By Michael Janusonis / Providence Journal Arts Writer
PROVIDENCE - Demetria Carr, managing director of the Rhode Island International Film Festival, which officially opens its 13th year Tuesday night with screenings of short independent films at the Providence Performing Arts Center, remembers the year they couldn’t get anyone to accept their lifetime achievement award.
In the past, the award had attracted the likes of Patricia Neal, Seymour Cassel and Julie Andrews, who arrived to pick up the award for her ailing husband, director Blake Edwards. So Carr said the festival staff — not ones to declare “all is lost!” — declared the filmmakers themselves the stars of that year’s event “and it was the smoothest, most relaxed festival we ever had.”
This year, however, the RIIFF has found a veritable star gold mine. Ninety-two-year-old Ernest Borgnine, who won the best actor Academy Award for 1955’s Marty and went on to star in the TV sitcom McHale’s Navy, will be at the Columbus Theatre Friday to receive the RIIFF’s lifetime achievement award and to present his latest film, Another Harvest Moon. He will share the stage with some of the film’s other stars — Doris Roberts (of TV’s Everybody Loves Raymond) and Anne Meara, who will attend with husband Jerry Stiller.
The night before there will be a screening of William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet with Shatner himself on the Columbus stage to introduce his documentary film, which is based on one of his music albums. He’ll also receive the festival’s first Nathanael Greene Humanitarian Award and take part in a conversation with the audience — “William Shatner Unplugged,” he calls it — in which he will discuss his life and career.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg for the festival, which has grown this year to showing 235 films in six days — seven if you count Monday’s two special screenings: Monsters vs. Aliens for disadvantaged youth at the Providence Place Cinemas in the morning; The Lark Farm, about the Armenian genocide during World War I, at the Columbus in the evening. The films have been culled from more than 3,400 entries, according to RIIFF executive director George Marshall, 24 percent more than last year. With 11 screening locations, the festival has grown to be the largest in New England, moving ahead of Boston’s Independent Film Festival.
Part of the attraction for filmmakers, who pay an entrance fee of between $30 and $45 (depending how far in advance they submit a film), is that the RIIFF is one of only 63 film festivals worldwide accredited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to qualify films for an Oscar in the short film category. Since 2002 “we’ve had 15 nominations and five wins,” says Marshall proudly.
He hasn’t seen all of this year’s 3,400 entries, but Marshall has seen every one of the 235 films that will be screened. They were selected by more than 100 “community viewer” judges, from different backgrounds but all chosen with the stipulation that they love movies. “The goal is for each film to be seen and judged by three people,” explains Marshall, adding that in the end, the buck stopped with him. “At the end of the day it’s my decision as to what goes into the festival.”
Once a film has made the cut, Marshall says he and his staff keep in “constant communication” with the filmmakers. “If you’re not in touch with them, you’re just a blank face to take their money.”
The films come from all over the world. Spain, Ireland, New Zealand, Israel, Canada and Australia are represented this year, along with the United States. Many of the filmmakers come along. This year the festival will be podcasting many of the interviews done with filmmakers during the festival on the RIIFF Web site — RIFilmFest.org — so the folks back home can keep abreast of what’s going on in Providence.
“Last year 326 filmmakers came from all over the world,” says Marshall, adding that local hotels have pitched in with discount rates. This year Lei Hong, executive director of the Guangzhou Film Festival in China, will be coming. “We’re associated with the Guangzhou Documentary Film Festival,” adds RIIFF producing director Adam Short, and she will be here to represent her festival and to see how an American film festival works. “Every year,” Short continues, “we exchange films with the Guangzhou festival, provided our filmmakers agree to translate their films into Mandarin for China.”
The RIIFF continues to donate tickets to non-profit groups which they can then sell to their patrons — a win-win situation for both the non-profits, which get money from selling the tickets, and for the RIIFF, which can both fill up its shows and develop new audiences. That’s important when you want to have a good showing in a hall such as the 3,300-seat PPAC or the 850-seat Columbus.
But this year, the RIIFF also will be splitting the gate with nonprofits on some of the films. For example, ticket sales from the Aug. 5 screening at the Columbus of local documentary filmmaker John Lavall’s Home Across Lands, which follows refugees of an East African war from their settlement camp in Ethiopia to a new life in Providence, will be split between the RIIFF and the International Institute of Rhode Island, which helped bring the refugees to the United States.
“There’s at least one benefit performance a night,” says Carr, including the Rhode Island Commission for the Humanities and Rhode Island College for a screening of David Bettencourt’s On the Lake: Life and Love in a Distant Place; the Armenian Historical Association of Rhode Island for the screening of The Lark Farm; the Station Fire Fund for a screening of The Station, which was shot at a benefit concert at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center; the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation for a special closing night program of short films called “Hip Hot and Short.”
Shatner and Borgnine won’t be the only honorees this year. Composer Klaus Badelt, whose film scores include Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Time Machine and K-19: The Widowmaker as well as music for the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, will be given the RIIFF’s Crystal Image Award. Walt Misaka, the first Asian American pro basketball player to be drafted into what is now the NBA in 1947 and the subject of the film Transcending: The Walt Misaka Story, will be presented the first Roger Williams Independent Voice Award.
In addition, there are many special forums and sidebars throughout the festival, including the KidsEye International Film Festival of films made by children; the Local Filmmaker Spotlight which will showcase films by Jake Mahaffy; the Rhode Island Film Forum, which provides a networking platform for filmmakers, with Badelt as the keynote speaker; a two-day Scriptbiz workshop for aspiring screen writers which includes a special three-hour program on writing for Hollywood by film industry producer-writer Ron Tippe; the RIIFF Technology Forum, with a day-long series of workshops about new marketing and distribution trends in digital and Web-based technologies; the annual GLBT sidebar with 22 films geared to homosexuals and transgender people to be shown at the Bell Chapel.
In other words, there’s something in this year’s festival for everyone. For a complete schedule and description of the films and various programs, go to RIFilmFest.org.