The little festival that could is still alive and thriving. Is it time to grow up? Someday, but not now.

April 22, 2007

The Independent Film Festival of Boston turns five on Wednesday, and that's reason to celebrate. The youth-centric programming (many of the filmmakers' careers are younger than the festival itself) is strong, but also not perfect -- there are some naive works, others that are smugly self-aware, and some that pander to the hipsters and self-styled nerds in the theater lobbies. But what the festival's roster might lack in formal ambition, wisdom, and geographical scope, it makes up for in energy, wit, and ideas. This is an exciting six days.

The theme for this year is old-school fun. There's a View-Master on the festival's website and Connect Four on one of the posters, with a tagline that asks, "Can Boston come out and play?" The joke being that IFFB is a bracing, guerilla-ish rebuke of the mirthless self-importance of the city's other film festivals. Some of the movies here simply aren't Connect Four material, however. Instead, they're serious and provocative achievements. Will the festival and its taste mature as its talent does? Or will it become something curiously ageless: Ryan Seacrest today, Dick Clark tomorrow? One day the IFFB will have to grow up, as it has with a few of this year's entries.

In the meantime, it's worth remembering that the festival is only five. If it wants to play with Boston, Boston should certainly come out and play with it.

Following are highlights from this year's program.

-- Wesley Morris