I DON'T KNOW if this is true elsewhere, but this festival seems to afford a certain loyalty, not only to independent filmmakers but to local filmmakers and to films shot in and around town.

"Our first few years we were really about Northern California films, so how can we not give them a particular place in our hearts?" Elton asks. "We want to show them in the context of the world." But Fishkin is quick to add, "They're not given priority. They have to meet our criteria. But keep in mind what we have in the Bay Area is a strong center, a focal point, for independent filmmaking. It's not surprising a lot of films come from here."

The Old Guard is well represented by Marin's John Korty and the East Bay's Rob Nilsson, who went to Tam High, by the way. They'll probably hammer me for putting this in print, but together they have pretty close to 100 years of filmmaking experience. Their two entries ought to be required viewing before any aspiring filmmaker is allowed to breathe near a camera: One takes a subject that sounds like an alternative to Valium and transforms it into something completely captivating; the other simply mesmerizes with a cast of two in a single room.

Best known for Crazy Quilt, Farewell to Manzanar and his Oscar-winning Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get 19 Kids?, Korty exercised a long hiatus from general audience filmmaking before bringing in his latest, Miracle in a Box: A Piano Reborn (Oct. 10, 3pm and Oct. 17, 2:30pm), which he says "on the surface is about restoring grand pianos but really is about people who work extremely well together...and truly care about the quality of what they do." Asked what hopes he has for such an esoteric subject, Korty quips, "Oh, just the usual--that people will leave the screening in a beatific state and their lives will be changed forever."

Meanwhile, Berkeley director Nilsson--the first American to win both the Camera d'Or at Cannes and the Grand Prize at Sundance and whose latest films are as much an annual certainty as the festival itself—--presents the world premiere of Imbued (Oct. 10, 9pm and Oct. 11, 9pm) with Stacy Keach as a gambler holed up for a night in a friend's half-finished high-rise condo. When a call girl rings the wrong doorbell, no elevator can rescue one from the other. Clever, articulate and scholarly, Nilsson will also be in his element in a free-wheeling conversation on stage with character actor Seymour Cassel (Oct. 14, 8pm). Both bleed the grand vizier of independent film, the late John Cassavetes. Cassel's first role was in Cassavetes' Shadows, the film that Nilsson credits as his wake-up call to cinema. You can toss questions at 'em from your seat.

Korty and Nilsson are just kids compared to Poland's Andrzej Wajda, who is still making movies at 83. With last year's riveting Katyn, it's safe to say he is aging like fine wine. In this turn, his Sweet Rush (Oct. 16, 4pm) centers on a lonely wife who begins a relationship with a young laborer while trying to overcome the loss of two sons. Actress Krystyna Janda drew on her own grief over the recent loss of someone she loved for a highly emotional performance.

Not only does Oakland writer/director Niall McKay's emotion-charged and deeply personal documentary The Bass Player (Oct. 9, 9pm and Oct. 11, 7:30pm) center on his jazz musician father raising two sons alone in Dublin, it begins with his mother's suicide. "My mother would have been a natural protagonist," McKay says. "But sometimes it's the film that seems to make the filmmaker. Time and time again I would have quit this if I felt I had a choice. After my mother's death I left California for Switzerland to rescue my Dad and bring him back to Ireland. However, life intervened, as it often does, and it was I that was rescued. From the outset, I had no intention of including myself in the film but, as time went on, I had no choice. After all, what's a father-and-son story without a son?"

Now this may not exactly catch you by surprise, but fractured families are in like never before. In addition to The Bass Player, single parents are the heroes, heroines, protagonists, antagonists and/or driving force behind nearly a dozen entries, including both Opening Night films, one Closing Night film (Looking for Eric), plus Fish Tank, The Eclipse, Hellsinki, The Swimsuit Issue, Original, Ricky and Jermal.

British director Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank (Oct. 10, 8:30pm and Oct. 13, 9pm) offers a fresh and abrasive in-your-face dissection of working class Britain, of a teenage wannabe in a dysfunctional home with her young single mom that sinks deeper into competitive sexuality, betrayal and revenge when mom brings home a new guy. Arnold won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2006 with her first film Red Road. Won it again this year with this, her second film. Whoa! Has anyone ever done that before?

On Closing Night, director Ken Loach will give you an up-close-and-personal shot of a single parent's life that couldn't be more of a mess if you put a match to it. Steve Evets plays a pathetic s.o.b. as well as anyone ever has in Looking for Eric (Oct. 18, 5:15pm). His slovenly stepkids sleep, eat, watch TV, don't work, walk all over him, and hang--naively--with the underworld. He still pines away for a love lost decades ago. There's a cement mixer in his front yard. And only imaginary conversations with international soccer hero Eric Cantona keep him from diving into an empty pool.

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