Delinquent made its cinematic mark like a band -- by playing lots of gigs in far-flung places:  20 festivals in 10 nations on 4 continents. The World Tour commenced amid cold, catastrophic rains as Director Peter Christian Hall unveiled a 16 mm, work-in-progress version to enthusiastic audiences and critics at the Palms Springs International Film Festival. Variety’s Todd McCarthy judged it “Potent, intelligent…. Marks its director as a name to watch.” Decidedly encouraged, and working closely with Director of Photography Todd Crockett, Hall shot 10 additional close-ups, cut 6 minutes, added more Gang Of Four music, and added the hitherto-unused “fondling” sequence.

"D'you like my lingerie, Tim?" Click for Gang of Four's Showtime, Valentine

Recut Delinquent headed west to John E. Allen’s Northeast Pennsylvania lab, where Allen deftly and swiftly created an exquisite 35 mm internegative. Meanwhile, Bill Ivie, (who mixed Laws Of Gravity), was revitalizing and remixing Delinquent's sound at Manhattan's Parallax Audio Post for completion on Ultra*Stereo at Sound One. After transferring the 35 mm IP to video with John J. Dowdell III at Tape House Editorial, Crockett and Hall celebrated at a screening and reception provided by Planet Hollywood.

Next stop was the mammoth Montreal World Film Festival, where Delinquent sold out its multiplex and sold international rights to Beyond Films Ltd., a global sales company based in Sydney, Australia (a deal negotiated by Delinquent’s attorney and associate producer, Eli M. Kabillio). Montreal was a dream: “A truly independent effort, Delinquent is a haunting and incisive tone poem about teen angst with a Grimm-like fairy-tale aura,” wrote American Cinematographer’s Stephen Pizzello.

Delinquent then flew to Sweden’s Umea International Film Festival, which sent Hall whitewater rafting near the Arctic Circle. While the We Love Timmy Committee denounced Hall in the festival’s daily newsletter for abusing his lead character, Vasterbottens Kuriren’s Malin Dahlberg praised Delinquent as “Unusually cruel and honest for an American film,” and Norrbottens Kuriren’s Rolf Nilsen wrote: “Brilliantly acted by Desmond Devenish, Delinquent’s story moves and pulsates in a deep, imposing way, with lots of raw tension.”

Consecutive trips to Germany brought the movie to the unique, adventurous, world-art oriented Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival (where critic Shoma A. Chatterji hailed Hall's "right touch of suspense and pain, of thrills and tragedy....") and to Wiesbaden’s exground on screen, an extremely lively and intimate international underground convocation. Rudolf Worshech of EPD Film assessed Delinquent at exground as “A fascinating study of pubescent fantasy, fetishism, fear and responsibility.”

New Delhi: The India International Film Festival

Lured by the quality, range, zest, and character of films in the new underground, Hall then re-introduced Delinquent to the motherland at the New York Underground Film Festival, where no one was offended by the movie’s tasteful qualities. Sarah Jacobson (critic and director of Mary Jane's Not A Virgin Anymore) wrote in Film Zone that "Delinquent boasts a realism that most films about teenagers either don’t bother to capture or can’t capture. Tim [Devenish] was totally fantastic….” Next: Italy’s International Mystery Film Festival (Mystfest), where La Repubblica’s Roberto Nipoti cheered: “Buona Peter Hall’s Delinquent, especially for that surprise ending.”
 

Delinquent then drove deep into the heartland to play the Chicago Underground Film Festival, a well-organized, lusty celebration of truly independent filmmaking and filmmakers. Wrote New City’s Ray Pride: “Strong, brooding debut feature, with taut thriller editing, gorgeously punctuated by the crackling sound of Gang Of Four. The grandly nihilist ending haunts.”

Heading further west, Delinquent played to an extremely attentive audience at the One Reel Film Festival in Seattle’s colossal Bumbershoot Arts Festival, then crossed to Portugal’s International Festival de Cine at Figueira da Foz, where Hall won the cash Discovery Prize for Best First-Time Director. A final journey underground, to East Berlin’s young, ambitious Circles of Confusion, seemed to close Delinquent's festival circuit. But just after the film opened theatrically in September, 1997 (see excellent REVIEWS), critic Jeffrey Lyons arranged to screen it at his festival in Breckenridge, CO.  Delinquent ended the year with a series of screenings at Egypt's Cairo International Film Festival, where Hall was attacked by a mob of pretty autograph-seekers at Giza's Great Pyramid (happily, they didn't think he was Steve Buscemi; sadly, it was probably Bon Jovi).

The end, in fact, never came.  In September, 1998, the Bangkok Film Festival's excellent inaugural screened Delinquent.   Early in 1999, Angelika Films presented Delinquent at its weekly New Filmmakers Series at Manhattan's Anthology Film Archives. Delinquent appeared on American video shelves in November 2000.
                                                                To be continued....

A lot of strange, witty, and wonderful people at film festivals around the world work very hard - and play fervently, too - to support genuinely original movies and those who make them. Most are volunteers. Delinquent’s players are deeply grateful to all of them.

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