..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

High Falls Film Festival 2006
Surprising Rochester

The 2006 High Falls Film Festival has been held for the past six years in the surprising, culturally-rich upstate city of Rochester, New York. It is dedicated to promoting the achievements of women in film behind the camera. The festival, dedicated to Rochester resident Susan B. Anthony, has the motto, "Independent Films for Independent Minds" and is buoyed by the spirit of Ms. Anthony's personal motto, "Failure is Impossible."

This festival is an event Ms. Anthony would be very proud of indeed. This year's edition was intelligent, stimulating, thought provoking, diverse, challenging, inspiring and, oh yes, a lot of fun, too.

The artistic director is Catherine Wyler, daughter of the great film director William Wyler. Intelligent, attractive and as charismatic as any movie star, Ms.Wyler introduced each and every presentation over its six day span, November 8-13, and was beguiling, engaging -- and delightfully brief. She brought to mind the old vaudevillian adage "Leave 'em wanting more."

High Falls is kind of a well-kept secret, but Catherine Wyler definitely wants that to change. "It's a festival for everyone to enjoy, not just women," she assured over coffee one chilly November morning, her large, dark eyes flashing. "It's a little secret we've been developing for the past six years. We would love to have more out-of-towners. I know it's at the end of the season after Montreal, Telluride, Toronto, New York and the Hamptons. I really expect that this is a regional film festival, and it will always be, but one of the really nice things about it is that everybody gets to stay in the same hotel, everybody gets to hang out."

"Except me," I pointed out. I was housed elsewhere.

"I know. I'm sorry." she apologized "That was our one serious glitch."

Flattered that she even noticed I was MIA in the hangin' and chillin' department, I noticed that she was clad unpretentiously in grey cashmere sweat pants, a bulky brown Irish fishermen's sweater and a bright orange-yellow turtleneck.

And indeed, as she pointed out, half the audience did seem to be men, who were also thoroughly enjoying themselves and the wide range of films and events being presented. Cinephiles all.

"The good part about this is that I liked just about everything I saw," I told her. "Your taste is exquisite. Everybody here is so interesting. The panels! That first panel I saw-!"

Called "Previews of Coming Distractions" the panelists were Gary Meyer, co-director of the Telluride Film Festival, Hollywood X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner, independent distributor Paul Cohen, and moderator, film critic Amy Taubin.

"Gary Meyer of Telluride" she enthused, "He knows everything about everything!"

Gary Meyer iterated a very alarming statistic at one panel. "Right now," he said, "There are approximately 37,000 movie screens in America. I predict that in ten years there will be only 10,000."

The mind boggles.

Meyer also pointed out that DVDs being viewed at home changed "the nature of the film experience. When you are going out to a theater, you are committing an evening to see an entire film that you've chosen, in a communal setting, which you will usually sit through til the film is finished. With a DVD viewed at home, if you don't like it after the first twenty minutes or so, you'll just turn it off and do something else."

Meyer used Lost in Translation as an example of a slow-starting film that "You'd just turn off, if you saw it at home, because nothing much happens. It's a slow build. Films can't have a slow build anymore."

As a Guru o' Gold, I just had to ask Ms. Shuler Donner about the Oscars, and the impact of the Awards Season, which is now upon us, on a film's success.

"Oh, that's something that comes much, much later. You don't think about that when you're making a film."

I got to follow up on this Oscar-theme when a few days later she and her husband of many years Hollywood director Richard Donner (the Christopher Reeve Superman, The Omen & Lethal Weapon series) were honored with an evening focused solely on them, hosted by Rochester-based Gannett film critic Jack Garner.

I asked the Donners, a Hollywood power couple to be sure, if they were actual academy members. It turns out they both were.

"The OSCARS! They're a FARCE!" exploded Donner. "Only an infinitesimal percentage of people" He held up his thumb and forefinger about a quarter of an inch apart to indicate indeed how small an amount, "take this seriously. You can't possibly see all the films that are up for nomination. Or the awards. You vote for what's most popular, the flavor."

His wife agreed. "You get sent invitations to see the films that are screened constantly for Academy members and you get in for free with your membership cards. You also are sent DVDs of all the movies at your home as well."

This we already knew.

And she again agreed with her husband that "You can't see everything. So you vote for your friends."

This shocking remark plunged with room into a momentary silence.

"But they're talented, and they deserve it," she said smiling.

"You've got to hand it to her," Gary Meyer told me later in the Eastman Kodak café. "That was a very honest answer."

I also noticed another High Falls Fest slogan "Films that get more Thumps Up than any other finger."

The best and also most disturbing film I saw up there was Deliver Us From Evil which has already enjoyed a theatrical release by Lionsgate and will be coming out on DVD in the new year. It's also on the short list for the Oscars for Best Documentary. Its subject matter is pedophilia and the massive cover-up the Catholic Church is still maintaining to this day.

I resisted seeing it in its' first critical go-round prior to release, but I'm so glad the High Falls Film Festival chose to include it in the program. The overwhelming magnitude of the Catholic Church's categorical denial that this problem even exists makes it a story that needs to be told and re-told. I cannot think of any message that is more vitally important to get out there. Virtually nothing has been done to stem the tidal wave of child abuse that the Catholic Church seems to be, by its dogged silence, actually condoning.

Written and directed by Amy Berg, it is one of the most important, powerful films of the year, documentary or otherwise, and I can only wish it Godspeed on its Oscar hegira.

Another documentary that was immensely interesting and much more entertaining was "Absolute Wilson" about the performance artist guru, writer/director/performer and all-around-High Priest of the Avant-Garde, Robert Wilson. Director/Writer/Producer Katharina Otto-Bernstein plays it right down the middle about Wilson's bizarre history in the world of High Art. Is he a great artist or simply a great fund-raiser? I liked that she gave theater critic John Simon the last word. "There's nothing there anymore. There's style, but no substance," he shrugged. Anyway, shaman or fakir, magician or fool, it was a hoot, Wilson being marvelously humorous and charming and VERY gay.

I asked the female filmmaker who was present why was it that in the entire history of the Academy Awards only two women have been nominated for Best Director (Lina Wertmuller and Sophia Coppola), and none has ever won, whereas in the Documentary category, and in the documentary field in general, women were fully represented.

She answered, "The Academy chooses its' documentary nominees in a different way from the way they choose Best Picture. There's a committee who decides." And right now, she was happy to point out, "the chairman is a woman."

The Oscar refrain continued as Germany's entry for Best Foreign Film The Lives of Others which made a big splash at both Telluride and Toronto, won the Audience Choice award for Best Narrative Film, and so was screened again on the Festival's last night. Each film at the High Falls Festival was honoring a woman involved in its' creation and it the case of The Lives of Others it was Patricia Rommel, who edited it.

What all the fuss is about The Lives of Others just eludes me, however, as I was barely engaged in its predictable story of everyone-spying-on-everyone-else in 1984 East Berlin. Drab, uninvolving and mediocre to say the least, it's plodding pace and its' barely watchable and unengaging cast left me as cold as a drizzly night in Rochester. Which is pretty damn cold.

And then there is the city of Rochester itself. The host city always plays a large part in the success or failure of any film festival that takes place there. It is one of its most important elements actually.

The George Eastman House (www.eastmanhouse.org), now a Museum devoted to the preservation and restoration of film is a knockout and a must-see, and constantly has screening series of decided interest. Right now it was getting ready to open its tribute to another great Rochester woman, silent film star, Louise Brooks with a film series as well as a photographic exhibition of the legend in question. And I was lucky enough to catch part of a screening of Beggars of Life (1928) with Wallace Beery, which featured a rollicking edge-of-your-seat cliff-hanging (literally) train chase, directed by another legend William A. Wellman. I viewed it with members of the Alloy Orchestra who were about ready to perform one of their magical, percussive soundtrack accompaniments to it, as they so memorably did with the closing night film Lonesome also 1928.

The Dryden Theater, which has been added on to the back of the Eastman House, is where most of the Festival's films were shown. An Art Deco-ish auditorium, badly in need of new seats with unsprung cushions, the quality of the films I saw there was so high and the discussions so stimulating, I forgot how much the seating was hurting my nether regions - in ways that I can still feel a week later.

All in all, Rochester is the perfect place to view this great women's film festival, the High Falls. (For more on Rochester and its landmarks, read more in the sidebar.)

I can't wait till next year!

- Stephen Holt
December 3, 2006

Stephen Holt is a veteran NY-based journalist. The Stephen Holt Show continues to run weekly in NY.

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