firmly to its roots

There’s always a temptation to tinker. Even when you’ve got something that’s working great, there are those little voices that creep in and make you wonder, ‘Well, maybe if we justÉ’

But when it comes to Edmonton’s Local Heroes International Screen Festival, founding director Jan Miller adheres to the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it philosophy and steadfastly refuses to listen.

The focus of the festival, which ran March 12-18, hasn’t wavered since its inception almost a decade ago. ‘It’s all about celebrating the independent filmmakers who manage to tell their stories on the screen but who have done it without the `Hollywood’ system,’ says Miller.

When it was launched by the National Screen Institute in 1984, Local Heroes attracted a mere 3,000 participants. This year attendance topped 20,000.

‘If you look at the festivals from across the country, generally as they grow larger they bring in greater numbers of films and the nature of the event invariably changes,’ says Miller. ‘What we have done here, instead, is to expand the number of components in our festival so that we can reach new audiences, but we’ve kept the festival itself small and clearly focused on its original intention. I think that’s why it’s been so successful.’

One attendee describes the festival’s intimate atmosphere and supportive attitude as ‘like the Sundance Film Festival before the limos, agents and cell phones arrived.’

Tom Dent-Cox, Calgary-based coproducer of the Alliance Communications/Alberta Filmworks series North Of 60 and chairman of the nsi, says the festival has had an important impact on the development and maturation of the local industry.

‘It has offered exposure for a number of Alberta filmmakers and talent. It’s a wonderful place for Alberta filmmakers to meet veterans in the industry and establish relationships in an unintimidating setting. It also presents a regional perspective at a national and international level. That’s critical for building the future of our industry.’

The local production community plays an important role in shaping the festival. A committee from the Alberta production industry helps select the guests for screenings and workshops. fava, a film and video artists co-operative, operates an on-demand screening room for the festival, and the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association runs the hospitality suite.

‘To me this is indicative that they feel the event is theirs,’ says Miller. ‘I have also found that the needs of Alberta are very similar to the needs of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia.’

This year marked the first time that provincial agencies from across the country, along with the CTV Television Network, contributed funds to help their filmmakers – other than those whose films were being screened – make the trip to Edmonton.

After going through this year’s guest list, Miller says she noticed how many network television programmers, film company executives and distributors are now coming to Local Heroes to scout for new young filmmakers.

‘The way the Declaration of Independents screenings are set up, followed by a moderated informal discussion between the filmmaker and the audience, it creates an ideal relaxed format for talent to be discovered. That’s exactly the dialogue and exchange the festival is aiming for,’ she says.

Unlike most other festivals, Miller says Local Heroes has also made a point of not having a competitive component.

‘We’ve often been pressured to give awards, but if I remember that the focus is the filmmaker, we’re not tempted to change.

‘That said, we are very competitive in the selection process. Hundreds of films come in but we only select 16 for screening. So once the filmmakers are here, we try to ensure everyone is treated like a star, that’s important. When they get here they should all be celebrated. We don’t want to create some kind of hierarchy. I think there’s enough competition and awards out there already.’

Local Heroes’ growing international reputation, built on word of mouth from past participants, is also helping to attract more film premieres to the festival. Despite the fact that most filmmakers time the release of their films for later in the year, ‘more and more filmmakers are viewing Local Heroes as a great avenue for introducing their films because they see the increasing profile and promotional possibilities of the festival,’ says Miller.

Highlights from the week-long event included the North American premiere of Academy Award-winning Czech director Jiri Menzel’s (Closely Watched Trains) latest project, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin. The film, which opened the festival, is a scathing satire of the legendary comic Russian novel about an awkward, simple, stubborn Red Army draftee who single-handedly derails the Soviet war effort when he is sent to guard a downed plane in a forgotten village.

The festival also marked the Canadian premieres of two films from each side of the war in the former Yugoslavia. Vukovar (Post Restante), produced by Steven North, is a love story set amidst the blood bath of the war about a handsome young Serb who marries a beautiful childhood friend, a Croatian, and their struggle to prove love conquers all. The second film, Vukovar: The Way Home from Croatian director Branko Schmidt, chronicles the plight of a young man and his family who, after spending months with hundreds of other refugees in a series of coach cars at a train station, struggle to remember a better life as they attempt to return home.

The world premiere of Paris Or Somewhere, a blend of murder mystery and cross-border romance adapted from the Irish stage play Playboy Of The Western World, closed the festival. Directed by Brad Turner and produced in Saskatchewan last summer, the film centers on a soft-spoken American stranger and self-confessed killer who wanders into a remote Saskatchewan town where the people can’t decide whether to love him or lock him up.

This year, the nsi added two more components to the festival: NHTV, New Heroes Teen Video, which provides a two-week intensive filmmaking camp for at-risk teens, and Local Exposure Video.

Local Exposure is an Alberta-wide home video contest. Miller says the idea evolved out of the realization that while the festival is primarily designed for the filmmaker, it needed something more to involve the public.

‘We invited everyone to take their camcorders and make their own movies. They can’t be longer than five minutes and must all have a story to tell, which is what the nsi is all about – just drama. The program, which went provincial this year, quadrupled our numbers and brought in Rogers Video as a major sponsor.’