FESTIVAL ROUNDUP



 

Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival

Hurricane Mitch hardly made a dent on the 13th annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival; knocking out power lines and flooding parts of South Florida midway through the 21-day event, it registered as little more than a blip on Fest director Gregory von Hausch’s radar. Like a force of nature himself, he was far too busy overseeing the world’s second longest film festival.

The Fort Lauderdale Fest is actually five festivals rolled into one: the Main Event, unfolding over 15 days at the Coral Ridge Mall in Ft. Lauderdale, and five Mini Fests – Women in Film, Miami Mini Fest, Miami Mini Fest Too, Hollywood Mini Fest & Asian Film Fest, and the Boca Mini Fest – each of several days duration. Together with the Fest’s numerous parties and cocktail receptions, and even a lavish tour by yacht of the Fort. Lauderdale intercoastal, it’s a whirlwind affair.

But bigger isn’t always better; South Florida’s gorgeous beaches and festive atmosphere could hardly mask the fact that the Festival, however titanic its ambitions, was a disappointment.

The Fest’s main venue, a commercial multiplex in a low-rent strip mall, did little to enhance the glamour organizers tried so hard to impart on the event. Neither did the Blockbuster Hospitality tent in the parking lot. It all sounded great on paper, but with screenings often beginning late, and ticket holders competing with cues for Bride of Chucky to access the theater lobby, the event felt tacky. Indeed, the film screenings themselves seemed secondary to the Fest’s aggressive schedule of post-screening receptions and late-night parties; the films were merely a pretext for socializing.

If the Fest’s Opening Night party was any index, the event does seem to register on the Fort Lauderdale social calendar. Although the evening’s entertainment – dancers miming "The Star Spangled Banner" and a featured performance by a Marilyn Monroe imitator –would hardly cut it at a New Jersey bar mitzvah. Nor would the locale; yet another, slightly more upscale, mall.

To the Fest’s great credit, a single Opening Night film, the Argentine El Faro, was chosen this year (last year, multiple opening films were programmed) and it unspooled to a receptive standing room audience in the luxurious Parker Playhouse.

The Festival proper, like Fort Lauderdale’s strip-mall culture, eschewed intimacy in favor of scale, featuring an abundance of selections of often inferior quality. And few, if any, screenings were followed by discussions, let alone substantive discussions, with the directors, producers and actors who had been flown in, housed, and wined in dined, at seemingly great expense.

This is not to say that there weren’t great films to be seen at the Festival; one simply had to spend a lot of time in Fort Lauderdale – like three weeks – to weed through the enormous program to find them. Well-known international hits, like Todd Solondz’ Happiness, Roberto Begnini’s Life is Beautiful, Walter Salles’ Central Station and Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The Inheritors, were peppered judiciously throughout the program, but few of the 17 World Premieres I made it a priority to see made an impact. Jason Freeland’s Brown’s Requiem, based on a novel by James Ellroy, displayed stunning technical values and an interesting performance by Michael Rooker in the title role, but the film seemed flat, maintaining an even tone despite Ellroy’s typically busy plot. Jonathan Flicker’s Followers, while lower budget, was slightly more successful in breathing life into a fairly cable-ready script about racism in a college fraternity. The film features terrific performances by its leads, Sam Trammell, Eddie Robinson and Gerald Robinson. Melissa Behr and Sherrie Rose’s Me and Will is a well meaning if muddled movie that takes two women, who meet in rehab, on a cross country motorcycle ride – Easy Rider on the road to recovery. Richard Murphy’s Betty is an infectious, if often harsh, comedy about a female film star’s flight from the limelight to the welcoming banality of everyday life.

Despite von Hausch’s and his staff’s obvious enthusiasm and energy on behalf of filmmakers, the Festival would be well served by scaling back its ambitions and presenting a more manageable event. Indeed, they may already be moving in that direction. Upon my return, I learned the Fest had just signed a 16-year lease to operate a 240-seat, single-screen art house year-round. "It will be the long-awaited art house that the east side of Fort Lauderdale has been craving," said an article in City Link, a local newspaper.

Great! But what about the parties?



 
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© 2005 Filmmaker Magazine