As usual, 'art film' standards elude many

As usual, 'art film' standards elude many

By ANNE SHARP MAR 2 0 1995

NEWS SPECIAL WRITER

FILM VIEW

Watching the credits roll on each successive short and feature-length film shown at this year’s 33rd annual Ann Arbor Film Festival, it was hard to avoid thinking of recent moves to eliminate government arts funding in the United States.

Many of the films screened at the festival’s Winners Program on Sunday, whether made in the States, Canada, Europe or Australia, acknowledged sponsorship by some sort of public arts council.

So, Newt Gingrich & Co., might argue, what spectators at the Michigan Theatre just witnessed unspooling last week and Sunday was a procession of welfare queens, flaunting tax-subsidized products for the benefit of the cultural elite.

Should such films even exist? Should their makers be permitted the luxury of exploring motion pictures as a form of art and self-expression, without worrying about whether or not there’s a paying audience for them?

If these people want to make movies, why not compel them to follow the usual route instead — go to Hollywood and carry film cans for Joel Silver for a few years, till they’ve earned the chance to direct a real movie, like “Hideaway,” or “Man of the House”?

There is something fundamentally infuriating to many of us about the very concept of movies as art. Not entertainment, not even something educational or uplifting, just pure art. And to sit through Winner’s Night at AAFF, and to see what the festival judges - usually filmmakers or critics themselves, steeped in the world of film-as-non-commercial-art - have chosen for commendation, is to confront that fury within ourselves.

This year’s judges, experimental filmmakers Emily Breer, Midi Ono-dera, and Jay Rosenblatt, followed the traditional course of AAFF jurists. Their award selections were often unpredictable, certainly not crowd-pleasers. And, in some cases, it would take a seasoned insider in the art-film world to explain their criteria for excellence.

Why, for instance, did they decide K.C. Amos’ “Syphon-Gun” merited the Best of the Festival prize? This impressionistic black comedy, about an elderly man’s violent confrontation with a neighborhood junkie who was stealing gasoline from his truck, must have struck a chord with its high-impact depiction of urban strife. Or maybe its bold, stressed-out black-and-white visuals impressed them aesthetically.

Yet Canadian filmmaker Kim Thompson’s “This Is the End of Me” and the American Michael La Haie’s “Critizen” demonstrated equally impressive technique. Thompson’s tour-de-force exploration of a 19th-century train disaster combines the wild style of Michael Moore with the cool wit of Margaret Atwood. And there was probably no more memorable image in the whole festival than “Critizen’s” depiction of a naked, bald young man carrying a video camera down San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, to the strains of “Lonely Is a Man Without Love.” Both “End of Me” and “Critizen” received only honorable mentions.

Much more difficult to interpret was the selection of the none-too-arresting abstract works “A Touch Too Cold,” “The Exquisite Hour,” “Penumbra,” and “Home” for major awards. For the most part, this year’s AAFF audiences were extremely well-mannered, applauding politely after each film and refraining from the traditional hoots and catcalls when a festival entry bored or displeased them.

A notable exception on Sunday night involved “Home,” to the untrained eye an artless assemblage of footage featuring water ripples, a dead chicken and a plastic lizard. “Home” received a $500 award for excellence in film editing from Rosenblatt, Onodera and Breer, and a chorus of indignant jeers from Winners Program spectators.

Certain films chosen by the judges possessed a unique quality, by anyone’s standards. “Tom’s Flesh” made the skin crawl with its depiction of an emotionally and physically scarred victim of child abuse. The Viennese documentary “Those Loved By God,” about the tender relationship between an aging male comedian and a brain-damaged woman, might have pleased Fassbinder himself with its sentimental bitterness.

Worthy of Best of Festival consideration, though it earned only a Special Jury Award, was Mitch McCabe’s “Playing the Part.” This wry autobiographical documentary, in which the young McCabe returns to her plush Grosse Pointe home like a stranger in a strange land, seemed incomplete at 38 minutes. Maybe McCabe will find the funding, public or private, to carry on her amazing journey.

33RD ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL AWARDS

Best of Festival ($1,500)
"Syphon-Gun," K.C. Amos, Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Tom Berman Award ($1,250)
"Tom’s Flesh,” Jane Wagner and Tom diMaria, San Francisco, Calif.

rts Foundation of Michigan Award, Best Local Filmmaker
($1,000)
"A Touch Too Cold,” Claire Tinkerhess, Ann Arbor.

Marvin Felheim Award, Best Experimental Film ($500)
“The Exquisite Hour,” Philip Solomon, Broomfield, Col.

Chris Frayne Award, Best Animated Film ($500)
“Is This Me?” Mary Kocol, Somerville, Mass.

Lawrence Kasdan Award, Best Narrative Film ($500)
“Cat's Cradle,” Liz Hughes, Rozelle, NSW, Australia.

Michael Moore Award, Best Documentary Film ($500)
"Black Is ... Black Ain’t," Marlon Riggs, Berkeley, Calif.

Telepost, Inc. Editing Award ($500)
“Home,” Uirike Reichold, Chicago, III.

Peter Wilde Award, Most Innovative Film ($250 each)
“Black Sun,” Johannes Hammel, Vienna, Austria; “Crucero/Crossroads,” Ramiro Puerta, Toronto, Canada.

The Old Peculiar ($100 each)
"Thine Inward-Looking Eyes,” Thad Povey, San Francisco, Calif.; “Broken Footnotes,” Colin Barton, Jamaica Plain, Mass.; “Those Loved by God,” Johannes Holzhausen, Vienna, Austria.

Isabella Liddell Art Award ($100 each)
“Little Women in Transit," Barbara Heller, New York, N.Y.; “My Favorite Things That I Love,” Janet Perlman, Cambridge, Mass.; "Evidence,” Kathleen O’Brien, Ripponlea, Australia.

Special Jury Documentary Award ($200)
“Playing the Part," Mitch McCabe, Somerville. Mass.

Special Jury Narrative Award ($200)
“Multi Facial,” Vin Diesel, New York, N.Y.

Judges' Technical Excellence Award ($125)
"Hello Photo,” Nina Davenport, Cambridge, Mass.

Judges’ Best Cinematography Award ($125)
"Penumbra," Hilary Morgan, Pescadero, Calif.

Honorable Mentions ($100 each)
"Compassion in Exile: The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama,” Mickey Lemie, New York, N.Y.; "Critizen,” Michael La Haie, New York, N.Y.; “Avenue X,” Leslie McCleave, New York, N.Y.; “Seven of Worlds,” Erin Sax, San Francisco, Calif.; “The Accursed Mazurka,” Nina Fonoroff, Boston, Mass.; “The Red Book,” Janie Geiser, New York, N.Y.; “This Is the End of Me,” Kim Thompson, Toronto, Canada.

Honorable Mention (no cash prize)
“Due West” Elisabeth M. Spencer, San Francisco, Calif.; “How I Spent My Summer Vacation," Kate Wrobel, Chicago, ill.; “The Architect,” Adam Keker, San Francisco, Calif.; “Breathe,” Jay Capela, San Francisco, Calif,; “Split Description,” Andy Moore, San Francisco, Calif.; “Lady," Ira Sachs, New York, N.Y.