As the 17th annual Palm Beach International Film Festival approaches, the countywide movie event seems now what it was when it started in 1996.
It hovers perpetually on the verge of becoming worth our time and attention, but is has yet to get there.
Sure, in the 16 previous festivals, there have been films worthy of this exalted showcase. Think of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (the independent box office dynamo that nearly every ethnic romantic comedy since has likened itself to), the well-crafted immigrant experience drama The Golden Door, the soaring documentary Winged Migration, the emotionally powerful Alzheimer’s tale Away From Her, and last year’s wryly comic Win Win, to name just a few.
But these are the exceptions. With each festival bringing in over 100 films — features, shorts and documentaries — most will go directly to video, if they go anywhere, and rightly so.
If you measure film festivals by the star power of awards honorees — and I hope you don’t — the Palm Beach fest looks more impressive. Over the years, it has featured the likes of Sir Anthony Hopkins, Adrien Brody fresh from his Oscar win for The Pianist, Fay Wray, Ben Gazzara, Peter Boyle, Louise Fletcher, Leslie Nielsen, Mickey Rooney, Lou Gossett Jr., Dennis Hopper, local favorite Burt Reynolds and that cinematic legend, Sylvester Stallone.
In many respects, that ability to attract stars has been part of PBIFF’s problem. For much of its history, the focus has been on bringing in attention-getting names — as a way to attract media attention and corporate sponsors — instead of where the focus should be, on finding, acquiring and screening interesting, offbeat films of quality.
Recently announced is this year’s lifetime achievement award winner, June Lockhart, to be celebrated at a low-key Sunday brunch. Now Lockhart is a perfectly charming lady and a show biz icon for her work in three TV series — Lassie, Lost in Space and Petticoat Junction. But her film career is frankly minor and unlikely to gain in stature based on the film she brings to the festival — the world premiere of Zombie Hamlet. (No, really, we’re not making this stuff up.)
If you are grading the festival, give it a B+ for its celebrities, but a C- for its films. That misguided emphasis was glaringly obvious with the opening night selection of the 11th Palm Beach festival in 2006, a wince-inducing item called Rain — something about a young woman with family secrets, who takes refuge with wealthy relatives — whose only possible rationale for such a prominent slot was the promised appearance of its star, Faye Dunaway. (P.S. Dunaway never showed that night, though she did manage to glide in to pick up an award as film legend at the gala two nights later.)
You see, for most of the festival’s history, if you happened to be willing to part with an excess $1,000, the ticket price for the galas that used to be the centerpiece of the festival, you could be in the same room with a Salma Hayek, a Rod Steiger or a Daryl Hannah. Those with a more modest entertainment budget were stuck with the option of seeing the movies.
Or of staying home. Getting attendance figures for the festival is a perpetual challenge, but from anecdotal observation, all but the evening and weekend screenings of films with familiar cast members are sparsely attended. Again it is anecdotal, but for more of those past 16 years, I spoke often to public groups of avid film fans and would make a point of asking who had ever attended the Palm Beach International Film Festival. I never saw more than a handful of raised hands.
Each year, it seems, the festival leadership talks about gaining visibility for the event, an unlikely occurrence in these post-recessionary times when the marketing budget for the festival has dwindled. Without good attendance numbers to boast about, PBIFF’s founding chairman, Burt Aaronson, would often remind naysayers that the true beneficiaries of the festival was “the kids,” the county’s film training students whose departments received some of the proceeds from the festival.
Such worthy target recipients make the Palm Beach festival as controversial as mom or apple pie, but one does wonder, if film studies are so valued, why the county doesn’t simply fund these programs instead of laundering the money through an under-performing film festival?
These days, of course, there seems to be a film festival in every major city of the country — and a lot of minor ones — so I suppose Palm Beach County might as well have one, too. In fact, we have several, including the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, the Women’s Film Festival, the African-American Film Festival and the Delray Beach Film Festival (which drifted down to Boca Raton last year).
Expectations should not be too high for the Palm Beach International Film Festival, since it competes for product — at least in filmmakers’ minds — with the festivals of Miami and Fort Lauderdale. We might be more understanding of the PBIFF if only it looked like the event were moving closer to getting it right.
In an attempt to find the best venue strategy, the festival has moved around the county, alternately spreading its nets wide, then consolidating into just a few locations. No wonder the audience is confused.
It was a long time before there was any competitive recognition for films here. That valuable involvement factor was added in the eighth year, but the festival still seems to be searching for a winning format of award categories and judges.
Another holy grail goal has been turning PBIFF into a marketplace festival, where distributors seek out and bid on new, unsigned product. But with so many more established festivals with better films, it seems unlikely that we could ever become a place where true, previously undiscovered gems emerge in sufficient numbers to keep distributors interested.
Seventeen years ago, there was a greater need for a film festival here. Palm Beach County was a cultural backwater in 1996 when it came to foreign, independent and alternative films. Then, West Palm Beach’s Carefree Theatre was really the only game around. Today, there are the Living Room Theatres in Boca Raton, Emerging Cinemas in Lake Worth and Mos’Art Theatre in Lake Park bringing a steady supply of non-studio fare to the area.
Naturally, there is room for more art house films here and the more that arrives here, the larger the appetite for these movies grows. So we might as well cross our fingers and hope that this is the year that the festival films make a quantum leap in quality. And if that is not the case, we can always enjoy the latest batch of celebrities hawking their new movies or stopping by to scoop up an award.