By
Ian Caruth
Arizona Daily Wildcat
The Screening Room hosts mini-film festival
In their frenzied rush to video stores to find the latest Ben Affleck-and-Aerosmith romantic action-dramedy, local film fans may miss out on an unusual opportunity. Cinemad magazine - conceived and published right here in the Old Pueblo and now enjoying worldwide distribution - is sponsoring a film "mini-festival" at Tucson's venerated art-house theater, The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress St.
Cinemad - a non-profit labor of love for local film buff and occasional filmmaker Mike Plante - is using the event as a fundraiser, and as the opportunity to promote some rare and intriguing films that otherwise would pass beneath the radar of most Tucsonans.
"What he's (Plante) trying to do is cover hard-to-find films and good filmmakers who don't have that Hollywood reputation," said Giulio Scalinger, The Screening Room owner. "Cinemad has done interviews with all the filmmakers who are being shown at the festival. Readers can... read through the interviews- it's almost like having the filmmakers here."
The mini-fest begins Thursday and runs through Sunday. Featured films are:
"The Target Shoots First" (1999) is a fascinating autobiographical documentary about Chris Wilcha's experience working for a huge mail-order music company. Wilcha, a recent college graduate with no qualifications, was hired in 1993 by an out-of-touch executive impressed by his knowledge of the then-popular band Nirvana and other forms of "alternative" music. Bringing his home-video camera to work every day, Wilcha documented his two-year stint at the company, including the rise and fall of Nirvana and the corporate subsumption of all things "alternative." A penetrating and often humorous look at the marketing of art, as well as the self-portrait of a young punk rock fan and his perceived "sell-out" to corporate culture, the film is a rare glimpse of an often hidden industry.
"Killer of Sheep" (1977) is one of the first 50 films placed in the National Film Registry for its significance and has been declared a national treasure by the Library of Congress. Written, produced, directed, shot and edited by Charles Burnett, the film is the chronicle of a Watts slaughterhouse worker and his family, and has been widely praised for its unflinching but ultimately hopeful portrait of human vitality and the struggle for hope in a bleak, unforgiving environment.
"Lost Book Found" (1996) is a quiet, poetic meditation on the tenuous bonds that connect seemingly unrelated places, things and people in urban environments. Filmmaker Jem Cohen uses black-and-white footage of New York City streets, voiceover narration and a strange tale about a lost notebook filled with cryptic scrawlings to construct a swirling, fuzzy-edged treatise on beauty and chance in modern life. Filmgoers will have fun spotting themes and visual ideas that were later ripped off by "American Beauty."
"We're trying to show films that don't get play at other theaters," Scalinger said. "(In that way) the missions of The Screening Room and Cinemad are the same."
The festival begins with "Killer of Sheep" at 8 p.m. Thursday. Admission to each screening is $5. Call 622-2262 for more information, and pick up Cinemad three times a year at Casa Video, 2905 E. Speedway Blvd., or in other cities worldwide at Tower Records stores.
