Planet Ant fest supports local filmmakers

June 6, 2003

BY JOHN MONAGHAN - FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

When Hamtramck's tiny Planet Ant turned from coffeehouse to performance space seven years ago, the impetus was to make and screen a feature film there.

Planet Ant's first film project was 2000's "Garage: A Rock Saga," directed by Planet Ant executive producer Hal Soper. But while "Garage" has been one of the highlights in Planet Ant's performance schedule, mostly made up of live theater and comedy, its makers still felt disconnected from the local filmmaking community. For Soper, that was as good a reason as any to mount a film festival.

"I was meeting filmmakers who are making amazing films but frustrated that they don't have a professional space to show them in," Soper says. "This is a chance for these films to see the light."

The resulting collection of 13 shorts and features makes up the first Planet Ant Film Festival. Some shot on 16mm, some on video, the films will be screened through digital projection, not in Planet Ant's 50-seat space on Caniff, but in Detroit's Hastings Street Ballroom, which has three times the seating and a larger reception area in the lobby. This is the local premiere for many of the films, and a number of the screenings will include appearances by the filmmakers.

The hour-long "Iwo Jima Diary" (8:55 p.m.), which played at the East Lansing Film Festival this spring, is based on the World War II experiences of Edward (Mort) Denell, grandfather of the film's producer, Tom Coulter. Denell kept a detailed journal during the war, and 50 years later he read it over again and began creating cartoon drawings to make his memories even more vivid. Their inclusion gives the movie an edge over the usual talking-heads and stock-footage documentaries shown practically round-the-clock on the History Channel.

Other films on the schedule include the office comedy "Dan Jones' Career is Over" (6:45 p.m.); Matt Cantu's half-hour documentary about an eccentric self-taught Redford sculptor; "Silvio: A Story About Art and Pizza" (8:25 p.m.); and the intriguingly titled shorts "The Last Condom" (6:20), "25 Ways to Die" (10:15) and "Kamikaze Squirrel" (10:35).

Viewers will likely float in and out, but expect the largest crowd for the premiere of Anthony Garth's "Black Math" (8:18 p.m.), the new White Stripes video filmed at the Masonic Temple in April. What makes this different from the usual live performance video, Garth says, is that he bled all the color out of the film except the reds, in keeping with the red-and-white color scheme that has become the band's visual trademark.

Organizers say the Planet Ant Film Festival will fill the gap left by the Metropolitan Film Festival, a showcase for locally produced films throughout the 1990s.

"Planet Ant has a good idea," says "Black Math" editor Mike Nelson. "They're starting small and allowing it to build an audience."