Cinema-by-the-sea

Wrapping up the Newport International Film Festival

by Bill Rodriguez

It was Sunday, and their cell phone were still ringing every few minutes -- but not quite as insistently. The inevitable crises were still popping up (the Japanese film Afterlife still was lost in the Borgesian bowels of FedEx-land) but they no longer mattered as much. A few hours before, closing night ceremonies for the film festival had successfully decompressed the salt air atmosphere after four straight days of balmy weather and sunny dispositions by filmmakers and film-goers alike. The Korbel kept flowing as final awards were given out under a big tent behind the Marble House, whose Gilded Age accouterments couldn't resist thrumming to James Brown covers when the band got going. Crossing in front of the bandstand, carefully carrying a brimming glass of cola, was a graying Peter Riegert (Local Hero, Crossing Delancy). Pan and zoom to an ironic contrast: Whit Stillman, director of such über-Izod, Park Ave how-do-you-do-set films as Metropolitan and Barcelona, walks in the opposite direction wearing a where-is-she? expression and a most un-Armani plastic lobster bib. Put that image on a poster for next year, to capture the gestalt of this the second annual Newport International Film Festival: Unmistakable class but striking lack of pretension. Think Amadeus meets Bringing Up Baby.

It's Sunday afternoon, the wrap-up day after the ceremonial closing. Festival founders and organizers Chris Schomer and Nancy Donahoe are finally able to relax and reflect, sitting in the sun on the terrace of the Viking Hotel, a sponsor that provided office space for the organizers and guest rooms for invited filmmakers.

"There are [film distributors] that we call on and they basically laugh: `Ah-hah! Who do you think you are, Newport?' " says festival director Donahoe, and keeps laughing. She's the tiny blond one under the nearly omnipresent logo bill cap, which is shed for the interview. Her voice is reduced to a hoarse whisper from six days of speaking loudly to introduce films and shouting into her cell phone over background dins. Her laughter hasn't even a tinge of bitterness, not even when she recalls a specific conversation she had, begging for a major studio premiere: "And the woman was like, `Why am I talking to you?' "

But such persistence in the face of titters and hang-ups has had its successes. This year for the opening night US premiere they latched onto An Ideal Husband, a skillful adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play, with Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, Minnie Driver, Jeremy Northam, and Rupert Everett.

Schomer, the executive director, is taller one, intense and slightly nervous, who looks like her curly brunette hair might eventually straighten on its own once the pressure is off. She points out that Newport's inherent cache is a substantial attraction. "All you need is someone who's been here before. And you can just say, `Oh, you know Newport. The host hotel is the Viking. We're doing closing night at the Marble House.' And people are like" -- she raises her eyebrows -- " `Oh, really?' "

Last year the festival budget was $200,000 and this year it was about $300,000, half raised in cash and half in sponsorship donations, such as Amtrak's last-minute transportation services. Because the Jane Pickens and Opera House theaters have only four screens between them, maximum screenings were about 75 both years. Last year 5100 tickets were sold. This year's numbers were not tallied by press time but were estimated to be "significantly higher," with nine shows sold out, compared to two last year. The 70 films included three world and two US premieres among the documentaries and features, as well as 25 shorts, a jazz film program and a Bill Murray "Introspective."

Donahoe says that with all the good press last year they were optimistic about this year's outing. Five years is the time frame she's thinking of, by which point she hopes the festival will be part of a lot of film fans' vacation itineraries. But Donahoe cautions herself against impatience. "We still are so small," she says. "We have to allow ourselves to still take baby steps and be a baby festival, because that is what we are."

Schomer, 30, was raised in Barrington. Donahoe, 33, is from Scranton. Both live part of the year in Newport and part in New York, where they came up with the idea of a festival, in April 1997. When they sat down over coffee at their favorite Upper West Side bakery, Nancy thought they were going to discuss producing a film together, as she had already done with a short.

Schomer says: "I had been withholding it" -- the idea for a festival -- "but was too embarrassed to tell her about it."

At the time she was booking guests for David Letterman, but this would require convincing people on a grander scale. Also at the meeting was their friend Pami Shamir, who helped organize last year's event. None had ever been to a film festival. But not only did Donahoe think it was a great and not impossibly ambitious idea, she initially proposed that they schedule the festival for that October! It would be an intimate little walk-around festival, like the one at Telluride, where indie filmmakers and film buffs could mingle and talk.

They got on the phones. By August the Viking Hotel signed on. Two months later, Us magazine backed them as a major sponsor, giving instant credibility that made additional national sponsorships inevitable. For programming director, the organizers tapped friend and film buff Maude Chilton, who had produced two films that had been screened at Sundance. And they put it all together, in little over a year, working at it part-time. After last year's festival, they made sure that at least one of them was not working while the other took her turn earning a living for a while.

This year seven people were working year-round to make the festival happen. The ranks swelled to about 35 staff as June approached and some 200 volunteers for the five days. So far, no one is getting more than a stipend or small salary, although that will have to change as the festival grows.

And grow it will. As Schomer noted, descriptively rather than pridefully, "A filmmaker from Los Angeles who was here said to me, `You know, they know about you on the West Coast.' "