Beats me. I don’t even know, as I have written … okay … ad nauseum, what a conservative or a liberal is anymore. But I have attended a lot of film festivals (more than I care to admit over more years than I care to admit), submitted films to them, been accepted and rejected, sat through a lot of stinkers and eaten a lot of bad food (particularly at the Berlin Festival). What I do know is that ideology, or perceived ideology, has a lot do with the selection process.
So conservative or whatever it is the American Film Renaissance Festival, which PJ is now covering with the superb video work of Andrew Marcus and his on-camera partner Clay Champlin is hugely welcome for one word above all – openness. Lots of viewpoints, some (like intelligent design) with which I completely disagree, are presented. But they are there. You don’t see a lot of that at Sundance. Everything at that festival is open pretty much from one side only. Here you have a pro-life film, which could be considered relatively prudish, mixed with the first-ever screening in Hollywood of clips from “Submission,” which is anything but.
As one who has frequently criticized the lack of Hollywood response to the murder of “Submission” director Theo van Gogh (stone silence is more like it), I am looking forward finally to seeing the film in a theatre (Sunday at 2:30). I wonder how many of my colleagues will be there.
BTW, our second video from the festival is now up.
UPDATE: Interesting interview with Gary Sinise at the festival should be up on Mondo Hollywood soon (roughly six pacific). Sinise talks about his program for Iraqi children.
MORE: For the record, AFR is not the first right-leaning film festival in Hollywood. The Liberty Film Festival, of course, was that.
What’s a “conservative film festival”?
That’s easy: Conservative = pro-American
For example, a conservative film festival will not screen movies destined to premier to the nodding praise of the entire Democratic leadership in which Americans are portrayed as crusading, oil-snorting fascists destroying idylic middle eastern nations in a voracious quest for corporate profits.
Roger, you make some elequent points in this post and the others of which I hardily agree.
While I disagree with much on the left my larger issues are really the point you make with regards to ‘open’ playing field. I will not deny the left to meander along with their political undertones in movies. What irks me at every point is the denial of other opinions in hollywood.
I am so glad to see things starting to open up.
Sundance, Redford and many like him can only see producing film on one side and they have that right.
The problem is we never get the truth of the nitty gritty reality in many issues. For example, you will never see the truth that many past practicing homosexuals left the gay scene, renounced it as a lifestyle and are happily married now to the opposite sex with children living in loving relationships. And anyone who dares mentions such things is demonized.
Submission is another fine example of whats wrong with Hollywood and distributers. It should be playing in theatre’s across America proudly in defiance of Theo van Gogh’s killers and as praise to such a film maker’s courage. You would think that it would be hailed as a truthful look into Islamic fundamentalism and advertised from coast to coast.
In fact you would think that the French, those so proudly revolutionist would revel in such films.
But they’re lost forever in blinders of mediocrity and appeasement of one’s true rights to speak out openly against Tyrants and oppressive movements.
It is either that or they’re 1) cowards, 2) blind. I lean towards # 2 out of courtesy and hope some will wake up eventually to see the truth.
Having stated such, its much easier and less controversial these days to make an pseudo-intellectual film like Munich than it is to expose the dirty and seedy connections of Islam with Nazi Germany’s past, the Muslim Brotherhood and Arabia.
There were two sides in WWII, what is vastly unknown and untold is that many Arabian tribes took the side of Hitler.
They’re showing Submission!? Good for them! (So much for the brave Hollywood left.) Wish I had known, darn it. I already made a commitment for this afternoon.
“That’s easy: Conservative = pro-American”
Also pro-faith. I hope the festival includes a screening of some of the Left Behind movies, many of which are are quite excellent.