Pittsburgh Dispatch. 2.

In his overview of the Olympia Film Festival here at the Daily last week, Sean Axmaker observed that "most small city film festivals are much like any other, a tasteful but undifferentiated mix of international festival standbys, American indies and documentaries, most of which would otherwise bypass the town entirely." This does describe the Three Rivers Film Festival to some extent, and I'm grateful to the festival for providing me with my first, and possibly my only, chance to see films like Requiem and Ten Canoes (to name my two favorites so far) on the big screen that they were made for.

What makes the TRFF unique, though, is that it's presented by filmmakers - Pittsburgh Filmmakers, specifically, an organization touting itself as "one of the largest and oldest independent media arts centers in the country." Every year, TRFF showcases films made by local artists, featuring local talent, often with the help of funding, cooperation, and equipment from Filmmakers. In years past, many local productions, like Melissa Martin's The Bread, My Sweet and Brady Lewis's Daddy Cool, have used their Three Rivers debuts as a springboard to future commercial and/or festival success. But there's nothing quite like seeing a film in its home town, surrounded by the very people who helped make it.

The most high-profile local film to play at this year's festival was the verité Iraq War doc Home Front, which screened here in advance of its cable debut on Showtime this past weekend. The directorial debut of Richard Hankin, who edited Capturing the Friedmans, Home Front documents wounded Iraq vet Jeremy Feldbusch's return to his hometown of Blairsville, Pennsylvania and his attempts to adjust to life there, a tall order considering that he has been blinded and brain-damaged by a piece of shrapnel.

In the Q&A session that followed the film, Hankin mentioned that his inspiration for this project was the similarly-themed World War II film The Best Years of Our Lives, and that's an excellent lens through which to examine Home Front. With a controversial and divisive conflict as a backdrop, it cannot help but be political, but politics take a back seat to a humanist portrait of Feldbusch's struggles to attain some semblance of normalcy. The film's greatest strengths are the surreal vignettes in which Feldbush tackles activities like hunting that one would think were impossible for someone who cannot see. A scene in which Feldbusch practices with live rounds at a shooting range for the first time since his injury is truly something to see.

A slight anti-war sentiment does come through in subtle directorial touches (a storefront sign that reads "God Bless America" reappears later in the film missing the 'G') and in Feldbusch's brother's taciturn allusions to his dissenting political beliefs. But this is balanced by Feldbusch's adamant and oft-repeated support for the conflict that claimed his sight. Ultimately, Home Front refuses to take sides, and that's to its advantage - ultimately, this well-crafted, affecting film is simply about the price of war, a nonpartisan subject if ever there was one.

Somewhat less politically charged is José Muniain's An Independent Portrait, which documents three days that local artist Félix de la Concha spent painting a portrait of independent filmmaker Robert M Young in de la Concha's Pittsburgh studio. Another debut feature, An Independent Portrait is an ambitious, conceptually fascinating exploration of the relationship between artist and subject.

Asked afterwards what his biggest challenge was in making this film, Muniain replied, "It's an hour in a room." His solution is to sporadically cut away from said room to clips from Young's films, including hard-to-find works like Caught and even harder-to-find films like Alambrista! and Cortile Cascino. The result is a sort of nested doll effect as the myriad subjects and artists (Muniain, de la Concha, Young, Young's subjects) register in the master Portrait to varying degrees. Though only an hour long, An Independent Portrait is possibly the most complex film that has played at the festival this year. It's no accident that close-ups of human faces figure heavily in some of the most moving films ever made: observe the lasting impact of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc or Fellini's La Strada. By cutting scenes from Young's films next to scenes of his portrait being painted, Muniain invites us to reflect on the impact that this man's life and work has had on his visage, on what shapes a face. That is, to my mind, an attempt to grapple with nothing less than the power of cinema.

Bob Golub's Dodo, an autobiographical portrait of the artist as a member of a dysfunctional family, completes this impromptu thematic trilogy. The film, like the one-man show that it's adapted from, takes its title from the nickname of Golub's abusive, alcoholic, beloved father. Golub, a stand-up comedian from Sharon, Pennsylvania, has constructed his film out of the fragments of a life-long effort to come to terms with his upbringing. Dodo imaginatively and skillfully combines home video footage that Golub took over many years of family gatherings (selected from over 50 hours of material), clips of his stand-up routines and one-man show, and scenes from an incomplete fictionalized film version of his life into a surprisingly cohesive narrative.

The resulting film is dramatically different from "quirky" dysfunctional family comedies like this summer's Little Miss Sunshine. I suspect that Golub's film, which looks back on the past with equal parts affection and pure horror (there are some graphic accounts of real physical and verbal abuse), will ring more true for many. And because it earns its humor by refusing to shy away from the contingent pain, I suspect that many people will, like me, find it funnier, too.

Posted by dwhudson at November 13, 2006 1:41 AM