Now that the 13th AFI Los Angeles Film Festival is mercifully over, it's high time someone called fest director Jon Fitzgerald's "less is more" bluff ("Director Yells 'Cut!' at AFI Festival," by Susan King, Oct. 21). As the festival lineup has been steadily shrinking during Fitzgerald's tenure, so, precipitously, has the number of films anyone gives a hoot about seeing.
It's unclear whether the we-are-oh-so-exclusive-we-only-show-a-handful-of-films strategy works even at the New York Festival--the new AFI's obvious model-- where the programmers, unlike Fitzgerald's team here, have unassailable taste, a track record of impeccable picks and thus the clout to attract the world's best movies. But even there, the film lover's got a gripe regarding the scant number of film options.
The problem here is, even with three times as many movies, there was precious little worth a look at this year's fest. But that's not surprising given Fitzgerald's apparent film-culture illiteracy. I, for one, was stunned at last year's inaugural when Fitzgerald introduced Nicoletta Braschi, the co-star of his fest's opening-night film, "Life Is Beautiful," as "Signor Braschi." The puzzled performer--clearly, embarrassingly, a signora--rose to the podium. This time around, our fest head personally introduced China's most famous director, Chen Kaige (family name Chen, given name Kaige)--of the overrated "Farewell, My Concubine" and the underrated "Temptress Moon" and the fest's disappointing snoozer, "The Emperor and the Assassin"--as "Mr. Kaige."
Now, it's bad enough that our evening's host somehow lives in Los Angeles and can still be confused about simple points of Asian nomenclature, but the fact that he doesn't even know the name of one of the world's most important film directors is simply unforgivable.
Young and sexy in a town that loves that kind of thing, with superficial maverick credentials--he founded Slamdance, the Utah fest that shows movies too horrible to get into Sundance--our blunderkind is the Esa-Pekka Salonen of the film scene. All show and no show. At least, artistically. Perhaps he's some sort of financial or PR whiz-kid, as he himself suggested in the Calendar piece; but if attendance at this year's fest is any indication--I counted 12 at the Oct. 25 screening of "Riensur Robert" and hardly more than 100 at Mr. Kaige's, I mean, Mr. Chen's film--his miracles have ceased.
