The Obscure Are Sometimes The Best
We live in a time of plenty, and that includes plenty of film festivals. But just as political candidates need to differentiate themselves from the pack and the Land Rover has to separate itself from the Jeep Cherokee and the Rolex needs to be waterproof at more leagues than the Patek Philippe (or is it vice versa?), film festivals seem to feel the need for a way to keep from getting lost in the crowd. Cannes, Toronto and Venice, as always, are about? International cinema-at-large. Oberhausen, Germany, is dedicated to the short film. Sundance is, of course, devoted solely to the American independent.
As is the Hamptons festival. And Austin's South- by-Southwest. And any number of others with even narrower agendas - Nantucket, for instance, which emphasizes screenplay writing, or the upcoming Method Fest Independent Film Festival slated for Pasadena, whose motto is "Celebrating Breakout Performances in Independent Film." Right now, however, in the movie-crazed town of Stony Brook on the campus of the film schools of New York, they're taking a revolutionary tack: something for everybody. Studio blockbusters. Independents. Short films. It's visionary. It's groundbreaking. It's cutting-edge. It's nostalgic.
The Stony Brook Film Festival, which opened recently, is a different animal this year than it's been in the past. No longer a combo platter with the Long Island Film Festival - which brought to the SUNY campus a raft of local films and filmmakers - Stony Brook is indie-friendly, but limiting the menu. "We have a live season, as you know," said Staller Center Director Alan Inkles, who organized the festival. "So the day job is putting together 75 live shows throughout the year. But I've really gotten intrigued by film over the last few years. And while working with Suffolk film commissioner Chris Cooke and the Long Island Film Festival was great, it meant a couple of chefs in the kitchen.
I once worked with a German director who said, 'There is no room for democracy in the theater,' and he was right. "So we agreed upon that this year, and Chris very agreeably moved to Westhampton, and I took what I learned over the last five or six years and put this one together." Inkles doesn't believe that Long Island, much less Suffolk County, can support a pure, unknown-indie film series. "It's not going to happen," he said, "especially in the middle of the summer, with people at the beach or on the boat. So I had to find this mix. And I'll let you know in two weeks how it went." The festival's formula calls for films that look particularly good on the Staller's 40-foot screen (the largest in the area). It also includes 10 independent features that seem likely to be picked up for distribution, 25 shorts that complement, thematically or aesthetically, the features they're preceding, and a smattering of first-rate foreign films - including Shohei Imamura's "Dr. Akagi," the Oscar-nominated "Central Station" and Carlos Saura's "Tango." ("Life Is Beautiful" will be screened twice to make up for a spring showing that was canceled because the film was still in its first-run theaters.) In defiance of F. Scott Fitzgerald's rule about second acts, the SBFF is also resuscitating some terrific movies that never got their due when first released: "A Walk on the Moon," which stars Liev Schreiber, Diane Lane and Anna Paquin in a Woodstock-era Catskills love story; "True Crime," the latest Clint Eastwood thriller, and "October Sky," NASA engineer Homer Hickam's boyhood memoir about Sputnik-era rocketry in West Virginia (and nicely timed for the Apollo anniversary).
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