Newport International Film Festival

The recent ascent of Rhode Island-born filmmakers like Michael Corrente and the Farrelly brothers helped draw state and private support to this spring’s premiere Newport International Film Festival, a five-day event sandwiched between Cannes and Nantucket on the festival calendar.

Newport’s an old-money coastal resort and the home of America’s Cup racing; it’s also the annual host of a famous 40-year-old summer jazz festival which the Festival acknowledged with a jazz film sidebar. Three hours from New York on a scenic Amtrak route, Newport proved easily accessible to New York filmmakers who turned up in respectable numbers; if the industry presence was sketchy that’s more than likely due to Newport organizers’ one serious stumble, a late mailing to distributors and the like. But Harvey Weinstein showed up to introduce The 400 Blows, the centerpiece of a three-film "Under the Influence" section that screened classics named by filmmakers and industry types as influential to their own work.

Susan Muska and Greta Oafsdottir's The Brandon Teena Story

Newport’s Dramatic Competition snared several of the year’s more intriguing U.S. indies largely passed over by more cutthroat events (Anima, Dead Broke, OK Garage) and mixed them with with proven foreign audience pleasers (Gadjo Dilo, Who the Hell is Juliette?, The Contract). Most pleasantly surprising was Iranian director Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven, a poignant divertissment about two children and a pair of sneakers in the vein of The White Balloon. (Though Miramax made a preemptive bid for Children on its North American premiere at Montreal last year, the film’s gone unscreened since and is not yet scheduled for release.)

Newport really distinguished itself with its compelling ten-film documentary section. Audiences got an early shot at emerging ’98 favorites like The Cruise, The Brandon Teena Story, SlamNation and Angel On My Shoulder and a chance to catch up with cult item Hands on A Hardbody and Off the Menu as well as Sundance fare Baby It’s You and Out of the Past. Foreign documentaries were well represented by two fascinating films, The Hunt, a Dutch portrait of British foxhunting and the controversy currently embattling its practitioners, and Oberwasser: By U-Boat to America, an often-sobering tale about the first German sub to journey to America since World War II.

The festival opened with The Mighty and closed with I Went Down, respectable choices intended to charm capacity houses trundling on to gala celebrations. That Newport is now on the map and the subject of enthusiastic buzz from filmmakers, jurors and audience members is a credit to the collective drive of the three women who dreamed it up over coffee last spring: Nancy Donahoe, Christine Schomer and Maude Chilton. Chilton, who is Harvey Weinstein’s sister-in-law, also had the trio’s only fest experience – she produced Sundance docs Belly Talkers and The Who’s Tommy: Amazing Journey – and subsequently took on the programming while Donahoe and Schomer created the infrastructure and went after sponsorship. Considering what an organic event Newport’s organizers pulled off in their first outing, the ’99 edition (June 1-6) is recommended to debut filmmakers looking for an East Coast premiere alternative.

Chicago Underground Film Festival by Ray Pride
ResFest ’98 by Eugene Hernandez
Nantucket Film Festival by Mark Rabinowitz
Newport International Film Festival by Mary Glucksman
Sydney Film Festival by Henry Lewes
Hudson Valley Film Festival by Holly Willis