May 7–14, 1998

movies|Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema

Coming Of Age

Stronger than ever, the Festival of Independents enters its teens.

by Sam Adams

Its 13th year has turned up lucky for the Festival of Independents. Expanded from four nights to six, the festival-within-a-festival (metafestival?) more than merits the extra programming space, with a strong and varied crop of shorts and two, yes two, locally shot feature films. While FestIndies (as it's known to friends) focuses on work with ties to the Philadelphia area, this year's program (curated by the Museum of Modern Art's Sally Berger) is more than ever about good films, not "just" good local films. Both features—Surrender Dorothy and Edge City—are garnering international attention, and several of the shorts have been around the world as well.

Eugene Martin's Edge City, kind of a Laws of Gravity-meets-Kids, is the more accomplished of the two full-length entries. Handheld camerawork lends a raw urgency to the story of the simmering tension between "suburban urban gangstas" and "Philly guys." Drawing inspiration from the murder of Eddie Polec, Martin looks at the way pose becomes practice, how teenagers who mimic a criminal lifestyle can become criminals almost without knowing it. Although the one adult character is badly played and drags down the scenes he's in, performances from the young actors are strong across the board and Martin's dead-on sense of rhythm gives Edge City real velocity.

Less refined but striking in its originality, Surrender Dorothy is this year's big-ticket entry, arriving with the kind of out-of-town buzz that's still sadly necessary for a local film to get decent attention. Winning top honors at Slamdance and the New York Underground Film Festival, Dorothy is a twisted tale of one man's sexual obsession. Barrymore-winning local actor Peter Pryor stars as Trevor, a wild-eyed busboy fixated on the notion of an ideal woman he calls Dorothy, a woman whom nature has neglected to provide. From the heroin dependency of his junkie roommate Lanh (director/writer Kevin DiNovis), Trevor hatches a fiendish plan; Lanh will do anything for junk, and Trevor wants to make Dorothy real.

Dot, dot, dot.

To reveal any more would be to ruin this twisting, twisted film's many surprises and shocks, which amuse and horrify throughout. (You'll have to see the movie to find out why the Surrender Dorothy crew gave out plastic forks at Slamdance.) Certainly not without its flaws—Jonathan Kovel's black-and-white photography is too cool and static for a movie about psychosis and obsession; Pryor's performance is at times too overstated for film—Surrender Dorothy is a bold, ballsy and attention-getting debut.

The most thoroughly satisfying of the shorts programs is "Beneath the Surface," loosely organized around the theme of documentary. Best of the four, and my favorite of the FestIndies shorts, is Snake-Byte, Dina Mendros and Shashwati Talukdar's hilariously deadpan parody of a newsmagazine show on serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Mixing excerpts from actual broadcast transcripts with improvised "interviews," Snake-Byte savages the fear-inducing racism of broadcast TV through the story of a killer described as "a cross between Belmondo and Krishna."

Also in "Beneath the Surface": Sasha Waters and Iana Porter's hour-long Whipped. Where Sick looked at the psychology of S/M, Whipped focuses on the business of domination, through interviews with professional dominatrixes, their clients and their lovers. David Zappalla's Sleep is a narcotic peek into the mind of Gepetto, and Cornelieu Dimitriu's brief Spring Synchronic turns images of dappled leaves into a fractal symphony of light and shade.

"Personal Explorations and Community Issues" is notable for the inclusion of From Here to There (De Aqui a Alla), Maria Rodriguez's thought-provoking look back at her father's death, and her attempts to get to know him after he is gone. A Colombian immigrant to the U.S., Rodriguez's' father rarely talked about his past, so her search for his past is as much an inquiry into her own heritage. Also on the bill: Mike O'Reilly's kaleidoscopic Panopticon/Panauricon, a whiplash blend of different film and video stocks shot in Eastern State Penitentiary that eerily evokes the sensation of being constantly watched.

Standing out from an unexciting "Women's Realities" program, Sheila Sofian's Survivors is a stunning animated short which uses ink and crayon images to illustrate audio interviews of survivors of domestic abuse. While the testimonial format is undeniably powerful, the straightforward approach has become almost too common to be effective; Sofian's devastating images allow us to hear these stories again as if for the first time.

Also worth noting are the standouts from the opening night program on May 5. Guy Mann is Bruce Pedretti's wry, multilayered take on love, loss and paranoia, and Margot Myers' Rose, completed by classmates after her death, is a pleasantly offbeat story of a postal worker with literary fantasies who finds love with Rent's Anthony Rapp.

Edge City, Sun. May 10, Ritz Five, 4:45 p.m.

Surrender Dorothy, Sat. May 9, 12 midnite, Ritz Bourse; Sun. May 10, 9:30 p.m., I-House.

"Beneath the Surface," Sat. May 9, 5:30 p.m., I-House.

"Personal Explorations and Community Issues," Thurs. May 7, 9 p.m., I-House.

"Women's Realities," Fri. May 8, 9 p.m., I-House.