Salon des refusés

A second chance at the Reject Filmfest

"Reject Filmfest!" says the unashamed voice at the other end of the phone. I've got the right Philadelphia phone number to follow up on an intriguing item in a recent Variety. One of America's newest film festivals has a unusual, slightly screwy agenda: showing only works that have been rejected elsewhere.

Last year's premiere festival in Philly had 2000 attendees for the three days of screenings. This year's fest, October 15 through 17, promises larger crowds, an assortment of venues (art galleries, pubs, maybe a theater), and more than 100 features and shorts.

I talk with Virginia Leahy, one of the festival's three co-producers. A Framingham native, Leahy left a position as a production coordinator for Channel 5's Chronicle to attend the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. After employment as an associate producer on some local indie films, she helped jumpstart the Reject Filmfest.

"We're non-profit," she answers the obvious funding question. "We're just now applying for grants for next year. We never want to be Pepsi-sponsored."

Leahy corrects an egregious error in the Variety piece: it is not true that movies submitted to the Reject Filmfest must have been refused at every festival they've entered. I'm a bit disappointed to hear her say it, because that would have guaranteed days and nights of howlingly awful movies. Negative fun!

"We're not kitschy," Leahy explains. This festival is seeking the exact opposite: good films that have gone underappreciated. "We want the best of what Hollywood is ignoring. We're pushing the envelope for styles of filmmaking, selecting things not picked for big festivals like Telluride and Sundance. They're distribution-based; they offer Hollywood versions of independent movies."

So Reject Filmfest choices don't have to have gone unwanted everywhere. Still, Leahy says, "they do have to have been rejected somewhere. They have to have faced adversity. And the filmmakers have to send us a copy of a rejection letter. Often we get the standard Sundance letter, `We have 1400 applicants. Keep plugging.' "

Of course, some Reject applicants actually have been constant losers. There have been despondent letters begging for admittance, even a rare epistle from a failed director's desperate mother: "My daughter's film isn't making it. Please accept my kid's film."

Unfortunately for the wretched and the untalented, the Reject Filmfest has standards also, and a jury of hardened film professionals. "We reject films," Leahy says emphatically. "The first year, when we were a spur-of-the-moment idea, put together in four months' time, we took in half the films. This year, we rejected two-thirds of our entries. But our jurors send back critique sheets, which are for the filmmakers, commenting on the technical aspects of the films, the content, and whether the film is going to provoke an audience response.

"So those rejected from the Reject Fest, a sad fate indeed, have a reference, these feedback forms."

The Reject Fest was begun when the Philadelphia Fest of World Cinema refused entry to a local 18-minute short, "Clay Feet," which was written and directed by Robert DeMarco. The producer of that short, D. Mason Bendewald, and the cinematographer, Don Argott, were so annoyed that they became co-producers (with Leahy) of their own fest.

" 'Clay Feet' is good," Leahy says -- and promptly sends me a tape in the mail.

I watch it: a day in the life of a cokehead. Argott's camerawork is impressive, and there are some fleeting good moments. But do I care about the protagonist? Not at all. Does the story add up? Nope.

If I ran a film festival, I probably would reject "Clay Feet." And we're back at the beginning . . .

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The best personal piece I've read on Saving Private Ryan was book editor Gail Caldwell's touching, glowingly written essay in the Sunday August 16 Globe, which talked of how the movie brought back into the light her thorny relationship she had, as a Vietnam war protester, with her Texas father, who fought proudly in World War II. And while we're speaking of the Globe, I'm happy to see Betsy Sherman, a dedicated critic, back on the movie beat, writing about odd films and her beloved Hong Kong cinema. How about filling the Barnicle spot by putting the long-time Globe correspondent on staff?

And a joyous 70th birthday to Brookline's George Bluestone, the last true gentleman, and, before retiring as a professor, the conscience of Boston University's film division. My friend George is the author of one of the key film books, the pioneering but still relevant 1957 Novels into Film.

When is the New Yorker going to throw in the proverbial towel on Daphne Merkin as a film critic? Contrary to public opinion, not just anyone can write knowledgeably, perceptively, about movies. She's a Tina Brown mistake.

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The coarse male voice on the phone line chilled my Phoenix intern. "Gerald Peary uses the word 'ubiquitous' too much," the anonymous voice groaned. "Tell him to stop using it." The voice hung up.

Well, I checked through a bunch of columns and, oops, my phantom critic was right. So I swear never to use that word again. Yep, my employment of that now-banished word was ubiquitous.