In his comic short, The Opening Day of Close-Up (aka Il Giorno della Prima di Close Up), Italian comedian Nanni Moretti plays a frantic theater manager doing everything possible to gather and keep an audience for a classic — if challenging — Iranian film. He orders an extra-large ad for the newspaper, spruces up the lobby, double-checks the snack-bar, and gives special instructions to the projectionist and counter-woman — including a tip for the latter to use force on customers as necessary. All is for naught, however: as the anxious manager checks attendance figures, he is frustrated to find that while the latest Hollywood action film and The Lion King are filling theaters, Close-Up plays to ever more empty seats. We could relate. We knew curiosity and current events would bring people into our Iranian film series on the opening day of Flickerings 2002, but we wondered if they'd keep coming back all week. So we sweated the details, too, like this one: even director Abbas Kiarostami hasn't screened his admittedly difficult films in an un-air-conditioned metal building on a former hog farm during a music festival in ninety-degree heat.

We needn't have worried: despite our essentially Third World theater, we still had a bigger audience for our single screening of Kiarostami's masterpiece than Nannie Moretti's poor manager had for several — and they did keep coming back, all week, to what was described more than once as "the hottest film festival in America."

Flickerings 2002 began where last year's festival left off: we expanded our program, our audience, and our vision, seeking to dig deeper and see farther down the road as we continue to shape the identity of this exciting new Cornerstone venue.

There were several reasons why featuring the Cinema of Iran at Flickerings 2002 was an obvious choice, even before September 11th of 2001. For while the films played a part in a wider discussion of globalism, tribalism and women's issues at Cornerstone (the "Between Jihad & McWorld" program), these films were chosen first of all because, as representives of an exciting and original cinematic movement, they are works of art meant to be taken primarily on their own terms. Many of the musical artists who have appeared at Cornerstone Festival over the years have had some experience in being relegated to an artistic ghetto, apprehended often more for novelty's sake ("Rock music and Jesus?!!") than in being received by critics outside the ghetto on the strength of their original and individual visions (Of course, not all the artists in our ghetto have represented original and individual visions, but that's another story...) With some sympathy, then, for the predicament of Iranian filmmakers, we at Flickerings approached these films as best we could on the level the director seemed to be intending, trying to engage with the artists beyond just the immediate social-political contexts.

The discussions after Close-Up and Kandahar and the other Iranian features we screened — Leila, The Circle, Hamoun, and The Color of Paradise — made it clear we'd not only won over our audience to some great films, and introduced them to an amazing and still-unfolding chapter in cinematic history, but we'd also succeeded in pulling them inside a culture they knew previously only by way of media and political stereotypes. Flickering's audiences were as astonished as anyone is by the breadth and depth of Iranian film and the individual directors' visions. More importantly, they also properly perceived in these films the surprising connections to our own culture, our own problems, and our own hopes: like most foreign films, on closer inspection, these turned out to be less foreign than we'd thought: with regard to women's issues, globalization, and other matters of common concern, including the quest for individual meaning and acceptance.

Our intentional collision of Jihad and McWorld at Flickerings involved linking the issues and problems we encountered in the Iranian films to the very McWorld the Ayatollahs are trying to keep out (among other things). The link between Western materialism and consumerism and the ticklish question of "Why they hate us" was touched upon in the documentary on Islamic women in North America, Under One Sky, and made even more explicit in our double-bill of The Merchants of Cool and Ghost World. All three of these films played to packed houses: packed, it seemed, with audiences very different than we'd seen at other Flickerings programming, suggesting both new directions for next year and a wider vision for the impact film and especially documentaries might have at future Cornerstone Festivals.

Meanwhile, the coincidental focus in Merchants of Cool, an exposé of corporations targeting teenagers, on a "Cornerstone" ad agency was most provocative: some of us have wondered for some time whether many music videos and certain other sorts of films funded by record companies to promote bands are too close for comfort to the sorts of problems we were examining. After some careful discussion, and with no disrespect meant to any of the filmmakers who have in the past contributed to the Showcase in this genre of films, we've decided to drop this category from our annual Film Showcase: part of a re-sculpting of our identity that will continue in the weeks to come.

The 2002 Flickerings Film Showcase, like last year's debut program, featured a variety of films from a strong diversity of filmmakers. The word is clearly spreading among Cornerstone attendees, for the short film program continued to be one of our most popular offerings. (See the complete list of 2002 Showcase Films and filmmakers). We're hoping to spread the word among filmmakers as well; if you know of any places we can publicize our 2003 Call for Entries, please get in touch with us. Some of the films we're most eager to look to as trail blazers leading us forward were collected together in our Best of Flickerings 2002 session, always the best-attended slot in the Showcase schedule. Congratulations to these, and all rest of the participating filmmakers. As we did last year, we're hoping to get a selection of films from the 2002 Showcase posted online. Stay tuned to www.flickerings.com for updates on films posted.

We were very concerned this year to create a credible program for filmmakers at Flickerings, the program that we came to call "Deep Focus". As you can read about in a separate report, Deep Focus lived up to its name and continued to generate the sparks that we at Flickerings are trying to light. We've already begun to see films created especially for the Flickerings Showcase, and it has been most exciting to watch a film community come into being. Filmmakers at the Late Night meetings talked about films they're already working on to screen at next year's Showcase, contacts were made, and possible collaborations begun to be explored.

Meanwhile, the program for Flickerings 2003 is, as of this moment, blank: the Film Showcase films are either in postproduction, or preproduction — or even pre- preproduction. i.e., there is plenty of time to make a short film for next year's festival. The deadline for entries is March 1, 2003. See our new Call For Entries for entry information, and Entry Form. If you shot film at Cornerstone 2002 with the intent of entering the "Shoot a Film @ Cornerstone" track of next year's program, we've posted an entry form for those who didn't pick one up at the festival. If you shot footage but didn't consider until this very moment the possibility of cutting it together into a film for next year, then, by all means, consider: the deadline for this track is February 1st. (But please note carefully this entry category is different than the regular Flickerings Film Showcase Call to Entries, the form for which is here.)

Thank you to all who pitched in — filmmakers, audience, "crew" — to make Flickerings II that rare production, a sequel even better than the original — a cliffhanger, with several subplots set in motion simultaneously.

We can't wait to see what happens next.

See also

Deep Focus Clarifies Vision

Best of Flickerings 2002

Complete list of 2002 Film Showcase Films

Best of Flickerings 2001

Select 2001 Clips Posted Online

Copyright 2002, Cornerstone Communications, Inc.