Silver Lake Film Fest Grows on Historic Ground

Most film festivals today, from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto, are marketing vehicles, where movies tart themselves up, hoping to catch the eye of a film distributor, critic or entertainment reporter. One of the few festivals devoted to discovering movies is the second annual Silver Lake Film Festival, which runs through Sunday right here in our backyard. It’s a festival where you won’t bump into any starlets or Hollywood agents with all-access passes.

“We’re an old-fashioned underground festival for films that might never get normal distribution,” says festival co-founder Gret Ptacek. “The Eastside of Los Angeles has an incredible connection to the history of Hollywood, but we also probably have more filmmakers today living east of Highland Avenue than anywhere else in the country. So the festival is steeped in the past but has a desire to embrace the future too.”

In many ways, Silver Lake was the original Hollywood. D.W. Griffith’s sound stages were right next door to the Vista Theater, the main venue for this week’s festival screenings. Its cluttered upstairs offices, which now serve as festival headquarters, once housed cult director Ed Wood’s production company. Mack Sennett’s original sound stage is still in use, just down the street. Walt Disney’s original studio was on the site of what is now a Mayfair Market.

The festival has several programs devoted to the past, including a “Red Gulch” series of films devoted to the blacklist era and a tribute to pioneering female director Dorothy Arzner that includes her rarely seen 1929 film “The Wild Party,” which launched the career of starlet Clara Bow.

The festival also features a host of offbeat programming, including a series called “Up Your Skirt: Naked Feminism,” highlighted by showings of “Live Nude Girls Unite!,” a documentary about the first unionization of strip club workers, and “Strip Notes,” a Darryl Hannah video journal about her research for playing an upcoming role as a stripper.

The festival is also showing a series of skateboard short films, along with a clinic and live demonstration by skateboard pros. The festival’s Spirit of Silver Lake Award goes to Penelope Spheeris, who will premiere “We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a documentary about the world of heavy-metal music.

“We have no limousines and no corporate sponsors. Most of our filmmakers are more likely to arrive on a motorcycle,” says festival co-director David Ebersole. “We learned a lot from last year. It’s not enough just to program the movies. You learn that you can’t necessarily program a 35-millimeter print next to a VHS video. Last year I ended up running the projection booth for a while. This year we have a technical advisor, so things should run more smoothly.”

But not too smoothly we hope--that’s part of this festival’s charm.