So, in the end, SNIFF 2003 was a success. A quality series of seven programs. Appearances by several filmmakers, most of whom had good stories to tell. More than 700 tickets sold. Now if we could just get more people interested in attending, SNIFF would be an Inland Northwest gem. As it is, it’s still just a festival with potential.

Anyway, for a listing of this year’s awards, scroll down. For an overall wrap-up of this year’s festival, see Wednesday’s Spokesman-Review (Feb. 5).

For SNIFF 2004, start saving your money now. And if you’re interested, call 624-2615 and talk to the Contemporary Arts Alliance to see what you can do to make sure there even IS a 6th SNIFF.

Marlin Darrah’s “Monsoon Wife,” the final film of SNIFF 2003, is an amazing achievement for a production made by a first-time feature filmmaker, with a $95,000 budget and in a country not accustomed to supporting film crews.

It’s not perfect, what with certain plot points (the doomed friend, the threatened daughter, the dramatic showdown) lacking originality. But the male lead, McGeorge Robinson is a decent actor (and gorgeous besides). And the Southeast Asian countryside is beautiful.

In addition, the theme, that of young girls being forced into prostitution, is compelling, so much so that it would have been easy for Darrah to overpreach. But he holds back and lets the story speak for itself.

Program 5, Sunday’s 1 p.m. feature film, was a mystery titled “Outpatient.” It stars Justin Kirk as Morris, a disturbed guy who, through his novel, works out the fantasies that have tormented him since childhood.

Those same torments, by the way, earned him a stay in a mental facility, where he begins therapy with a young woman doctor (Catherine Kellner). It is through the doctor’s help that Morris begins to see the truth around him.

Kirk is good. (He was, by the way, the blind boyfriend in the 1997 film “Love! Valour! Compassion!”) , but the film has problems. Among them: Seattle writer-director Alec Carlin telegraphs an important character almost from the first (think: bad wig), Morris is too weird to ever attract the attention (much less affection) of a tough “dancer” named Raven (Claudia Mason), and the theme of an abused young boy’s past being played out in flashback has been done to death. Carlin just asks us to accept too much on good faith, and that seldom works with any kind of art

Still, hearing Patsy Cline crooning her hit song “Back In Baby’s Arms” was a nice touch.

Friday
“The Burial Society”: Nicholas Racz’s film tells the story of a little man (Rob LaBelle) who may (or may not) have stolen money from a front business for a money-laundering scheme. The perfect film festival experience - low-budget, largely no-name cast, non-Hollywood feel - it benefits from having an ending that is both satisfying and not at all predictable. And it’s strange, but LaBelle bears a strange resemblance to Roberto Benigni, though clearly a Benigni on Ritalin.

Today
“Celluloid Dreams”: Four directors with unique visions - Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the Brothers Quay, Guy Maddin and David Lynch - talk to Canadian filmmaker James Dunnison about what they do. It’s a fascinating look at the medium of film that, at 47 minutes, could easily have been twice as long.

“Pretty Boys”: This second Dunnison documentary gives a good look at the male side of the modeling industry. It centers on Kelly Kreye, a Canadian “skid” or street kid from Stony Plain, Alberta, who is just one of thousands of young men trying to break into international modeling. Though it feels choppy (Dunnison said it was cut down from two hours), it works whenever the refreshingly honest kid, Kelly, is on screen.

“Waydowntown”: Gary Burns’s film “Kitchen Party” played in the first SNIFF back in 1999. This film is easily the best made of the bunch so far, which shows what a talented director can do with a small ($700,000 Canadian) budget. It’s a dark comedy, which gets a bit far out at times, and its overall view of modern life as an exercise in frustration doesn’t go as nearly deep as it might. But it does play with your mind, and I mean that in a good way.

If you’re a documentary freak, check out the two less-than-hour-long films by James Dunnison that will play 1 p.m. today at The Met. Among other things, “Celluloid Dreams” takes us into the weird mind of director David Lynch. The other, “Pretty Boys,” examines the world of male models. Afterward, you might want to stop off somewhere and have a (trivia reference to follow) a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Friday’s opening night of the 2003 Spokane Northwest International Film Festival, which runs through Sunday at The Met, wasn’t a sellout. But neither did it leave those of us who attended feeling as if we were the only few survivors not yet voted off the island.

Maybe half of the 740-odd seats at The Met were filled. Not bad for a film, Canadian filmmaker Nicholas Racz’s “The Burial Society,” that has as much to do with the Inland Northwest as this Seattle-type weather that we’ve been happening.