While celebrity sightings were slim at the Angelika during the IFP Market this year, at least I can say I lunched with Elvis at Katz’s Deli. This post-Comeback Special period impersonator had it down—the gold leather jacket with fringes, the sideburns, the sunglasses, the sneer. Impressive. And of course it’s New York so no one even bats an eyelash.
The Market definitely had more activity at the Puck Building for panels and meetings than at the Angelika for screenings. Though attendance seemed to pick up on Wednesday afternoon, perhaps due to new projects from familiar directors, gone are the days of being shut out of screenings and being assaulted by filmmakers with promotional gimmicks as soon as they recognized the color of your badge. It’s always an adjustment to go from seeing accomplished, full-length features at the Toronto Film Festival to trailers and clips of dozens of docs in various stages of readiness just a couple of days later. Despite this aesthetic whiplash and the usual shortcomings of the Angelika--including lack of a functional “Up” escalator, technical difficulties galore, late starts of films, and a leaking ceiling over the escalator (but hey! the popcorn and soda were free)—there were many promising projects to see and talented filmmakers to meet and encourage.
Certain themes emerged over the week: abuses of the government; the struggles of living in poverty; female empowerment and women who have made a difference in their communities and their countries; mental illness; terminal diseases and living with disabilities; political activism; the performance arts, and baseball. Perhaps it’s a coincidence with the great Wild Card races and the perpetual Yankees/Red Sox horserace going on in Major League Baseball right now, but there were four (!) baseball projects in the works--SPACEMAN: A BASEBALL ODYSSEY, about counter-culture pitcher Bill Lee; KOKO-YAKYU: HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL, about the National Championship tournament in Japan; BAD BOYS OF SUMMER, about the San Quentin prison baseball team (that gets to all their games at home); and WHO’S ON FIRST, about Greece having to field a baseball team for the 2004 Olympics in Athens despite no experience whatsoever when the country was awarded the Summer Games. Another sports film that had considerable buzz and is ready to go out into the festival world now is Josh Aronson’s BULLRIDER. NASCAR fans should rejoice over this new film from the director of SOUND AND FURY as it focuses on all the good ol’ boys that participate in the incredibly dangerous bull riding World Championship tour.
The other doc feature that opened some eyes (and moistened a few as well) is SO MUCH SO FAST, the new film from Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, the creators of the Sundance award-winning TROUBLESOME CREEK: A MIDWESTERN. This rich and moving work focuses on a family dealing with a 29-year-old brother who’s been diagnosed with the nerve disorder ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and the race against time to do something about it. Every year at the Market there’s one or two films that are a sure thing, such as NEVERLAND in 2003 or THREE OF HEARTS in 2004—SO MUCH SO FAST is this year’s standout for me.
There were of course, many other titles by both “name” and first-time directors whose films’ progress we’ll be following in the coming months: AUTUMN’S EYES by Paola Mendoza, co-creator and star of ON THE OUTS; THE CANDIDATE, the charming look at feisty 94-year-old Granny D’s run for the Senate in New Hampshire by Marlo Poras (MAI’S AMERICA); A LION IN THE HOUSE, the PBS-bound series focusing on families with children stricken with cancer by Steven Bognar (PICTURE DAY) and Julia Reichert (SEEING RED, UNION MAIDS); OFF THE GRID: LIFE ON THE MESA by Jeremy and Randy Stulberg (THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX), about a small group of drifters, veterans, and freedom-seekers living in a remote part of New Mexico; IMAGINING PEACE by Lisa Gossels (THE CHILDREN OF CHABANNES), a fascinating look at the Middle East crisis through the eyes of teenage girls from both Israel and Palestine that attend a 3-week summer camp in New Jersey; GONE TO TEXAS: THE LIVES OF FORREST CARTER by Marco Ricci, the wild story of the best-selling author of “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and “The Education of Little Tree” who was a Cherokee hero of New Age Wisdom. But twelve years after his death it’s discovered that he was also “Asa” Carter, head of the KKK in Alabama and speech writer for George Wallace; and new films by both co-directors of TWO TOWNS OF JASPER, Whitney Dow’s exploration of Haiti and its most famous band, SEPTENTRIONAL, and Marco Williams’ FREEDOM DREAMS, a portrait of Patrick Critton, a black militant, revolutionary, and terrorist.
Laughs were far and few between, but there were a couple of films which had the audience cracking up and potentially could be winners: GARY AND THE ROMANS by Ted Gesing is in the AMERICAN MOVIE vein and introduces us to a deluded Tampa billboard magnate and his Brazilian body-building leading actress as they attempt to make a promo reel for the toga epic of his dreams; and GIRLS ROCK! by Arne Johnson and Shane King packed ‘em in for this very entertaining peek at a rock ‘n’ roll camp for girls ages 8 – 18 in Portland, Oregon.
The final day of screenings also brought reduced hours in the Video Library. While it was previously publicized that the library would be open until 8:30 nightly, Thursday morning’s mailbox memo announced a 4:00 PM closing time. It’s bad enough they eliminated Friday availability for the first time in years, but this abrupt change in policy was met with a lot of frustration. The IFP needs to do better and at least give its supporters enough lead time to maximize their schedule. Is that to much to ask?
I did make a discovery though. For some reason, there were three films in the library that were not listed in the program, all quite interesting doc feature works-in-progress: HOW SWEET THE SOUND, a film about the musical legends The Blind Boys of Alabama produced by Heidi Ewing (SHELTER DOGS); HEATWAVE – AN UNNATURAL DISASTER, a film by Judith Helfand (BLUE VINYL) about poverty in Chicago and the one week in July where over 700 people died heat-related deaths; and THE LORD OF LIGHT by Diane Bernard, the bizarre story of Barry Geller, who in 1979 began production on a science fiction film and came up with the idea for a sci-fi theme park with designs by Marvel comics great Jack Kirby. After his financial ruin brought on by a sleazy business partner, somehow his writings end up being used by the CIA to rescue hostages in Iran. I kid you not!
Following in the tradition of Enzian’s Marketing Director, Shannon Lacek, and her fascination with odd names of businesses in Toronto, here’s a couple of favorites to close with from the Big Apple: “A Salt & Battery” (a fish ‘n’ chips joint) and “Burp Castle” (it had to be a bar).
- Matthew
