Boston Dispatch. IFFB.

Taking a red-eye flight across country isn't the most relaxing way to start a weekend of film festival-ing, but when it is kick-started by the sight of a magenta dog, you know you're in for a good time.

The magenta dog really had nothing to do with the 2005 Independent Film Festival of Boston, but she was a fellow guest at the Onyx Hotel, a festival sponsor. Her owner, Kelly Osbourne, wasn't a participant, but that was just as well. The festival was refreshingly free of the hyped, shellacked, or corporatized definition of "independent" that seems to hang over other festivals like so much smog. The spirit, hard work and enthusiasm of this festival's all-volunteer staff and its supportive audience was just as impressive as its lineup of films.

In its third year, IFFB has grown steadily in numbers, this year expanding its venue lineup from Boston's beloved independent movie houses - the historic Somerville Theater in Davis Square, the Brattle Theater outside the gilded gates of Harvard and Brookline's Coolidge Corner theater - to include the Museum of Fine Arts. Criss-crossing town via Boston's subway system, getting to each film was like a little mini-adventure. The festival opened with Steve Buscemi's Lonesome Jim, starring Boston-born Casey Affleck. The demure but eager-to-get-the-show-on-the-road crowd was treated to the best film festival trailer I have seen in years; a catchy live action/animated ditty by Liam Lynch (the writer, musician, actor, and director who is currently working on the Tenacious D movie) that was charming and funny even after the umpteenth time of seeing it. I don't mean to beleaguer a point that many critics have made, but Lynch's trailer put the insulting trailers by Jib Jab at Sundance to extra shame.

The Boston crowd took to Buscemi's film about a failed wannabe writer who returns to his dreary and mundane Indiana home so well that Buscemi ended up watching the entire movie with the audience and then came up for a pleasant Q&A session that only had one embarrassing question, which boded well for the Q&As to come. Pleasant as the audiences were, that didn't keep Buscemi's fan boys at bay, which led to a rather Spinal Tap-ish escape through the catacomb-like basement of the Somerville Theater to finally arrive at the opening night party at Sauce, where Buscemi sat with film scholar Ray Carney.

Friday presented the premiere of a number of films to the New England area - the US premiere of Don McKellar's Childstar, Sundance docs Mardi Gras: Made in China and Shakespeare Behind Bars and Hal Hartley's The Girl from Monday. One particular documentary was especially suited for this Boston festival. Stolen, directed by Rebecca Dreyfus and produced by Susannah Ludwig, traces one of the biggest art heists of our time - the job on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where five Degas, three Rembrandts, one Manet, one Flinck and Johannes Vermeer's The Concert were stolen on St. Patrick's Day, 1990. The film follows a number of theories about who stole the paintings through detective Harold Smith, a fine art detective whose passion for his work is only rivaled by Isabella Stewart Gardner's passion for collecting art (letters about acquiring the art between Gardner and Bernard Berenson, an art critic she hired to evaluate paintings for purchase, are read by Blythe Danner and Campbell Scott.) Stolen is a fascinating presentation about the impact of fine art and the people who collect it, protect it, steal it, write about it and have made it their life's work to recover.

Midpoint at the festival brought Slamdance doc winner Abel Raises Cain, buzz films Chain and the short film Allison, the Sundance hit Murderball (true to form, the audience cheered and wept during this powerful doc about the sport of quad rugby and the members of the US team's quest for gold at the 2004 Paralympics) and Popaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English. Like Stolen, Popaganda examines the power of art, but here the focus is on the subversive, culture-jamming billboard art of one of America's eminent guerilla artists.

By the last day, I felt I was only hitting my stride, but all good things must come to an end. An afternoon screening of Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley, was so crowded that the theater decided to swap its scheduled screening of Kung Fu Hustle in its big theater with Amazing Grace in its small theater so they could accommodate the rush ticket line. One thesis of this biography of the singer/songwriter whose life and career was cut short by a drowning accident in 1997 was that he was barely known and hardly popular in the US. You definitely couldn't tell by the over-capacity audience, who sat quietly enraptured by Buckley's musical performances that pepper the film.

The closing night film, Miranda July's beautifully delicate Me and You and Everyone We Know, played at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was a fitting venue for July, whose videos have played at MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum and, although it was a film playing at a somewhat highbrow venue and that featured a struggling artist, one audience member aptly commented: "You can't resist a good shit joke." The closing night party at Spire Restaurant enjoyed the company of Melvin Van Peebles, in town to talk about his experiences as an independent filmmaker, and members of Living Color, with whom the prolific Mr Van Peebles had done a musical collaboration recently. As the festival's many volunteers celebrated a successful end to their third festival and I toddled out of the party by midnight to catch my 6 am plane back to the west coast, all I could think was, "Thanks for a great festival. Now make it longer!"

The Award-winners:

Narrative Feature:

• Grand Jury Prize: Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story.
• Special Jury Prize: Sundowning.
• Audience Award: Brothers.

Documentary Feature:

• Grand Jury Prize: The Fall of Fujimori.
• Special Jury Prize: Shakespeare Behind Bars.
• Audience Award: After Innocence.

Short Film:

• Grand Jury Prize: Allison.
• Special Jury Prize: (Tie) The Youth in Us / The Passage of Mrs Calabash.
• Audience Award: Waking Dreams.