• Printer friendly
• E-mail to a friend
• 0 comment(s)
• Recommend

  ( 0 )

Cube Ad

Ojai Film Festival

By STEVEN LIBOWITZ

Powerful Hollywood producer Peter Guber reportedly told the audience at the Toronto Film Festival last year that “Ojai is the next Telluride!”

Well, no. Or at least not yet.

Yes, like Telluride, it’s hosted by a sleepy little mountain village that, thankfully, is a heck of a lot easier to access than that remote Colorado town.

But even if it didn’t operate in the shadow of the huge (three times as long) and high profile (Hollywood north) Santa Barbara International Festival, the Ojai Film Festival would have been a well-below-the-radar, quiet little secret few outside of the village itself paid any attention to in any way resembling Telluride, which sells out despite never revealing its slate of films (including many world premieres of major indie films) beforehand.

But with eight previous years under its belt, and SBIFF and Cannes-trained Santa Barbara entertainment PR maven Mo McFadden as its new executive director, the festival is poised to cut a bigger swath on the entertainment calendar.

The four-day OFF now boasts 57 independent films including quite a few world premieres of its own, most of which, as befits a smaller festival, are shorts, a seminar featuring cinematographer Bill Fraker – whose 50-plus credits include “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Bullett,” “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” “Heaven Can Wait,” “WarGames” and “Rules of Engagement” (editor’s note: due to health reasons, Fraker has canceled his appearance) – plus a free community screening of Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights.”

Perhaps most impressive is a triple-header Lifetime Achievement Award evening featuring the husband-and-wife directors/producers Richard Donner and Lauren Schuler Donner and ubiquitous Ray Bradbury (the author of “Farenheit 451” is a perennial keynote speaker at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference). Richard Donner lengthy career, which began with innumerable credits directing episodes of now-classic TV shows (“The Fugitive,” “FBI,” “Get Smart,” “Perry Mason” “Gilligan’s Island,” to name just a few), boasts all four of the wildly successful “Lethal Weapon” movies as well as the first – and to many, the best – “Superman” big screen effort, plus such films as “Goonies,” “Maverick,” “Radio Flyer,” “Conspiracy Theory” and 2006’s unjustly overlooked “16 Blocks.” Edward James Olmos, Diane Ladd and Malcolm McDowell will be among the luminaries on hand to fete the trio on Saturday night.

McFadden shared some thoughts on her first year at the helm.

Q. Why were you interested in running the Ojai fest?

A. It’s a festival where the focus is about the quality of films. Artistic Director Steve Grumette has got a knack for picking the good ones. This year there are 18 docs and 8 features and that really says something, because Ojai is issue driven community much like Santa Barbara.

After having worked at SBIFF, I also like the idea of smaller, more contained festival and the intimacy that a little town brings. Plus, there’s the geographic location. It’s a little sweet spot up here. And while Ojai can be hotter than Hades in the summer, this time of year is absolutely pleasant, just pristine and sunny and drop dead gorgeous, and the stars are amazing at night. 

Q. How does it compare with SBIFF?

A. It’s s very different thing. Santa Barbara always had a larger schedule, was always a longer fest. But with Ojai behind held over one weekend, it puts a pin-spot focus on what you’re doing. We want it to be a destination festival for people from the East Coast and Midwest, much like Telluride.

Q. What will it take to make that happen?

A. You know you can’t pay for that sense of ambiance, but we already have it here, so it’s not something that’s impossible to emulate. We’ll never be a festival where people do the marketing, but there’s no reason we can’t screen some of good high quality indie films. We’d love to be able to do the majors. I plan on being in conversation with the studios about having them show their big-ass Christmas film here first. The timing would be absolutely perfect, so it should be viable. And it would suit our major sponsor and HQ site of the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa – the producers, directors and marketers can afford to stay there, they might already be familiar.

Q. What can you tell me about this year’s crop of film?

A. “The Flyboys” is very uplifting family film, one of the best I’ve seen in a while. “Crazy” based on life of a guitarist who played with Elvis, Conway Twitty, Patsy Cline and then got turned onto Wes Montgomery in the 50s and 60s when that was not done in those days. The production values on the film are phenomenal. If you love jazz or country or whatever, you’ll hang your hat on this one. There’s a documentary about Robert F. Kennedy called “A Ripple of Hope.” For boomer generation people like me who wasn’t able to vote but paid attention to campaign, it’s for us. The speech he made on night of Martin Luther King’s assassination – extemporaneously – really touches you. It reminds us of what we lost back then.

Then there’s “Imprint,” a feature set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It’s a thriller, not a gory one but psychological. I gave it three jumps, as in it made me jump three times. Then I watched it again just to see what I missed. The young actress from the film will be at the screening. She’s one of 33 filmmakers attending, which out of 57 films is pretty darn good.

The Ojai Film Festival takes place at various venues in downtown Ojai today through Sunday. For tickets, schedules and information, visit  HYPERLINK "http://www.ojaifilmfestival.com" www.ojaifilmfestival.com or call 640-1947.

Comment on this article

Subject:

Body:

Poster:

Enter text seen above: