LAIFF ‘98 Kicks Off With Higher Profile and Sold Out Screenings

by Eugene Hernandez

"We are definitely a discovery festival," Los Angeles Independent Film Festival (LAIFF) Founder and Director Robert Faust told indieWIRE last month, following the announcement of the lineup for the 4th annual festival. And he's got a list of movies to back-up the claim. Of the twenty-six feature length films, programmed by Thomas Ethan Harris, seventeen are having their world premiere here in L.A. Twenty four of the films are narrative features, while two are feature length documentaries, and thirty-one are shorts. Organized received close to 1,300 film submissions this year, topping last year's 1,000 entries.

Firmly established as a leading Spring festival for premiere work, the event is equipped to welcome over 65% more attendees with 20,000 guests anticipated in the new Sunset Blvd. venues -- a major leap from last year's 12,000 patrons. According to festival orgainzers the hottest tickets in pre-event sales were Scott Ziehl's "Broken Vessels," Jon Reiss' "Cleopatra's Second Husband," Eric Bross' "Restaurant," Adam Goldberg's "Scotch and Milk," John Enbom's "Starf*cker," and of course the festival's opening and closing night gala events -- all of which sold out.

In was no surprise to "In the Soup" fans to hear that the U.S. Premiere of Alexandre Rockwell's latest film "Louis and Frank", screening Saturday night, had sold out too quickly for them to get tickets. The unfortunate surprise is that the "Sold Out" status was a computer error and all those eager Rockwell enthusiasts were turned away by mistake. The good news for fans is that tickets are now available, for Rockwell's screwball comedy.

"What I love about our event," Faust told indieWIRE, "is that we've been able to continue our goal to create and foster a sense of community for the whole independent scene, while providing the perfect showcase for new work." Additional screenings have been added for a number of the sold out films and festival organizers are already discussing the addition of at least one more day of screenings next year.

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(Donna Lorenz contributed to this artcle.) Login to recommend this article » posted on April 16, 1998 Films to Snag Login to Leave a Comment »