April 22, 2003

I feel like I should have stayed in Bermuda…

It's not so much that I'm not happy to be home. It just feels like I should be hanging out there, gathering more than a week's perspective, writing about the life of this odd, remarkable island. This was my fourth year at the Bermuda International Film Festival. Each year is a little different. The films are different. The people are different. The tone is different.

One thing is consistent. I really like the people who participate in the festival. The staff, uniquely, is free of anyone I find even a little irritating. Each has his or her own personality. But that is the beauty. From the hospitality suite volunteers to the festival director and everyone in between, each person has the room to allow their personality to breathe and the commitment to the festival to embrace the sense of a shared experience.

The most amazing thing about Bermuda is how it seems to bring the festival guests together each year. Real friendships are made in the Bermuda sun. This year, I thought we were going to have to hold a communal wedding for our dramatic jury they got along so famously.

Bermuda is a unique opportunity to dissect the nature of so much of this industry. Because of the intimacy, there are few real secrets and few rumors that are not true. And like so much of the movie biz, the festival seems to be at a perpetual crossroads. Ambition suggests that anything is possible. Caution seems a waste.

This year's festival, the seventh edition, was more formed than ever before, yet the structure brought up more questions about the future. The festival showed 40 feature films. 16 were in competition, split evenly between documentaries and features. 14 of the films were already represented by distributors, though most were unlikely to get distribution on one of Bermuda's three screens. 8 films were part of two retrospectives. And 2 films for children were presented.

So who is the festival for? People on the island of 60,000 should be pleased to see some of the art house features that arrived with this year's BIFF and even gave the Audience Award to The Pianist, which is now even more likely to get a local run, as is DA Pennebaker/Chris Hegedus/Roger Friedman's extremely well received Only The Strong Survive. But in a classic Catch 22, many of the locals who have supported the festival over the years are more interested in new talent than in the kind of art product that gets distribution. Then again, the big money on the island is attracted to glitz and glamour… the kind of glitz and glamour that would come with a visit by Adrien Brody or Nick Nolte (whose The Good Thief screened) or Francis McDormand (who killed in Laurel Canyon).

What about those of us from off the island? Well, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (the Globes people) has found Bermuda, appreciating the ultimate film lover's vacation. But we all had invitations to screenings of all of the distributor-set films in our inboxes even before we left. So what of the competition films? Ah, there's the rub.

Bermuda' s programmers happen to have extremely eclectic taste. One of the great things about the festival is that it has films from all over the globe. Germany, Israel, Canada, America, UK, Sweden/Denmark and Argentina were all represented in the feature competition. Docs were a little more domesticated, but subjects covered Guatemala, Germany, India, Bhutan, Montserrat and China.

The question remains whether these are the very best films from this wide range of countries. With due respect to the filmmakers, the answer - with a few exceptions - is no. But the focus is smart. If the selection can be clarified down to its clearest form, Bermuda will be one of the few small can't-miss festivals.

The film that won the Dramatic Jury Award, Josef Fares' comedy Kops, was purchased in the midst of the festival by Columbia for development as an English-language comedy for Adam Sandler. (Basic premise - bored small-town cop decides to create work for himself by promoting crime amongst the innocent. Sandler as Barney Fife.)

No one in Bermuda hopes - or wants - to turn the festival into a mid-Atlantic Sundance. But if this sale had come out of Bermuda - which it could have, given the enthusiasm of jurors David Ansen of Newsweek and Val Van Galder of Sony Screen Gems - that would have started the ball rolling in a clear direction for this festival. In a way, the sale does reflect on BIFF, as this is Fares' second win at the festival, the first one being for Jalla Jalla at BIFF 2001.

Patricia Flynn's Doc Jury Winner, Discovering Dominga, is also fresh to the scene… and you will be able to see it on PBS' excellent P.O.V. series on Tuesday, July 8, 2003.

The other film most likely to emerge from BIFF 2003 is The Other Final, a soccer documentary with the style of a dramatic feature. The story of a match during World Cup Finals week between the two lowest ranked teams on the FIFA charts, Bhutan and Montserrat, the film is the perfect antidote to the hype and cash flow sports world of today. And it is so fresh that there is no listing of the film on IMdB… not even for its director, Johan Kramer. (You can reach the sales rep for the must-have doc at jonathan@kesselskramer.com.)

But is this a film that is evolving into a market or a sand & celluloid extravaganza, calling out for those who love warm, friendly people and the feel of an alternative universe, just an hour and change from New York City? Maybe it can be both.

READER OF THE DAY: STARRING JIM writes: "I think you've got a point about Moore's embellishments in that column, but he is correct about his movie being #1 on Amazon. I checked Amazon a couple days after the Oscars and Bowling was the #1 pre-order, ahead of Chicago. Since then, MGM/UA has changed the release date several times (I work at a video store and its been a headache). First it was supposed to be out the 22nd, today, then it got moved to May something, now it's off the schedule. I don't know what this means. I do know that our store was going to buy quite a bit of copies and this is not typical for a documentary. The only thing I wonder about is if some redneck video stores/Walmarts were going to boycott the movie. This is something worth looking into."

DAVID RESPONDS: I am not surprised to hear that… and not surprised that a popular film that was scheduled for release less than a month after the Oscars would be bought and paid for in advance more than a film that had a street date still five months away. That's the kind of embellishment I am talking about. A true fact, but with a completely spun subtext. Moore would have you believe that everyone who isn't his tightest ally is out to get him, much as he would now say that Bowling for Columbine is an anti-Bush movie, when there is only one brief attack on Bush, who was not President during the Columbine massacre. Back in September, Moore was pushing a story that Phillip Anchutz's Regal chain was not going to book the film on any of its screens for political reasons… Anchutz is conservative. That was a lie. "Redneck video stores" are a little more likely to buy B.F.C. than they were last year's doc winner - Anyone? Anyone? - Murder On A Sunday Morning, which never got a theatrical release in this country. Woe is Mike.

E ME: What do you love (or hate) about film festivals?