2nd Try for Cinematic Career Lands Student Top Honors at Festival

Seven years ago, Dan Bootzin produced a short film in his advanced cinema class at Los Angeles City College. It won him an agent--but his next job was delivering pizzas.

Last spring, Bootzin returned to the Vermont Avenue campus for a second try in the filmmaking class. Now he’s hoping that the result will be a different kind of delivery job.

Bootzin’s film, “Six Point Nine,” has won top prize for short films in this year’s Berlin International Film Festival--one of the most highly regarded film competitions in the world.

“My main goal was just to make another film, to be productive and to use the support of the school,” Bootzin, a 30-year-old Hollywood resident and free-lance film editor, said of his return to the college. “Hopefully, this will open doors to some more work.”

“Six Point Nine” is an eight-minute black-and-white comedy about a man living in a low-rent Los Angeles apartment.

His morning routine of brushing his teeth, rinsing his mouth and reading the paper--performed in a small, dismal bathroom--is regularly interrupted by the noisy morning routine of a Latino couple next door.

The man seems painfully aware of the couple’s fights, loud music, crying baby and lovemaking, all of which he hears through thin, cracked walls.

But his routine is so methodical that even an earthquake, which he seems to mistake for the couple’s rambunctious intimacy, fails to deter him.

“The film is about how important it is for people to maintain the status quo in their lives, to maintain their routine,” Bootzin said. “The main character . . . is kind of an everyman, you know. He’s standing in for all of us, and he’s trying to keep control of his life in any way he can.”

But “it’s not about any great political theme. It’s just about a little human moment.”

The film, which Bootzin submitted, won the Golden Bear award for short films in Berlin, where the world’s top professional filmmakers converged last month for a competition that is ranked with the Cannes and Venice festivals.

Of 170 films entered, nine were chosen for final judging, including works from Canada, Czechoslovakia, Germany, France and Italy.

Bootzin’s film was picked by a panel led by German filmmaker Volker Schlondorff, who made “The Tin Drum” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

“That’s a big thing. . . . You’re competing against the best short filmmakers in the world,” Ken Wlaschin, director of exhibitions and festivals for the Los Angeles-based American Film Institute, said of Bootzin’s achievement.

Wlaschin said he has attended the Berlin Film Festival for the past 21 years, but did not view Bootzin’s film at this year’s competition.

Bootzin said he spent a week filming “Six Point Nine” on a sound stage in the school’s radio, TV and cinema studios.

With a $1,000 art grant and $5,000 of his own money, he hired three actors from among more than 50 who auditioned after seeing his advertisement in a film industry magazine.

His wife, Elizabeth, helped produce the film, and former and present classmates made up the crew.

Bootzin, who for the past several years has worked on commercials, music videos and film scripts, first took the class in 1984 after completing many of the other cinema courses.

His film “Volts” attracted an agent but no work, he said, and he left school before graduating to try to find a job.

After delivering pizzas for nearly a year, he broke into film editing as an apprentice and eventually became a free-lance editor and scriptwriter.

While continuing his work, he returned to the college in February, 1990, to repeat the film production class.

Now he has been asked to show his latest work at a festival in Turin, Italy, at the upcoming Los Angeles Film Festival, and at other exhibits and competitions.

“I used to deliver pizzas,” Bootzin said. “Being a film editor is a little more satisfying. My ultimate goal is to direct a feature film. Maybe ‘Six Point Nine’ will produce some leads.”