The Berkeley Video & Film Festival

Depending on how you look at things, it’s either a wonderful or a terrible time to be an independent filmmaker. On the one hand, Indies have never been bigger, with the massive commercial success of movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the Blair Witch Project.

But success breeds imitation, and nowadays it seems like everyone with a digital camera is making an Indie. In a crowded field it is frustratingly difficult to find an audience for your flick, a feeling made unbearable other filmmakers go blithely Sundancing their way to riches and acclaim.

The elemental human urge to tell a story is about one second older than the urge to have that story heard and declared magnificent. It’s hard not to worry that the world contains more storytellers than audience members. Luckily for these cinematic strivers (and for those of us who love to watch movies), there is the Berkeley Video and Film Festival, a modest but energetic celebration of independent filmmaking that gives a few talented filmmakers their moment in the sun.

Sixty-five of these have been chosen for inclusion and will be screened in an eye-popping orgy of cineastic bliss, twelve hours a day from noon until midnight.

Don’t worry about how nice it is outside; November sunshine is more than you deserve, frankly, and you really ought to be hunkered down in a dark room, hoovering popcorn like there’s famine afoot.

The strength of this festival lies with the documentary films. In an era when tagging along on a stranger’s unpleasant first date qualifies as reality footage, these well-conceived, deeply felt investigations are particularly moving. While there is no requirement that the films have a Bay Area theme, many of them do, and the chance to see our home from a different perspective is much appreciated.

Bounce: The Don Barksdale Story features one of the first black players in the NBA, a former Berkeley High Yellowjacket who distinguished himself in athletics, radio, business, and philanthropy. The footage of Berkeley in the 1930s is arresting, and interviews with Barksdale’s basketball descendants (and Bay Area locals) Jason Kidd and Gary Payton show just how valuable it is to turn away from the present and recall one’s progenitors. In general the documentaries tend to be activist, focusing on themes familiar to Berkeley viewers. There are two films that focus on opposition to the war on terror, one about the Black Panthers, one on the horrors of animal trapping and, of course, the obligatory Holocaust documentary.

Suffice it to say that the fact that separate documentaries about nudists both won Best of Festival Awards firmly locates this collection of films here in the Land of the Free (Speech Movement).

The best documentary (and possibly the best film of the entire festival) is Brothers on Holy Ground, an enormously affecting piece about the psychological aftermath of 9/11. Director Mike Lennon chooses to focus not on the horrible footage that we all now involuntarily replay in our own minds, but on the unscripted words of the survivors. In these raw interviews we see a young firefighter drowning with guilt over his decision to swap seats on the engine with a buddy, a chance event that left one man dead and the other standing on a downtown street, covered with ashfall and awash in misery. Lennon eschews the maudlin tone and imperious politicizing common to many 9/11 documentaries, focusing instead on the quiet rhythms of lives interrupted, the way a fireman calmly chops celery for a firehouse lunch as he muses about the violence of the job and the agony of losing one’s closest friends.

Fortunately, the festival is not all portentous and important. The presence of animation, short comedies, music videos and even public service announcements gives the mind a bit of a yawn and a stretch before settling back down to the heavy lifting.

These shorter efforts can be quite winning, allowing the viewer brief dips into the delightfully addled minds of a variety of talented filmmakers. In Lost and Found for example, an odd little man insists that a sculptor has stolen his dentures, and the interaction between the two men borders on the surreal.

Young producers offer short films with whimsical names like Egyptian Rat War and subject matter such as an insect’s reaction to high culture.

The music videos are also visually compelling, especially The Dive which was shot underwater and then hand-colored frame by frame for a unique look.

There’s even a big name hiding among the short pieces—Eminem’s video White America, which was produced and directed by the local Guerilla News Network. It’s an excellent video; the graphics are simple and powerful, and Eminem’s lyrics are, as always, refreshingly self-aware and unsentimental.

If anything, the video is too good in the context of the other films; Eminem’s star power and overwhelming marketing machinery feels a little unfair, like Shaquille O’Neal stopping by the Berkeley Y for a pickup game.

Without the aid of an intravenous feeding tube and a vampiric love of the dark, there’s simply no way to see all of the movies on offer here. Viewers will have to look deeply into themselves and make tough decisions.

Will you see Temptation, the Grand Festival Award winner, a lighthearted feature film about new-age pornographers—please, it’s erotica, not porn!—or will you stick with uplifting and earnest by picking the foot-stomping fun of Los Zafiros, a dance through the raucous world of Cuban music?

However you choose, you’re bound to see a few stinkers. But the joy is in the hunt, and there are diamonds littered throughout this field.

It’s a fine time to be an independent film watcher, and the Berkeley Video and Film Festival has done an impressive job of collecting compelling movies that may mark the emergence of big time talent.

The festival runs from noon until midnight this Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 1 and 2. Tickets and show times can be found at www.berkeleyvideofilmfest.org and the movies will be shown at Wheeler Auditorium on the UC campus.