Go fest, film town

I like L.A. in spring. The roses are in bloom, the air is only mildly chunky, and the days when the San Fernando Valley turns into a hellish Dutch oven of simmering suburbanites seem a long way off. Basically, it’s nice out. So why does the entire film community seem hellbent on keeping me stuck indoors, in the dark?

There are, at the very least, 19 film festivals in and around Los Angeles between February and April. Nineteen. I don’t think I’ve seen 19 movies this year. It’s not that I don’t love cinema, and it’s not that I don’t want to be culturally enriched. It’s just that I have TiVo now, and finding parking anywhere in this town is, like, hard.

But film festivals aren’t so easily shrugged off. The good stuff never seems to trickle down to my neighborhood cineplex, and by the time the big hit of a festival makes it to DVD, I’ve usually forgotten the title, which makes for a humiliating conversation with my local video store clerk. “Um, it was the German movie with that girl, the blond one. Maria something. Or maybe it was an L name. What was it about? I don’t know, there was a lot of talking with subtitles. It got really good reviews. You know, just because you’re cursing under your breath doesn’t mean I can’t hear you.”

So I actually do loosen my death grip on the TiVo remote when I hear about the Los Angeles Italian Film Awards (April 11-15) and the Newport Beach Film Festival (today-April 30). I suspect quality films await me at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (April 20-24), the Beverly Hills Film Festival (April 13-17) and the Malibu Film Festival (April 14-18). But do they all have to be scheduled in one month? And so close to tax day?

I wanted answers, so I made some calls. But in all honesty, I wanted more than the truth. I really hoped I might be able to nudge some of these festival directors to reschedule their spring flings. September’s pretty open, and it’s the perfect month to celebrate cinema. It’s miserably hot, all the exciting summer movies have already come out, and by the middle of the month we’ve discovered that the new network TV shows are just as lame as the ones that were canceled in May. In September, I’d pay good money to see a Britney Spears film festival just to sit in air-conditioning.

It seemed like an easy sell, but I was wrong.

“April is a deliberate choice for us, because it’s Asian Pacific Heritage month,” explained Leslie Ito, executive director of the Visual Communications Film Festival, a celebration of Asian Pacific films.

The City of Lights, City of Angels Festival, a French film fest, didn’t have a whole theme month to back it up, so I thought I might have better luck. Sadly, festival director Claudia Durgnat set me straight.

“We always do it at the end of March or early April, because it’s very difficult to find a time after the Oscars and before Cannes,” she said.

Fine. But if all the film festivals are going to clump up right in the middle of good tennis weather, we’re just going to have to be choosy.

Considering there are Italian, Polish, French, Hungarian, Pan-African, Asian Pacific, Israeli and Indian film festivals all taking place within days of each other, you can pick a foreign favorite in a variety of ways. Maybe you can go by the beauty of the language, their United Nations standing, or how much you’d like to visit. Given the dive the dollar is taking, a film festival may be the closest you’re getting to a European vacation anytime soon.

Then there are the local film fests: the Malibu Film Festival (held mainly in Santa Monica), the Other Venice Film Festival, the Beverly Hills Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival (in June), the Newport Beach Film Festival, and my personal favorite, the San Fernando Valley International Film Festival, a.k.a. Viffi. I dig the nickname; it makes the film festival sound a little like a perky eighth grader. But mostly I just like the idea that the Valley gets its own film festival. Considering that the other side of the hill seems to get all the attention (A-list celebrities, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, a 24-hour House of Tofu), it seems only fair. And in the Valley, you can find parking. Free parking. This is not a perk to be underestimated.

There are a few other festivals to consider, like February’s DIY Film Festival and this weekend’s Artivist Film Festival at the Egyptian. As much as I like the punk aesthetic of DIY, I think you have to give props to the Artivist fest for actually creating a word. From the website, I get the impression they’re combining “artist” and “activist,” but maybe it’s “artist” and “atavist.” The first one may be heartwarming and all that, but the second one? Pure commercial potential.

Think about it: a film festival chock full of sequels and remakes like “Miss Congeniality 2” and “The Amityville Horror.” Wait a minute, that’s what’s in theaters every day of the week. No wonder I never go to the movies. Next spring, I’ll be highlighting the festival listings and slinking off to the theaters. I can always play tennis in September.

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Liane Bonin can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.