Sarah Price, and actor Mark Borchardt will be present at tonight's 7:15 showing.

-- Gerald Peary

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Film Festival Feature Films

| The Minus Man | The Tavern | Black Eyed Dog | The Last September | A Wake in Providence | Man of the Century | Pups | Dreaming of Joseph Leeds | Wisdom of Crocodiles | That's The Way I Like It | American Beauty | Mifune | Black Cat, White Cat | Hit and Runway | All the LIttle Animals | Me Myself I | The Alchemist and the Virgin | Trash | Old Man River | The Poet and the Con | Snow Falling on Cedars | Guinevere | East is East | American Movie | Rivers of Babylon | Two Ninas | Rats | Keepers of the Frame | The Runner |

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More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times

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