Independent Film Festival of Boston 2007

The 5th Annual Independent Film Festival of Boston, showcasing “the best independent films from around the world”, ran 25-30 April 2007.

In five years, the Independent Film Festival of Boston (or, as I like to affectionately call it, Biff) has transformed itself from a fledgling upstart into the premier New England festival event. Compared to the increasingly moribund Boston Film Festival held in the fall, the IFF is vibrant and eclectic, young and vital, pulling from all corners of the cinematic map.

If its willingness to take risks yields the occasional lapse in consistency, well, that’s the price of growing into a bigger skin. Building on past successes and ever increasing prestige, 2007’s Fest yielded another bumper crop of excellent films from the margins.

As I’ve found from years past, the strength of the festival tends to lean more towards documentary features that narrative films, but that’s not to say the latter weren’t up to snuff. Both Hal Hartley’s Fay Grim and the Julia Loktev’s Day Night Day Night stood out as the two most likely to find wider critical success beyond the festival circuit, though I can see Sarah Polley’s Away from Her being the one that would find a large mainstream audience.

Documentaries, as usual, were all over the map in terms of both style and content. Crowd pleasing features about mostly harmless eccentrics went head-to-head against darker, more difficult fare about abortion, school shootings and… um… horses. I wish I could forget some of these latter films, but they left the most indelible impressions.

So, seven days; 14 films; 25 pots of coffee; and one exhausted, overcaffeinated, highly strung by satisfied film fanatic. And so I present to you my impressions of the films I saw at the 2007 Independent Film Festival of Boston…

Movies Reviewed in this PopMatters‘ Special Section

 Fay Grim (Hal Hartley)

 On Broadway (Dave McLaughlin)

 Audience of One (Mike Jacobs)

 Monster Camp (Cullen Hoback)

 Day Night Day Night (Julia Loktev)

 The Killer Within (Macky Alston)

 Away From Her (Sarah Polley)

 The Paper (Aaron Matthews)

 Lake of Fire (Tony Kaye)

 Zoo (Robinson Dover)

 TheGoodTimesKid (Azazel Jacobs)

 Hannah Takes the Stairs (Joe Swanberg)

 Rumbo a las Grande Ligas (Jared Goodman)

 Brooklyn Rules (Michael Corrente)

Writer Bio: A locally renowned freelance film enthusiast and professional contrarian based out of Somerville, Massachusetts, Jake Meaney is most noted as a hopelessly amateur dilettante whose unapologetically omnivorous taste in films of questionable caliber has finally cancelled out whatever critical acumen he may have once possessed. We’re not saying you shouldn’t read him, but do so at your own risk.