Mill Valley Preview. 2.

JM: What's up with the Bob Dylan titles [in the 5@5 series]?

AM: Well, you know, it's a tradition at Mill Valley to do that kind of grouping. There were Elvis Costello titles and so on, and it's kind of an insider wink-wink, but I picked Bob Dylan because I like him. There are a lot of titles to choose from and they're pretty evocative titles. For instance, Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat, I chose because it's such a damn goofy title...

JM: Yes, that program has La Vie d'un Chien in it, which...

AM: I love. I'd like to expose as many people as possible to John Harden's film.

JM: It's very clever.

AM: On top of being clever, I actually believe that it is very moving and deep and has a lot to say about humans and the propensity for love and freedom. I think it's really about freedom.

JM: I'm going to backpedal a little. I want to find out how you came to the Castro Theatre and then I don't want to dwell very much on how you came to leave the Castro, but it's opened up all these opportunities with the Noir City festival, programming for FAF and Mill Valley...

AM: Well, you know, Mel Novikoff was dying and the people running the theater asked me to program the last Castro calendar. Essentially, the theater was being sold and anything could have happened to it. Really, everyone thought that this was the last of it and so I programmed one calendar, and then I programmed another, and there were kind of protracted negotiations, and the people who bought the business really loved how the Castro was run. So they not only asked me to stay, but they gave me support and essentially we built that theater as a first-class arts cinema. It's really shocking to a lot of people that it's a for-profit business. That is how I came to be at the Castro.

Before I was at the Castro, I worked for Renaissance Rialto and I programmed the York theater on 24th Street, which is where the Brava now. Before that, I was at the Roxie. That's how I got my start being interested in programming. Curt McDowell was a filmmaker, he kind of had the moniker of the bad boy of underground film and he and I worked together and...

JM: Not on Thundercrack!.

AM: Not on Thundercrack!, I met him after Thundercrack!. We cleaned up the basement in my house on 21st Street and set up a little editing studio and Curt edited a few films there and we decided to self-distribute his films. We asked the Roxie if we could put on a show. We put together a program and did all the publicity and I did the notes and stuff for the Roxie calendar and I just never left the Roxie. That was how I kind of got started in putting stuff together because I like to show people things. That's my credo. There's a kind of, if I might say, generosity in people who program things - they want to share with people. It was always my intention to make sure people had a good experience, too. I think that was a big part of it.

JM: So, show you will, and you've picked many, many, many short films between Mill Valley and FAF.

AM: Mill Valley films came from everywhere. It's an international festival and there were over 1000 shorts that we saw. There were a lot. It's very easy for people to make films now. That doesn't mean it's very easy for people to make films. You know, really make films. Many people have video cameras and think that they have a good idea about making a short. People also are kind of trained in film schools, I think, to make these 20-minute shorts, which I find just a horrible length.

JM: Yes.

AM: It's too long to be a short and too short to be a feature. So Mill Valley, from really 1000 shorts from around the world, there are some pretty spectacular new things. Some stuff that's been around. Some very accomplished filmmaking, for instance, Raftman's Razor.

JM: Yes, my friend Keith [Bearden].

AM: It's a great short. I saw this really pretty wonderful short called The Death of Salvador Dalí. It's unclear what else this guy has done, but it's this perfectly modulated little absurdist piece that concerns Salvador Dalí walking into Sigmund Freud's psychiatric office and driving Sigmund Freud crazy.

Also, Uso Justo. It's this very funny film. I saw it at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and it's about the process of making films and what it means to be an experimental film. Also, Uso Justo refers to fair use.

JM: So it's constructed out of found footage.

AM: It's constructed completely out of found footage. It's hilarious and very pointed, too.

JM: So help the person who has no idea what it's like to program short films. How do you go through he process of narrowing things down and how do you start to, then, create thematic programs around patterns that you start to see?

AM: What I do is just go through and weed out all the bad stuff first. That's like the number one thing, not that there's any bad stuff. You just have to pull the good stuff. And then, of course, there's too much. Then you just go through and think, what has to be shown.

You shouldn't be too doctrinaire about your themes because you could be deadly dull if you're giving too much weight to sticking with a theme. It's up to the viewer to actually, you know, fathom the theme. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's not so obvious. It requires some juggling, making sure that the program will both have a kind of ebb and flow and keep interest, but you don't want to sock people in the stomach before you show them some insanely goofy little thing - but you have to have some variety in it.

You have an added advantage with the Film Arts Festival because it's local. I was determined to highlight experimental films. The San Francisco Bay Area is really one of the last bastions for experimental filmmaking.

Posted by dwhudson at October 5, 2005 5:33 AM