Reel World: The Berkshire International Film Festival

 

INT. BERKSHIRE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (BIFF) OFFICE, RAILROAD STREET, GREAT BARRINGTON, MASS. – MORNING

 

A color-coded calendar displays: March 1. Framed movie posters—Frozen River; In the Loop; Food, Inc.—dot the walls of the square, tall-ceilinged room. BIFF founder and director KELLEY VICKERY organizes a pile of papers on a desk in the far corner as assistants LAUREN FERIN and RACHEL BRONSTEIN click-clack on computer keyboards at adjacent workstations.

 

New Marlborough, Mass.-based filmmaker SANJIBAN SELLEW bursts through the door, holding up a small plastic case.

 

SANJIBAN SELLEW
(Excitedly, after greeting the women)
I got my final product yesterday. A thirty-minute documentary…

 

KELLEY VICKERY
A total departure!

 

SANJIBAN SELLEW
It sure is…

 

KELLEY VICKERY
(Cheerfully)
You know, your chipmunk film [Animal Tricks, 2009] is still talked about as people’s favorite. So, what’s it about?

SANJIBAN SELLEW
Seventeen years ago I organized a men-among-men outdoor drumming gathering; it took place for several years. The group never wanted to be photographed, to keep it sacred, but on three different occasions people said, ‘OK, you can bring your camera.’ I dug the footage out this summer, [and] I interviewed fourteen different men of the forty that often came, to talk about what they remember…

 

KELLEY VICKERY
Good for you! It’s well timed, because we have a final committee screening tomorrow night.

 

SANJIBAN SELLEW
(Gratefully)
Here’s my check. [He hands it over, along with the DVD.] Great to see you—on the deadline date!

 

Sellew’s Drumming Men is just one of more than five hundred submissions to this year’s Berkshire International Film Festival, the small-town celebration of contemporary international, national, regional, and local screen gems, which takes place this year from June 3 through 6. By fusing fresh, independent feature, documentary, and short films with panel discussions presenting producers, directors, and actors; effervescent yet intimate cocktail parties; and a celeb-studded, homespun tribute to an industry superstar, Vickery has aspired to create what she calls “a world-class festival as an integral part of the cultural fabric of the Berkshires.” Now gearing up for its fifth season, it’s clear that she is succeeding in her mission—the BIFF, as it’s called, has become something of a cinephile’s dream come true.

 

“I woke up Monday morning after the first festival [in 2006], and I said, ‘Oh my God, this may actually work! This may actually have a life,’” Vickery says over lattés at rubi’s in Great Barrington, just around the corner from BIFF headquarters. “And then right about now I’m not sleeping, that anxiety .… Why do I do this?”

 

The gripe is faux, of course. Since October, Vickery has been spending her afternoons, evenings, and weekends watching screener copies of hundreds of new movies, but gladly. She’s a woman obsessed with film—and her curiosity is shared with Berkshirites and those who flock here each summer to revel among our cultural jewels: the BIFF, a carefully orchestrated mish-mash of screenings and events, floods downtown Great Barrington with more visitors at one time than it sees at any other point in the year. Town manager Kevin O’Donnell estimates a surge of at least three thousand; those numbers could increase this year, as the dates have been pushed forward a couple of weeks, past Memorial Day—thanks to pesky college graduations, second-home move-ins, and the Cannes International Film Festival.

 

Vickery’s was an unfamiliar face to Great Barrington-based entrepreneur and developer Richard Stanley when she pitched the idea of hosting a film festival at his Triplex Cinema, but her gusto inspired him and general manager John Valente to take a leap of faith. “I sort of held my breath the first year … and was ecstatic about the results,” enthuses Stanley, largely credited for revitalizing the sleepy downtown via the independent movie house in 1995. “What I found quite amazing was the carryover of goodwill and enthusiasm after it was over. People didn’t want it to end, they wanted more. It was clear to me: we were doing the right thing in the right way.”

 

Among the forty-two films at the first-ever, three-day BIFF in 2006 was the regional premiere of Robert Altman’s final oeuvre, A Prairie Home Companion; the opening night tribute toasted award-winning producer/director/jack-of-all trades and Pittsfield, Massachusetts-native Mike Haley. Vickery estimates that about a thousand people showed up, among them Sid Ganis, then-president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and his TV/film-producer wife, Nancy.

 

“It was so splendid and surprising and pleasant,” Ganis reminisces by phone from his Los Angeles office. He hasn’t missed a BIFF since it began. “It seems to happen every year—the selection of films seems so interesting to us, and there’s no pressure, no Hollywoodness, no buying and selling of films, no heavy duty intrusions—no frenzy.” Though Ganis is not the type to skip from festival to festival, he’s been to quite a few in his day (the second-ever Sundance, for one), and he revels in the fact that the BIFF hasn’t morphed into a circus. Last year, “I said to Nancy, ‘Shouldn’t we be in Cannes?’” Ganis says, with mock incredulity. “She said, with great energy, ‘No, we should be in the Berkshires!’”

 

Filmmakers, too, have been vociferous in their praise, according to Valente, who overhears the contented murmurs in the Triplex lobby. They see audiences as intelligent and friendly (shocker); venues as top-notch. (“A lot of film festivals aren’t lucky enough to have a professional movie theater,” Valente explains, “so they go into libraries, school rooms, classrooms, school gymnasiums…”) And they surely enjoy the respite during the festival circuit in the form of a four-day jaunt during our mild—and traditionally rainy, as Vickery’s crossed fingers would have it—spring awakening, being shuttled back and forth to charming digs at the Red Lion Inn up the road in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, by some of the festival’s eighty-odd volunteers

 

Though it’s grown exponentially, the BIFF is still largely underground—there are no banners suspended along Main Street, as is commonplace at larger festivals. But something is in the air. “There’s a wonderful energy at a film festival,” Valente says. “These films come in, un-reviewed for the most part, and maybe there’s a little word of mouth, but it’s minor compared to the onslaught that you get once a film is out in the marketplace.”

 

As dyed-in-the-wool movie junkie and BIFF disciple Rachel Fletcher, 62, attests, therein lies the excitement. “The thing I love about film today is how many different vocabularies are being invented to tell stories,” says Fletcher, who last year shoehorned seventeen regular-length films into the four days (she forgoes the shorts … and the parties). “The selection [at the BIFF] is so good that you have Oscar and Independent Spirit Awards nominees consistently. And the emphasis on documentary films is a terrific fit because the social messages are at the heart of a lot of the work that so many of us are doing.” (Fletcher would know: she’s the founding director of the Great Barrington Housatonic River Walk.)

 

She’s nearly breathless. “It’s sort of like [being in] a room at the Plaza and having room service: all these films are given to you on a platter. When I do see the light of day, it is wonderful to see so many people walking in downtown Great Barrington—it’s so much livelier and the better for this.”
 

This year, Pittsfield is getting in on the action as a selection of films travels north for additional screenings at Stanley’s brand-new Beacon Cinema and at the Little Cinema, the Berkshire Museum’s independent summer movie series, now in its sixtieth year.

 

“The one thing we talk about all the time is focusing on making it better, not necessarily bigger,” explains Valente, who is also general manager of the Beacon. “And even though the expansion to Pittsfield is making it bigger, it’s a controlled growth. The more we establish our reputation in the industry, the better the films we will get.”

 

Ah, Vickery’s perennial challenge: to convince filmmakers and distributors (and even actors) that her “boutique” film festival is worthy—hence jaunts to Sundance and the Berlin International Film Festival in the depths of winter to hobnob with industry professionals. “We can build off the fact that we had Man on Wire as our opening film [in 2008; it later won an Oscar for best documentary],” Vickery explains. “The fact that we had [actors] Kevin Bacon and Peter Riegert here [for the 2008 opening-night tribute to Bacon, a resident of Sharon, Connecticut]. That it’s in the Berkshires is huge for filmmakers. I’m trying to get a film right now out of Berlin, and a big selling point is that it would be a co-presentation of Jacob’s Pillow.” And, she says with a toothy grin, “People want to be part of an anniversary.”

 

But as the majority of Academy Award nominees discover each year: You can’t always get what you want. “Last year I really wanted The Cove [up for Best Documentary, 2009],” Vickery admits. “They only gave it to a handful of festivals, which I think is a shame. It’s an ill-conceived assumption that if it goes to a festival then people won’t go see it.” She cites previous BIFF screeners—Favela Rising, Arranged, in 2006 and 2007, respectively—that fared especially well. “It’s guerilla marketing. The word of mouth is so strong—especially [for] documentaries, which are such a tough sell.”

 

Conversely, audiences seek out works by area residents, and local filmmakers like Sellew are thrilled to have a professional outlet in their own backyard. Among last year’s MVPs: An Impulse to Soar, a documentary by Mati Kiin about the Berkshire Children’s Chorus, and Hal Clifford’s quirky short, Cowboy Yoga [he presents Stone River this year]. “I love to program local filming,” Vickery affirms. “It builds excitement in the community and it gives [filmmakers] a platform.”

A stylish social butterfly with a penchant for witty banter, the forty-three-yearold mother of three teenagers sharpened her skills in publicity and special events at the Denver Symphony and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. At the latter, she handled the press and marketing of dance programs—a veritable MBA of special events, she quips in her trademark, breezy tone—and helped to inaugurate cultural festivals there. During ten years spent living abroad with her former husband, an international banker, she tackled various professions, launching a flavored coffee business and opening an art gallery boutique in Frankfurt; consulting for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra; and playing photographer in Hong Kong.

 

“I couldn’t work for somebody [else] in any of these countries,” Vickery explains, “so if I was to do any sort of work that would balance out with being a mom, I had to start it myself.”

Back in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she currently resides, Vickery set her sights on a lifelong fantasy. “Film is my passion,” she affirms, the gaze from her dark brown, bespectacled eyes now intense. “I can watch film all the time.” (Not surprisingly, Vickery is also on the board of the fledgling Berkshire Film and Media Commission.)

 

This spring, along with a committee of about fourteen, including fellow head programmer Lillian Lennox, Vickery eyeballed an estimated six hundred movies from October through March. A few of this year’s favorites from more than seventy-five films representing nineteen countries: Io Sono l’Amore (I Am Love), a tragic, passion-fueled story filmed in Milan, starring Tilda Swinton, and My Year Without Sex, an Australian drama delving into family dynamics following a parent’s brain trauma. Opening night in Great Barrington, held at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on Thursday, June 3, features Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which scooped up an award for documentary film editing and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, prefaced by Keep Dancing, a twenty-minute short film about legendary performers Marge Champion and Donald Saddler (both are ninety years old).

 

The concurrent opening-night bash happens right next door at the old Great Barrington fire station, vamped up for an all-night Disco Inferno dance party. (Pittsfield’s opening night, held at the Beacon on Friday, June 4, features Atletu, a biopic of the barefooted Ethiopian who snagged the gold medal in the 1960 Olympic marathon, with a party at the Ferrin Gallery nearby.) An Extra Man, in which an escort (Kevin Kline) for wealthy widows on New York’s Upper East Side forms an unexpected bond with an aspiring playwright (Paul Dano), closes the festival on Sunday.

 

Also in the mix are The Hungry Ghosts, a New York City-based drama written and directed by Michael Imperioli of Sopranos fame; Ondine, an Irish fairy-tale love story exploiting the rogue charms of Colin Farrell; and Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, an homage to the international art star and his meteoric rise to fame.

 

The rest seems to run the gamut, according to Vickery: “Some great environmental films [Climate Refugees, regarding mass migration; Sweet Crude, on the irony suffered by deprived villagers of the Niger Delta; Bananas!, an examination of a significant lawsuit against Dole Food and Dow Chemical, in partnership with Berkshire Grown] … political content [Vlast (Power), an investigation of an imprisoned oil magnate after he challenged Vladimir Putin] … war-driven films [The Oath, about becoming an al Qaeda henchman] … art films [Con Artist, a docu-comedy starring a surprisingly candid millionaire hack] … and a couple of really hot gay films.” Bow chicka wow. 

 

The Friday night gala tribute at the Mahaiwe bequeaths the BIFF’s Achievement in Film award to longtime Berkshire visitor and film actor Patricia Clarkson, also known to grace stages of the summer theater circuit. (She joins the ranks of Haley, 2006; Arthur Penn, 2007; and Bacon, 2008.) The evening’s centerpiece is Clarkson’s latest picture, Cairo Time, in which she stars as a married American woman tangled unexpectedly in a fleeting foreign romance.

 

The fourth annual Berkshire Student Film Festival highlights a handful of works chosen from the twenty or so submitted by area high schoolers. Three films comprise “family programming” at the Mason Public Library—most notably School Play, a short doc starring fifth graders on the eve of their departure from elementary school—despite last year’s lackluster turnout. And in related news, Berkshire Bank is sponsoring a “Next Great Filmmaker” online contest (www.berkshirebank.com) in conjunction with the BIFF, in which the public decides which of ten short films deserves $5,000 in bragging rights.

 

Perhaps the biggest development this year, however, is the creation of a Grand Jury Prize for feature and documentary films ($5,000 each), selected by a roster that includes Sid and Nancy Ganis, Mike Haley, Lincoln Center Film Society board member Peter Herbst, photographer Ken Regan, and actors David Rasche and Lauren Ambrose, among others, headed up by Great Barrington’s original silver-screen darling, Karen Allen.

 

But as Vickery’s overarching goal is to give the BIFF legs upon which it can crusade throughout the rest of the year, last year marked the debut of year-round, filmmaker-anchored screenings; the members-only Reel Friends of BIFF Society, which enjoys screenings and parties here and in New York City (such as an early screening of Where the Wild Things Are in Manhattan last October); and the BIFF BFFs, a more informal club for the younger set that meets for monthly private events. Collaborations with the Ferrin Gallery and Mission Bar + Tapas in Pittsfield dovetail nicely with events at the Beacon Cinema, which hosted a red-carpet gala for a live broadcast of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony in March. Next up: the possible launch of a summer outdoor film series.

 

Reports so far confirm that Vickery is nailing it. “She has that intangible quality of being able to elicit loyalty from people—people want to work with her and for her,” Valente says tenderly. “Whether you’re an honoree or a volunteer usher, Kelley makes you feel like your contribution is as important as anybody else’s. And she’s right, it is. Because unless that usher is doing his or her job, then what she’s doing in terms of programming and getting filmmakers to come here doesn’t really matter.”

 

Midway through what sounds like a magic carpet ride of fond memories from the BIFF’s “most delightful” past, Sid Ganis pauses; he’s mindful of sounding overly exuberant. “It’s a gigantic job to put on a film festival,” Ganis says, his voice deepening. “Every year, it’s a new event. Kelley at the helm has met the challenge … and has created a film festival that seems to be here to stay.”
 

Rachel Fletcher, the BIFF fan of all fans, who schedules a pre-festival strategy session with Valente, sure hopes so. Fletcher credits the BIFF with “growing a movie audience that is very knowledgeable and that really appreciates film. We’re all learning how great film can be, and throughout the rest of the season that is sustained,” Fletcher declares. “Our lives are richer for it.” [MAY 2010]

 

One of senior editor Amanda Rae Busch’s favorite films from past BIFFs was Wordplay, a 2006 documentary exploring the mania surrounding the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. It’s far more fascinating than it sounds.

THE GOODS

Berkshire International Film Festival
Jun 3-6
Great Barrington and Pittsfield, Mass.

 

Rules of Engagement

As general manager of both the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington and the Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield and as advisor extraordinaire to the Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF), John Valente has little time for much else—but that’s OK with him. “The BIFF is the most fun thing I do,” he gloats good-naturedly. 

His advice on how the average viewer should approach the four days:

“People ask me all the time, ‘What’s good?’” Valente says. “Ah, it doesn’t matter, that’s the whole point of a festival! It’s sort of like being born: you have no expectations. Read the description, go in, take a chance. You may find a gem. You’re gonna see things you don’t like. But it’s about the experience. We put so much pressure on ourselves; everything has to be great. You may not agree with A.O. Scott or Roger Ebert. Just go; you might be surprised.”—ARB