“We’re out of tickets.” Those are the four words every film festival director dreams of hearing. For Ron Tibbett, founder of the annual Magnolia Independent Film Festival, the dream came true at last year’s festival.
This year, Tibbett expects the Mag to be even more successful.
“Last year, we had 28 films and 13 of the filmmakers came,” Tibbett said. “This year, we have 38 films and 24 filmmakers.”
Filmmakers from around the world will attend the Mag. Although the festival is only in its fifth year, some of the filmmakers have already become veterans.
“Joseph Biancaniello will be coming to the Mag for the second time,” Tibbett said. “He’s been to countless film festivals, and he said, and I quote, ‘This is still my favorite film festival.'”
Biancaniello is presenting his feature film, “Mary/Mary,” which he wrote and directed. It is a film that Tibbett said should play well to college audiences for its provocative outlook on contemporary sexual issues such as AIDS.
Many of the films presented have won numerous accolades at other festivals. “Cheek To Cheek,” written and directed by Beth Armstrong, is a film about an aging woman who rediscovers the joys of life. Its list of accolades includes Best Short Film at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, Best of Festival at the Palm Springs International Festival and Best Short Fiction at Italy’s Corto Imola International Film Festival.
“Middlemen,” written by Kevin Speckmaier and Robert Petrovicz and directed by Speckmaier, is the 2001 winner of Best Film and Best Director at the Phoenix Film Festival as well as Best Feature at the Montreal Reel Film Festival.
“Gregor’s Greatest Invention,” a short German film directed by Johannes Kiefer was recently nominated for the Oscar for Best Short Film. The 11-minute film is about Gregor, a talented inventor who tries to come up with a solution to keep his grandmother from entering a nursing home.
“It’s hard to pick any particular favorites,” Tibbett said. “It’s such an awesome lineup.”
One slugger in Tibbett’s “awesome lineup” is “G-SPOTS?” The film is written by Daniel Scott Fine and Carla Stockton and directed by Fine.
“We hope no one comes to the ‘G-SPOTS?’ screening looking for answers,” Stockton said. “But we hope this film makes you laugh and think at the same time; it should generate smiles and questions.”
The film stars Sandy Duncan (“Peter Pan”) and Keith David, who Tibbett dubs as “the great black actor from ‘Platoon’ and ‘Dead Presidents.'”
Tibbett said there is at least one film that will have no trouble generating laughs.
“My favorite comedy is ‘Joey Petrone: TV Cop,'” Tibbett said. “It’s about an actor who played a cop on TV in the ’70s. It opens up like a TV show with the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ music, and then it shows him now as he plays a mobster in a cable mafia show. It’s so ’70s, it’s great.”
“Joey Petrone: TV Cop” is written and directed by Denise McCarthy, who is scheduled to attend.
“Odessa Or Bust” is a short comedy written and directed by Lawrence B. Schechter. The film lasts 12 minutes, just enough time to showcase the relative all-star cast that includes Jason Schwartzman (“Slackers,” “Rushmore”), George Wendt (“Cheers”) and Jason Alexander (“Seinfeld”).
“Look Back, Don’t Look Back” is an award-winning documentary about two Harvard students who are so in love with Bob Dylan, they overturn New York City looking for him.
Taking a morbidly funny spin is “Family Values,” directed by Eva Saks.
“It’s about this lesbian couple who start a business of cleaning up death scenes in New York City,” Tibbett said. “You know the drill: somebody dies in your house, the police come and they take pictures, and then they leave and you have to clean it up. But not anymore.”
Perhaps the most poetic film is “Lowell Blues: The Words of Jack Kerouac,” directed by Henry Ferrini.
“Conceived as a 30-minute film poem, what distinguishes ‘Lowell Blues’ from other Kerouac films is its non-linear approach to the writer, his words and his formative experiences,” Ferrini said. “It fuses English, French, music and image to explore Jack Kerouac’s childhood.”
With all these films winning prestigious awards at high-profile film festivals, why would the filmmakers be interested in coming to the Mag?
“It’s filmmaker-friendly,” Tibbett said. “We all ride in the vans to the theater together, we all watch each other’s films, we all come back to party and talk and then we get up the next day to do it all over again.”
The filmmakers receive complimentary accommodations at the Old Waverly Golf Course in West Point, near Tibbett’s home.
“By the second day, you know everybody,” Tibbett said. “You go to any film festival, you’re lucky to meet 10 filmmakers because some stay at the Holiday Inn, some are at the Hilton, and then they have four different venues to go to. Here, you become family pretty quickly and you make lasting friendships.”
For the first four years of the Mag, Tibbett did not charge an entry fee.
“As a filmmaker, I know that if I enter 10 festivals, it’s going to cost 600 bucks after you add up the entry fees that are 40 to 60 bucks each plus postage,” Tibbett said. “That’s a lot of money for an independent filmmaker, so I just said ‘screw the entry fees.'”
However, Tibbett was finally forced to charge an almost complimentary fee of $10 simply to cover his own postage and phone bills.
Tibbett founded the Magnolia Independent Film Festival in 1997 to “keep the spirit of independent film alive.”
Tibbett said that the Mag recognizes that independent films work more on vision than formula. The filmmakers agree.
“Here we are in the Deep South, and we’re showing a quirky, pro-feminist short film,” Stockton said. “You gotta love a film festival that offers you that kind of courage. That is a leap of faith not a lot of festivals-especially the more established ‘institutional’ film festivals have taken. Magnolia is a rare gem, a festival as independent as the films it screens.”
The Magnolia Independent Film Festival will run from Thursday to Saturday at the Starkville Cinema on Miss. Highway 12. For more information, including a complete program of the films and the presentations of the awards, log on to www.magflimfest.com.