By David Fear

BACK IN 1998 , local music promoter and San Francisco Film Society lackey Jeff Ross saw his friend Rand Alexander head up north to show his debut film, Caged, at Slamdance, one of the underground's answers to the cell-phoned feeding frenzies and check-signing melees of that other Park City institution. When Rand returned home after a successful screening there, Ross watched in frustration as his friend failed to find a place to show his film in the Bay Area. So he whipped out a credit card, booked a space for four days, printed up some flyers, and gathered up a few other films that were lacking a distributor, hoping to turn a few dozen people on to some unseen work. Three thousand people showed up.

"I had done event promoting before, having worked the club scene and all, but I wasn't quite prepared for the turnout," Ross says. "I mean, I was just happy it ended up paying for itself." But even then, he says, he was starting to see this as the beginning of a new entity that would continue on year after year – something that would give people access to under-the-radar work that was screening in Los Angeles or Chicago but wasn't getting seen here.

"Plus, I had a bunch of Film Society friends who were out of work between the International festival and Mill Valley's festival. I told them, 'Hey, I can get you guys jobs here!' But hell," he says, laughing, "what did I know? I was just 26!"

The San Francisco Independent Film Festival, colloquially dubbed the "S.F. Indiefest," has not only seen its attendance numbers rise steadily every year. It has also spawned its own offshoots in the form of an annual documentary shindig titled "Docfest" (its slogan: "Reality is fun!") and the Artists' Television Access-cosponsored Digital Underground Festival.

"There's a lot of really good stuff out there that falls in between the cracks of some of your larger, more prestige-oriented festivals and doesn't fulfill the shock quota of the in-your-face underground circuit," says Bruce Fletcher, Indiefest's programming director and self-proclaimed resident Canadian. The distributor-less middle ground between Ed Burns and Richard Kern leaves a large terrain of American cinematic territory to cover, though Ross and Fletcher don't seem to have trouble finding gold in that vast wasteland. This year's roundup finds everything from a minimalist spaghetti western (The Journeyman) to feature documentaries on Ozzy Osbourne, blues chanteuse Mickey Champion, and German noise industrialists Einstürzende Neubauten sitting side by side throughout the 11-day schedule. Brief works from Sarah Polley, Jay Rosenblatt, and Caveh Zahedi fill out the short-film programs, while the addition of international works gives local film addicts two ravenously dizzying glimpses into Japan's new wave: Toyoda Toshiaki's teenage riot Blue Spring and Katsuhito Ishii's genre-defying Party 7. "I just look for movies that I wouldn't feel guilty charging somebody to see," Ross says.

"It's all about a balance in the programming, so there's not too much of one thing," he adds. "Throw a romantic comedy next to a horror film next to a film from Quebec, with the idea being someone adventurous will sit through everything and find something they like. I think the San Francisco audiences really respond to that."

The rather problematic terminology in the festival's name carries its share of baggage. Long before Dockers jumped on the "indie" bandwagon and Miramax's integrity started chafing under its mouse ears, the term "independent film" was shorthand for modestly budgeted movies connected only by a devotion to their maker's vision and their status apart from the mainstream Hollywood studio product. In a world where studios establish boutique "classic" divisions and even Blockbuster Video has an "independent" shelf, the word has become just another brand name to market product. Does the term signify anything anymore?

"Back in '98, when we started out, the concept of the co-opted 'Indiewood' state was only barely coming around the bend," Ross laments, only half-jokingly. "Now, hell, you might as well say it's 'alternative'! I mean, George Lucas thinks he's an independent filmmaker. Someone who shot a $500 feature on his or her D.V. camera might argue that point. Ultimately, I guess, it's like that old saying about modern art: You know it when you see it."

"Any movie that someone feels has to get made, by hook or by crook, minus any investment besides that of the film's creator, and damn the consequences ... that's the mind-set I consider independent," Fletcher adds. "And those films that us 'jaded' folks considered an independent film back in the day, they're still being made by people outside of the mainstream who have something to say. These movies are shuffled around without distribution; some play one festival outside of the U.S., then they're gone. There's still an audience around here that's hungry for something you can't see at the mall."

Don't expect the festival's brain trust to argue about semiotics, however; they seem OK with whatever you call them as long as you show up. "Whatever the state of any 'indie' nation, we're still stuck with the 'independent' title four years later," Ross jokes. "Now that it's been shortened to Indiefest, though, it just trips right off the tongue. Me, I'd rather get rid of the word 'festival' ... I'm sick of that word."