The mission statement of this year’s San Diego International Film Festival sounds terribly overreaching and idealistic given the national and global political anxieties sweeping the nation. At a time when tensions in Iraq are increasing every day, it seems the last thing on one’s mind should be “watching movies.” If anything, to regard a movie as a remedy for the intensely distressing problems of modern society would be heinous. Could anyone really be so idealistic as to think that a single film could change things? Can one film really matter that much?
For the late Ruth Bailey of University Events Office, a film could change the world. As the founder and director of the SDIFF, Bailey organized the festival for nearly twenty years at UCSD, and her great love was cinema. Believing that film was a way of bridging gaps between countries and cultures, a way of showing the interconnectedness of humanity, she was adamant in acquiring films from all across the world. She established many personal contacts in several foreign nations via consulates and ambassadors in such places as South Korea and mainland China.
However, at a great loss to the UCSD community, she passed away unexpectedly last July. In her absence, the very future of the SDIFF was jeopardized. Filling her position as the new festival directors, Martin Wollesen, Amy Thomas and undergraduate Rinee Shah have worked against great odds to make the annual festival a reality.
UEO, which runs the SDIFF, also programs events such as the Sun God Festival, in addition to Mandeville Auditorium and RIMAC concerts, among other things. With such an impacted schedule, the festival seemed almost impossible given Bailey’s death.
“We came to the conclusion that we couldn’t do a full-week festival. But we also felt that it was critically important to continue a presence,” Wollesen said.
Lacking Bailey’s experience and international contacts, the directors faced the bureaucratic and multilayered process of requesting and soliciting foreign film from international distributors. Given this difficulty, the directors had to rely primarily upon local and national submissions in a call-for-entry. Wollesen explains, “What that means is that there is greater weight on U.S. filmmaking than the international.”
Wollesen, Thomas and Shah aren’t exactly fighting this battle alone, though. On April 15 on local television network KPBS, Beth Accomando, a San Diego-based film critic and long time supporter of the SDIFF, heralded the festival with a feature on the program “Full Focus.” Other critics such as David Elliot of the San Diego Union-Tribune and Duncan Shephard of the San Diego Reader have also voiced their enthusiasm.
And without a doubt, community participation has been strong over the years, as the SDIFF is the only international film festival in town. Wollesen also anticipates a good deal of student involvement. “In the past, our student attendance was really quite high, and we anticipate that will be the case again,” she said. “We know that there will be some classes attending as well.”
With student attendance higher than any other UC film festival, the SDIFF audience promises to be an interesting blend. “I feel it’s very important that students go,” Shah said. “I’ve overlooked the festival in the past … We’re trying to get the word out a lot more.”
Watching over 100 submissions, mostly shorts, the artistic curators selected the most outstanding and significant works to be featured at this year’s festival. The three-day program includes themes such as: “The Light and Dark of It,” shorts ranging from the romantically sentimental to the absurdly dark; “Animals and Kitsch,” including fuzzy creatures and campy teen humor; “Animated World,” highlighting the oft-overlooked medium of animation; and “Brief Investigations,” which are “really exciting non-narrative experimental films.”
Amidst the sizeable array of shorts, the feature films promise for memorable viewings. The full-lengths, many from the international scene (Russia, Israel, Iraq, Italy), are complex dramas, plumbing the human psyche and exposing people’s greatest fears. The premiere feature, the Italian “Io Non Ho Paura” (“I’m Not Scared”) by director Gabriele Salvatores of Academy Award-winning “Mediterraneo” recognition, is the story of innocence lost. The film, set in a remote southern Italian village, follows the story of 10-year-old Michele who finds a startling secret that forcibly removes him from the safety of childhood.
“At a point in modern Italian cinema, where most films celebrate lightheartedness and comedy, it is refreshing to see a starker image that acts as a thriller,” Wollesen said.
Another notable film about the trauma of disrupted youth is the American feature, “Girlhood,” by Liz Garbus. Also Academy Award-nominated for “The Farm, Angola,” Garbus documents the lives of two young girls in Maryland’s Waxter Juvenile Facility: Shanae, a victim of a vicious gang-rape who turned to drugs and murder; and Megan, a child abandoned by her heroin-addict mother. “Girlhood” is an unflinching portrait of abused young women striving against adversity.
April 24’s opening feature, “About Baghdad,” an American film by exiled Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon, is a timely and harrowing documentary, relating Antoon’s return visit to a besieged Iraq.
“What you see time and again throughout ‘About Baghdad’ is how people are struggling with really basic things,” Thomas said. “The film goes beyond politics, beyond governments.”
Though less ambitious than Bailey’s incomparable 10-day festival runs, this year’s SDIFF is an endearing and hard-fought gesture in memory of a woman who loved and championed films as vehicles for humanitarian force. According to the mission statement, in a world that is “complex, frightening, and hopelessly beautiful,” Bailey’s venturesome and compassionate spirit is vividly reflected in these films.
Tickets for the SDIFF can be purchased at the UCSD Box Office in person or by calling (858) 534-TIXS.
