At festival's close, 'Passionada' takes center stage

Editor's note: The Standard-Times is in Seattle covering the first public screening of "Passionada," the movie filmed in New Bedford a year ago. The world premiere took place last night, too late for our deadline. We will report on it tomorrow.

By ROBERT LOVINGER, Standard-Times staff writer

  John Baer / Standard-Times special

SEATTLE -- Hard by the Campari table, the tall American leaned down to the Kurdistani director and said, "I'm 58, I'm very tired, I have a heart condition and a failing memory. Tell me again how to pronounce the name of your movie." The final weekend of the 2002 Seattle International Film Festival sped to a close with a highly caffeineated crush of screenings, panels, deal-making, late-night partying and strange conversation. But not before a movie -- whose principals keep calling it "sweet," "authentic," "little" and "lovely" -- took the stage as the festival's gala, closing night selection. "Passionada," shot a year ago in and around New Bedford, had two screenings last night -- 6:30 and 9:30, Seattle time -- in the 800-seat Cinerama Theatre.

At press time, the first showing was sold out and the second was on the way to doing the same.

The premiere was to be followed by a festival-closing party themed with Portuguese food and fado music, in keeping with "Passionada's" very Portuguese story. This has been a coming home for "Passionada" director Dan Ireland. He co-founded this festival, now the nation's biggest, 27 years ago. "Everyone's really excited about the movie because of Dan," said Rebecca Fisher, the festival's head of publicity and promotion. There is much affection for him in this movie-mad town, and he still sits on the festival advisory board. His close connection with the event is the reason "Passionada" was being shown out of competition, said David Bakalar, the movie's producer.

"Dan started the festival. If there was an award, I didn't want any aspersions cast on the movie," Mr. Bakalar said. "They're giving us closing night, for Chrissakes. It's a great honor," he added. "I don't think competition does anything for you, anyway." The Brookline-based producer declined to say he was proud of the movie. "No, because I didn't do it. It was a collaborative effort of a lot of people. And then, you know, you get involved in other considerations." Those "other considerations" on Mr. Bakalar's mind are primarily the marketing and selling of the movie to a distributor. The premiere is the beginning of that process. People involved with "Passionada" hoped possible buyers, or their agents, would be in the audience last night.

"Passionada" is a made-up word.

Originally, the title was to be "Apaixonada," which means "in love" in Portuguese. But the folks behind the film didn't think Americans would see a movie with an "x" in the title. They changed it to "Passionada," which isn't a word in Portuguese, Italian, Spanish or any other language anyone can think of. When New Bedford's Portuguese culture mavens heard that people were coming from New York and California to make a Portuguese-themed movie, with that title and a lead character with the WASP/Italian name of "Sally Amonte," they grew nervous. But the filmmakers bent, changing Sally's name to Celia. They also began picking the brains of local experts on music, food, language, clothing and more.

"I've only had a chance to see half of your film, I'm sorry to say," a woman could be heard telling a man at her table.

"That's OK," he replied. "Was it the good half?" Roughly 100 bleary-eyed, mostly 20-something filmmakers and friends made their way up to the banquet room of Seattle's Space Needle yesterday morning for the festival's awards breakfast. "Passionada" director and festival creator Mr. Ireland was greeted with hugs and kisses when he arrived in the room with "Passionada" leading lady Sofia Milos and others. Mimosas, champagne and a buffet were followed by the presentation of awards voted on by juries in some cases and audience members in others.

Some 70,000 people attending the festival cast ballots in the competition for Golden Space Needle audience prizes. They chose Norway's "Elling" best film. Among recognizable presenters were Tim Blake-Nelson ("O Brother, Where Art Thou?") and Tom Cavanagh (TV's "Ed"). Ms. Milos bestowed the Best Actor award to Moritz Bleibtreu of Germany's "Das Experiment." When emcee and festival director Darryl Macdonald apologized to Ms. Milos for not giving her enough time to prepare to be a presenter, Mr. Ireland called out, "She had more time to rehearse the festival award presentation than she had to rehearse for 'Passionada.'" He was referring to the fact that he found Ms. Milos only a week before production was scheduled to start.

After the breakfast, Ms. Milos sat and spoke about how playing Celia has affected her. "She has stuck with me: my love for fado, my love for Portuguese culture and bacalhau, and now my need to go to the Azores." The actress said she is very happy with the film. "We put so much love and passion into it." And how will the people of New Bedford react to it? "They're going to love it. In the end, you love this film for its simplicity."

Last night, barring the unforeseen, the lights grew dim and the Cinerama Theatre's elegantly curved curtain opened onto the streets of New Bedford and the movie, "Passionada."

This story appeared on Page A1 of The Standard-Times on June 17, 2002.

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