FESTIVAL ROUNDUP



 
 

Film Arts Festival

In describing Eva Ilona Brzeski's film This Unfamiliar Place, my friend Patrick once said that he liked it because Brzeski shows us the impossibility of documentary. And indeed, the filmmaker's inability to uncover the "places" in her father's history that are occupied by Adolf Hitler and World War II, and the concomitant necessity to offer substitute images that merely point to that sense of loss instead, are poignant lessons in filmmaking. Brzeski continues to explore the lyrical sense of implacable absence in her new film 24 Girls, the highlight, for me, of this year's Film Arts Festival.

24 Girls has two threads. One is a series of clips of 24 girls auditioning for a film project. Ranging in age from 10 to around 12, the girls are just on the edge of identity. They still have a natural, uncompromised sense of self, but they are beginning to adopt the performative characteristics that make being both a woman and an adult such a complex and often self-conscious activity. Because they are also performing in front of the camera, the mix of "real" and "fake" identities is often charming and always fascinating. The second story tells of Lynnie Moore, a young girl from Brzeski's past who died before becoming a teenager. In a project that would seem impossible to make work, Brzeski deftly weaves together glimpses of these living girls and the memory of one who has passed away, and in the process makes a film that's quite stunning.

The Film Arts Foundation has a reputation for showcasing such gems, and each year's festival invariably offers a strong mix of wacky narratives, stridently political docs, and uncompromising experimental films. This year was no exception, and many of the filmmakers in the festival, including Jay Rosenblatt, who presented the world premiere of his latest found footage film, Human Remains, and Jon Moritsugu, who screened his dark feature Fame Whore, are FAF regulars. The reciprocity between FAF and filmmakers is great, and it showed, especially on the opening night of the festival which took place at the nearly filled Castro Theater.

Hosted by the dynamic Mark Taylor, who has a daunting act to follow -- both Lissa Gibbs and Robert Hawk are former festival directors -- the festival consistently drew large crowds to a series of strong films. The "Advice to Adventurous Girls" show, for example, featured Amy, Susan Rivo's personal confession of her peculiar attachment to a stuffed animal, as well as two profiles: one by Kimberly Wood of Lilly La France, a motorcyclist from the 1930s titled Advice to Adventurous Girls, and Miriam Is Not Amused, a nicely developed introduction to the wife of Kenneth Patchen, a beat poet, by Kim Roberts. Sarah Kennedy's Dirty Fingernails is a hearty diatribe against the way women are excluded from everyday technology (like rebuilding motorcycle engines) and simultaneously a wonderfully self-conscious meditation in which Kennedy assesses her own complicity in this exclusion. Charlotte Legarde's Swell profiles several women surfers, and its moving conclusion had the entire theater sniffling tearfully.

Several other shows offered a similar series of great shorts back-to-back. Some of the highlights include Danielle Renfrew's Dear Dr. Spencer: Abortion in a Small Town, which profiles a small-town doctor who performed abortions for desperate women from all over the country long before abortion became legal. The film documents the town's clandestine support for the doctor, and offers a moving account of the ways in which people can band together to help others in need. Another compelling short is Rosenblatt's Human Remains, which uses archival footage and biographical excerpts to profile five key historical figures; the play of personal information and photographs against the backdrop of various historical atrocities is fascinating and at times horrific. Rosenblatt's film screened on opening night as part of the "In Glorious Black and White" show, which featured six great shorts. Tom E. Brown's Don't Run, Johnny was perhaps the oddest of the bunch. Brown's premise? Make the AIDS film that Ed Wood might have made. The result is irreverent and quite funny, with a perfectly contrived goofy aesthetic.

I discovered the Film Arts Foundation nearly five years ago when helping program for L.A.'s Filmforum. The collection of great shorts housed there could have filled an entire season's screenings, and the organization's support of its members, not only through screenings, equipment access, and basic membership services, but through real support, both financial and via astute networking, is remarkable. I secretly worried that FAF would be one of the media wonders that would dissolve -- too good to be true, how could it last? Well, it has lasted, and with no hint of dissolution. And Mark Taylor's leadership of the FAF's 13th festival bodes well for the future.
 
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© 2005 Filmmaker Magazine