Six to see at the KC FilmFest

Cheatin’
Bill Plympton’s latest animated feature is a wordless love story between a woman named Ella and a gas-station attendant named Jake, whose romance goes sour when she’s falsely accused of being unfaithful to him. Plympton’s movies are always great to look at, but there’s a poignancy to Cheatin’ that makes the movie weirdly heartwarming despite its sordid subject matter. Plympton takes part in screenings and presents some of his sketches.

Ralph Bakshi Retrospective
At 75, Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat, The Lord of the Rings) has made a career making cartoons safe for adults. KC FilmFest is presenting his 1970s classics Coonskin, Heavy Traffic and Wizards at the Alamo Mainstreet. Bakshi’s son Eddie will attend all the screenings, and Bakshi himself will answer audience questions via Skype.

Rich Hill
Shot primarily in a small Missouri town (1,400 people) 76 miles south of Kansas City, Rich Hill follows three teenage boys as they try to make their way through economic and social challenges. The sobering but moving documentary earned the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and co-director Tracy Droz Tragos will be on hand to present it.

Blood of Me
It has been awhile since Tim De Paepe presented his engrossing documentary Shades of Gray (which concerns gays in Kansas) at the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee. His latest short, a horror entry presented as part of Heartland Late Night, suggests what a dental practice might be like if run by Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe. It won’t make you feel better about getting your teeth cleaned.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
The author of the historical novels Lincoln and Burr, the play and film The Best Man and a large portion of the screenplay to William Wyler’s Ben-Hur, Gore Vidal was a child of the American establishment but labored all of his long life to thumb his nose at it. He lived an openly gay life and wrote explicitly about homosexuality when it was a taboo subject. This new documentary does a decent job of encapsulating his sometimes complicated and dynamic philosophies and captures him at his acidic best. Executive producer Chad Troutwine will attend a Q&A.

A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at The New York Times
In 2003, The New York Times devoted several pages to debunking the reporting of its own Jayson Blair, who was caught plagiarizing and fabricating dozens of stories. This new documentary spends a little too much time with Blair himself, who has little more to say than “and then I lied.” But it does a thorough job of explaining the culture at the Times that enabled his toxic journalism to flourish.