On the mark: Whet your cinematic sensibilities this weekend

I like films that stretch me. Bring me to new places and cultures, present surprising solutions to daunting problems. Films that make me think, films that avoid violence, films that explore love and meaningful work.

This year's Free Range Film Festival offers up 19 films that range from a few minutes in length to more than an hour. They cover most genres: animation, documentary, fiction, experimental.

My favorite is a film about sausage. Brilliantly conceived, acted and filmed, it follows a middle-aged man who is addicted to sausage, a major phenomenon in Iran. He knows it's not good for him. His doctors confirm this. But, it's just too pleasurable. In hilarious scene after scene, he consumes sausages in many formats and urban locales, including family kitchens, alone and with others. I loved the windows into daily Iranian life. And I won't be eating much sausage again soon.

Another winsome film, Jonathon Olson's "The Gift," follows a youngish (to me) couple who decamp from the city to an abandoned factory in the woods where the man wants to compose a song for his wife. The film is luscious, moving slowly and giving the viewer time to think and speculate, qualities that the great German playwright Bertolt Brecht pursued in his dramas. The woman roams through the woods, flushing small game - you are left to imagine her thoughts. The film is almost wordless. As the two float through their hours, the filmmaker explores their love for and attachment to each other.

A third film I'm eager to see again is Cy Dodson's "Beneath the Ink." This film, which will eventually be a full-length feature, documents the unusual work of a small-town Ohio tattoo artist. He offers to remove - for free - Nazi tattoos for people who regret their past choices. A young woman and a couple of beefy motorcyclists are among those taking up his offer. We watch him carefully cover the old tattoos by designing flowers, or whatever the owner wishes, and engraving them over the offending ones. He asks each why they'd acquired the old one, why they changed their minds. Very low-key, gentle and working-class.

And I love films about workplaces. This year's Free Range Crop includes several. Tess Wagman offers her short documentary, "Great! Lakes," about an intergenerational family making delicate, mouth-watering candies on the North Shore. They love working together. Another documentary, Ellen Evans' "Life in Miniature," features a Yorkshire mother and daughter team making tiny replicas of contemporary landscapes, buildings and furnishings for a broad, mostly online market. They love working together. They credit their success to their documentation of contemporary English life, rather than of castles, palaces and forts.

And one last shout-out. A.M. Lukas' fictional film, "One Cambodian Family Please for My Pleasure," portrays a Czech-refugee mother living in Fargo who, encouraged by her church, welcomes a Cambodian refugee family into their home. It's a very joyful portrait of both families. I recommend these and the entire festival for upbeat windows into American, English, Iranian and others' lives. Screenings run Friday evening through Saturday evening in the big restored barn at 909 County Road 4, Wrenshall.

Ann Markusen is an economist and professor emerita at the University of Minnesota. A Pine Knot board member, she lives in Red Clover Township.