The Best Of The Fests: 1988; The Best Of The Fests: 1989; The Best Of The Fests: 1990

30 for the price of 1 is a deal you'll rarely hear, but this three-tape collection highlighting award-winning independent short subjects offers just that. Averaging 10 titles per tape, each program offers 90 minutes of the weird, wacky, and wonderful world of independent filmmaking. The "1988"volume includes Dennis Pies' Sky Heart, a beautiful pastel, pencil, and airbrush vision; Richard Mortillano's superb documentary The Mother Art, which chronicles the history of tattooing; Rose Bond's lovely Cerridwen's Gift, a Celtic myth about the birth of poetry, drawn and painted directly on film; Tom Finerty's Trust Me, a special-effects laden parable about the future, William Mitchell's breathtaking Zebu, a short film using time-lapse photography to reveal nature in a startlingly new way, and 4 others. The "1989"volume has Susan Emshwiller's hilarious Breakfast Messages, a comedy about a short-order cook at a truck stop who tries to woo a customer through the arrangement of her breakfast on the plate; Suelto!, Chris Emmanouilides' and Rebecca Taggart's fascinating documentary on the bull runs at Pamplona; John Adamcyzk's Recurrents, a visual feast using the Mandelbrot Set; Ann Marie Fleming's You Take Care Now, a powerful and disturbing story of a woman who is raped and has a car accident "both in one life," and 6 others. The "1990"tape contains Ethan Coen Sitt's outrageously funny Dr. Ded Bug, a black comedy about a to-the-death battle between a chef and a cockroach; Barry Kimm's The Measurements of Oxford, a charming short about Iowans measuring their little town; Charles Wiener's Rumba, a hilarious short which interviews rumba aficionados, Tom Brozovich's No Pain No Gain, an excellent satire in which a bodybuilding instructor guides a student through a weights workout: mentioning what long term ill effects each exercise will produce; and 7 others. While different shorts will appeal to different folks, the overall quality of the compilations is first-rate. Together with Best of the Fests for Kids (see under "Children's"), these three tapes will form the cornerstone for a public library's short subject collection. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (See BEST OF THE FESTS FOR KIDS for availability.)