Whisper the word Hollywood. The images that spring into many people's minds are of glamorous award ceremonies--such as the Academy Awards--with actors and directors wearing designer threads, smiling and waving to their fans, the cameras, and the paparazzi, all the while looking like a million bucks.

Movies mean many things to different people--an escape from reality for one, a glamorous exciting dream world for another, or a visual artistic format to voice their ideologies for others. Whatever it may represent, movies have always been a part of the
American culture through the fame, glitz, and glamour of Hollywood.

However, the millions of dollars spent on special effects, movie stars, and famous directors have garnered so much of the public's attention that they have forgotten that stories weren't first told through Hollywood. No, movies were first dreams told through film festivals, with directors trying to make a name for themselves, just like they do at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival (Indiefest), this year featuring over eighty absolutely independent films that were featured last February.

Jeff Ross, founder and director who financed the very first festival in 1998 from his own pocket, says he initially started the festival after realizing there was no revenue to showcase his friend's film to the public.

"Indiefest is for any filmmaker who wants to be heard," Ross says. "We get filmmakers who are trying to break into the industry, and others who just want to tell the public their story."

"I have been filmmaking for thirteen years," Jon Dowden, director of the feature film, Full Picture, says. "To actually be here to screen for our friends, our family, our fans... it is something that is purely special."

With a bright smile on his face after a thunderous applause following his movie screening at the festival, Dowden says that Indiefest is the perfect match, considering his movie is a San Francisco-based indie film.

"People reacted the way we had hoped--balanced out the drama, balanced out the comedy, and reacted accordingly," Dowden says. "I think it's a quintessential San Francisco film in that way. People are serious about some things, but also react and can quickly switch from the seriousness of life to the comedic structures of life."

A patron who has been attending Indiefest since 2002, Ira Esmy says he loves going to the festival for the excellent broad spectrum of movies, and says that attending the festival every February is a tradition.

"Movies and videos showcased in the festival could be seen through Amazon and Netflix," Ross says for moviegoers who might want to catch the featured films showcased in Indiefest, but were unable to attend this year. "Netflix is really good in buying up independent films and showcasing them to the public."

[X]press Indie Picks:

The Full Picture
Jon Bowden USA, 77 min
The Full Picture is about a man who struggles to commit to his girlfriend because of the effects of his dysfunctional family. The film was inspired by one of Bowden's childhood neighbors who lived in the outskirt of New Jersey.
It shows the stark reality of a family's bad habits and how they have a backhanded affect on their children's' psyche. Dowden says the film tries to project how little tidbits and secrets of family life starts to leak out over the years, no matter how much effort goes into trying to keep it quiet.

Home Movie
Christopher Denham, USA, 80 min
Home Movie is the directorial debut of Denham's first "reality horror" film of a dysfunctional family trying to piece their precarious family unit back together. Movie patron Jason Wiener wished the movie had a better "payoff at the end," because it is the most uncomfortable movie to watch.
The film features one of the stars from the hit NBC television drama series Heroes, as the father and Adrian Pasdar and Clare Poe also star as the husband and wife. The couple tries to understand their antisocial and violent ten year-old twins (played by real-life siblings Austin and Amber Williams), and turn them into normal happy children through daily depictions of everyday life from homemade movies.

contact: lydiak@sfsu.edu | Lydia Kim loves to dance off the accumulated stress of the week on weekends.