'Shrek 2' vs. ... 'After the Apocalypse'? Independent films don't appeal to everyone
THE POST-STAR June 7, 2004LAKE PLACID -- As cultured cine-philes sat in darkened theaters over the weekend -- perhaps watching a drama about lobotomies in the 1950s, or a documentary about the first black female presidential candidate, or a series of animated short stories -- Peter Christian stood in the sun on Main Street watching an electric mixer churning wet, gray dry wall in a dirty bucket.
To Christian, staring at the dry wall was probably more entertaining than the average independent film.
A brigade of label-wearing, digitally connected, goatee-sporting, elbow-patched, skinny-jeaned, pierced and pretty, organic soy latte-lovers flocks madly to Lake Placid every year to see genres of cinema ignored, refined, supplanted and expanded, but Christian -- a hotel maintenance man from Dickinson (Franklin County) -- doesn't get too worked up over the Lake Placid Film Festival.
"You've gotta have an acquired taste for it, like listening to jazz or opera," he yelled, straining to be heard over the country-rock booming from his boom box. "And I don't."
In front of the Palace Theater on Friday, Nico Feliciano of Jamestown (Chautaugua County) and Matt Nardone of Saratoga Springs pondered the meaning of the film they'd just taken in, staring as a perfectly permed, manicured and pedicured woman strolled past wearing gold, silk and attitude, her groomed Chihuahua strutting behind.
Unlike Christian, Feliciano and Nardone are art and film majors (respectively) at college, but they were still baffled by some of the movies they'd seen.
"I've seen some very strange films here," Nardone said, looking unsettled. "You go in expecting one thing, and you come out with something different. ... I guess that's the fun of it."
To be confused, shocked and confounded is not a bad thing when watching independent films, said the festival's co-founder, Kathleen Carroll.
Every day, people watch movies at their local cinema and come away unmoved, or worse, unchallenged, Carroll said. And while the idea of a creative, experimental film might sound elitist, there's one simple concept behind their creation.
"It's about making something deeply personal, and putting that vision on screen, without the pressure of studio executives, test audiences and editors," Carroll said. "It's about passion, and that's what separates the movies you see here from what you're going to see at your average multiplex. With the movies here, you feel something."
All George Washington could feel Friday afternoon was the vibration of a weed-whacker in his hands. He likes what the festival does for the local economy, but he hasn't felt moved beyond that.
"I haven't seen any of the films here -- ever. I don't even know what's playing," he said. "All I know is I want to go see 'Shrek 2' at the normal movie theater."
In the center of town, peeking out through John Lennon-style sunglasses, framed by shoulder-length wavy black hair, Graeme McKenna said he understands the common man not falling in love with a creative filmmaker's avant garde screen revelations.
"But it's like anything else that's different," McKenna said. "I don't try new foods because I'm afraid they'll taste bad."
McKenna is the managing director of the Saratoga Film Forum, but he said he wouldn't want the job of programming this festival. The deluge of strange films submitted would make the selection process too difficult, he said.
"You'd spend your time wondering, is this going to go over? Is it going to be accessible? It's the finish too grainy? Is the idea too foreign?" he said. "I'm happy not to be in their shoes."
Working the door at the Women in Film reception down the road, Chris O'Donnell's hair -- a spiky, blonde-with-brown-roots Mohawk -- said as much about his taste in films as he ever could. In a few days, he had seen a French drama, attended a seminar on animation and sat though "After the Apocalypse" -- a two-hour, black and white feature about life after the third world war, in which no one speaks.
"It was good, but ? it was ... different," O'Donnell said, struggling to find one superlative.
Sensing that his praise of an experimental film may have sounded muted at best, O'Donnell launched into a self-assured spiel about viewers incorrectly equating "independent" with "B-rated," about the power of seeing something original, about people being too adjusted to the Hollywood system of mass-produced, pre-packaged, sugar-coated, assembly-line movies.
And then he paused, and smiled.
"I definitely want to see 'Shrek 2,' though," he said.www.poststar.net