Stayin' Alive
After 10 years, Dances with Films remains in step with its original mission
Four years ago, when Los Angeles CityBeat was still in metaphorical swaddling cloth, the first local festival we covered was Dances with Films, then in its sixth year. In a town with two huge all-purpose fests (Los Angeles Film Festival, AFI Fest) and innumerable smaller events - most tied to a locale (Silver Lake FF, Beverly Hills FF) or a theme (OutFest, Polish FF, Bicycle FF) - it's tough for a small, less clearly defined festival to survive. Yet this is Dances with Films' tenth year, and we thought we'd check back in with cofounder/director Leslee Scallon.
Over at Danceswithfilms.com, the motto is "No politics. No stars. No sh*t." "Politics," in this context, doesn't refer to right/left political stuff, but to industry politics. The notion is to restrict the entries to filmmakers who don't have distribution or the bait of stars or any "knowing the right people" connections. "Doing the non-celebrity thing has always been important to us," Scallon says, "since everybody else is chasing them.
"In general, there's no place for filmmakers who are cutting their teeth to get a platform to show their work," she continues, "because the industry seems to want people coming out of the gate at top speed. It's our mission to provide that platform."
Still, according to Scallon, with the explosion of indie film festivals, "there's increased competition for sponsors and for films that are premieres. We've done well, but it can be tough when you're not one of the two big festivals in this town."
It's no surprise that the amount of material originally shot on film has diminished since Dances with Films began. "It's roughly a third film and two thirds digital," Scallon says. "But digital includes HD and DV, so, if you break it down, I think it's about a third each. Probably a little more toward DV. The film stuff is almost all 35mm. Very little seems to be done on 16mm these days."
Another trend Scallon has noticed is that fewer people "finish to film" (convert to an actual projectable print) anymore. "We're projecting HD and from DV. But I won't project a DVD, because there are inherent problems with that."
The fact that Dances with Films has endured but managed to stay cozy is part of its appeal. "Film festivals are something that will get people out to the theater, in an era when, for most releases, it's just as easy to wait for video. With something like 95 percent of our films, the filmmakers show up for Q&A, which is another draw. People get to meet the filmmakers. We've developed a kind of community."
-Andy Klein
Break it down: Some festival highlights
While other festivals duke it out to premiere the latest D-list actor's directing debut, the populist Dances with Films has one strict rule: No famous people. You won't find any boldface names lurking behind the camera, typing up a script, making a celebrity cameo, or even slipping the movie some dough. For 10 years, the fest has bowed out of the politics that tend to subvert even the indiest of indie festivals, while pledging to uncover filmmakers who have the need - if not the cash - to create. The 24 flicks showcased this year skitter from the playfully controversial I'm Through with White Girls, about a black hipster who tries to reconnect to his identity with plan "Operation Brown Sugar," to the dated, but convincing, ecstasy raves of Rolling. Jake's Closet is a stately drama about an eight-year-old plagued both by his parents' divorce and by zombies; the haunting continues for the hapless theater troupe of Never Say Macbeth, while in Gameface, a petulant rocker with a lucky resemblance to John Stamos tries to escape his ex-wife's spell with a parade of L.A. groupies.
Here are some highlights:
Speed Dating. A fast, sharp farce about a rich kid who can't get a date. When James Van Der Bexton (Hugh O'Conor) meets a girl, he lies and claims to be an astronaut or an anthropologist - anything but the truth: that he's an heir to a $700 million fortune, who spends all of his time at the pub with his loser mates. (Can't blame him for getting out of the house; his family is a pack of drunks, morons, and vipers.) A bout of amnesia frees him from memories of his crippling ex-girlfriend and plops him in the path of an absurdly cute and accommodating nurse (Emma Choy). But it also puts him in the crosshairs of British police investigating a missing woman James had been stalking before his accident. Tony Herbert's lean comedy takes its formula in stride, spangling the plot with mischievous supporting performances, particularly Nora-Jane Noone as a goth debutante who changes her name weekly from Juliet to Orchid to Jupiter. (Mon. at 2:45 p.m.)
~ Pretty in the Face ~
Pretty in the Face. This candid portrait of an obese teenager named Daniel (David Reynolds) and a dumpy wallflower named Maggie (Meagan Moses) was shot on weekends - and looks it. But the upside of the way it nearly seems to have been shot on a cell phone is the intimacy we feel for these misfits, who are so perfectly cast that watching them crumple and lash out feels like voyeurism. Writer-director Nate Meyer's first feature is unsparingly honest: When Daniel hears his 300-pound-plus mother is getting an electric wheelchair, he screams that she may as well quit living now. His uncle Ethan (Nathan Amadon) has a dalliance with a mercenary wannabe singer (Morgan Mosher) trying to secure a position in his band, thus breaking longtime girlfriend Maggie's heart. (Sun. at 9:30 p.m.)
Broke Sky. There's enough roadkill in Thomas L. Calloway's black comedy to give all of Texas a Labor Day hot dog. Doltish county employee Bucky (Will Wallace) and wife Becky (Barbara Chisholm) want to upgrade to a doublewide, which, if Becky gets her way, will have plenty of room for the kids she aims to start popping out ASAP. Their small-town dreams are complicated by the county's new sanitation truck, which can scrape up and dispose of a dead possum in seconds, making either Bucky or his best bud and coworker Earl (John Unger) redundant. But, when a body turns up on their route and the guys panic and lay it to rest with the deer and foxes, the problem escalates from who's getting fired to who's going to jail. Calloway's direction slides from lazily quirky to frenetic, and his plot twists pack a mean punch; Broke Sky has the big-sky beauty of a travelogue but the soul of a masochist who loves a cruel joke. (Sat. at 9:30 p.m.)
-Amy Nicholson
Published: 07/05/2007
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