No Laffing Matter

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Once upon a time, Film Independent executive director Dawn Hudson never fails to remind me, I wrote a scathing assessment of the Los Angeles Film Festival in which I said (among other things) that if a great hole opened up in the earth and consumed the festival entire, L.A. moviegoers would be none the worse for it. That was 2001, the seventh year for LAFF and its first under the aegis of Film Independent (then called the Independent Feature Project/West). If you went back and looked at the list of films screened that year, you’d find that most of them were (quite deservedly) never seen or heard from again.

A half decade later, no great sinkholes have plagued LAFF, although the 2007 lineup does include a sidebar of L.A.-centric disaster movies, as well as the world premiere of Transformers — the latest work by a director, Michael Bay, with a seemingly insatiable appetite for destruction. Meanwhile, I have been forced — quite happily — to swallow my words. In the space of six short years, what was once just another undistinguished voice in the local cacophony of film festivals and screening series has undergone an extreme makeover to rival those of Bay’s titular anthropomorphic robots, emerging as our most intelligent and ambitiously programmed — indeed, our most essential — annual film event. It’s also the one with the greatest sense of connection to the city itself.

The move last year to Westwood Village and its classic, single-screen movie palaces gave LAFF a feeling of permanence and a warm, communal atmosphere all too rarely encountered in these parts. (People were actually walking from theater to theater!) This year, LAFF returns there, with the addition of the Westside Pavilion’s new Landmark theater and the Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater as primary venues, plus a lineup that once again exemplifies the commitment of festival director Rich Raddon and programming director Rachel Rosen to challenging and expanding the audience’s horizons.

While LAFF’s eagerness to compete with Sundance, Toronto and other “discovery” festivals is evident in the presence of 14 world-premiere titles in the narrative and documentary competition sections, the 2007 selection is fleshed out by some of the best movies to have surfaced during the past year on the international festival circuit, plus a series of revival and retrospective programs devoted to films and filmmakers from the past in need of rediscovery. There are few places where one can see Transformers, vanguard new films from Spain, Thailand and Indonesia, plus Paul Mazursky’s 1974 human-feline road-trip movie Harry and Tonto all under the same roof, but LAFF is one of them. If some of those choices seem incongruous for a festival produced by an organization called Film Independent, it’s worth remembering that there is no shortage of independently financed films today that are veritable facsimiles of the worst studio-produced dreck, while there are filmmakers working at the studios (like Clint Eastwood, who will receive LAFF’s annual Spirit of Independence award on June 28) who are as iconoclastic as they come. So LAFF stands as a celebration of independent visions, from wherever in the world they may hail. Doubtless, you will love some and hate others. With any luck, they will spark conversations that will spill out of the cinemas and into the Westwood night.

LAFF 2007, From A to Y

Prisons, Punks and Don Quixote: Our critics’ guide to the very best of LAFF

MUSIC VIDEOS

{mosimage}In MTV’s halcyon days, before pimped rides, real worlds and big-budget
awards shows, the videos they programmed often gleamed with a joyful ineptitude.
Music-clip formula was far on the horizon, and naiveté was conjoined with a
gleeful raiding of experimental-film history and art-student precocity. Though
the “ineptitude” and “naiveté” showcased in the Los Angeles Film Festival’s
“Eclectic Mix” programs are more tongue-in-cheek and coolly studied, what these
more than three dozen music shorts have in common is a palpable sense of individuality
and indifference to the reigning templates of expression. Highlights include
Fluorescent Hill’s surreal, acid-trippy “12 Days of Christmas” for the band
Taking Back Sunday, in which a gift-giver’s obsession with fowl is drolly illustrated,
and then punctuated with non sequitur riffs on Danny Bonaduce; Jon Watts’ crinkly,
weathered homage to silent movies and the horror genre in his clip “Wolf Like
Me” for indie darlings TV on the Radio; and Daniel Levi’s work on Plan B’s “No
Good,” a claymation and stop-motion nod to Peter Gabriel’s classic “Sledgehammer”
video. Big-name directors like Joseph Kahn, Roman Coppola and Michel Gondry
all have new work here, as does Melodie McDaniel, who was the next big thing
a few years ago (she directed Madonna’s “Secret” video) before vanishing. What’s
especially refreshing are the representations of black folk: Asif Mian’s politically
charged “Trilogy” for the Roots; the aforementioned TV on the Radio; the spoofing
of Dick Cheney in Jurassic 5’s “Work It Out”; and two clips from Canadian rapper
k-os, who, in “ElectriK Heat: The Seekwill,” is a skater boy/bike dude roaming
through suburbia as b-boying and deejaying take place around him, while in “Sunday
Morning,” Afro-punks, white and black hipsters, and ghetto prom queens all gyrate
to the same pounding beat.

“Eclectic Mix 1” screens Sun., June 24, 1 p.m., and Thurs., June 28, 7:30
p.m., at the Italian Cultural Institute. “Eclectic Mix 2” screens Sat., June
23, 12:45 p.m., at Landmark’s Regent and Sun., July 1, 3 p.m., at the Italian
Cultural Institute. “Turn Into: The Music Videos of Patrick Daughters”screens
Sun., June 24, 3:30 p.m., at the Italian Cultural Institute and Mon., June 25,
9:45 p.m., at the Landmark.

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LARRY FESSENDEN X 3

{mosimage}If this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival has an unofficial poster
boy, it’s the New York–based writer-director Larry Fessenden, who may not be
a household name (even in houses with a Fangoria subscription), but who
is nevertheless the most gifted American horror auteur to emerge since the g(l)ory
days of John Carpenter and George Romero. Fessenden’s specialty lies in putting
a highly contemporary and sociopolitical spin on the most immortal horror-fantasy
myths: In No Telling (1991), he used the architecture of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein to comment on animal testing and the morality of science;
in the Independent Spirit Award–winning Habit (1997), vampirism functioned
as a metaphor for the alienation of modern life in the big city; and in Wendigo
(2001), the eponymous creature was a werewolflike Native American spirit, but
the more destructive force was the clash between civilized man and his primal,
animalistic nature. Much the same holds true for Fessenden’s latest, The
Last Winter, in which the employees of a U.S. oil company embark on a top-secret
Alaskan drilling project that will bring “energy independence” to the American
people while wreaking irreparable havoc on the delicate environment of the Arctic
tundra. Until, that is, some unseen, primordial force bubbles up from the ground
along with the black gold, infecting everyone and everything with which it comes
into contact. Could it be the spirit of the Wendigo come back to haunt again?
Perhaps. But as usual in a Fessenden film, in The Last Winter mankind
is its own worst enemy. Call it the first green horror picture — punctuated
by ample doses of red. In between directing his own films and acting in others
(recently, he could be seen sucker-punching Bill Murray in a memorable scene
from Broken Flowers), Fessenden has amassed a prolific career as an indie-film
producer, including River of Grass (the 1994 debut feature of Old
Joy director Kelly Reichardt) and two new works that screen alongside The
Last Winter in LAFF. In the first, writer-director Ilya Chaiken’s sensitively
drawn Liberty Kid, two food-service workers at New York’s Liberty Island
— fast-talking hustler Tico (Kareem Savinon) and wide-eyed dreamer Derrick (Al
Thompson) — find the job opportunities scarce after they’re laid off in the
wake of the 9/11 attacks. Recruiters of both the military and criminal-life
variety soon appear, as the story ventures into that familiar territory of urban
youths waylaid by ghetto realities. The strong performances and Chaiken’s vivid
NYC locations, however, lend the film unexpected resonance. Old Joy reconceived
as a horror movie is the simplest way to describe Trigger Man, the stunning
sophomore feature by 26-year-old writer-director Ti West, whose Fessenden-produced
vampire-bat epic The Roost earned a brief local release back in 2005.
Working from the purportedly true story of three buddies on a Delaware hunting
trip attacked by an unseen sniper, West fashions an uncommonly naturalistic
terror tale in which the emphasis on landscape and the gradual passage of time
have less to do with cut-and-run splatter-cinema hallmarks like Last House
on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave than with the work of experimental
filmmakers like Michael Snow and Chantal Akerman. Rife with intentional echoes
of the 9/11 attacks and unintentional ones of the Virginia Tech shootings, Trigger
Man denies its audience conventional narrative satisfactions while creating
an almost unbearable atmosphere of voyeurism and random violence, right up to
a final scene that teases us with resolution only to devolve into yet another
enigma. Who’s gunning whom in Trigger Man? The point is that it scarcely
matters in a world where everyday life is a deadly contact sport.

The Last Winter screens Fri., June 22, at 9:30 p.m. at the Majestic Crest
and Sun., June 24, at 2 p.m. at the Mann Festival; Liberty Kid screens
Sat., June 23, at 7:45 p.m. at the Landmark Regent and Mon., June 25, at 7:30
p.m. at the Landmark. Trigger Man screens Mon., June 25, at 10 p.m. at
the Landmark Regent and Tues., June 26, at 7:30 p.m. at the Landmark.

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MOVIES & MORE

{mosimage}When the trailblazing “new Hollywood cinema” of the 1970s is nostalgically
evoked, two names too infrequently mentioned in the hallowed company of Altman,
Cassavetes, Rafelson, et al. are those of Paul Mazursky and Ulu Grosbard. This
year, the Los Angeles Film Festival sets about correcting that oversight in
a sidebar program titled “Movies & More,” the “more” referring to the fact
that all films in the series will be preceded or followed by onstage conversations
with their makers. Chances are you’ve at least heard of Mazursky, if not for
his recurring appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Sopranos,
then for the fact that he weathered the grim moviemaking decade of the 1980s
more successfully than most of his more lionized contemporaries, emerging with
two popular hits, Moscow on the Hudson (1984) and Down and Out in
Beverly Hills (1986). Mazursky’s heyday, though, was the ’70s, during which
he presided over a series of indelible tragicomedies (Bob & Carol &
Ted & Alice [actually 1969], Blume in Love, An Unmarried Woman)
about modern American marriage and the pursuit of something like happiness.
In 1974, Mazursky took time out for a love story of a different sort, this one
between an elderly widower (Art Carney, in his Oscar-winning role) and his trusty
feline companion, who, upon being evicted from their New York apartment, take
to the highways, destination unknown. The movie is called Harry and Tonto,
and from an era rich with road movies (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Vanishing
Point), it is one of the most lyrical and picaresque, as man and beast encounter
a succession of relatives and eccentric strangers (played by the likes of Ellen
Burstyn, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Chief Dan George) who form a mosaic of hopeful
and bottomed-out possibilities.

Now to the more pressing question: Ulu who? A Belgian-born former diamond cutter
whose Broadway credits far outnumber his film ones, Grosbard was nevertheless
responsible for one of the best and least-heralded American movies of the decade:
1978’s Straight Time. In probably his greatest, least mannered performance,
Dustin Hoffman stars as a recently paroled petty thief who flirts briefly with
the idea of living legit, only to quickly fall back into old habits. Adapted
from the novel No Beast So Fierce by real-life ex-con Edward Bunker,
Straight Time sees the criminal life less as a choice than as a predisposition,
and it bristles with the terse street poetry and solemn philosophizing associated
with the later films of Michael Mann (who worked uncredited on the script).
Also on tap, an ultrarare revival of Jospeh Sargent’s The Man (1972),
which was originally produced for television but released to theaters instead
and returns to the big screen at what could hardly seem a more prescient moment:
It stars James Earl Jones as the first black president of these United States.

The Man screens Fri., June 22, at 9:30 p.m. at the Billy Wilder Theater;
Straight Time screens Sat., June 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the Billy Wilder
Theater; Harry and Tonto screens Fri., June 29, at 8:30 p.m. at the Billy
Wilder Theater.

THE FILMS THAT GOT AWAY

{mosimage}I’d like to blame the recall election and the fervor of the Bush
vs. Kerry campaign for the fact that two provocative and artfully made political
films from 2003 and 2004 have never before screened in Los Angeles. It seems
like new documentaries on hot-button issues were opening every week back then,
so perhaps there simply wasn’t room for a chamber drama about the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact or an operatic account of the Achille Lauro hijacking. More likely, distributors
didn’t see a buck to be made. Whatever the reason, this situation is finally
being corrected by the Los Angeles Film Festival, which has again partnered
with the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the UCLA Film and Television
Archive to give two long-undistributed films — Eric Rohmer’s Triple Agent
and Penny Woolcock’s The Death of Klinghoffer — their belated local premieres.
Triple Agent has many of Rohmer’s hallmarks: beautiful Continental women,
lots of intellectual banter and, of course, even more that’s left unsaid. But
like only a few of his films (L’Anglaise et le Duc, La Marquise d’O),
it’s also a period piece — complete with Pathé newsreel footage — set in Paris
during the lead-up to WWII. One can see the influence of Notorious on
Rohmer (who wrote an early book about Hitchcock) in this tale of love and espionage
shot in the old-style, full-frame aspect ratio. Triple Agent boasts Nazis,
sustained suspense and a sudden, twist ending, all handled in Rohmer’s slow,
transparent, seemingly effortless style (no memorable tracking shots here).
Woolcock’s film adaptation of John Adams’ 1991 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer,
also has effortless moments in its mixture of oratorio and cinema. Klinghoffer
has often been called a “CNN opera,” and indeed Woolcock uses news-style editing
and hand-held cameras to make this stagy work seem surprisingly natural onscreen.
Unfortunately, her grasp of politics is shakier than her camera. She hijacks
Adams’ controversial work and makes it unambiguously (and often naively) pro-Palestinian.
What could have been a watershed for filmed opera is instead an ambitious, if
often cringe-inducing, curiosity.

The Death of Klinghoffer screens Mon., June 25, 9:30 p.m., at the Billy Wilder
Theater. Triple Agent screens Tues., June 26, 7:30 p.m., at the Billy
Wilder Theater.

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INTERNATIONAL SPOTLIGHT: ROMANIA

Though critics cry “New Wave” all too easily when a national cinema starts
popping up at all the right film festivals, there’s definitely something in
the water when it comes to contemporary Romanian film. And I’m not just talking
about Cristian Mungiu’s lauded abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,
which carried off the Palme D’Or at Cannes last month and was due to play the
Los Angeles Film Festival until it was pulled by its distributor. From Cristi
Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu to Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East
of Bucharest, Romania is taking a sardonic yet loving ax to its autocratic
past and chaotic present. In LAFF’s spotlight on Romanian film, Radu Muntean’s
excellent The Paper Will Be Blue plays like a prequel to 12:08,
which focused on a provincial TV talk show host 16 years after the revolution,
trying to get a bead on what happened in his town the day Ceausescu was ousted.
Muntean takes us back to the night of the revolution itself, December 22, 1989,
and follows a militia unit assigned to peace-keeping duties on the anarchic
streets of Bucharest as it tries to track down a conscript who’s defected. A
deft impassive comedy laced with looming tragedy, the movie addresses both the
confusion of cataclysmic social change and its consequences for innocent lives.
Less successful is Cristian Nemescu’s 45-minute Marina From P7, a drama
about a boy in love with a hooker on the mean streets of Bucharest that takes
its stylistic cues from Italian neo-realism and methodically converts them into
cliché. Better to stick with the accompanying short, The Tube With a Hat,
a delightful 23-minute piece about a father trying to get the ancient family
TV fixed for his stolid little boy, which suggests the benefits of capitalism
haven’t quite made it to Romania.

The Paper Will Be Blue screens Sun., June 24, 4:45 p.m. at The Landmark &
Wed., June 27, 9:45 p.m., at the Italian Cultural Center. Marilena From
P7 and The Tube With a Hat screens Sat., June 30, 10 p.m., & Sun.,
July 1, 5:15 p.m., at the Italian Cultural Institute.

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