65
BY
ANGELO MANCUSO
T
his years High Falls Film Festival,
www.highfallsfilm-
festival.com, concluded on Saturday evening in
Rochester, NY. The festival, which ran this year
from
November 5th through the 9th, is starting to be
recognized
as
a leading film festival, celebrating women behind the
camera in the motion picture business. This city's
history
has much to do with that. Rochester is the birthplace
of
women's rights and motion picture film.
Candice Bergen opened the festival in the same room
where
her Candice Bergen Photographs: 1971-76 was on
exhibit.
She opened with the remark, "I am so honored by this
exhi-
bition in the shrine of photography." Dr. Anthony
Bannon,
this historical site's director said, at the news conference
at
George Eastman House, www.eastman.org, that he was
proud of being able to display Ms. Bergen's work
featuring
photos of Arnold Schwartzenegger Pumping Iron,
Paul
Newman, Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx and many
more from ESQUIRE, LIFE and NEW YORK magazines
as
well as photographs featured on the TODAY SHOW.
Much of this film festival's success comes from the
contribution
and at the hand of Catherine Wyler, the festival's
Artistic
Director. She has worked as a studio executive at
Columbia
Pictures, PBS and was one of the founders of the
Sundance
Institute, www.sundance.org. She has managed to
encourage
dialogue with the most successful people, men and
women
alike, in the film business and bring together a provocative
dis-
cussion in a city that is one of the crown jewels of the northeast.
With the palette chosen and the table set. 63 films. 33 feature
or
documentary. 14 panels. Five days. Four filmmaker parties.
One
very special restoration. And not enough time to be everywhere.
Films featuring women behind the camera from 20
countries
made this year's cinema nothing less than spectacular.
From
narrative to realism to experimental, these films
engaged
audiences that had traveled from around the world.
This years Audience Choice winners for Best Feature
Film
went to IN AMERICA, filmmakers Jim, Kirsten and
Naomi
Sheridan and Best Documentary went to MY
ARCHITECT,
filmmakers Nathaniel Kahn and Susan Rose Behr.
The feature film OSAMA is the first entirely Afghan
film
made after the fall of the Taliban and was screened
before
a
sold-out house at the Dryden Theater. (George Eastman
House) This emotionally wrenching story of a 12 year
old
Afghan girl who is forced to cut her hair and dress as a
boy
so
she could go and find work after her father is killed by
the Taliban is as an emotionally charged film as you
will
ever see. This film is not an American Film. It's the
tough-
est of subject material that needs to be seen.
The documentary BLUEGRASS JOURNEY thrilled audi-
ences with a behind the scenes look at the world of the
blue-
grass movement. As I panned the audience, they were
doing
very much the same. The digital cinematography
captured
the feeling that you were at the bluegrass festival.
With
ample movement and subtly the camera was as much a
char-
acter in the composition as the subjects were. And did I
men-
tion the music. The richness of the sound added to the
mes-
sage these filmmakers were trying to convey.
The short film WHITE LIKE THE MOON screened as
part
of AFI's, www.afi.com, Directing Workshop for Women
at
the Little Theater, www.little-theatre.com. The
films
writer-director, Marina Gonzalez Palmier, whose
acting
credits include C.S.I.: MIAMI and the WEST WING
made
her directorial debut as one of only seven women
chosen
by AFI to produce their film at the institute last year.
The Women's Preservation Fund along with the
George
Eastman House, one of only a handful of motion
picture
archives in the United States, screened a film
restoration
from 1912 titled A FOOL AND HIS MONEY. This film, of
a
very rare entirely African-American cast, was found at
a
garage sale and was restored and archived. How fitting
and
fortunate it is that this film be screened in the shrine
of
motion picture and photography.
Panels included director Vicky Jensen, SHREK,
director
Randa Haines, CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD, stunt
woman Jeanie Epper, MINORITY REPORT, Oscar winning
actress Celeste Holm, GENTLEMANS' AGREEMENT, cin-
ematographer John Bailey, ACCIDENTAL TOURIST and
YA-YA SISTERS, Daytime Emmy-winning composer
Shirley Walker, BATMAN and SUPERMAN animated TV,
and the incomparable movement specialist Jean
Louis
Rodrigue who demonstrated the Alexander Technique.
Jean Louis teaches at UCLA, the Verbier Festival
and
Academy in the Swiss Alps as well as his own school
Alexander
Techworks in LA. www.alexandertechworks.com. His
past
clients include names like Binoche, Reeves, Swank and
the
many studios that bring him into production. All for one
rea-
son, to work with actors and help them learn to relax, find
the
poise and grace to be cool and nail the scene on the first or
sec-
ond take. As he guided audience members through this
tech-
nique, both the subject and observers found their grace.
With
this micro-panel of 30 or so participants, maybe this was
the
biggest present this festival could give to its guests.
The High Falls Film Festival is a growing force to be
reck-
oned with. The festival's sponsors and supporters
have
continued to grow over the past few years. With the
many
major corporations that have world headquarters
here
(Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb, Newman's Own is
man-
ufactured here) and the many more global
corporations
located in Rochester, NY that can't be mentioned, it will
be
interesting to see if these big companies support
programs
in their own backyard.
The Rochester community is located between New
York
and Toronto and is the back lot for the second and
third
largest filmmaking communities in the world. I got
the
sense that Rochester is trying to grow its film
production
community and replace jobs lost in a changing
economy.
Not withstanding, this festival has both the political
and
business support and the potential to become one of
the
few international festivals that has found it's niche.
Candice Bergen opened the festival and Celeste
Holm
closed it. After a five minute film tribute to Ms. Holm,
she
humbly accepted the Susan B. Anthony "Failure is
Impossible" award. As Lorie Lachiusa Barnum, the
Executive Director of the Susan B. Anthony House,
www.susanbanthonyhouse.org, told the audience why
Ms.
Holm exemplified who Susan B. Anthony was as a
person,
a visibly moved women moved to the podium and said
"You
weren't supposed to make me cry. You are all far too
nice.
Thank you."
Ms. Holm couldn't have said it any better.
FFR
Women, Film Come
Together In Rochester
H I
G H FA L LS
F E
S T I VA L R E V I E W
HIGH FALLS FILM
FESTIVAL
2004 Festival Dates Set:
November 10-14
www.highfallsfilm
festival.com
The festival has found its
natural place in Rochester,
NY, the home of both
motion picture film and
the origins of women's
rights in America.
Rochester is the head-
quarters of Eastman
Kodak Company, the glob-
al leader in motion picture
film manufacturing, and
suffragist Susan B. Anthony pub-
lished her daily newspaper from
her residence in downtown
Rochester.
IN
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