Our film fest

How Boston can get the one it deserves

Several months ago, it seemed that everyone had given up on improving our mom-and-pop Boston Film Festival, the private fiefdom of Susan Fraine and Mark Diamond, who took it over in 1994 and have been running it at (mostly) the Copley Place each September since.

It was hard to conceive a radically altered festival unless the Boston Globe were to editorialize for changes. But last Sunday, Globe veteran Michael Blowen blew the whistle on the fest, calling it "a hit-and-miss barrage that's closer to a video-store rummage sale than a legitimate festival" and asking for an independent screening committee of local film experts to choose the movies. Blowen's opinion piece seems to put him at odds with the Globe's chief film critic, Jay Carr, who though he has grumbled occasionally about some of the selections appears to endorse the Boston Film Festival just the way it is.

It was Boston Magazine that broke the ice in 1999 with Amy Traverso's trenchant September article "Matinee Idle," which observed that "the Boston festival is rapidly being eclipsed by upstart festivals in Nantucket and Providence" and that the fest has been roasted for everything from "the cheesiness of its venue to . . . the relatively dim wattage of its visiting stars, and its overall lack of cachet and incoherence."

Following rapidly was Paul Sherman's scathing essay in the Improper Bostonian charging that the Boston Fest "has no personality or credibility" and that it "seems like a test-marketing exercise to get ad-ready quotes from Globe critic Jay Carr. . . . " Sherman continued in the Herald, wondering why the likes of Errol Morris's made-in-Cambridge Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. played at the Toronto Film Festival and not in Boston. "Should the fest make a point of annually showcasing local works?" he asked.

I find it encouraging that some local media are opening a dialogue on the Boston Film Festival. And if there's criticism (I've sniped often in this column), it's because everyone wants Boston to have the tony festival it deserves. Not everyone agrees with me. "I think those are cheap shots at Mark and Susan," the MFA's Bo Smith told me. Smith objects to comparing the Boston fest with huge-budget affairs like the 40-year-old San Francisco Film Festival, or with government-subsidized fests like Toronto and Rotterdam. For Smith, if the Boston fest is tiny, that's because we live in a society that doesn't believe in government's supporting the arts.

Maybe so, Bo.

I haven't spoken to either in years, but I respect Diamond as an extremely knowledgeable booker, and Fraine was by far the nicest employee of the old Sack Theatres. Nobody to whom I spoke wants them to stop administering the Boston Film Festival. Everyone credits them for stepping forward when the fest was being dumped by Loews.

So let's turn a corner and get conciliatory. Think to the Boston Film Festival 2000 and beyond. For, without much change, the fest could be considerably better:

Improvement 1. Bring on a program director to select those key films without distributors, and to provide a book of program notes. There is simply no reason for the dreary American independents that show randomly year after year. This person would pick carefully among the hundreds of indies that come on tape to every fest. There must be good ones. Can you imagine? A Boston discovery! That's what puts a fest on the map.

And the fest needs a programmer, or at least some scouts, at other fests to find undiscovered movies for ours. (Hey, Mark and Susan, I'd be glad to volunteer!) As I said when interviewed for Boston Magazine: ". . . as I go around the world to film festivals, I should see someone representing Boston the way I see San Francisco or even Newport represented. Boston is conspicuously absent at gatherings where people look at films."

Improvement 2. Utilize the fest's advisory board, which includes such stalwart supporters as Anne Marie Stein, executive director of the Boston Film/Video Foundation. Says Stein: "I really like Mark and Susan, and in terms of spirit, they are definitely interested in being part of the community. They give back money to support the Screenwriting Competition for the Massachusetts Film Office, and Susan is delighted to be on the honorary committee for the 25th anniversary of the New England Film/Video Festival. But the advisory board has not been active. There should be ways to use the expertise of the film community in Boston for individual programs and to decide who are the fest's honorees."

Improvement 3. A citywide festival! Copley Place is a miserable venue, but I guess I understand the need to use its mini-theaters. They're offered free by Loews. But there's not a reason in the world why the Boston Film Festival can't spread its wings to the Brattle, the Kendall Square (which has showed some fest films in the past), and the Harvard Film Archive. Smith hopes to do something with the fest next year at the MFA with a film and speaker. Certainly Joe Zina, the new executive director of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, speaks for others in saying, "We'd love to participate. When the Boston fest has a really good film, we could offer our big screen. The fest would be more widespread, and that would be great!"