FESTIVAL ROUNDUP



 

Seattle International Film Festival

The gods were looking out for the Seattle International Film Festival this year, as it rained only twice during the 25th edition of the country’s longest festival. Two-hundred-and-six features and 76 shorts and documentaries from 45 countries were crammed into four of the city’s numerous theatres, drawing in over 142,000 people during its three-week run, a record high for the festival, and an 8% increase over last year’s audience totals.

To celebrate their silver anniversary, programmers added special sections, restored classic prints and even organized an accompaniment to The Battleship Potemkin by the Bellevue Philharmonic (Bellevue being the suburb next door to Microsoftland.)

The festival opened with La Cage aux Folles director Francis Veber’s latest farce, The Dinner Game, about a group of friends’ callous efforts to ridicule the biggest fool they can find at a weekly dinner party, to enthusiastic audience reaction.

Wim Wender's Doc Buena Vista Social Club

Like many of this year’s festivals, SIFF focused on Eastern European and ex-Soviet bloc cinema, showcasing internationally acclaimed films that have yet to get released in the states: Aklan Abdikalikov’s quietly moving Beshkempir from Kyrgyzstan, Czech director Petr Zelenka’s Buttoners, and Radu Mihaileanu’s masterful French-Romanian holocaust fable, Train of Life.

Apart from Train, other standouts included Chinese filmmaker Shi Runjiu’s A Beautiful New World, about a small town man who moves to Beijing after having won an apartment in a lottery. The film weaves its simple characters and plotline unassumingly, with lead actor Jiang Wu almost inconspicuously belying a blend of comedic and dramatic timing so precise he ultimately steals the entire film.

Only Clouds Move the Stars was a strong and emotionally resonant debut from Norwegian writer/director Torun Lian. Another in a growing line of Scandinavian films which captures all the pain and glory of adolescence, Only Clouds resounds with intelligence and humanity, and actress Thea Sofie Rusten shines as an eleven-year-old trying to live with the weight of her younger brother’s death.

Making his eighth appearance at SIFF, John Sayles was on hand for the premiere of Limbo, as well as for a special tribute to his entire body of work. And a focus on Emerging Masters this year showcased four young directors who, according to festival director and co-founder Darryl Macdonald, "represent the next wave of European filmmaking": Dorota Kedzierzawska (Devils, Devils, Nothing), Francois Ozon (Sitcom), Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), and Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, Jude) whose latest film, I Want You, was making its U.S. premiere here.

Another special anniversary feature was Flashback Films, a series of ten films which had received either their world or U.S. premieres at SIFF during the past 25 years before going on to win greater critical acclaim. Films included Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: Wrath of God, Hector Babenco’s Kiss of the Spiderwoman, and Paul Verhoeven’s The Fourth Man.

The rest of the offerings focused generously on American independents, and there was even a mini festival-within-a-festival titled Oh, Canada! Sadly though, too many of the North American independents were disappointing, most of them falling prey to the ingratiating angst that seems to be the flip side of the talk- show craze permeating this country. With a lot of expletives meant to represent dramatic writing, melodramatic, tabloidesque themes are favored in lieu of emotional complexity. There was family angst (Tod Williams’ The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, Holly Goldberg Sloan’s The Secret Life of Girls, Shimon Dolan’s You Can Thank Me Later), sexual angst (Colette Burson’s Coming Soon, Mike Figgis’ The Loss of Sexual Innocence), racial angst (The Last Best Sunday, by "Happy Days" actor-turned-director Don Most), and even mall angst (the overly-hyped talkfest Freak Talks About Sex by Paul Todisco).

The Festival’s main prizes, the Golden Space Needle awards, are audience selected, voted on by over 55,000 viewers this year. Picking up a Golden Space Needle for Best Film was festival staple Run Lola Run. John Sayles received the Best Director award, Best Actor went to Rupert Everett for An Ideal Husband, and Piper Laurie picked up the Best Actress award for her admittedly touching performance in Jonathan Miller’s The Mao Game, what has to be one of the most excruciatingly self-indulgent films ever made. Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club, on the legends of Cuba’s music world, was the hands-down favorite for Best Documentary, and Best Short went to Jay Lowi’s 12 Stops on the Road to Nowhere. The New Directors Showcase Award went to Czech filmmaker Oskar Reif for The Bed, an homage to that intimate refuge where many of life’s most important moments (including birth and death) take place. The American Independent Award was given to Clay Eide for his feature debut, Dead Dogs, a tightly shot black-and-white study of two brothers’ troubled and violent relationship. Atom Films, a distribution company dedicated entirely to cultivating shorts, awarded U.S. filmmaker Henry Griffin their top prize for Mutiny.



 
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© 2005 Filmmaker Magazine