The thinking person’s film fest

Plot twists set in motion by the viewer’s brainwaves? Neurocinema? MRIs that can trace an actor’s empathy?

If this weekend’s 7^th Annual Topanga Film Festival doesn’t sound like your ordinary day at the movies, it’s not just because Topanga Canyon is known for doing things differently.

The film festival, which opens Thursday, will bring big names to rustic settings, as always. Event director and co-founder Urs Baur says, in fact, that this year is the biggest ever, with about 50 films that will be shown over four days, including short film and feature documentary competitions judged by such respected names as director Randall Einhorn and actors William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman and Elijah Wood.

But it will also carry a theme you don’t see at every film festival: neuroscience. The backstory? “It all started when I lost my job,” says volunteer communications director L.G. Taylor:

A 30-year-old novelist and actress, Taylor says she had been earning her paycheck at an acting studio until the recession forced them to lay her off.  When a friend steered her to a temp agency, she hoped for a studio gig, hoping it might bring her big break into show business.  Instead, she was sent to the Institute of Neurosurgical Innovation, a research foundation started by Dr. Amir Vokshoor, a Westside neurosurgeon, after Alzheimer’s Disease claimed his father’s life.

For the next six weeks, Taylor says, she was immersed in brain research, a field that, she discovered, has increasingly been applied to film marketing.

“When the position ended, I had this passion,” she remembers. “But I was left with ‘Now what?’”

Fortunately, she says, the festival was approaching. A suggestion that the organization include a single panel discussion on creativity and neuroscience morphed into a decision to build this year’s event around the intersection of art and the brain.

“This is really an interesting time in the movie industry,” says Baur, a Topanga local who works as a branding consultant when he’s not organizing the festival or running its new year-round presence, the Topanga Film Institute.

“Content creation is changing, business models are changing. Hollywood has begun employing neuromarketing in its advertising. It’s no longer enough to ask what you think about a movie. It’s become more interesting for Hollywood to measure what you feel.”

This year’s event will feature a new, cutting-edge screening in which special headsets will let viewers determine the plot of a film by the state of their brain waves. Panels on filmmaking and creativity will feature not only Hollywood A-listers, but also a surprisingly renowned cross-section of scientific rock stars.

One panel on directing will include California Institute of Technology’s Steven Quartz, whose groundbreaking brain research is helping to shape the next generation of movie trailers. Another session, on acting, will feature both Oscar-winner Melissa Leo and Jonas Kaplan of USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, whose research uses functional MRIs to search for the roots of empathy and self-awareness.

“It’s pretty revolutionary,” says Vokshoor of the Institute for Neurosurgical Innovation, who will also participate as a panelist. “We’re in a period right now where we are really speaking collaboratively across various disciplines.”

Vokshoor says his Institute focuses on such collaborative research because “from quantum mechanics and basic neuroscience to metaphysics, religion and the creative arts, we’re all trying to answer some of the same kinds of questions.”

“If I were to name one great life goal for neuroscience research, it would probably be: Where is the molecule for consciousness, for inspiration, located?” says Vokshoor. “I’m not sure we’ll find the answers, but these kinds of collaborations are exciting, because they say, ‘There’s something here.’”

The Topanga Film Festival runs from July 28-31. For tickets and more information, click here.

Posted 7/28/11