Crosby Tatum’s romantic comedy “Confused . . . by Love’’ is headed to a Cannes film festival. OK, not the Cannes Film Festival, but still. The film will premiere as an official selection in the 13th Festival International du Film PanAfricain de Cannes which runs April 16-20. Tatum, who held a private screening of his film in Cambridge in February, hopes that “Confused . . . by Love’’ will have its Boston premiere at the Roxbury International Film Festival in June, though it hasn’t been officially selected yet.
A Roxbury native now living in Hyde Park, which is also home to his Triceptus Studios, Tatum wrote the script in 2014 and started production last year with a mostly Boston-based cast and crew. A house in Grove Hall served as the principal location for the six-day shoot. “Confused . . . by Love’’ is about a couple, Ferguson and Tiffany (played by Keith Mascoll and Jamie M. Perez), who face foreclosure on their house. Another couple, Reggie and Joline (Simba Dibinga and Jordan Lloyd), offer assistance but with conditions. Despite its story line about marital and financial strife, “Confused . . . by Love’’ is described by Tatum as a feel-good movie.
It also sprang from personal experience. Tatum remembers that when he was 13 his mother struggled with high mortgage payments and her separation from Tatum’s father. “She sold our home in Dorchester and we ended up sleeping in the same room in my aunt’s house in Hyde Park. My mother worked but we had no home,’’ he says.
A graduate of the New England Institute of Art, Tatum worked for Chicago-based filmmaker Christopher Nolen on several films that aired on BET. Tatum produced, directed, and starred in his first feature, “Surprise, Surprise,’’ released last year. Besides fielding distribution offers for “Confused . . . by Love,’’ Triceptus Studios is currently producing “Camellia,’’ a music industry-set series by Opal Thompson, one of the producers of “Confused . . . by Love.’’
For more information go to www.confusedfilm.com.
Encore performance
If you missed its North American premiere at Emerson’s Paramount Center last month, you can catch “The Consul of Bordeaux’’ on April 17 at 11 a.m. at the West Newton Cinema. Directed by Francisco Manso and Joao Correa, the 2011 film from Portugal is based on the true story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who saved 30,000 people from Nazi persecution by defying government orders and issuing visas for safe passage to Portugal during World War II. “The Consul of Bordeaux’’ is presented by local filmmaker Claire Andrade-Watkins’s SPIA Media Productions Inc., which in 1999 released Mango’s film “Testamento.’’
For more information go to spiamedia.com.
Throwback Thursday
Audiences are invited to celebrate the 60th anniversary of a pair of classics: Fred M. Wilcox’s sci-fi groundbreaker “Forbidden Planet’’ and John Ford’s landmark western “The Searchers.’’ Presented by the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival and Warner Archive, both films will screen in 35mm on April 21 at 7:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre. One of the great sci-fi films of the ’50s, “Forbidden Planet’’ boasts Oscar-nominated special effects including Robby the Robot, one of the first screen robots who is a distinct character. The plot reimagines Shakespeare’s “The Tempest’’ on a planet where Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) has built a kingdom to protect his daughter Altaira (Anne Francis) from outsiders. “The Searchers,’’ one of Hollywood’s most revered and influential westerns, follows Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) on a years-long quest to rescue his niece (Natalie Wood), who has been kidnapped by Comanches.
For more information go to somervilletheatre.com.
Cue the figher pilots
Boston-based organist Peter Krasinski, known for his live, improvised accompaniment of silent films, will provide the soundtrack to “Wings’’ (1927), the classic tale of love and war, on April 22 at 7 p.m. in Harvard’s Memorial Church. Presented by the Harvard Organ Society, “Wings,’’ winner of the first Academy Award for best picture, is about fighter pilots Jack Powell (Charles “Buddy’’ Rogers) and David Armstrong (Richard Arlen), who enlist to fight in World War I. Clara Bow costars as the “girl next door’’ who’s in love with Jack and joins the war effort as an ambulance driver.
For more information go to www.hcs.harvard.edu/organ.
Loren King can be reached at loren.king@comcast.net.
