Film Festivals

Fast-Forwarding

1 Jul , 2003  

Written by Sandy MacDonald | Posted by:

A post-festival report of the 2003 Nantucket Film Festival, which took place this June.

Maybe trying to catch a couple of good movies at a film festival is a sucker’s game — like trying to see the paintings at an art opening, when there are far too many schmoozing heads in the way. One day into the four-day, eighth annual Nantucket Film Festival, which wrapped June 22, and I was already feeling frustrated. I’d half-seen a handful of films and like most festival-goers, with or without a professional interest, I was trolling for a sleeper — the as yet unbuzzed beauty that would blow me away.

Meanwhile, at the daily kickstart called "Morning Coffee With…" director Jace Alexander (a lifelong summerer who has done a bunch of "Law & Orders" and had his own debut film, "Carry Me Home," on the roster) deftly emceed a changing cast of industry insiders to provide context for what was on view. The SRO audience heaved an audible sigh of relief when, right off the bat, he discouraged any questions of the "how do I get my movie made" stripe.

The first quartet included summer resident Elliot Greenebaum, 25, whose debut post-NYU feature, "Assisted Living," mixes fictional and documentary styles by casting real-life nursing home residents in a absurdist comedy. He made the interesting point that, "You can never get the kind of specificity the world gives; there’s a lot of weirdness. No one is that creative." Unfortunately, in his choice of scripted specifics — e.g., having the oldsters respond to phone calls from "Heaven" — he exploits and degrades the very subjects we’re meant to be touched by.

With "Nosey Parker"the conclusion of a trilogy that began in 1993 with "Vermont Is For Lovers" and achieved breakout success with 1996’s "Man with a Plan"– John O’Brien has created a far more effective hybrid. For the first time he imported two "real" actors — in addition to his rural neighbors — for his loosely conceived, largely improvised script: they play urbane settlers in the tiny idyllic town of Tunbridge, Vermont (where O’Brien, a native, raises sheep). Comic moments abound as the locals pry into the interlopers’ lives and, on the pretext of a tax assessment, their trophy home. (O’Brien noted that the $1 million faux-barn, quarantined in the course of a rancorous divorce, made an ideal set: well-lit, fully furnished, and affordable). Ultimately, the film is an offbeat romance, and a fitting paean to local lead George Lyford, a quintessential Vermonter whose dry wit comes paired with a kind heart. O’Brien, who considers his oeuvre "anthropological comedies," succeeded in his goal: to "get at the complexities of the clash between newcomers and old-timers, without being flip or ironic."

The question of just what constitutes an independent film fueled a discussion at the next coffee colloquium. Alexander posited a definition of "either low budget or full decision," which three panelists — "Buffalo Soldiers" director Gregor Jordan, screenwriter Alex Garland of "28 Days Later," and Catherine Hardwicke, writer/director of "Thirteen" — then expanded to include "degree of difficulty." Each outlined the many challenges they faced. Hardwicke clearly earned the hardship prize — with a script co-written with a 13-year-old over a one-week winter break, and a 24-day shooting schedule limited to 8 ½-hour days to accommodate the underage stars, including her co-author, Nikki Reed, in a bad girl role, and the lambent Evan Rachel Wood as an innocent all too willingly pulled under.

The result is one of the most honest and arresting portraits of adolescence filmed to date, a gift to girls — and their families — coping with rapidly changing mores. Hardwicke undertook the project as a way to help a girl she saw struggling and acting out; initially, they’d envisioned a "wacky teen comedy," but what they worked their way toward became both darker and more therapeutic. It has the immediacy of a documentary, but the emotional pull of a well-crafted story.

Garland described "28 Days Later," the festival’s closing film, as belonging to the sci-fi horror genre, subgenus postapocalyptic/paranoid. Though packed with homages to antecedents, it’s not, he promised, "full of ironic nudges or winks." What it is, though, is a fast-moving and utterly gripping film, despite a plot line which, if logically examined, proves riddled with holes. As the movie unfolds, they’re forgotten and forgiven. The premise is that a PETA-style lab-liberation effort unleashes on London a rapid-onset "rage" virus: within a month, the city has self-destructed, but for a handful of survivors, who must elude the roving rageaholics. It may sound silly on the surface, but a terse, psychologically incisive script and brilliant, jumped-up cinematography (the director is Danny Boyle of "Trainspotting") makes it an unnerving must-watch whose frissons survive long after the last frame.

And surely that’s another facet in defining an independent film: one that makes you see the world a little differently.

For more information about the Nantucket Film Festival, visit www.nantucketfilmfestival.org.


For more information about the Nantucket Film Festival, visit www.nantucketfilmfestival.org.

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