Spokane’s film fest improves scene

One night in the mid-‘80s, I was having a particularly hard time at the Magic Lantern Cinemas.

The film was out of focus, the sound was fuzzy, the seat I had chosen was uncomfortable and the sight lines sucked. To make matters worse, a train went by, causing the building to shake and drowning out the dialogue with what I distinctly remember as choo-choo sounds.

Still, I was happy. In those days, when home-video technology was crude and the only Spokane store that catered specifically to alternative films was the late and lamented Street Music, area theaters seldom played anything other than the latest blockbuster wannabe.

So we were stuck with the Magic Lantern and its bad screens, bad sound, bad seats, semigood popcorn and perennially rotating ownership.

How times have changed. While the area’s Regal Cinemas play art and foreign-language films only on occasion – and hardly at all since the Newport Cinemas closed in September – AMC’s 20-screen complex in River Park Square offers alternative programming on a regular basis.

Two foreign films, China’s “The House of Flying Daggers” and France’s “A Very Long Engagement,” opened there on Jan. 14. Before that, AMC opened such alternative treats as “Closer,” “Sideways,” “Finding Neverland,” “Being Julia” and even the re-release of Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece “La Dolce Vita.”

If that weren’t enough, River Park Square Cinemas has taken over as full-time host of the Spokane International Film Festival, which begins its seventh year on Thursday with an 8 p.m. screening of the Indian film “Hari Om.” A table with festival information sits next to the AMC box office.

“Boy have they given us a lot of support,” says Leslie Ronald, who chairs the board of the festival sponsor, the Contemporary Arts Alliance. “People are coming up and saying, ‘Oh, the film festival,’ they say. ‘Weren’t you at The Met last year?’ “

The SpIFF was at The Met last year. In fact, the festival has been a fixture at the 740-seat performing arts center since it began in 1999 as a two-day celebration of primarily Canadian films. But over the subsequent years the only times The Met sold out were for the opening-night movie of the 2000 festival, Jasmine Dellal’s documentary “American Gypsy,” and Sherman Alexie’s 2002 film “The Business of Fancydancing” (which sold out, Ronald says, three times in one day).

AMC is providing a 300-seat house for this year’s festival, and this would seem better suited to Spokane movie fans. The film that opened last year’s festival, the Argentine drama “Kamchatka,” sold enough tickets to fill every seat, but several of the other films did nowhere near as well.

And then there’s this: While SpIFF 2004 boasted 10 feature films and two shorts over four days, this year will see 15 feature and eight short films over eight days.

Following Thursday’s premiere, at which director Bharatbala is scheduled to appear, two films a night will play from countries such as South Korea, Argentina, Japan, Slovenia, Austria, China and Tajikistan. There will be one documentary, one classic (W.S. Van Dyke’s 1934 film “The Thin Man”) and a five-film retrospective of the work of German director Tom Tykwer, including “Run Lola Run” and two shorts.

All films were hand-picked by festival director Bob Glatzer, who hasn’t always shown the best judgment. I do a weekly Spokane Public Radio show with Glatzer, and I like the guy. But please, does anybody remember “Here’s to Life” from 2001?

To its credit, the CAA board has full faith in Glatzer’s film tastes.

“Bob? We think he’s perfect, his film selections are perfect,” Ronald says. “Every year we’re so thankful because he brings in a great mix of very good cinema.”

And to be fair, once Ronald and her 18 fellow board members decided to let Glatzer look beyond the Pacific Northwest, he has fared better. Last year’s event was the festival’s first step toward genuine legitimacy.

“We’re never going to be the 280-film festival,” Ronald says, “nor do we want to be. We’d like to grow to, maybe, 30 to 35 films, but of good quality. Whether you like them all or not … well, I always tell everybody, it’s like going to an art exhibit. You don’t like it all, but you like some of it, and sometimes what you like you absolutely love.”

The 2005 Spokane International Film Festival begins its eight-day run on Thursday at the River Park Square Cinemas. Tickets are $8. Five-film passes are $35, and full festival passes are $80. For full schedule and other information, access the festival Web site at www.caaspokane.org/spiff.htm or contact caaspokane@att.net or (509) 624-2615.