By SUZANNE MOORE
LAKE PLACID — The blank slate is filled, by chance and design.
Last May, Kathleen Carroll just happened to notice a movie called "City Island" listed among the entries for the Tribeca Film Festival in Lower Manhattan.
Years ago, she'd screened director Raymond De Felitta's first film at a festival on a cruise ship, when she was very struck by both man and movie. She was similarly taken by his latest work, which won the Tribeca Audience Award, and so found her kickoff film for this year's Lake Placid Film Forum, set for June 11 through 14.
"The characters are well played, there's a lot of humor — it's very well done," said Carroll, forum artistic director and founder. "The kind of film you like to open any kind of film event with."
PROVOCATIVE
She is excited, as well, about hosting guest of honor Paul Schrader, a writer-director likely best known for his work with Martin Scorsese on "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull." His movie "Adam Resurrected" will be one of two films with a Holocaust theme screened at the forum.
"It's a very unusual film to say the least," Carroll said. "You love to show films "¦ that are challenging and provocative and make you think.
"And this film certainly does."
Based on a novel by Yoram Kaniuk, "Adam Resurrected" revolves around Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum), who before the war was a cabaret magician in Berlin and is now a patient in a sanitarium for Holocaust survivors.
Carroll had actually jotted down on her slate the other film of that genre, Hugo Perez's "Neither Memory Nor Magic," before lining up Schrader's Holocaust work. The documentary is about Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti, who, facing death, found a way to preserve his poems about the horrors he and fellow slave labourers endured.
"They're very different," Carroll said of the two films.
STUDENT PRODUCTION
She jumped at the chance to pencil in Woody Allen's "Whatever Works," described as a "tart comedy" starring "Seinfeld" creator Larry David as "a cranky, self-proclaimed genius who's so convinced of his superior intelligence (that) he believes someone is secretly filming his every word."
When a film critic for the New York Daily News, Carroll conducted one of Allen's very first interviews.
"He came to the office," she recalled. "He has always been a bit skittish and nervous. "¦ The receptionist thought he was one of the copyboys. "¦ I rescued him."
An offering Carroll hopes won't get lost in the hubbub of the forum is the 1922 silent film "Beyond the Rocks," starring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson.
A natural selection was "Trailerpark," a feature-length ensemble drama based on a collection of short stories by best-selling author Russell Banks, forum co-founder.
That book, said Ohio University Associate Professor Frederick Lewis, was one of his favorites back in grad school, and at first, he intended to have his Media 419 class divide into five groups, making five short films. Instead, with conditional rights from Banks and under Lewis's supervision, the class wrote a screenplay blending the stories. They undertook every aspect of production from negotiating leases for land in Ohio where they set up a trailer-park to working with the Humane Association to make sure the guinea pigs in the film came to no harm.
"They set decorated a closed tavern," Lewis said. "It was so realistic, people were coming in trying to buy a drink.
"They shot in a snowstorm, burned a trailer (on purpose), all the music is original. "¦
"I think it's a very wonderful script — it really works. There are tense moments, comedy. It's an amazing achievement for a bunch of 20-year-old students."
VISUALLY STUNNING
With the Lake Champlain Quadricentennial in mind and to recognize the Canadian film industry, Carroll deliberately included the Bruce Beresford-directed work "Black Robe" on her slate of offerings. The 1991 historical epic follows a 17th-century Jesuit priest's journey from New France to the frontier town of Quebec, where he is to convert the Hurons to Catholicism and expedite colonization.
"We shot in continuity, which is the rarest thing," said Lothaire Bluteau, who stars as Father Laforgue and is one of Canada's best-known actors. "(Beresford) said, 'Since it is a journey, I would like to shoot in order.' I have never done it since."
Bluteau describes the film, shot in the mountains of Quebec, as "visually stunning." It is also a violent work that reflects the savagery of the New World. And while dramatic fiction, it was shot as close to being a documentary as could be. Much research went into the project, which was made as authentic as possible, Bluteau said.
For his role, he learned to canoe, learned music of the time period and was instructed in the Cree language.
The film doesn't pass judgement, the actor said.
"I think with that kind of subject, you're not trying to define a moment, you're trying to start a conversation."
LEAP OF FAITH
That's just the aim of the Film Forum, said Carroll, which along with the screenings and the North Country Shorts Competition for Emerging Filmmakers, includes several conversations with those related to the industry, including Courtney Hunt. She was director of the locally shot and much acclaimed "Frozen River," which screened at last year's event.
"We thought it would be nice to have her come back and tell us all the wonderful things that have happened to her," including the film's nominations for Academy Awards.
The Film Forum slate grew for 2009, after a few years of downsizing to stay within budget.
"We felt we needed to offer guests more choices," Carroll said, relying on a devoted audience that returns yearly and hoping to entice newcomers to the event. "I now understand what it's like to introduce an independent film — you are taking this huge leap of faith. You just have to hope that it all works."
E-mail Suzanne Moore at: smoore@pressrepublican.com
