Friday, May 12, 1:00 PM, Charles Theatre 5
Saturday, May 13, 9:30 PM, Charles Theatre 1

Director: Todd Rohal

Cast: Will Oldham, Katy Haywood, Sheila Scullin, Ken Byrnes, Rich Schreiber, Kathleen Kennedy, Cory McAbee, Ivan Dimitrov, Andy Nadler, Jim Ligons, VaLonda Harris, Christopher Morse

Country: USA
Year: 2006
Running Time: 96:00 minutes
Format: 35mm cinemascope

A small town suffers a massive power outage, during which one of the town's residents, Donald Turnipseed (Will Oldham), unexpectedly leaves town with his father's prized little orange electric car. Despite the impact he has had on those around him, his disappearance goes practically unnoticed by the people in his life, except for Turkeylegs (Katy Haywood), a ten-year-old girl who considers Donald her best friend. Donald's father (Ken Byrnes) is more concerned with getting his car back and finding out the combination to the lock on the shed door. Donald's pregnant girlfriend, Sadie (Sheila Scullin), reluctantly allows herself to be fixed up with lactose intolerant roller rink employee and exhibitionist, Stool (Rich Schreiber). Her father (Ivan Dimitrov) is a demolition derby champion who wants to keep her from following in his footsteps, but with the help of Donald's family friends, she may very well claim the championship for herself. Meanwhile, a woman searches for her lost dog, boy scouts behave badly, and a childhood TV hero returns, all culminating in one wonderful night at the demolition derby.

The Guatemalan Handshake captures the feel of a good childhood summer, full of summer camps, carnivals, lightning bugs, rope-swing swimming, fireworks, roller-skating, and demolition derbies. At first glance, the plot is not entirely obvious, but on further examination, all of the pieces to the puzzle are there but just need to be put together. It puts the audience in a warm comfortable place where everything might not be right, but there is a sense of joy, humor and adventure in working towards making things better. It is a film full of awkwardness and blissful confusion that is likely to draw comparisons to not-so-similar films like Welcome to the Dollhouse and Napoleon Dynamite, and is the sort of feature-debut that suggests another seat might soon be needed at the table with the likes of Mallick, Solondz, and Lynch.

-- Skizz Cyzyk

Showing with
Ponkutsu Park
Director: Josh Slates
6:00 minutes, 35mm scope, USA
Perhaps the first slapstick martial-arts misadventure, filmed in Southeast Baltimore in widescreen 35mm, with dialogue in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and English.  A police officer introduces us to Ponkutsu Park, once a nice family place, but now a place where some girls might want to read a book and be left alone, while other girls look for fights they can't win.

Presented By: Todd Rohal

Todd Rohal graduated from the Honors Tutorial Department of Ohio University with a BFA in Film. His short films, Slug 660, Single Spaced, Knuckleface Jones and Hillbilly Robot have enjoyed cult-followings on the film festival circuit, generating high anticipation for his feature-debut, The Guatemalan Handshake. He has served as DP and editor for Court TV, Discovery Channel and PBS, and a DVD designer/producer for underground classics like Heavy Metal Parking Lot and The American Astronaut.