ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL

ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL

Bob Stark

Last weekend, the West Coast entries in the Ann Arbor Film Festival were screened at the Detroit Repertory Theater. If they are indicative of all the entries, this will be a very poor year for Ann Arbor. None of the films stood out as exceptional and of the two films which were watchable, neither was exceptionally experimental, nor daring.

The best of the films was Sound of Flesh, by John Stewart, ' a surrealistic study of the breakdown of sex through plastic. The idea is sound and the images well chosen (a girl wearing a plastic bubble bra and a mini skirt is separated from her lover, wearing a suit and tie, by a wall of naked manikins. He attacks the wall, but failing to find anything real, turns and runs away) but the film borrows its structure heavily from Emschwiller’s Relativity, without ever achieving the shock of recognition when cutting from one image to the next one, that Emschwiller achieved with every cut.

America, The Home of the Free, Land of the Brave, by Allan Stecker, is a series of quick cuts on stock images attempting to be bitingsocial commentary. The problem is that the images (tester Maddox eating xwatermelon and. smiling, Negroes picking a clothing store, and a naked girl) don’t illustrate Stecker’s contention nearly as well as the TV coverage of the Democratic convention did.

Three of the other four films display one of the most common, and, to me, one of the most annoying characteristics of “underground” films, the substitution of visual flash for substance, which, in light of the current vogue for visual effects in even second rate Hollywood films' tends to generate nothing but boredom.

The most successful (because it is the most experimental of these films) is Project / by David Lowrie. Using cameiatricks, color negatives, distorted images and superimpositions to create several minutes of visually interesting film. Projectt Fs main interest is for other filmmakers who might see something that they could use in a more interesting setting.

A Trip to the Moon by Scott Bartlett is probably the worst film of the lot, though it is not as bad of the primary level as Onset: Variation No. 1, ox Approach: Innocense. What makes it so bad is its own pretentions of merit. If the seven men involved in the discussion around which the film evolved had said anything of importance if they had ever really gotten into any one of the many things they talked about, then this would have been a good film with the permanently positioned to constantly slow all seven minutes together. As it was, all the fading in and off of superimposed close-ups and all the rock and roll in ithe world couldn’t make this film anything but boring. Onset: Variation No. 1, by John Gruenberger is a four panel, split

screen light show keyed to an Indian raga. Not even Detroit’s infamous Luther Pendragon ever did so unimaginative a show.

The other film (it definitely was the other film) Approach: Innocence by Eric Saarinen was the only .one of the six films to have a plot (revolving around a bad LSD trip) but that didn’t help. The situation was set up in a way that Roger Corman would have laughed at and the whole thing (short as it was) was just stupid.

In this particular instance, the Rep really can’t be blamed for showing these films because they all held some interest, if only because they were Ann Arbor entries, but this program was indicative of most of the showings at the Rep, one or two worthwhile films and the rest just filler. Perhaps its impossible to book only first rate films when you have other projects to worry about, but, if this is so, then hire someone who can devote full time to booking.