By Jason Sanders.

Mad Matthewz and Mark Banning’s Jellysmoke, winner of the Best Narrative Feature Award at the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival.

“I never even knew Los Angeles had a film festival” were the not-so-promising initial words at this year’s, um, Los Angeles Film Festival, spoken by “Honorary Chair” Elijah Wood as he introduced the opening-night film Down in the Valley. Wood’s dubious confession (not exactly what you’d like to hear from an honorary chair, even if he is an ex-hobbit) left organizers nervously gagging on their complimentary Absolut tonics, but fortunately the 2005 edition of the LAFF proceeded to spread the word that Los Angeles does indeed have a film festival, one whose momentum is growing by the year. Its calculated addition of star-clogged new events (“Spirit of Independence Award” to George Clooney) manufactured an attraction glittering enough for individuals who, like Wood, would otherwise have barely noticed, but such top-heavy sparkle fortunately never detracted from what makes the LAFF so invigorating: its commitment to filmmakers and filmgoers who are shut out of such typical Hollywood dreamlands, and who demand — and create — something more; and its ability to actually connect these filmmakers to the industry.

The LAFF’s signature event has become its filmmaker retreat, which is becoming the most-loved experience of the entire film festival circuit. Putting words into action, the festival organizes a two-day retreat at a local inn and spa for every feature filmmaker in competition. Led by the festival’s guest director (this year, Sydney Pollack), the filmmakers mingle with staffers, board members and especially established directors and producers, gaining valuable feedback on current projects, tips for future ones and, most of all, a sense of community. “It blows me away that they even do that,” notes Beth Bird, director of the documentary Everyone Their Grain of Sand. “They bring in already established directors, who are specifically there to make an effort to outreach with you and connect with you.” For Mad Matthewz, a relative veteran of the retreat process (he attended last year for Men Without Jobs, and this year as a producer of Mark Banning’s Jellysmoke), “the retreat is a unique experience that immerses you in an intimate setting with more established filmmakers, and immediately sets the tone for the next 10 days. Invited directors share war stories about their struggles in bringing their particular stories to the screen, and younger directors are reminded that we are all more or less trying to do the same thing.”

After the retreat the LAFF makes sure guest filmmakers are still well connected to the industry at large. ”They really take advantage of the fact that they’re located in Los Angeles,” says Bird. Events such as the Kodak speed-dating sessions (where producers, distributors and development agents are available for informal meetings with attending filmmakers), the Fast Track program (where LAFF alumni projects are targeted for assistance) and a relaxed open-bar area all fashion a casual atmosphere where, as director Grace Lee (The Grace Lee Project) noted, “the staff goes out of its way to make sure that filmmakers are getting opportunities to meet people in the industry, and more importantly, network with our peers — fellow filmmakers.”

Anchoring the spa retreats and fistfuls of travel-size toiletry swag, of course, are the films themselves, and this year’s festival boasted a total of 266 films (including 77 features) representing more than 30 countries. The festival’s major sections are the Narrative and Documentary Competitions for American features, this year won by Banning’s Jellysmoke and Bird’s Everyone Their Grain of Sand respectively. One man’s battle with bipolar disorder formed the backbone of Jellysmoke, but the film’s charm wasn’t so much in the plot as in its rhythm and atmosphere. Like rising smoke, Jellysmoke is strangely hypnotic as it unspools, able to tune its audience in to the medicated dazes and bipolar crazes of its hero (rivetingly played by Michael Ealy), a man unmoored and unloved in contemporary Brooklyn. At first glance reminiscent of the early films of Spike Lee, Jellysmoke has a gentle naturalism that seems expansive enough to include the Parisian mileaus of Rohmer or a more mellow, deeply medicated Cassavetes, yet its strength of atmosphere seems culled from a Brooklyn all its own, one shot with obvious affection by cinematographer Cliff Charles.

If Jellysmoke was content to linger in the ether, Bird’s Everyone Their Grain of Sand rammed viewers straight into the fire of a Mexican border town’s struggle to survive against the Darwinian rules of contemporary economics. The film’s topic — an indigenous community battling globalization, their own government and police repression — guarantees its immediacy, but Bird’s strengths lie in her ability to move her camera away from the treatise at hand, to find the humanity within the headlines: a school graduation, a holiday celebration, a furtive smile or the rage that injustice provokes. Praised by the jury as “a return to unvarnished, passionate filmmaking,” Everyone Their Grain of Sand also provided the festival with its own bipolar moment, when this cine-call to action against globalization and multinationals received a cash prize from Target.

This being Los Angeles, such corporate largesse and product shilling provided other memorable moments, from the Family Day celebration at Santa Monica Pier (complete with Warner Bros.’ “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Activity Booth!” and Buena Vista’s “Have your head shaved like PACIFIER star Vin Diesel!” haircut salon) to the vaguely condescending daily festival highlights pages (which gave Banning’s and Bird’s award-acceptance photos equal billing with one of Virginia Madsen with Bulls-Eye, the Target Filmmaker Dog).

Other advertisements, fortunately, were of the more grassroots variety. To promote The Century Plaza, his cinema-verité look at a Portland SRO hotel, director Eric Lahey passed out complimentary bars of soap inscribed with the hotel’s (and film’s) name. Neill Dela Llana and Ian Gamazon, ready for the sold-out, much-anticipated hometown screenings of their Rotterdam/SXSW hit Cavite, were accompanied by a posse of Texas-Austin students, whose summer tasks (as part of a John Pierson–taught class) were to help promote the film. For her documentary The Grace Lee Project, which gathers the many Grace Lees of this world, filmmaker Grace Lee organized an entire flash-mob of Grace Lees to hit the theater outside her screening. Passing out “Hi, I’m Grace Lee” buttons to all and sundry (the oddest pseudo-Lee: Wim Wenders), she created an entire sea of artificial Lees floating like a tide onto Sunset Boulevard and beyond.

The Grace Lee Nation wasn’t the only community audience to be tapped by this year’s festival. Screenings of David LaChapelle’s krumping documentary Rize were accompanied by several of the film’s dancers, much to the delight of audience members. The festival’s CineCultura sidebar effectively outreached to the city’s vibrant Latino community, showing documentaries such as Everyone Their Grain of Sand, Mark Becker’s Romantico and Natalia Almada’s To the Other Side. Further expanding their reach, and breaking out from the usual rock-band choice for silent film scores, the programmers chose turntablist J-Rocc to compose and present an original score for the German silent classic The Last Laugh. While the evening may have been more “J-Rocc with The Last Laugh” rather than the other way around, it nonetheless proved effective, as did the LAFF’s even more inspired choice of the Wu-Tang Clan’s THE RZA as Artist in Residence.

With innovative programming, excellent community outreach and a new industry presence that not only comes for the photo ops but stays to help the filmmakers, it’s no surprise that filmmakers like Matthewz say that LAFF is “hands down the best film festival I’ve ever attended.” Building from the success of the past three years, the LAFF is raising the bar for how festivals treat filmmakers. “It’s one of the most filmmaker-friendly festivals I’ve attended,” explains Grace Lee. “Everyone works extremely hard to make each and every filmmaker feel at home,” continues Matthewz. “By comparison, I’ve been to festivals where the festival director didn’t even know my name.”