AFI Festival Lineup: Too Little and Too Bad

Now that the 13th AFI Los Angeles Film Festival is mercifully over, it’s high time someone called fest director Jon Fitzgerald’s “less is more” bluff (“Director Yells ‘Cut!’ at AFI Festival,” by Susan King, Oct. 21). As the festival lineup has been steadily shrinking during Fitzgerald’s tenure, so, precipitously, has the number of films anyone gives a hoot about seeing.

It’s unclear whether the we-are-oh-so-exclusive-we-only-show-a-handful-of-films strategy works even at the New York Festival--the new AFI’s obvious model-- where the programmers, unlike Fitzgerald’s team here, have unassailable taste, a track record of impeccable picks and thus the clout to attract the world’s best movies. But even there, the film lover’s got a gripe regarding the scant number of film options.

The problem here is, even with three times as many movies, there was precious little worth a look at this year’s fest. But that’s not surprising given Fitzgerald’s apparent film-culture illiteracy. I, for one, was stunned at last year’s inaugural when Fitzgerald introduced Nicoletta Braschi, the co-star of his fest’s opening-night film, “Life Is Beautiful,” as “Signor Braschi.” The puzzled performer--clearly, embarrassingly, a signora--rose to the podium. This time around, our fest head personally introduced China’s most famous director, Chen Kaige (family name Chen, given name Kaige)--of the overrated “Farewell, My Concubine” and the underrated “Temptress Moon” and the fest’s disappointing snoozer, “The Emperor and the Assassin”--as “Mr. Kaige.”

Now, it’s bad enough that our evening’s host somehow lives in Los Angeles and can still be confused about simple points of Asian nomenclature, but the fact that he doesn’t even know the name of one of the world’s most important film directors is simply unforgivable.

Young and sexy in a town that loves that kind of thing, with superficial maverick credentials--he founded Slamdance, the Utah fest that shows movies too horrible to get into Sundance--our blunderkind is the Esa-Pekka Salonen of the film scene. All show and no show. At least, artistically. Perhaps he’s some sort of financial or PR whiz-kid, as he himself suggested in the Calendar piece; but if attendance at this year’s fest is any indication--I counted 12 at the Oct. 25 screening of “Riensur Robert” and hardly more than 100 at Mr. Kaige’s, I mean, Mr. Chen’s film--his miracles have ceased.

Our young administrator called the pre-Fitzgerald AFI fests “insane”: “Before I came on it was a two- or three-week festival and they showed 300 films.” And there were always 30 I wanted to see! Now there are next to none. The new format hasn’t given us any of the recent works of Carax, Greenaway, Gherman, Hou, Haneke, Oliveira, Ozon, Moretti, Ruiz, Techine, Von Trier, Balabanov, Bellocchio, Carax, Erice, Herzog, Jacquot, Jancso, Kitano, Kiarostami, Sokurov, Szabo, Zhang and on and on and on.

What we do get is a set of mostly “U.S. premieres” (read: movies that couldn’t get into New York or San Francisco or Sundance)--films of little or no artistic or historical or any other significance.

Frankly, neither I nor anyone I know gives a bleep about whether the Greenaway or the Gherman has already played in New York and so is not a prestigious “premiere.” Premieres puff up fest directors. Cinephiles just want to see good movies.

Since he’s apparently unable to serve the cinephiles, Fitzgerald makes a virtue out of necessity, preempting tirades like mine by suggesting that they’re “elitist.” He wants to appeal to “a broad demographic” and believes that going to the AFI Fest should be “just like going to the AMC. The only difference is that you are going to see a movie in one of these historic movie palaces.” Hello?! Don’t we already have a couple dozen AMCs? Don’t they already play movies that appeal to a broad demographic? And since when is a film fest about movie palaces?

With the American Cinematheque an artistic bust--its silly programmers go in almost exclusively for populist pulp like “The Films of James Cameron” or trendy fluff like “Japanese Outlaw Filmmakers”--and now the demise of the AFI Fest, L.A.’s film fans have had to take refuge at LACMA, where good-old auteurist art films like Bresson’s and Bunuel’s play to packed houses.

Perhaps Fitzgerald should take a decade off and buy a LACMA membership. Or hunker down with his VCR and a subscription to Variety and Film Comment, or Cahiers du Cinema and Positif, and play a little catch-up.

Bob Davis is the film critic for Spin magazine and teaches film history and production at Cal State Fullerton.