Film Festival had everything and Nelson's 'Toto' had most

Film Festival had everything, and Nelson's 'Toto' had most

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER

NEWS ARTS WRITER

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You want befuddlement? We got befuddlement.

For 36 years individuality has been the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s leitmotif, as witness Best-of-the-Festi-val winner Robert Nelson’s “Hauling Toto Big," crowned last evening at Winners’ Night at the Michigan Theater.

Experimental filmmaker Nelson’s 45-minute movie offers just about everything save color and a coherent storyline. Nelson employs tilted angles, positive-negative footage, FILM

a whirling camera, overlapping ------------

images, overlapping soundtrack plus loads of people and critters such as a rancher and his shy thousand-pound bull Baloney.

There’s more: A raging, bellowing mental patient who looks and sounds like John Belushi fights for screen space with a swinging-bat baseball player. Two guys who fall kersplat! off a mountain and survive - no big deal. Carnival strippers, classical musicians, firefighters, a blurry-headed hypnotist (“Just let your thoughts flow...") and a tiny girl with a candlestick who sneezes during the hypnotist’s mantra.

Nelson doesn’t attempt to let logic intrude on his film, which also litters the screen with printed conversation, a sadisic nursery rhyme, helpings of the / Ching, and Robert Service’s poem "The Cremation of Sam McGree.”

Are we having fun yet?

Well, fun isn’t the point in “Hauling Toto Big,” a film with palpable urgency if no discernible coherence. Though I wouldn’t pay a dime for a taped copy (A video version is promised at film’s end), the movie’s my-way integrity feels as every bit as zestful as it does opaque.

Of the festival judges’ mostly excellent award choices, I especially liked Dale Elrod’s “The Oldest Tree," a chirpy-voiced nature study of bristlecone pine trees, the world's oldest. It’s perky, pretty and informative - until it reveals “a young geographer” named Prometheus allegedly sawed down Earth’s oldest three trees. Well, maybe he did. Elrod couches things in such whimsical tones that one hopes old Promy is still standing tall.

I also liked Quebec filmmaker Serge Marcotte’s “The Sickroom,” which cloaks a Kafka short story in futuristic-gumshoe pop garb - and somehow retains the futility-of-it-all essence of the author’s stark tale. Arthur bong's “Licensed to Kill” - this year’s outrageous omission from documentaiy Oscar nominees -profiles a half-dozen murderers of homosexuals and provokes disturbingly complex emotions.

Two convicted killers claim molestation as children by gays: A haunted con who says a childhood attack claimed his sense of manhood, is serving life. The least repentant, a good ol’ boy who calls his gay victim “one less problem in the world,” is doing a mere 20 years.

Snubbed entries included Kenneth Sherman’s “The Time Being,” a wrenching past-present narrative of a gay artist and his now-dead lover (has AIDS become a passe topic?).

Then there’s Harold Boihem and Chris Emmanoui-lides’ brilliant “The Ad and the Ego,” a razzle-dazzle documentary about commercials and commercialism that reveals who’s really running the world. It’s surprising this festival of free thought didn’t cite this salvo against its Madison-Avenue nemesis.

AWARD WINNERS

Awards presented at the Ann Arbor Film Festival Sunday:

MOSAIC FOUNDATION AWARD, $2,000 (BEST OF THE FESTIVAL): "Hauling Toto Big,” Robert Nelson, Milwaukee, Wis.

TOM BERMAN AWARD, $1,000 (MOST PROMISING FILMMAKER): ”24 Girls," Eva Ilona Brzeski, New York.

SCREENING COMMITTEE'S CHOICE AWARD FOR NARRATIVE INTEGRITY, $1,000: "The Street," Dina El-Horr, Chicago.

MARVIN FELHEIM AWARD, $500 (BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM): "Passing On," Mike Hoolboom, Toronto, Canada.

CHRIS FRAYNE AWARD, $500 (BEST ANIMATED FILM):

"The Fetishist," Jim Trainor, New York.

LAWRENCE KASDAN AWARD, $500 (BEST NARRATIVE FILM): "The Sickroom," Serge Marcotte, Terrebonne, Quebec, Canada.

MICHAEL MOORE AWARD, $500 (BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM): "The Rainbow Man/John 3:16,” Sam Green, Oalkand, Calif.

FILM CRAFT LAB/K0DAK AWARD, $500 (BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY): "Glass," Leighton Pierce, Iowa City, Iowa.

TELEPOST INC. EDITING AWARD, $500 (EXCELLENCE IN THE ART OF FILM EDITING): "Grand Zero/Sacred Ground," Karen Aqua. Somerville, Mass.

LIBERTY ST. VIDEO AWARD, $500 (BEST GAY/LESBIAN FILM): "Licensed to Kill," Arthur Dong, Los Angeles, Calif. BORDERS BOOKS & MUSIC AWARD, $500 (BEST MICHIGAN FILMMAKER): "Divorcing Jesus," Rebecca Daczka, Ann Arbor.

MICHIGAN VUE MAGAZINE AWARD, $500 (BEST SOUND DESIGN): "Linear Dreams," Richard Reeves, Pender Island, B.C., Canada.

PETER WILDE AWARD, $500 (MOST TECHNICALLY INNOVATIVE FILM): "Eleven Eighty Two,” Kevin Everson, Knoxville, Tenn.; ”5 Dreams," Luke Jaeger, Northhampton, Mass. (Tie).

ANN ARBOR FILM CO-OP AWARD, $500: "The Pupil of Her Hand in the Palm of Her Eye," Claire Dannenbaum, Oakland, Calif.

TIO’S RED HOT & SPICY AWARD, $500: "Paixao National: Irreversible Metabolic Shock," Karim Ainouz, New York; "Fever," Paula M. Froehle, Chicago (Tie).

THE OLD PECULIAR AWARD, $300: "The Oldest Tree," Dale Elrod, Salt Lake City, Utah.

ISABELLA LIDDELL ART AWARD, $300: "Miriam is Not Amused," Kim Roberts, Colma, California; "Happy-End," Peter Tscherkassky, Vienna, Austria (Tie).

DETROIT FILMMAKERS COALITION AWARD: "Cave Paintings 1998," David Moroski, Detroit.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: "Hub City," Bill Brown, Lubbock, Tex. ($200); “Franziska," Thomas Draschan, Vienna, Austria ($150): “A Microscopic Revolution," Sookyeon Kim, Chicago ($150); "The Street," Dima El-Horr, Chicago ($150); "Human Remains," Jay Rosenblatt, San Francisco ($150); "Persistence," Daniel Eisenberg," Chicago ($150); “Suvivors," Sheila M. Sofian, Philadelphia ($150); “The Circular Ruins," Julie Goldstein, Chicago ($150).

PRIX DeVARTI, $150 (FUNNIEST FILM): "The Morphology of Desire," Robert F. Arnold, Pompano Beach, Fla.