On Thursday, February 13, when we present the pre-release screening of Gerry, the new film by Gus Van Sant, with the director in person, we will already know something about this film that took the Sundance Festival by storm. Gerry, starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, may be set in the middle of nowhere-the desert is the third character in this open-air chamber piece-but it did not come out of nowhere, as our four-day tribute to Van Sant will show. Van Sant's rarely screened short films and first feature Mala Noche set the tone for the films that made him famous, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho-poetic, risk-taking films about dreamy, risk-taking youth on the so-called fringe (gay love, drug love, and the ever-stimulating and draining hustle). As a visual and narrative stylist, the Portland-based Van Sant has been called the most European of American filmmakers, and Gerry confirms this assessment. He counts among his influences the Hungarian director Béla Tarr and the Belgian Chantal Akerman, names not likely to be sprinkled over the cornflakes in breakfast-table conversation (unless you frequent PFA). But if Van Sant's films are not about American cinema, they are very much about America. He's our own private auteur.
Judy Bloch
