This year's director is New York-based Phyllis Kaufman, who has been involved with the Festival in an advisory capacity since its inception. Kaufman's changes to the structure of the Festival relate more to logistics than programming. Nevertheless, this year' s program appears to be less ambitious than that of recent years. As is true of most other festivals, an effort is made to bring in as many film makers as possible to share the experience of having their film screened. It's also worth noting that many of the better films are screened early in the festival.
Movies shown during the second weekend have the feeling of being leftovers.
One of this year's Festival highlights is a spotlight on the production company of Good Machine. Founded in 1991 by James Schamus and Ted Hope, Good Machine has been instrumental in bringing a variety of independent features to the screen, including The Ice Storm , Eat Drink Man Woman , Safe , Simple Men, The Brothers McMullen , and The Myth of Fingerprints . Both Hope and Schamus will be on hand during the Festival's first weekend. The first is an uninterrupted theatrical screening of a new 35 mm print of the film. The first movies to receive this treatment were Citizen Kane , Notorious , and The Third Man .