The 10th incarnation of the Malibu International Film Festival splits its venue screenings and events once again with Santa Monica.
By Sherene Tagharobi / Special to The Malibu Times and Laura Tate / Editor
Despite the fact that two weeks ago the Malibu International Film Festival was without a centerpiece film, director David Katz gave staff the day off in light of the swell that had just hit the coast. Sometimes, people work better outside the office. The festival is scheduled for this Thursday through Saturday.
“I was surfing and [film director] Michael Oblowitz paddles up to me and says, ‘Hey, my film just had its world premiere at CineVegas, and I’d love for it to have its Los Angeles premiere,'” Katz said.
Katz agreed to screen Oblowitz’s documentary “Sea of Darkness,” a candid look at surf culture, and he loved it.
The festival never closes its submissions, even if the schedule has been locked, Katz said.
“Producing a film festival is just like producing a film,” Katz said. “You have to understand that things are going to come unexpectedly sometimes.”
The scheduling of this year’s festival also came belatedly. The dates and film lineup were announced barely three weeks before its opening night. On July 13 Katz had circulated a letter asking the City of Malibu to sponsor the festival by allowing the festival to use the Malibu Performing Arts Center and Bluffs Parks for screenings.
However, because the center was still in escrow at the time (the city bought the property in June), it could not be rented, and it was decided that screening films in a tent at the park would be detrimental to the festival’s quality, Katz said in an interview Tuesday.
The only Malibu venues this year are Malibu Cinemas for opening night and Duke’s Malibu for the opening night party. The rest of the festival screenings and events take place at Ocean Avenue Screening Room in Santa Monica.
However, the festival-despite its growing pains and struggles throughout the years (this is its 10th incarnation), and that it is not entirely a “Malibu” festival (last year was the first year it came back to Malibu after Katz took it to Santa Monica in 2005)- keeps going.
Katz said he had planned to do the festival entirely within the city this year, but “we are going to stay as a summer event, and in order to be a summer event that’s going to take some [financial] support from the people of Malibu … in order to rent the theater.”
Katz said the minimum rental period past one day is seven days. “We need $25,000 to buy it out for a week,” he said.
“That’s what we are up against,” Katz explained. “Our goal next year is to fundraise and reach out to the people of Malibu, and to corporations, of course, and in a perfect world we will raise enough to keep our summer schedule.”
Meanwhile, as Katz made final week negotiations on where to screen the festival’s films, more last minute changes took place in the lineup. The documentary “Return to Tarawa,” a story of a World War II veteran who returns to one of the war’s deadliest battlegrounds, was added to the schedule last week. The film has already been featured in a number of festivals, won several awards and been recognized by various media outlets. But the Malibu Film Festival had originally rejected it.
“We shy away from films that have already been in several film festivals,” Katz said. “We want films that haven’t rammed the circuit yet.”
But the director, Steven Barber, wouldn’t take no for an answer. He started an e-mail campaign and by the end, 50 to 100 veterans had e-mailed Katz expressing their support for the documentary, Barber said.
Katz said he agreed to reconsider, and found that it’s an important documentary that inspires those who watch it to stand up and make a difference. Also, the film’s narrator and executive producer, Ed Harris and Leon Cooper, respectively, are both Malibu locals.
“I think they just didn’t spend enough time really looking at the film to understand the significance of it,” Barber said. “When I sat on the phone with them and explained it to them, they got it.
“The good things in life, you gotta fight for,” he added.
Katz explained the film selection process, stressing that organizers look for “new and quality” films: four festival organizers screen each film separately and give it a letter grade. If it makes the initial cut, organizers will then screen the film together. Katz said this year’s organizers are a diverse, impartial group hailing from Nebraska, England, Boston and Oakland.
“We’re incredibly thorough,” said Isolde Godfrey, an organizer who is here from England to work on the festival. “We have to watch the whole film to really get the grit of it. Sometimes it’s hard because there’s four of us, and we all have different experiences and backgrounds, different tastes.”
Of the 29 films on the schedule, four of them have Malibu ties. The opening night film features a former Malibu resident in “Jesse’s Story,” a documentary about then 17-year-old surfer Jesse Billauer who suffered a spinal cord injury while surfing that left him a C-6 quadriplegic. Even though he is paralyzed from the waist down, he learned to surf again.
Organizers don’t know whether Malibu locals make a film unless it’s apparent from the content, Katz said.
“It’s the luck of the draw,” Katz said. “If Malibu filmmakers happen to make quality projects and they submit it to the film festival, then they get in. We want to service not only the community of Malibu but the film industry and the city of Los Angeles.”
A complete schedule and tickets to the film festival can be obtained online at www.malibufilmfestival.com.