Filmfest: A Chance To Buy Locally

Filmfest DC, which opened Thursday, is also called "Washington's international film festival" for a reason: More than 30 countries will be represented during the 11-day feast of original cinema.

But for three featured filmmakers, it might feel like a homecoming. Of the 70-plus movies on the docket, their films have roots in the area. So if you like to buy locally (cinema as much as produce) here are the ones to check out:

"The Matador." Filmfest DC has been good to Nina Gilden Seavey. The documentary director won the prestigious Circle Audience Award in 2002 for "The Ballad of Bering Strait," a film that followed a band of Russian teenagers trying to break into the U.S. country music scene. She returns this year with "The Matador," an explosive glimpse inside the fierce world of bullfighting. With co-director Stephen Higgins, Gilden Seavey followed David Fandila, a young Spaniard intent on becoming the world's greatest bullfighter.

It is "really a simple story. . . . It looks, through [the bullfighter's] eyes, at this century's old tradition," says Gilden Seavey, who also runs the Documentary Center at George Washington University.

Bullfighting is a highly controversial endeavor, but the Austin American-Statesman said the film's "sparkle and artful precision make the deadly pageantry shine."

Screens Monday and Wednesday at 6:30 at Regal Cinemas Gallery Place.

"The Night James Brown Saved Boston." The burning of Washington after the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is still vivid for many in the area. But for those too young to recall the period's panic and outrage, D.C. producer and media archivist Eric Kulberg offers a 66-minute dose of another city's history.

His behind-the-scenes documentary, directed by David Leaf, traces the little-known efforts of various government and entertainment officials to keep a long-planned James Brown concert at the Boston Garden on track the day after King's murder. Extending its reach via television helped quell passions that otherwise might have erupted into violence.

Kulberg makes his living finding rare footage for other film and television productions. Work on this project was no different: Much of his time was spent tracking down original clips and negotiating with the Godfather of Soul's estate for the right to use his image and copyrighted materials.

Variety said the film, which premiered earlier this month on VH1 on the anniversary of King's death, "goes beyond a simple chronology of events: It reaches deep into the racially based fear that complicated a segregated city and also chronicles the potholes Brown had to navigate to keep the peace in the wake of catastrophe."

Screens Saturday at 9:30 and Sunday at 3 at Regal Cinemas Gallery Place.

"Jazz in the Diamond District." When Lindsey Christian's classmates from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts heard she was going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be an engineer, they thought it was an odd move. And when her MIT friends heard she was back in Washington making movies after graduating, that didn't make much sense to them. But it does to 25-year-old Christian, who co-wrote and directed "Jazz in the Diamond District," a go-go-music-infused urban drama conceived by and starring Christian's sister, Erica Chamblee.

"It is crazy because I didn't have any experience, but I read a ton of film production books," Christian says. "What we always wanted to do is show where we grew up."

Shot entirely in the District, "Jazz" attempts to capture a side of the city not often shown in Hollywood productions. It's the story of an ambitious, if slightly lost, young singer who drops out of college after learning her mother is terminally ill and tries to hit it big on the stages of her home town.

"At the end of the day, we did this not just for outside people to see D.C., but for D.C. people to see their city on the big screen," Christian explains. "D.C. culture, D.C. music, the streets of D.C. -- all the parts of D.C. that are not typically depicted on the big screen."

To that end, look for shots of such local haunts as Ben's Chili Bowl and listen for a soundtrack full of area entertainers, including Christian, whose voice can be heard whenever the lead character, Jazz, starts to sing.

Screens Sunday at 4:30 at Regal Cinemas Gallery Place.

FILMFEST DC Through May 4. Tickets $10. Available by phone at 800-955-5566 or online athttp://www.tickets.com; also available at theaters an hour before each show. For a full schedule of this week's events, see the Repertory list on Page 42 or visithttp://www.filmfestdc.org.