TO SEPT. 7
This minifest’s lineup has shrunk since it was first announced, with several of the documentaries being jettisoned. The final schedule’s centerpiece is Edward Dmytryk’s long-missing 1949 labor melodrama, Christ In Concrete (pictured; at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6), which was recently restored for DVD release. Made in Britain after Dmytryk was blacklisted in Hollywood, this adaptation of Pietro di Donato’s novel is the tale of a desperate Italian-American worker forced after the 1929 crash to become foreman of a construction project he knows is ignoring safety standards. Ironically, the film was rejected first by the American right, then by the left. After Dmytryk returned to the United States and testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, his old friends deserted himand this movie, which languished for some 50 years. The other fiction entries include Majid Majidi’s Baran (at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6), a sort of love story set partially at an Iranian construction site where many Afghan refugees work illegally; Dirt (at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7), Nancy Savoca’s new drama about an undocumented Salvadoran apartment cleaner who travels from the Upper East Side to Queens to her hometown in El Salvador; and Jose Joffily’s Two Lost Souls on a Dirty Night (at 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5), the tale of two immigrants in New York who have nothing in common save their Brazilian origins. The sole documentary is H2 Worker (at 6:45 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5), Stephanie Black’s 1989 exposé of Jamaican workers exploited by Florida’s sugar industry. The festival runs to Sunday, Sept. 7 (go to djdinstitute.org for details, and see Showtimes and City List for a full schedule of related events), at the American Film Institute’s Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $8.50. (301) 495-6700. (Mark Jenkins)