Screen Play

THE AUTEUR THEORY

"Another movie about filmmaking?" I hear you cry. Hang on, this one's different. Instead of focusing on the laborious processes of the industry, Oppenheimer mines the fertile ground of the film festival itself. In this case, that means a variety of filmmaking styles (Super-8, PixelVision) can be called into play to spoof the dreary undergrad technique. Add to this a conniving British documentarian finagling funding from a BBC film board that couldn't care less about his breakthrough project, a spate of dead filmmakers, and a series of red herrings and surreal homages, and the end result is actually pretty damn clever. There are times when it's a bit too clever, in fact, but whether that was an intentional attempt to capture film school's sometimes grating seriousness-of-purpose or a result of working (and working well) within the constraints of a $70K budget is up for grabs. Regardless, The Auteur Theory -- like Christopher Guest's The Big Picture before it -- cleverly focuses on the sacred and reveals the profane. And it's funny, to boot. (Fri, Oct 13, 7:15pm, Arbor; Wed, Oct 18, 7:15pm, Arbor)