Of all the movie shindigs in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Independent Film Festival — aka SF Indiefest — is the funkiest. The vibe is casual, but the energy is high. The program, which commences tonight with the quasi-biblical Arkansas yarn Shotgun Stories, has a lot to do with it, of course, for truly independent movies have a handmade, anything-goes quality. But the real wild card is the audience: hordes of moviegoers in their 20s eager to embrace the unknown, the unheralded and the uncompromising.
The typical Indiefest feature has no stars, which may have hurt its shot at getting into Sundance and certainly doomed its chances for theatrical distribution. But no-name actors aren’t a turnoff for the fest’s fan base, which doesn’t confuse commercial prospects with quality. On the documentary side, the fest favors colorful characters and outré situations to investigative journalism — hyperrealism over realism — and audiences have long endorsed that emphasis on entertainment.
Based on the chunk of the lineup that I previewed, here are some picks to click.
Local Heroes:
Rhyming is cool, fool, with hip-hop inspiring a wave of talented teens of color to compete in poetry slams. Carl Brown’s 2nd Verse — The Rebirth of Poetry starts out as a profile of several hard-writing Bay Area teenagers, then shifts its focus to the annual throwdown among kids from around the country sponsored by the S.F. organization Youth Speaks. Adults will be gratified to see young people deriving enormous power from words, but the film’s greatest impact will be on middle and high school students.
Free Spirits:
Catch a wave, Brian Wilson said, and you’re sitting on top of the world. Sliding Liberia is a lovely and mesmerizing film, but what is it that Stanford students Britton Caillouette and Nicholai Lidow have made, exactly? Is it a surfing video, an art film, a promotional piece for the Liberian tourist office or a social-issue snapshot? If you guessed (e) all of the above, go to the head of the class.