First Stage Of Bethel Film Festival Has Wrapped

By Shannon Hicks

BETHEL — The six-member screening team for Bethel Film Festival — a first-time event being coordinated for late October at Bethel Cinema — are on a break. Anyone who has screened more than 250 films in less than two months needs to take a break, even if they are among the most avid filmgoers in the area.

Bethel Film Festival will run six days and nights, October 25–30, offering a variety of independent and international films, videos and related events including filmmaker receptions, workshops, panel discussions, and an awards ceremony to recognize outstanding writing, editing, and cinematography. Attendees will also have opportunities to network and participate in educational workshops.

The festival’s mission is to “offer a rewarding, entertaining and educational experience for independent filmmakers and their audiences while contributing to [the] overall regional culture, commerce and tourism. First-time filmmakers and seasoned directors worldwide will be provided a valuable opportunity to showcase their latest projects to industry professionals as well as to film enthusiasts, film students and fellow filmmakers … Outstanding work will be recognized with jury and audience awards.”

It is a very ambitious plan for a first-year film festival, but things are moving right on schedule as the first portion of the event, the receiving of submissions, has come to a close.

The first announcement of the festival and the opening of entries was on March 1. By the time the entry deadline closed on July 31, more than 250 films had been received.

“The response was staggering,” said Carol Spiegel, the festival’s program director and a resident of Newtown. Her duties include full festival programming and coordination of the screenings that determine which submissions are accepted into the festival and which ones are rejected.

“We’re taking a little break from the festival now. It’s time for vacations,” she said. “After this short break we’ll get back to work. That’s when the program will be developed and announced.”

Entries arrived from more than 15 countries including Japan, France, and Italy. Final selections will be announced in September. Categories include Feature Films, Documentaries, Animation, Short, Student, and World Cinema.

“Some of the films are definitely in, some are definitely out, and some are still being pondered,” Ms Spiegel said.

As each film was played screeners worked with forms that asked them to rate, on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “unacceptable” to 5 being “wow”), a number of elements.

Technical Aspects included sound quality, picture clarity and focus, lighting levels, and camera shots and movement.

Creative Aspects covered acting, editing, and story/plot.

For a section called Entertainment Value, screeners needed to answer three questions: Did the film keep your attention? Did you care about the characters or subject matter? and Would you pay money to see this film?

Screeners were asked if they would recommend a film for the festival, and to use their forms for each film to advise on any graphic violence, sexual content, nudity, and disturbing language.

“They came into this project as authentic filmgoers of Bethel Cinema. The have backgrounds in film and know what to expect,” said Carol Spiegel.

“We get very divergent opinions,” she said of the group of screeners. “You can’t rely on one opinion when putting something like this together. This is a very fair and safe way to program for the festival.”

More than anything else, festival screeners need to love watching films. Ms Spiegel found five filmgoers whose passion for independent film matched hers, and was able to convince all five to take part in the festival.

Ms Spiegel is the event marketing and outreach director at Bethel Cinema. She discovered the joy of films at the age of 11, when she began spending afternoons watching The 4:30 Movie on Channel 7.

“The 4:30 Movie was my informal master class in film,” she has said. “On the Herculon couch in my family rec room, I was mesmerized by the characters on screen and would sink into the world the director had created for me. No cinema verite and social realism here, just 90 minutes of syndicated escapism bringing me the best of special effects, movie star actors, Hollywood sets, costumes, and locations.

“I was a visceral critic,” she continued. “If the movie stunk, I left and got a Ring Ding.”

Today Ms Spiegel’s tastes range from traditional to the avant-garde. She is an active member of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, an alumna of SUNY/Binghamton, a seasoned actress, voice-over artist, and event programmer. She is also, she says, a “tireless networker and patron of the arts” with many ties to the regional arts community.

The five screeners working with Ms Spiegel are John Grissmer of Ridgefield, Peter Lerman of Bethel, Suzanne Mortati of New Fairfield, Linda Sobo of Newtown, and Carol Tambour of Sherman and New York City.

Mr Grissmer has served on theater arts faculties at American University, University of Connecticut, and Xavier University, has worked in various capacities (producer, writer, director) on feature films, is a playwright, and has directed productions for Ridgefield Theater Barn.

Mr Lerman is a native New Yorker, and a former School of Visual Arts faculty member. He also owned an award-winning commercial photography studio in New York City that did work for national advertisers and magazines, he was a talent agent and partner in Rogers & Lerman Model & Talent Agent, and was a featured guest speaker at talent scouting conventions around the country.

Ms Mortati is a film lover and a former account executive at Silvercup Studios in New York, where she was involved with the daily troubleshooting of motion picture, television, commercial, production, music video, and still photography accounts. She is currently pursuing another relationship with film, this time as an artist.

Ms Sobo has a private psychotherapist practice in New Milford, is a published composer of children’s choral music, was the musical director for TheatreWorks New Milford’s children’s summer program in 1998, is an avid film enthusiast, and is the mother of two sons, both of whom work in the music and film arts.

Ms Tambour is a fill-time painter who studied at the National Academy of Design with Sam Adoquei, and she is an ardent film and theater viewer. Ms Tambour’s love of film, in fact, led her to create The Tambour Award, an annual honor presented at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The award brings top dramatic works from the festival to New York for a fully realized production.

Screenings for the group were done weekly at Bethel Cinema, usually Thursday mornings when the cinema was not screening anything for the public, and typically three or four films were shown.

The first rule of the screeners: No discussion between screeners until after everyone had seen and critiqued a film. Sometimes a screener would take home a copy of a film, which meant it was even harder for the other five to hold their opinions until a film was fully evaluated.

And opinions ran the gamut on many films. During a recent screening session one film had been seen by the full group, so it was time to discuss what to do with it.

Ms Tambour found the film in question “rather derivative of kung fu movies … I found it without meaning. It didn’t say very much about our fair sex.”

Ms Sobo agreed, calling the film “a little stereotypical,” but added “you need to joke about some things.” She felt strongly that the film should be added to the festival’s programming.

Ms Mortati also liked it. “I thought this was a very accurate account of a certain type of shopper. I loved the editing, the music. I enjoyed the whole experience.”

Mr Lerman liked it, he said, because “sometimes you go to the movies to learn something, sometimes you go for inspiration, and sometimes you just want to put up your feet and have fun. This was just a fun film.”

The film was “a good demo reel for the director,” said Mr Grissmer, and also good for an actress he felt was a Katharine Hepburn look-alike.

This kind of easy bantering made the screening sessions easy to look forward to.

“The banter goes back and forth. Decisions are made by the group even when there is opinion disagreement,” Ms Spiegel said.

In addition to the screeners, Peter Howland is serving as the festival partner and director of communications and Tom Carruthers is the event’s co-producer and events promoter.

On July 26, the first six of 18 judges for the festival were announced. The first six include a New York-based television network head, the founder of an online indie filmmaker forum, programmers from other international festivals, and newspaper film reviewers: Keith Dawkins, general manager of Nicktoons; Dan O’Berry, a filmmaker and the founder of IndieTalk.com; Bobbie Lautenschlager, a filmmaker, curator, juror, and programmer, St Louis International Film Festival; Sky Sitney, filmmaker and programmer, Newtown International Film Festival; Joe Meyers, film reviewer for The Connecticut Post; and John Boonstra, film reviewer for Hartford/New Haven Advocate and Fairfield/Westchester Weekly.

The full roster of judges will be announced on or before Labor Day.

Bethel Film Festival will not be the first showing for all of the films that make it into the six-day event this fall.

“We’re not worried about being world premieres. We’re not having premiere parties,” Ms Spiegel said. “We just want to show our audience good films they wouldn’t normally get to see.”