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Little big fest

The Rhode Island International Film Festival is ready for its closeup

by Bill Rodriguez

'Big Eden'

For a five-year-old, the Rhode Island International Film Festival certainly is hanging out in grown-up company these days.

Say, isn't that the director Blake Edwards over there? And hey -- isn't that his wife, Julie Andrews!?

Well, no one is going to mistake Providence for Cannes very soon, but for Hollywood mainstay Edwards to be accepting a lifetime achievement award the opening night of the festival (which runs through August 12) says a lot about how far it's come.

Another indication is that the RIIFF is featured in The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide, by Film Threat magazine editor Chris Gore. The book recognizes about 650 of the more than 1000 film festivals worldwide, so inclusion at all means that a fest is on the map. And most fests are merely listed with contact information, as the Newport International Film Festival is, rather than described, as RIIFF is.

"We were also listed in the guide as one of the top eight best-kept-secret festivals -- which was rather significant," says George T. Marshall, its founder and present co-executive director with Elisabeth N. Galligan.

The reference book touted it among such lesser-known but praiseworthy festivals as those in San Diego, Portland, and Ann Arbor. "One of the most exciting new festivals to come along, RIIFF aggressively supports its filmmakers," the guide gushes.

Part of the festival's significance and contribution is that, unlike the splashier Newport film fest in June, RIIFF has related events spread out over several months. Panel discussions on such subjects as documentary filmmaking and digital technology are scheduled before as well as during the festival. Last month Japanese films were screened in conjunction with Newport's Black Ships Festival. A summer camp program which fosters young Spielbergs culminated in the KidsEye International Film Festival last week. Aspiring screenwriters get the inside skinny in the annual "ScriptBiz" seminar (to be held October 20). Finally, as if to declare that independent filmmaking isn't just for the black turtleneck and latte crowd, the second annual RIIFF Horror Film Festival will be held October 26-28 at the Opera House in Newport.

The first festival in 1997 screened only five films -- four of which were in French -- at a single Woonsocket theater. The following year it selected from among 207 submissions; this year it could pick and choose from nearly 700.

"We've not had that kind of sexy allure in Rhode Island," Marshall says, referring to the Newport festival, "but outside we're perceived as kind of a working man's festival that's supporting filmmakers.

"What's amazing to me is that I'm getting stuff that goes to Slamdance and even to Sundance."

Some 250 filmmakers, producers, and distributors will attend this year, from across the country as well as overseas. Cast members from nine films in competition will be here. And Dutch director/screenwriter Gert de Graaff, whose The Sea That Thinks won the Berlin International Film Festival award for best narrative feature, will fly over from the Netherlands.

Last year more than 13,000 filmgoers attended, and this year upwards of 15,000 are expected. There will be screenings at four Providence locations: the Avon Cinema, the Columbus Theater, the RISD Auditorium, and Brown University's List Auditorium. On August 13, there will be a "Best of Fest" screening at the Opera House. Those films will also be shown August 22-24 at the South County Center for the Arts in West Kingston.

"We're `The Little Engine That Could,' " Marshall says. "We're not hugely staffed. We're certainly not hugely financed. But everyone believes in what we're doing, and the people that are committed have made this festival the reality that it is. That's pretty cool."

Through the Flickers Arts Collaborative, which Marshall founded as an offshoot of the Newport Film Society, he attempted Newport's first try at an international film fest way back in 1983, but it didn't survive to a second year. RIIFF, on the other hand, has sustained its initial momentum, not even stopped last year when a disgruntled associate established a competing Providence/ Rhode Island International Film Festival, with Providence City Hall backing.

"I look at our whole adventure as like going through four years of college. We had courses that we excelled in, some courses that we were marginal in and other courses where we needed a tutor. But we finally got the credits and got the degree -- and now we're in grad school," Marshall says.

Call (401) 861-4445, or go to www.film-festival.org for complete details.

Featured features

This year, 676 films were submitted to the fifth annual Rhode Island International Film Festival. Most of the 205 films accepted for screenings are shorts and documentaries, from countries with strong cinematic traditions, such as Italy and India, as well as from some in social and political ferment, such as Yugoslavia and Russia. Forty-two world premieres are among the offerings, as well as 20 U.S. premieres.

The 35 narrative feature films run the gamut in tone and subject, from comical to dramatic, romantic to adventurous. Of course, reactions to movies are largely personal tastes, as arguments under marquees attest. Nonetheless, here are three of this year's selections that I have no trouble recommending.

The Girls' Room
August 9 at 9:30 p.m. at the Columbus Theater

Set on a college campus, this film's dialogue manages to be smart without being self-conscious or making everyone sound like the same quirky English major. Another bullet it dodges is its plot premise, which sounds like a stretcher-case-study in Avoiding Cliches 101. To wit: two dorm roomies who couldn't be more opposite -- one a Southern belle with her pert nose buried in Brides magazine, the other a bitter and promiscuous Southern gothic character -- make each other's lives miserable. over the course of these exercises' each becomes more like her nemesis.

But first-time feature director Irene Turner doesn't get in the way of the cagey work of first-time screenwriter Amanda L. Beall, who makes sure that everyone we meet is too particularized to come across as merely a type. Goody-goody Grace (Cat Tober) insists on being reimbursed ("It's best for both of us") for a borrowed and lost mechanical pencil. Black-garbed Casey (Soleil Moon Frye) wakes in a sweat after dreaming of her own white wedding. Their guys are further catalysts for change. Grace's fiancé is Charlie, played rather spacily by Wil Wheaton, the precocious boy-ensign in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The frat mouse isn't made into a complete cipher, though; he counts for enough to eventually attract Casey with his stability. Her guitar-strumming friend -- not counting the jerk whom she uses for sex after his dates with his real girlfriend -- is the gentle Joey (Gary Wolf). Casey calls him "The Puppy," even before he turns down promotion from friend to boyfriend because he wants sex with her to mean something to her.

The acting is good enough to help us ride undistracted over the occasional bump in the plot, such as motivation that isn't entirely convincing. For example, good girl Grace is incensed that Casey has borrowed a notebook -- carelessly, not maliciously as Grace assumes -- causing her to fail a mid-term exam. So "to maintain balance in the universe," Grace decides to get even by making a play for Joey. But this film tends to stay honest, so this exploitive, out-of-character move by Grace peters out and she ends up getting emotionally whipsawed. Similarly, while Casey is overwritten as Roommate From Hell at the outset, we soon know of her repressed bridal envy, so we can eventually accept any amount of softening as the natural course of things. By the end, we have witnessed the kind of growth that is usually the most impressive learning experience of such years.

Big Eden
August 10 at 7 p.m. at the Columbus Theater

Gay films with crossover potential shouldn't be a big deal. Whether it's a sympathetic guy dying in Philadelphia or the Olympics sweating in Personal Best, the real hook is the vivid human connections rather than sexual ones. Big Eden has won more than its share of awards at gay and lesbian film festivals, but it tells a story that wouldn't need all that much adjusting to feature Julia and Hugh, although the writing would have to be dumbed down.

This is a romantic comedy, with the romance mostly a matter of wounded eyes and sexual tension -- except for the all-but-fireworks closing image -- and with the comical aspects subdued to the point of wry smiles. Late-thirtysomething Henry Hart (Ayre Gross) is a successful New York artist who dashes back to his small home town in Montana on the eve of a big opening because his grandfather (George Coe) has been hospitalized. Henry sticks around when he sees that an old flame from high school has moved back with his two small boys, after a divorce. Hmmm? Our hero's question too.

In turn, Henry has apparently been the object of a two-decade crush. Pike Dexter (Eric Schweig) is the Native American proprietor of the local cappuccino-dispensing general store. He takes it upon himself to learn gourmet cooking and feed Henry and his grandfather, secretly, instead of delivering a local widow's inedible fare nightly. The most delightful part of the film is how the community avidly follows the shifting odds on how this romantic Trifecta will pay off, from the craggy cracker barrel denizens to the widow and her girlfriends, who adjust their matchmaking mode with the alacrity of rock stars switching gender preference.

Yes, we have been cued that this is a fantasy by the title, which is the name of the town. And yes, audiences gotta dream, don't they? But the skillful storytelling is deflated at the very end by the gay film equivalent of the porno flick climaxing money shot: Henry and his eventual lover lost in a long, lingering kiss amidst the townsfolk -- nonchalant to a man -- at a dance. Writer/director Thomas Bezucha promised us Eden, not heaven.

Morning
August 11 at 9:30 p.m. at the Columbus Theater

There's no way to talk about this film without giving away its early whup upside the head. So maybe you'd better just take my word that it's an interesting tale of inner growth and not read on.

But if you must know, Morning is about mourning. As in the previous film, Trick (Kieran Mulroney) is a successful New Yorker who goes back home after a couple of decades away; this is a way independent films cue us that the characters' concerns will extend beyond the predominant off-screen preoccupations of aspiration and ambition. Trick is a wildly successful ad agency partner, pulling in a quarter-million bucks a year but rendered coldly efficient by his demanding work. His beautiful girlfriend Lily (Annabeth Gish), a sculptor, sees more in him than that, and eventually he does too.

But first he has to notice what he feels, and back in the little North Carolina town where he grew up, the death of a childhood friend gives him plenty to feel that his money and Top Dog people skills can't help him cope with. The dead friend, possibly a suicide, was a disappointment to his wealthy mother and grandfather, (Tess Harper and Pat Hingle) They want the body cremated without a memorial service and the embarrassment forgotten. No amount or style of persuasion will convince them otherwise.

Trick is aided by two friends he brought along and another he never knew he had. He and Lily have driven down with King (Steven Schub), a fast-talking pal who works as a deli clerk and is so unfamiliar with a meadow that he calls it a "plant area." Trick is opposed, but the two make plans to steal the corpse and advertise their own wake and farewell ceremony. Helping them is Emmanuel (Darren E. Burrows, the apprentice shaman in Northern Exposure), someone Trick looked through back in high school but who was closer to the dearly departed than any of them. Debuting director Ami Canaan Mann, who co-wrote this with Michael Hagler, weaves together nuanced performances that help us accept Trick's eventual, inevitable, change of heart. That the transformation doesn't come across as hokey is testimony to plenty of talent behind the scenes as well as on the screen.

-- B.R.

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