Regular contributor Mike Plante filed this report on the Poland-based fest Off Plus Camera, which took place April 17-26 and is gaining notoriety on the fest circuit because of its Grand Prize of $100,000. We can just hear you all practicing your Polish now.

The Off Plus Camera film festival is brand new but already pushing expectations. The first edition of the fest held in beautiful Krakow, Poland, was last October. In an effort to have more crowds and better weather, the fest was moved to April. But they didn’t wait a year - they slammed straight to April ‘09, being crazy enough to do a fest twice in one physical year. With less time between fests, it might be hard to find that many good films, but when you are looking for films from every country regardless of their premiere status, you have tons of great choices. Premiere status is necessary for many fests to entice press, industry and some audiences, and to help achieve a level of importance inside the indie film industry. It becomes tedious though, with many great films missing out on screening and competition opportunities because they had one show somewhere else.

I digress – Off Plus Camera had a powerful choice for opening night – the I-can’t-believe-its-not-a-documentary Johnny Mad Dog, a great and harrowing film that kept people talking. The fest’s official competition section stressed first and second features from directors, with the fest’s opinion each film had not been highly exposed yet, or played at other festivals and has since fallen below the radar. It was a section many fests would want to show, with Afterschool, Big Heart City, Gigante, La Nana, Medicine for Melancholy, The Messenger, Shutes, Sois Sage, Splinterheads, Unmade Beds, Wojna Polsko-Ruska (from Poland) and Zion and his Brother.

Besides their good taste in films, Off Plus Camera gives incredible awards: $100,000 to the jury-selected best film (La Nana, pictured above), which also includes a promise of 1 million zloty to the director if they make a film in Poland (winning director Sebastian Silva mentioned he was interested in making a film about mermaids and naked people. "I'd love to shoot it at the Baltic Sea.”)

Another $10,000 went to a film awarded by local journalists (The Messenger) and the Polish film in competition, Wojna Polska-Ruska, won the audience award, which gave $10,000 to each the filmmaker and the distributor.

Other sections held great films that had gotten attention at bigger festivals (like Hunger), recent films that did not play in Poland yet (Wendy and Lucy), a series of recent American independent films (chosen by Trevor Groth and myself, including Alexander the Last, Barking Water and My Effortless Brilliance), a tribute to 25 years of Sundance, a series of queer cinema (classic films from Gregg Araki, Todd Haynes, Isaac Julien, Gus Van Sant, Tom Kalin) and a series of retro films, this year highlighting Godard, Anna Karina and Seymour Cassel.

Audiences were up this year with the spring weather and more students in town for school. Krakow is a big university town with 100,000 students. And its old – Copernicus studied here (class of 1495). The picturesque city is incredibly intact through multiple wars and communism, surrounded by lovely rolling hills, castles, and a statue of a dragon that breathes fire. Some of the buildings they put microcinemas inside are older than cinema.

With the love of independent cinema from all over the world, Off Plus Camera fits right into what makes a festival vital and interesting. Not to mention: One day at lunch in the city square, two film icons met. Anna Karina was there to screen the films she made with Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s as well as the recent Victoria, which she directed and acted in. Seymour Cassel was on hand to screen two classics directed by John Cassavetes, Faces and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and two new films he acted in, Big Heart City and Reach for Me. Working completely unrelated in Europe and America in 1960, Karina and Cassel helped light the spark that ignited what is now independent cinema today. The two being present at a celebration of new filmmakers put everyone on cloud nine. Not bad for a second-year fest.

On a non-indie note: director Howard Deutch and actress Lea Thompson were also on hand at the fest and were incredibly gracious and funny, ruining any Hollywood clichés. Thompson promised to tell me behind-the-scenes stories of Jaws 3-D.

With an extremely kind staff, unique films and guests, and big support from the city and local television, Off Plus Camera has a chance to become a real gem of European film festivals. -- Mike Plante

Labels: Festival Ambassador

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/19/2009 11:45:00 AM Comments (0)