Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Cinema in Boston enjoys a generous gamut that ranges from the mainstream to the fringe. The city’s largest theater, a Loews multiplex, is essentially at its epicenter, opening straight onto the Boston Common, the animated marquee projecting down Tremont Street in either direction. Arthouse cinema is largely resorted to the suburbs: the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline; the Landmark in East Cambridge; the HFA and Brattle Theater in Harvard; and the Somerville Theater. A programmatic diversity in these theaters more or less echoes their metropolitan arrangement, and pronounces a volatility in establishing the city’s cinematic cultural identity.

Enter the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Now in its sixth year, the IFFB has emerged as a stabilized film festival, a more comprehensive answer to the Boston Film Festival or the surfeit of repertory festivals and revivals that screen throughout the year. This year’s program, which is the largest thus far in the festival’s short history, consists of narrative and documentary features – many of which premiered at either Sundance or South by Southwest – short films, and films made locally, promising compendium of both fiction and nonfiction, mainstream and avant-garde, domestic and foreign cinema. Almost every one of these is a New England premiere.

The 2008 IFFB commences on Wednesday, April 23rd, with Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian, and ends the following Tuesday with Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World. In between are two world premieres – Taylor Greeson’s Meadowlark and Twelve, a collaborative project between young, Boston-based filmmakers – and a rare screening of Trent Harris’ Beaver Trilogy. Please refer to this page for reviews of select festival films.

Short films – The Drift, The Pull, Primitive Technology, A Catalog of Anticipations, Reorder, Spider, I Love Sarah Jane, Doxology, Safari

Films