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Seattle's International Film Festival: Part 7

SIFF Day 16 – Archival Bias and Getting Excited About Mexico

By Sara M. Fetters.

Lineup Rumblings

For about the last week of the Seattle International Film Festival I’ve been hearing rumblings from festival pass holders, members of the press and frequent ticket buyers that this year’s festival has been sub par compared to the last few years. True or not I'm at a loss to have an opinion for I have not attended enough films in the last couple SIFFs to be able to compare. I will say, when dealing with 250-plus films, it is humanly impossible to see all of them.  With so much to choose from the law of averages states that an unlucky few are going to end up picking a slew of poor or disappointing movies, just as a proportionate few are going to end up picking a liter of pure winners to screen.

I know that from my perspective most of the films I singled out to see before the festival have been adequate in quality or worse. In the case of the Spanish thriller Plenilunio, Susan Seidelman’s Gaudi Afternoon and the Italy/Germany/France co-production Princesa, I’m pretty sure I ended up sitting through three of the worst films I’ve seen in ages. On the flip side, films that I ended up viewing by chance, the Italian drama Ignorant Fairies, Jan Egleson’s The Blue Diner, Bernard Rapp’s A Matter of Taste, Tony Gatlif’s Vengo to name a few, have all been very good to downright brilliant.

What’s it all mean? Don’t ask me. It just goes to show that the old adage of everyone’s tastes being completely unique to their owner holds true and that film, like any true art form, remains completely subjective. Reason I bring this up?  An ever growing murmur that the archival showing of Ron Fricke’s Baraka, originally shown at SIFF in 1992 for gosh sakes, might end up walking away with the audience award – The Golden Space Needle – for best picture.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Baraka and the rare 70mm print of the film was astounding, but be serious. While I'm all for archival features being shown at a film festival, it is a perfect venue for them after all, I am not pleased at the thought of one of them winning best picture. I mean, if the archival films get to compete, what is to stop the brand new print of Luis Buñel’s 1964 masterpiece Diary of a Chambermaid, Lindsay Anderson’s wonderful 1968 film If… or Jackie Chan’s 1989 classic Miracles from walking away with the trophy? They’re all tried and true, world-renowned films, too, so wouldn’t they have just as much a chance as Baraka?

The point is, no archival film has ever won the Golden Space Needle at SIFF to my knowledge, and nor should one.  Archival films have an undue advantage over regular entries at a film festival; they’re known commodities. Who knows what audiences and critics are going to think of any of the films playing at this year’s SIFF two or three decades from now? At the same time, a film like Diary of a Chambermaid has been sold as classic for over thirty years, so the audience’s vote is bought and paid for before the film even screens.

Will Baraka win? I doubt it. While I personally find the film to be a pleasant if somewhat derivative cousin to 1983’s Koyaanisqatsi, Seattle has loved the documentary since it first premiered here and it shows at local theaters for a week or two at least once a year. All the same, I think SIFF’s history has showcased the fact that Seattle audiences prefer to select newer entries for the audience awards, and lackluster year or not I don’t see any reason to believe that history will change.

On A Roll

I’m starting to think Mexican cinema is on a roll.

Right off the bat, 2001 started off with the bang that was Amores Perros. Audacious, violent, poetic, tragic and smartly elegiac, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s stunning debut could easily have been dismissed as warmed-over Pulp Fiction in lesser hands. Instead, the film garnered a justly earned Academy Award nomination in 2000 for best foreign film and would have won save for that small Taiwanese film from Ang Lee that had something to do with tigers and dragons. All kidding aside, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon may have been one of 2000’s real finds and best films, but Amores Perros probably should have taken home the trophy in that category.

Now comes Antonio Serrano’s 1999 film Sex, Shame & Tears, a surprisingly effective dramatic romantic comedy that, once it gets rolling, plays like vintage Pedro Almodóvar. It won four Mexican Academy Awards, including best screenplay adaptation and best first feature, both going to Serrano. It’s easy to see why. The film pulsates and moves to its own scintillating rhythm, looking at love, loss and relationships in a way - while not exactly new - that is constantly fresh and exciting.

Both Iñárritu and Serrano get my pulse racing, not just to see more of their own films, but to see more in the way of works from Mexico. These guys represent two of the most thrilling young directors to come out of Mexico in years, maybe since Luis Buñel - and if you think I’m forgetting Robert Rodriguez, I’m not. While I’m a fan of his to be sure, none of his work has reached the level of quality, craftsmanship and purpose that Iñárritu and Serrano have displayed in only their first foray out of the gate.  If there is more like these two working south of the border, lets hope their film make their way up here to be screened soon.

Fourteen Day Recap

Including today, there are 11 days left in the festival and I’ve now seen 42 films, including repeat visits to both The Big Animal and Ginger Snaps. So, in regards to my picks as best of the festival, has anything changed? Not when it comes to Brother. The more films I see, the more Takeshi Kitano’s masterpiece continues to remain at the forefront of my thoughts. I know I’ve said it many times before, but it’s an astonishing film.

I’m also very happy with my choice of Margherita Buy as best actress for her work in Ignorant Fairies. Not that there has been a lack of competition. Judy Davis arguably gives one of her best performances in the other wise lackluster Gaudi Afternoon, Lisa Vidal stopped the show in The Blue Diner and both Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle of Ginger Snaps show that they might be two of the best young actors in Canada today. Still, I have to remain with Buy as my first choice in this category. Hers is one of the best female performances I’ve seen in years, let alone this festival.

As far as actor goes I’ve changed my pick to A Matter of Taste’s Bernard Giraudeau. Not well known outside of France, his sly, smooth, seductive and ultimately tragic performance in director Bernard Rapp’s sublime dark morality tale is near pitch perfect. His crooked smile as he awaits his just deserts has a creepy menace that’s haunted me ever since the film’s end credits finished their crawl.

A change, too, in regards to screenplay as Jan Egleson and Natacha Estébanez’s work on the wonderful The Blue Diner must be singled out for praise. You can read my last column to get all my thoughts towards this excellent film, I’ll just say here that if this movie does not get a distributor and find theatrical release then a real travesty has been perpetrated on lovers of great cinema.

I'll update my choices on SIFF’s last day, June 17. I’ll also include my thoughts as to the best, worst and most interesting moments of this year’s festival. Until then I’ll just keep chugging along with my regular columns as I try to reach my goal of seeing 80-plus films.

Any comments? E-mail them in. I'll post the more interesting responses in future columns.

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