Thursday, February 27, 1997

FILM:

Annual event seeks to increase awareness of other cultures and lifestylesBy Aimee Phan

Daily Bruin Contributor

Lowrider cars, a male stripper who wears a g-string made of pennies, and the costume design of Star Trek fans are only three of the subjects explored in the Vitas Film Festival, a two-day screening of award-winning documentaries on folklore and popular culture.

This weekend the annual film festival, sponsored by the UCLA Film & Folklore Association, will present folklore films and their filmmakers at the James Bridges Theater (formerly known as Melnitz Theater). This unique event hopes to capture students' interests in different cultures and lifestyles with a variety of documentaries ranging from five to 80 minutes long.

Kerry Noonan and Kim Miller are graduate students in the folklore department who are the first-time co-coordinators of this festival. The annual event alternates from a smaller festival that features only one director to a larger one, like this year's, which showcases a variety of filmmakers.

Noonan hopes that many students will come out to experience this unique festival, the only one of its kind on the West Coast, and learn more about the wonders of folklore.

"I'm not aware of any other film festival in Los Angeles that features films with a folklore content," Noonan says. "Folklore is a very different kind of documentary because it takes a look at the expressive behavior of people. It expresses the behavior of people in small groups, so it could cover anything from how we celebrate religious holidays to the workings of different traditional arts and crafts."

Miller hopes that people from all disciplines and cultural backgrounds will embrace the opportunity to learn more about the different customs and little-known crafts covered in these films.

"I think we have a great collection of films this year," Miller says. "Anyone interested in multiculturalism should be interested in folklore. A lot of great films of different cultures should prove to interest many students from all the disciplines."

The Vitas Film Festival began in 1986 as a labor of love by the folklore students in a graduate seminar offered by Professor Michael Owen Jones called "Film and Folklore." The students decided to create this festival to showcase the documentaries they made in class. The festival has been successful in bringing attention to many folklorists' and student folklorists' documentaries.

"We wanted to have a venue for students who were being encouraged to make short films for Professor Jones' class," Noonan says. "And since we knew these people were making these films, we thought we could create a forum where they could be seen onto a large screen."

While some of the previous festivals have required special themes for film entries, this year has been open to any documentary on folklore and popular culture made after 1993. The responses they received ranged from student films from American universities to entries from England and Portugal.

"We sent out a call for films to universities' professional documentary organizations all over the country," Noonan says. "It was very exciting to see the breadth of things that people would send us."

The 45 documentaries submitted into the festival were judged by a panel of professors and students in the folklore department. Seven documentaries were given awards, and one received an honorable mention.

The first day of the two-day festival will screen the seven award winners with a special question-and-answer session with the director immediately after each panel screening. Several of the award winners include Jeff Porter's "The Men Who Dance the Giglio," describing the Italian-American religious festival in New York, the top-prize winner. Other award-winning documentaries include Gregory Thomson's "Lowriders: the Real Story" about the making of lowrider cars in Los Angeles and UCLA folklore graduate student Sandra Mizumoto Posey's "Home Sweet Home: Brian Kito's Little Tokyo," focusing on a sweets shop in Little Tokyo.

The second day will showcase the honorable mention screening of Joan Mandell's "Tales from Arab Detroit," a film documenting the traditions among Detroit's Arab Americans. Six student films will also be shown after "Tales," most from UCLA's own folklore graduate students. This is the first year that so many student films who did not receive an award will be included in the festival.

Camilla Mortenson, a UCLA folklore grad student who is also helping to organize the festival, came up with the idea to add the student films into the program. Miller hopes the inclusion of so many student films will encourage more documentaries on folklore by graduate students. "This is something we've never done before," Miller admits. "But we'd like to see more student films in the future. It's such a good learning experience for them and a great opportunity to learn to become filmmakers."

While this project did give the students many opportunities to explore their craft, most student filmmakers in the festival struggled with limited budgets and small camera crews when making their films.

"Most of the filmmakers made these films themselves, either getting grants or raising the money themselves, doing their own camerawork and working on a shoestring budget," Noonan explains. "They're basically doing this because they love to do it and they think people should find out about these fascinating topics."

Both Miller and Noonan have great hopes about the impact the film festival can have in promoting folklore studies and encourage students to come see and perhaps make their own folklore documentaries.

"I really hope that a lot of students come to see this because I don't think they're aware of this type of filmmaking," Noonan says. "I hope that people come to see that there's this wonderful group of very entertaining films that are scholarly, educational and yet a lot of fun to watch. Film is a wonderful medium for putting you in the middle of a culture in a way that reading or hearing about it can't quite do. But when you see a film, I really think it brings you closer to the subject in many ways."

"This festival is going to be very exciting, and most importantly, it's free," Miller laughs. "I think it's a great collection of films that are educational, interesting and very entertaining."

FILM: The folklore festival runs March 1-2. Admission is free. For more info, call Kerry Noonan or Kim Miller at (310) 825-3962.

Millard Berry

Shaykh Ghanim Mansour plays the rababa in "Tales From Arab Detroit."