|
When the Independent Features Project/West acquired the Los
Angeles Film Festival two years ago, it aspired to do what
no one had ever done: build a world-class film festival in
the heart of movieland. Almost immediately, executive director
Dawn Hudson started to hear passionate and disparate opinions
of how she should proceed.
"Someone said, 'You should just show documentary films.'
One person said we should make it like a filmmakers' campus
and focus on the art, not the business of filmmaking,"
she recalled. "Another said it should be only a festival
for the industry. A filmmaker said, 'Just make sure you have
all the agents there. We want our films bought.' Another said
it should be for the general public only, a film lovers' festival.
Another person said, 'You should be Cannes in L.A. and have
a market and a festival and put it on the beach.'"
On Thursday, the IFP/West, a respected nonprofit known for
its Independent Spirit Awards and support programs for indie
filmmakers, will open a reinvented festival with something
for almost everyone. "We're moving from a niche festival
to a more general film festival," L.A. Film Festival
programming director Rachel Rosen said. "We're stretching
any number of ways."
Even among well-wishers,
however, questions abound. For one, the metamorphosis comes
amid an explosion of film festivals, which have multiplied
an estimated fivefold during the past five years. There are
now 1,600 festivals around the world and 650 in the United
States, according to Filmfestivals Entertainment
Group, an international organization that provides
Web and television support to film festivals. None of the
more than two dozen festivals in Los Angeles ranks in the
top 10, a list dominated by Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, Venice
and Berlin, said Bruno Chatelin, Filmfestivals'
chief operating officer.
For another, it's unclear whether L.A. can support--or even
wants--another film festival. New festivals seem to pop up
all the time around Southern California, whether to promote
tourism or to draw specialty audiences.
"On the one hand, you could make the argument that perhaps
no other city in the world is more able to support such a
divergent mix of film events," said Christian Gaines,
director of the AFI Fest, the American Film Institute festival,
one of the largest and most respected of Los Angeles' existing
festivals. "On the other, you can argue it contributes
to disorientation and confusion among the film community as
well as the general public. Their feelings are, 'There are
too many film events and I can't quite keep up with them all.'"
As the world's film center, Los Angeles needs a film festival
less than almost any other place in the world, said film critic
Roger Ebert. "There's no need for one in a town where
every commercial release plays usually before it plays anywhere
else," he said. "It's a company town that doesn't
want anyone else managing the company softball team."
Despite the proliferation of local film festivals and the
presence of one of the world's three top film markets, the
American Film Market, Ebert said Sundance has become the "de
facto Los Angeles film festival."
The city just doesn't provide the same cachet as far-flung
locales, said Dawn Moyer-Sims, marketing manager of Outfest,
Los Angeles' gay and lesbian festival, which takes place in
July. "People here want to go somewhere else to do it.
It's exotic to go to Sundance with a bunch of people hopping
on a plane with their newly purchased parkas and seeing what
this snow stuff is all about. It's exotic to say 'I'm flying
off to Cannes and you can reach me on my cell phone,' rather
than 'I'm going down the street to the Directors Guild of
America.'"
The very nature of Los Angeles--sprawling, chaotic, culturally
diverse, professionally jaded--raises the question of whether
anyone could create a world-class festival in the world center
of the entertainment industry. Jon Fitzgerald, a former director
of the AFI Fest, said, "In Los Angeles, you've got the
unique combination of being in the industry's backyard, but
you have a very diverse cultural community. It's really hard
to have something for everybody."
At the same time, festivals have become an increasingly important
tool in getting audiences to see films--particularly smaller
independent films. "The more the film studios are in
the clutches of multinational companies, the fewer opportunities
are in the mainstream to make anything quirky," said
"A Hollywood Education" author and screenwriter
David Freeman.
"As long as festivals keep popping up, there's a chance
that some of this newer, more interesting work gets to be
shown to the public.
"This is one of those problems that is bigger than show
business," he added. "This is a cultural issue that
cuts across national lines. Anything the country does that
provides the best of what we can make is valuable, and should
be treasured and encouraged."
Filmmakers naturally are also looking for career-boosting
deals and distribution. Large festival audiences, especially
cinema-literate ones, can generate the kind of word-of-mouth
that is "gold to any marketing campaign," he said.
Banners along La Brea Avenue are among the efforts to raise
the profile of the Los Angeles Film Festival.
CARLOS CHAVEZ / LAT
Besides a strong mix of films (153 in all) and related events,
IFP/West-Los Angeles Film Festival leaders know that their
grand ambitions rest on their ability to sell the 10-day event--Thursday
through June 29--to audiences beyond the usual film festival
crowds. "The biggest key to having a successful festival
in Los Angeles is having the ability to market to the general
public," festival director Rich Raddon said. To do that,
they lined up high-level sponsors, Target and In Style magazine,
and by the spring had unrolled an active marketing campaign.
Hudson said the festival could never have pulled off a publicity
campaign on a similar scale on its own.
"We couldn't be marketing the festival on our limited
resources in this city, given that people spend millions and
millions to open a film here," Hudson said. The festival's
$850,000 budget has been augmented by an equal amount of in-kind
donations, Raddon said.
The dream of creating a major film festival in Los Angeles
goes back more than 30 years. One of the first to push for
a festival was the late director George Cukor, who in 1970
tried in vain to persuade the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences to take responsibility. His supporters hoped
for a world-class event that could challenge Lincoln Center's
New York Film Festival artistically and Cannes as a spectacle.
The plan's foes, however, feared having their product labeled
"art house" and believed most films could only suffer
from debuting at a festival (this was well before a movie
could benefit from "festival buzz"). Minus the studios'
cooperation, the festival would lack the necessary glitz to
gain worldwide attention. What's more, opponents worried that
the more influential New York critics would dismiss a festival
on the very grounds that it took place in the shadow of Hollywood.
"Back then, everybody was talking about it. [The supporters]
thought the academy should do it, the county museum should
do it. It was obvious that no one was going to do it,"
said Barbara Smith, who now directs the American Cinematheque
in Hollywood.
So a group that included Smith and "the two Garys"--Gary
Essert and Gary Abrahams--set up an independent organization
in 1971, the once controversial but now much lamented Los
Angeles International Film Exposition, better known as Filmex.
Local film lovers become misty-eyed now when they recall playful
Filmex ads, the galas, the campy parades that included a baby
elephant and a fire-eater, and the hundreds of rarely seen
films and movie marathons.
In retrospect, Smith said, people are amazed that at its
peak Filmex was filling two theaters in Century City, one
with 1,400 seats and the other with 800, five times a day.
"They forget that in the 1970s, there was only one cable
channel in L.A., the Z Channel. There were no video stores.
It was a very different time than now," she said.
In many ways, Filmex is a kind of model for the new Los Angeles
Film Festival, according to Raddon. "There hasn't been
anything since Filmex that captured the potential the city
has to offer, a world-class film festival. That's what we're
trying to do."
Filmex died in 1983 from a combination of politics and administrative
troubles. The AFI Fest grew from its ashes as other festivals
proliferated--from ethnic and geographic ones in Silver Lake,
Malibu and Palm Springs, to a method acting one in Pasadena.
In 1992, Robert Faust, a local entrepreneur who had been
producing the IFP/West's Independent Spirit Awards, decided
to start a festival for American indie films. "For years,
there were niche events like Outfest," he said. "There
was nothing for the masses that would garner both the public
and the industry's interest." The Los Angeles Independent
Film Festival, held in April, was timed to give filmmakers
an alternative to Sundance, which is held in January.
After five years, Faust sold the festival to IFP/West, an
organization he felt was well positioned in the community
to attract the best new filmmakers. A name change dropped
the word "independent" partly because to some it
implied an image of lesser quality, he said.
As a former producer, Raddon understands filmmakers, one
of the keys to running a successful festival, Faust said.
"With IFP growing it more and perhaps taking it to the
next level, I think the industry is going to pay more attention
to it," he said.
"There is a challenge in Los Angeles to get anybody
excited about anything," Faust added. "People see
stars here when they go out to eat. It's not as big a deal"
as in Sundance, Toronto or Cannes, he said. "People in
L.A. are jaded, and the industry as well, for sure."
Former AFI Fest director Fitzgerald, a co-founder of the
maverick Slamdance festival in Park City, Utah, said, "L.A.
itself doesn't care. People around Cannes love it when the
festival comes. People flock to celebrities. Not us. We see
them all the time....It's hard to get L.A. to pay attention.
When a festival is going on in Cannes, there's nothing else
going on."
Even if there was more money behind the L.A. Film Fest, success
wouldn't be a slam-dunk, studio executives said privately.
In a city where impressions often count more than reality,
the festival needs to seriously work on its personality to
get attention, they said: It needs more stars, more attendance,
more acquisitions, more fun.
Ebert, who runs his own Overlooked Film Festival, said it
would take someone with the stature and prestige of Steven
Spielberg or Robert De Niro to create a major film festival
in Los Angeles. "There are too many egos for an ordinary
film fest-type person to prevail," he said, adding that
De Niro's celebrity status helped the Tribeca Film Festival
achieve instant respect upon its debut in New York.
According to one school of thought, the best way for Los
Angeles to become a major international player is for one
or more of the city's biggest festivals to merge with the
American Film Market, the annual marketplace begun 22 years
ago by independent producers and distributors as an alternative
to Cannes.
At first cool to the idea, the trade organization has begun
to see the benefits, according to Greg Ptacek, communications
director for AFMA, the trade organization that sponsors the
market in Santa Monica. "Festivals bring in celebrities.
Having celebrity is important even if all you want to do is
business," he said. They attract the international press,
which in turn attracts more and bigger filmmakers, ultimately
raising the bottom line for everyone, he added.
Ptacek said the organization is considering an alliance,
but it is also thinking of hosting its own.
To some, this year's Los Angeles Film Festival looks promising,
with outdoor screenings, an expanded program designed by the
newly hired Rosen, formerly of the San Francisco International
Film Festival, and guest director Alfonso Cuarón ("Y
Tu Mamá También"). Cuarón will be
the host of a retreat for participating filmmakers in Ojai
and, separately, will show festival audiences three films
that have influenced him: "Adieu Philippine" (1962),
"Canoa" (1975) and "Sunrise" (1927.)
Nancy Utley, president of marketing for Fox Searchlight, was
shocked last year when she attended the L.A. Film Fest for
the first time. "I saw nametags, passes, question-and-answer
sessions with filmmakers, everything you would see in a film
festival. I wasn't aware that happened here at home."
Utley, like many others, said she had always found it odd
there wasn't a big festival in the industry's home town that
elicited the same enthusiasm as film festivals elsewhere.
She called it a shame--particularly since a local festival
offers small studios such as Searchlight the opportunity to
premiere films to a built-in audience. "It's ironic that
in the world capital of entertainment, so few people actually
realize there's a film festival here," said Rick Carpenter,
president of DDB Worldwide Communications Group, a Los Angeles-based
advertising agency and one of the organizations IFP/West has
courted aggressively to donate time, expertise or advertising
space to the festival.
So far, DDB has produced billboards and ads running in theaters
on the theme "Everyone Likes to Watch." IFP/West's
Hudson said "street teams" pass out candy with the
festival logo in movie theaters in the evening. Public radio
stations, local newspapers including the Los Angeles Times,
and major sponsor In Style have donated advertising. Target
donated cash for the narrative feature prize. "We've
had a lot of filmmakers come to us because of the $50,000
grant," Hudson said.
Raddon isn't sure the campaign has reached all the communities
the festival wants to attract. For instance, one new documentary,
"OT: Our Town," follows eager students at Dominguez
High School in the Crenshaw District as they stage the school's
first theatrical production in 22 years. "I'm hoping
those kids and families in Crenshaw come up for the film festival.
I don't know if they will," Raddon said.
Utley said Hudson and Raddon impressed her with their plans
for a "people's festival. We wanted to be supportive
of that idea."
This year, Fox Searchlight will screen "The Good Girl,"
an edgy comedy starring Jennifer Aniston as an unhappily married
shopgirl. Lions Gate will also present a Nick Broomfield documentary,
"Biggie and Tupac," and a feature, "Lovely
& Amazing," an ensemble family comedy. The festival
is a cheap way to launch the summer features, both of which
are scheduled be released in August, Utley said.
One key to a successful local festival, she added, is to
persuade more studios to premiere more films that haven't
already been screened in other festivals. "If the lineup
is amazing, then everyone in the industry will want to go."
Big studio chiefs, who sometimes premiere their smarter,
award-contending films at the Toronto Film Festival in September,
said privately there was no reason to participate in a local
film festival that doesn't get daily media coverage. They
would be seeking publicity for new releases, and in Los Angeles,
the major studios prefer to control publicity at the time
they choose. (But they didn't want to be identified because
they want to appear supportive of the L.A. fest.)
Last year, the L.A. Film Fest increased attendance 150%,
to 30,000, and boasted its biggest success, "Kissing
Jessica Stein."
"The festival delivered me," said director Charles
Herman-Wurmfeld, whose movie was acquired for distribution
and represented his first professional break in 15 years.
His film, made for less than $1 million, was distributed to
400 theaters and has made $6.5 million so far, he said.
Many in the filmmaking community argue that Los Angeles needs
and deserves its own major festival--especially now, when
young filmmakers are taking advantage of digital video to
create more independent films, and when most major studios
have scant interest in the small and the quirky.
Tanya Wexler, who will screen her feature "A Ball in
the House," said a festival in the center of the film
world is a boon for a small works like hers, a black comedy
about a small-town teenager trying to stay sober that will
probably initially appeal to art-house crowds.
"The whole industry's out there. It'll be fairly easy
to get someone to drive over. You can say, 'It's only on Sunset,
can you go to see it?'"
The L.A. Film Fest is on the right path, she added. "They're
more selective, devoting more resources to fewer films."
Cuarón said, "It would be great to have a really
important festival evolving in the context of the [film] industry
capital of the world. It is about time, by the way.
"A key in L.A. is to reach out for the normal, mainstream
audience. It would be a beautiful thing to expose them to
the diversity that cinema is all about," he said.
"You have to understand, we believe we're involved in
a cause," Raddon said, "the cause of promoting voices
that wouldn't otherwise be heard. This summer, everywhere
I look, it's 'Spider-Man.'"
If there's any one thing all 153 films have in common this
year, Rosen said, "it's whatever it takes to get a movie
made when no one's asking you to make it. And that applies
straight down the line from the international films to some
of the archival films to the American documentaries and features.
I doubt there was anyone throwing money at any of these filmmakers
or begging them to get out there with a camera."
She and her team screened more than 2,500 entries, including
shorts and features. Her schedule for the event shows a checkerboard
full of gray, black and blue color blocks to help people sort
the galas from the special events, the music video screenings
from the seminars, and figure out where to go for the international
showcase movies, the shorts, high school films, narrative
competition films, and the documentary competition. Events
will be held mostly around Hollywood, from the festival center
at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood, to the DGA, the
ArcLight Cinerama Dome, the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre and
the Chateau Marmont.
Hudson said she hopes the festival will inspire industry
and non-industry people alike to remember why they loved going
to movies in the first place. "When you go to the festival
and see wonderful films, and you're not hearing the box office
report the next morning, and they haven't been prepackaged
to you, there is that exciting sense of discovery and more
of a pure film experience. It takes us all back to whenever
you first discovered film as a powerful medium."
It was "Kissing Jessica Stein" that made Berkeley
filmmaker Myra Paci sit up and take notice. Her first feature
film, "Searching for Paradise," the story of a young
woman disillusioned by what she learns about her father after
his death, had been accepted by three other film festivals
this year. She said she pulled it out of the other festivals
because the L.A. Film Fest wanted the world premiere.
She is hopeful she will be able to sell her film here. "The
Los Angeles Film Festival is getting to be such a big festival.
Plus, it's placed in the center of the filmmaking industry.
A lot of sales happen there and there's a lot of attention
by the press and buyers. This is a festival that has a lot
of weight for a filmmaker who wants to go on to make more
movies."
The IFP/West-Los Angeles Film Festival runs Thursday-June
29 at the Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., West
Hollywood; Laemmle's Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood;
and other venues. (866) 345-6337 or http://www.lafilmfest.com.
* * *
Lynn Smith is a Times staff writer. Times staff writer Kevin
Crust contributed to this story.
|
FESTIVAL