Jay Rosenblatt's Human Remains uses archival footage and a black-comic overdub in a series of brutal sketch-bios of five famous dictators. The narrators, using the despots' own words, ruthlessly mock their subjects' vanity and their bodily obsessions and malfunctions -- Mussolini chiding the "weakness" of women in one breath and saying, "Every Thursday I would get a manicure and a pedicure!" in another; Mao denying he was homosexual but praising his guards for giving him enemas and "groin massages." (One sour note: The director inexcusably fails to credit the great jazz chanteuse Mildred Bailey for the anti-Hitler closing tune.) Another standout is Danielle Renfrew's Dear Dr. Spencer, a model of populist history detailing the work of a small-town doctor who performed tens of thousands of pre-legal abortions for women of every age, race, and class and, most surprisingly, was fiercely protected in his endeavors by the townspeople. Fatimah Tobing Rony's Concrete River has an emotional heft that belies its 12-minute running time. This mood piece transforms the L.A. River into a grim, magical mindscape punctuated by a wailing Indonesian soundtrack.
Liz Hughes' Cat's Cradle deals comically with the always pesky problem of how to dispose of a dead dad. In vivid black-and-white, the irritated kids march the corpse through the town without drawing so much as a stare. Another witty entry is what sounds like an impossible mix, Ed Wood and AIDS, in Don't Run, Johnny. Filmmaker/star Tom E. Brown captures the foolish fun of his sleazy mentor in a deadpan overdub and pompous stock-footage inserts. Hundreds of monkeys raging through the Texas grasslands may sound more like a 1950s horror movie than a 1997 short, but Richard M. Lewis' Snow Monkey Round Up is a lively document of this bizarre true-life tale. Sliding down the food chain a few notches, vermin enthusiasts won't want to miss Jason Shiga's Daggett the Maggot, which gives us five poignant minutes in the life of this much-maligned creature. Daggett might be enlisted as the FAF mascot; he's a lot like the festival -- small but spunky.
-- Gary Morris
The Film Arts Festival runs Wednesday through Sunday, Nov. 5-9. Opening night is at the Castro, 429 Castro (at Market); most other screenings are at the Roxie, 3117 16th St. (at Valencia). Tickets for most shows are $7. For details or to order tickets by phone call 552-3456.
