E-Mail This Article to a Friend Hole in the wall Woods Hole and The Third Man tour in Vienna BY GERALD PEARY
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Steve Atlas is a public-affairs executive with years of service at WGBH, but he confessed last week on the Cape that "I’ve never before been to a film festival." Atlas’s point of entry was perfect for his reinvented career as a muckraking documentarian: the Woods Hole Film Festival. This is Woods Hole’s 13th year, and each time out, Boston attorney Judy Laster and her all-volunteer staff struggle to assemble a bill that will showcase worthy low-budget works, mostly by New Englanders, that lack distribution. Short films are welcome, and their creators also — I know no festival in America that is so hospitable to makers of five-to-20-minute movies. And those who do political and ecological films are especially encouraged.

Atlas’s film, "Battle of La Oroya," is, at 18 lean minutes, first-rate agitprop, a potent exposé of a mega-wealthy American corporation, the Doe Run Company of St. Louis, which brings acid rain and lead poisoning to the rural Peruvians who reside near its smoke-spewing refinery. On camera, Atlas hangs with the militant peasants, way up high in the Andes. Then he’s back in Missouri to reveal the ecological damage done at home by a company that’s been labeled "one of the worst private polluters in America."

Other Woods Hole short-film highlights by Boston-area artists:

Alice Stone’s "Dog Eat Dog," a slick, live-action comic-strip romp in which yuppie dog owners stay a step ahead of a South End bicycle-riding cop. There’s also some fancy skateboarding that’s matched by fancy skateboarding cinematography from Gary Henoch.

Mike Pecci’s "Autumn," a mini-Mamet drama with tangy slang dialogue in which several suspicious-looking oddballs prepare for a secret operation in the night. Two twist endings, one twist too many.

Matthew Rasmussen’s "Aesop’s Council of Mice," a clever, lovely animated work in which highly individualized mice debate the extermination of a big bad cat. Rasmussen, who was represented last year here by "Marboxian," is an amazing young filmmaker, and a bona fide Woods Hole Fest discovery.

Laura Kerivan’s "The Master," a poignant sketch of Harvard Square’s chess champ in residence, Murray Turnbull, who’s been playing $2 outdoor chess matches since the early 1980s. It’s fun to watch him make mashed potatoes out of several youthful players. But Kerivan should extend her fascinating short: how does Turnbull, so gentlemanly in victory, act when he’s about to be checkmated?

Elsewhere, a Woods Hole feature discovery: Tony Spiridakis’s Noise, the opening-night selection, an intelligent thriller with Roman Polanski moments and a juicy performance by Ally Sheedy as a kooky, sadistic upstairs neighbor. She drives the heroine crazy by playing vapid show tunes loudly through the night: "Some Enchanted Evening!"

CAROL REED’S sublime The Third Man arrives at the Brattle Theatre this weekend, August 13-15. Two years ago, I was in Vienna, where the Orson Welles–starring classic was shot in 1948, to take the enticing Third Man tour. I’d discover where legendary scenes took place, including the police’s chase of Welles’s villainous Harry Lime through the city’s sewers. Our guide was Third Man obsessive Brigitte Timmerman, who’d seen the film 120 times and given tours for 15 years. Timmerman led us to a kiosk in a city park and opened a secret door on its side. Down a winding stair were the sewers: putrid smells, yellow water pounding by.

Welles spent little time down here, she explained. "He was scared of infection, that the rats would bite him." She showed us where Joseph Cotten’s character, Holly Martins, stood, confused, and the skeletal ladder that Welles’s mortally wounded Lime climbed in desperation. I climbed it too, looking up, as Lime did, to a closed grate. No escape!

Later, we stood where, in a famous movie moment, a little cat climbed over Welles’s legs. It wasn’t really Welles but assistant director Gino Wimmer. "When the scene was shot, Orson was in Rome," Timmerman informed us. It was filmed both in Vienna and, with matching shots, at a British studio. "They had six cats, three in London, three in Vienna. Here, the cats were attracted by catnip. In London, it was sardine oil. That’s what made the cat lick Harry’s shoe. You can’t train a cat to do that."

PEOPLE SAY I’M CRAZY is a silly tabloid title for John Cadigan’s courageous, alternately forlorn and hopeful documentary about the filmmaker’s eight-year battle to achieve a livable life after being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic at age 22. Don’t miss it when it airs this Wednesday, August 18, at 7 p.m. on Cinemax.