Spotlighting Independence

The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, which will be held Friday through Sunday at Raleigh and Paramount studios and the Directors Guild, in only its third edition has become one of the hottest movie tickets in town. Last year, it was 98% sold out, and by the time you read this, you may not be able to see everything you would like to.

Yet you’re likely to get another chance to see LAIFF’s best offerings in theatrical release, because right from the start, festival founder Robert Faust has kept his slate of films small and the quality high.

Participants tend to agree that it’s truly a filmmakers’ festival with a sense of communal support as well as one that attracts studio acquisitions executives. Fox Searchlight acquisitions’ Bob Aaronson observes that it tries to show films that “haven’t been seen anywhere else and doesn’t try to be a rehash of the prior year’s festival calendar.”

The number of films to be shown has grown from 14 to 23, and Faust says he hopes to keep the number at no more than 25. That could prove tough, since submissions have grown from 300 to more than 1,000. Programming the festival is Thomas Ethan Harris, who also selects the films for the American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen series.

“I’m very pleased and very gratified for the response the festival has gotten,” says Faust, whose own background is in management and production. “We want to expand the scope and diversity of the festival. We’re doing again our new technologies seminar, and we’ve added a live music event, featuring artists on independent labels. [The LAIFF Indie Music Jam will be Friday at the Martini Lounge, on Melrose Avenue near Paramount and Raleigh.] We’re thinking about including foreign films, and we want to get more venues next year. Nine films over the last two years have been acquired from our festival.”

One of those is the heart-wrenching “Squeeze,” in which Robert Patton-Spruill brings a bold, visual expressiveness to the plight of a 14-year-old African American (Tyrone Burton) who, like his friends, experiences almost unbearable pressure to enter a life of crime simply to survive on the mean streets of Boston’s Fields Corner neighborhood. “It was sold to Miramax the night that it was screened,” says Patton-Spruill, currently in post-production for Islands Pictures’ “Body Count,” an action-thriller featuring David Caruso, Linda Fiorentino, John Leguizamo, Ving Rhames, Donnie Wahlberg and Forest Whitaker. “Squeeze” is slated for a June 13 release.

“That was one of the most important moments of my life,” recalls Patton-Spruill. “I’m from Boston, and here’s this screening of my film in that big theater at Paramount. It was not like other festivals. It didn’t feel competitive. It felt like a bunch of filmmakers coming together to show their work to each other.”

“I really like ‘Squeeze,’ ” says Jonathan King, Miramax director of creative affairs, “and I’m looking forward to this year. It’s really good to have an L.A. showcase after Sundance if you didn’t make it there or your film wasn’t ready in time. The output of the independent community is getting bigger and better, and we need more places to see their pictures. New York recognizes and showcases independent productions, and this festival fills a need.”

Sundance Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore agrees about the LAIFF. “It’s still new, but it’s already developed itself into another opportunity for new films to be introduced to the public and the industry. There are so many independent films and so few get theatrical visibility that more platforms need to be developed, and this festival is another opportunity to see the richness and diversity of the independent American cinema.”

The Sundance Channel is in fact LAIFF’s key sponsor, and the festival has a solid relationship with Out on the Screen, which sponsors Outfest, the well-established local gay and lesbian film festival.

“By supporting a festival like LAIFF, we are building our own audiences,” says Outfest director Morgan Rumpf, who last year showed “Chocolate Babies,” set in a gay fantasy underworld, which will screen Saturday at Raleigh at 10:15 p.m. “By our audiences crossing over to theirs, we hope that their audiences, both straight and gay, will cross over to ours.”

For Michele Ohayon, maker of the memorable documentary on unlikely homeless women called “It Was a Wonderful Life,” LAIFF is the ideal place to launch her “Colors Straight Up,” a study of Colors United, a critically acclaimed performing arts group for Los Angeles urban youths. Ohayon says she passed up submitting her film to Sundance because to her the LAIFF was “the perfect organization for commercial reasons and for the community outreach angle. The NAACP, for example, will sponsor the next screening, at the Magic Johnson Theaters.”

“I like to be part of something fresh, I talk to Faust nearly every day, and I like that personal contact. Since the festival chose only three documentaries, my film won’t have to fight for an audience. And”--and this may well be a key reason to LAIFF’s swift rise--”they asked me for my film early on.”

* FESTIVAL SCHEDULE: Page 16