Festival gets 130 films

'Pat's Tow' big winner

Festival gets 130 films

By Richard Vander Veen

'Pat's Tow," a film depicting
women's confrontation with
male-dominated police and care
tow-away system in America's big
cities, was the top-prize-winner in
the 9th annual Ann Arbor 8 mil
limeter Film Festival.

The festival, the oldest competi-
tion in the United States devoted
exclusively to 8 mm films, drew
130 films from Canada, the United
States and Italy to the University
of Michigan campus this weekend.

The judges do not try to rate the
films one, two, three in awarding
prizes, so winners are not as
clear-out as in such events as the
Academy Award or Emmy con-
tests.Part of the problem is that
some films may be creative and
well directed and acted but poorly
filmed. Others may be slickly
done but may show less original-
ity.

"Pat's Tow" which won a $900
Bell and Howell Mamiya camera
fore filmmaker Ann Schaetzel,
showing belching two truck dirvers
"arresting" cars, then forcing
them open with coat hangers, Fes-
'tival judges said the film was
probably the most creative work
submitted.

JEFFREY POLN'S "Two
Days," a slick" 12-minute film
portraying the life of a
businessman-father, was labeled
the best all-around-work by festi-
val judges. With carfully selected
images, the filmshows how a hus-
band and father gives his all to his
business, then feel its cold walls
close him out. Poln won $115 for
his work.

The S125 Keith Clark Memorial
prize was awarded to Bill Know-
land for "Implosions - Parts I
and II." Knowland's 12-minute
film emplys rock music at an
ever-quickening pace, time-
lapsed, accelerating cinematogra-
phy and intensifying white, red,
and yellow city lights to push view-
ers to the final image, an explod-
ing A-bomb.

THe festival's most controversi-
al film was Willard Small's "Disco
Dog," according to festival direct-
tor Gerry Pialka.

The film gives the viewer 15 mi-
nutes of the latest disco bits while
subjecting him to two of the most.
gruesome images ever filmed: A
scene from Luis Bunuel's "Un
Chien Andalou" ("The Andalusian
Dog" in which a razor blade used
to cut a cow' appears to cut a
woman's eye and the bloody exe-
cution scene from the Vietnam
War.

LOCAL FILMMAKER John
Nelson produced a delightfully dif-
ferent effect in his "Roofdreams"
which begins and ends quietly
with a dancer asleep in a conapoied
bed, Fialka said. Filmed on build-
ing rooftops in Chicago and Ann
Arbor, the film shows an agile
chimne dancer moying snesuous-
ly beofre the setting sun and disap-
pearing randomly into brick walls.

Festival judges examined 60
films varying in length from three-
to 59 minutes on Friday and Satur-
day, and the 19 best films were
shown Sunday night, Fialka siad

THE FESTIVAL is designed to
encourage creativity among non-
professional film producers in a
"home movie" medium that is
"easy to learn, easy to do and
more easily available than any
other," Fialka said.

This year's festival drew fewer
applicants and viewers than the
record 183 films and 800 spectators
last year, Fialka said. About 550
people attended last year, he said.

The festival is sponsored by the
Ann Arbor Film Cooperative, a
non-profit U-M student organiza-
tion which also offers film series
on campus.