State of the Art

The New England Film/Video Festival

by Peter Keough

Sundance -- as Bret Stern of Fairfield, Connecticut, points out repeatedly in his mock-documentary The Road to Park City -- remains the Promised Land for independent filmmakers. But as an interim stop they could do worse than be included in the annual festival that's been held for the past 24 years by the Boston Film/Video Foundation. Chosen among scores of entries from New England and upper New York State, this year's winning films in feature, documentary, short, animation, experimental, and other categories will screen this week at the Coolidge Corner.

Among them will be Stern's film -- which won only an honorable mention, to be sure, but as festival director Devon Damonte points out, such recognition was the starting point for no less than Brad Anderson, a former BF/VF volunteer honored at the festival a few years back for a short subject. As every local indie knows, Anderson thereafter went on to make a $6 million deal for his feature Next Stop, Wonderland with Miramax at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.

Such a fate perhaps awaits this year's Best of the Festival, Cambridge filmmaker William Roth's Floating. Tonily produced, with an impressive cast (Norman Reedus, Chad Lowe, Casey Affleck), it's an offbeat coming-of-age tale that lives up to its title with its blithe style. Van (Reedus), a high-school graduate whose dreams of a college swimming scholarship dim when his dad loses his legs in a car accident, befriends Doug (Lowe), a kid who moves into his old home. Doug's dad is a macho martinet, the antithesis of Van's wheelchair-bound, alcoholic old man, and the pair's bond threatens to go beyond mere friendly wrestling. With its melodrama tempered by its true-to-life teen characterizations and authentic performances, Floating might well some day catch a studio's eye at Park City.

Despite the success of Floating and an overall increase in feature entries, Damonte acknowledges that documentaries dominate the festival and independent filmmaking in New England in general. "There's the long tradition of documentary filmmaking here continued by the film and video community. You see more diversity and quality in documentaries here than those produced anywhere else."

That includes Cambridge filmmaker Nick Kurzon's Super Chief, winner of the Best Documentary award, a deceptively genial look at a tribal election that proves to be a Frank Capra-esque microcosm of the American political process at work. And Raise the Dead, by Newton's James Rutenbeck, a vivid, sympathetic documentary about Southern fundamentalist faith healers, which was chosen Best Independent Film. Another documentary honored is Theme: Murder, by Brookline's Martha Swetzoff, a lacerating but restrained exploration of her father's murder and its impact on her life and that of her family. It received a Special Jury Award.

Each of these films is distinguished by the passion and commitment of those who made them. That's a contrast to the recent trend where independent filmmakers seem in it only for the fame and the money -- an attitude wryly satirized in Stern's Park City. "That opportunism has come with the notoriety independent film has recently received," says Damonte. "But it's not the attitude of this festival. If a filmmaker is looking to get rich and famous, they've probably moved to New York or LA.

"Here in New England the community is strongly supportive of one another. Everyone knows everyone else and works on each other's projects. But I think it's reached a coming of age and is poised to explode."

The New England Film and Video Festival screens from April 26 through May 1 at the Coolidge Corner Theater. Call 536-1540.