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A still from Gigantic

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When James Marsh and Simon Chinn won the 2009 Oscar for best feature documentary for their film about French tightrope walker Philippe Petit, they had an unlikely but vociferous cheering section at a home in Lenox.

Man on Wire, the film about Petit's daring (and illicit) tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, became a sensation (as far as documentaries go) in 2008, garnering top honors at a laundry list of top festivals and awards ceremonies.

But before it reached juggernaut status, it was the opening night film at the Berkshire International Film Festival.

"I never do Oscar parties," Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) founder and executive director Kelley Vickery said in a telephone interview, "but it felt like we really had to this year. The whole group was just jubilant. ... You feel very loyal to the films that have been at your festival."

(Frozen River, a then-obscure drama that also screened at last year's BIFF, was up for Oscars this year for Courtney Hunt's original screenplay and actress Melissa Leo's lead performance.)

The next morning, Vickery says, Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, called to congratulate her.

When Man on Wire opened the 2008 festival at the Mahaiwe Theatre, he was in the audience. (Ganis in fact has been to BIFF each year, Vickery says, and spoke at last year's special tribute to sort-of local actor Kevin Bacon.)

As it happens, last year's Oscar winter for best documentary feature, Taxi To The Dark Side, screened at BIFF as well.

By mid-May, Great Barrington is still stretching its legs after the end of ski season, gearing up for the summer frenzy just around the corner. It's a town well used to the change in complexion that occurs once the tourist season starts in earnest.

In past years, about an hour before the first film of the festival, parking spots suddenly become unattainable. Through Sunday evening, high-end restaurants, diners and pubs are all packed. Everywhere, groups of pedestrians with various color-coded festival passes dangling around their necks patrol the sidewalks. Items of BIFF-related clothing are seen frequently. And at any given moment, from morning until about midnight, hundreds of people are passing in and out of the lobby of the Triplex Cinema or milling around on the terrace outside.

The Triplex is the epicenter of BIFF, but the Mahaiwe Theatre hosts the opening night film, and playwright Joan Ackerman's theatre space Mixed Company has screened films in past festivals. (This year, the Mason Library will host two free family-friendly films.)

"I'm very skeptical to add too many things, to grow too fast, because I don't want it to fail," Vickery says. "I don't want it to lose somehow how intimate it is. & I'm very careful about the growth of the festival. For me, where it is right now is perfect."

Where it is right now, nevertheless, is a place of growth. This is only the fourth year of the festival. The last two years, the allotment of about 100 festival passes (which this year cost $125 and grant admission to any film) sold out months before the festival lineup was even announced. Vickery says two thousand people have seen films at BIFF, with about half traveling from out of state. There were five hundred films submitted for consideration this year, up from three hundred last year and 150 the year before.

Tickets are available on a film-by-film basis, of course, but seating can sometimes get competitive. Some people are turned away from a few particularly in-demand films each year; in these cases, pass holders do well to heed the warning that they must find their seats fifteen minutes before show time, lest the folks cued up in the rush line snatch them away.

Triplex Cinema manager John Vallente is often captain of the chaos. BIFF employs some operational staff and a coordinator for the dozens of volunteers who make it run, but when metaphorical push comes to shove, the seemingly unflappable Vallente is there in the lobby of his theatre, calmly directing traffic.

"It's pretty much organized mayhem," Vallente says in a telephone interview from the offices of the Triplex, breaking into a laugh. "I try not to flip out. I do that in the corner."

He immediately switches back into serious mode, soberly noting that his chief priority is to keep everything on schedule, and playing the scene off as merely a "more magnified" version of a very busy weekend. He also salutes projectionist Steve Johnson, who is responsible for running down some fifty to seventy films over the course of the weekend.

Vickery claims she lists his job title as "Projection god" on his credentials. It seems appropriate.

Sure, it seems like you can't swing a bottle of chardonnay in the Berkshires without hitting a theatre festival, performance space, or Yo Yo Ma ordering a hot dog at a James Taylor concert. (Okay, that last phenomenon has not necessarily been documented.)

And the Williamstown Film Festival has been an autumn tradition since 1998. But Vickery felt she saw an opening not only in the calendar but in the cultural landscape.

"The first year we did this, people were like, 'Okay, mid-life crisis for Kell, she's doing a film festival," she says with a laugh. "It seemed to me there was more room to celebrate film. It seemed to me like there was more to do."

As she talks, she's just put a chicken in the oven; the length of an interview turns out to be the perfect amount of time to let it roast. (There are three children in the house, aged fifteen, thirteen and eleven, who are much more interested in the outcome of the roasting process than that of the interview.)

Vickery's become a master of multitasking, and necessarily so. She runs the festival prep work from an office in Great Barrington, but her dining room is covered with DVDs, and she frequently squeezes in a screening of a submitted film on the television in her bedroom before going to sleep. (Hopefully not before the end credits.)

Alleged life crisis notwithstanding, BIFF was a huge hit its first year and has grown from there. It went from forty films in 2006 to an anticipated seventy this year, and seems well on its way to becoming a regular fixture in the Berkshires cultural calendar.

Vickery and the festival's advisory committee have a track record for finding quality films on their way toward accruing lots of buzz in the indie film community. BIFF is not an "industry" festival with tons of world premieres and distribution deals being struck in the theatre lobby, but it's a small festival offering a roster of quality films before they fully enter the zeitgeist.

Man Push Cart (2007 Independent Spirits Awards nomination for Best First Feature), In The Shadow of the Moon (2007 Audience Award for Best Documentary at Sundance Film Festival), and War Dance (2008 Oscar nominee for best documentary feature) are among the films that made an early stop at BIFF on their laurel-laden trips around the festival circuit. The opening night film at the inaugural BIFF was the regional premiere of Prairie Home Companion, the film that proved to be director Robert Altman's last.

In addition to the films, question-and-answer sessions with filmmakers and trendy, after-hours parties at Great Barrington restaurants, each year the festival honors a figure in the film industry with ties to the Berkshires; before Bacon last year, previous honorees were director Arthur Penn (Alice's Restaurant, Bonnie and Clyde), and Michael Haley, an assistant director type who's worked on films from The Honeymoon Killers to Groundhog Day. (The identity of the 2009 honoree was not available at press time.)

Selections in the 2009 BIFF include The Glass House, a documentary about young women in Iran; Out of Our Minds, an offbeat short described as a "fantasy" with rock music; The Answer Man, a romantic comedy that will kick off the Bay Area's Sonoma International Film Festival in April; and In the Loop, a satire about the relationship between the American and British governments.

It's all in a weekend's screenings, come BIFF time. Time will tell if any of these films will have big nights at next year's Oscars. But if they do, there will probably be a small party in Lenox whose guests will be monitoring the situation closely.

Full schedule and more info: www.biffma.com