AFI FEST INDIE FILMS SEEK TRACTION
Los Angeles — As AFI Fest — LA’s largest fall film festival — hit midpoint earlier this week, no single title had broken out of the narrative or documentary competition selections as an obvious front-runner, while viable independently produced audience-award contenders also appeared scarce.
Some attendees were attributing the lack of a clear critical or audience consensus to uneven programming selections, particularly among American independent titles. Features like The Living Wake [pictured above], Pop Skull, Searchers 2.0 and the documentaries 1000 Journals and Heckler were drawing decidedly mixed responses.
With indies vying to gain traction, studio specialty releases and foreign pick ups angling for awards season exposure were left to take the limelight, including Centerpiece title Juno (Fox Searchlight), Margot at the Wedding (Paramount Vantage), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Miramax) and Persepolis (Sony Pictures Classics).
Festival attendance at the upscale Arclight Hollywood theaters’ multiplex ranged from 50-percent capacity at some mid-week screenings to sold-out on weekends. Atop the adjacent seven-story parking structure, AFI Fest’s Rooftop Village — a gathering of large party tents — hosted tightly monitored premiere parties, as well as the festival box office and the Cinema Lounge and Music Cafe for badge holders.
AFI Fest’s celebrity-friendly atmosphere had the glitz factor running high throughout the week, with multiple premieres drawing filmmakers and high-wattage talent for swanky arrivals and parties. Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs opened the festival, with Redford and co-stars Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise walking the red carpet for the North American premiere at Arclight’s Cinerama Dome. Stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black graced the screening of Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding, while rappers Chuck D and Flavor Flav were among the hip hop luminaries attending the world premiere of Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome.
Heading into the festival’s final weekend, capped by closing night’s North American premiere of Mike Newell’s Love in the Time of Cholera from New Line, tributes were scheduled to actors Laura Linney (along with a screening of Tamara’ Jenkins’ Fox Searchlight release The Savages), and Catherine Deneuve, who voices a character in France’s animated foreign-language Oscar submission Persepolis.
