The first movie we watched on the first full day of the film festival was Mundane History from Thailand, directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong:

Mundane History

Ake, a young man recently paralyzed from the waist down, sits sullenly in bed all day long in his family’s declining mansion, refusing even the little pleasures available to him. His mysterious and stern father Thanin hires a male nurse, Pun, to care for Ake and keep him company. But a jaded Ake rebukes and ignores Pun’s quietly good-natured attempts to cheer him up, challenging Pun to find new ways to distract his patient. When the thaw finally comes, secrets and changes emerge – both personal and cosmic.

—from the Film Festival Guide

The film community in Thailand was a completely unknown entity to me until we saw Syndromes and a Century in 2007. I enjoyed Syndromes and a Century a lot, and I had the feeling I might like Mundane History as well.

Both films shared some similarities in their quiet, meditative pace and non-linearity. And the way Syndromes and a Century was previously described as “a stream of haunting sci-fi imagery worthy of Kubrick’s 2001″ could actually apply more to a few moments in Mundane History. But that’s were the similarities end.

A few minutes into the movie the screen went black and presented something that looked like end credits. I was puzzled and amused that several people left the theater in this very moment. Did they really think they bought a ticket for a 20 minute short? Maybe they just filled some time while waiting for another screening. Later the film burned and caused a few minutes interruption. I was very surprised. After all it was the first movie on the first day of the festival.

But the movie presented a few surprises as well. Most notably the music which reminded me a bit of post-rock bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Explosions in the Sky. Responsible for the music in this movie were Malaysian band Furniture and the Thai group Photo Sticker Machine which are worth a closer listen.

Another surprising moment was a scene featuring masturbation and full-frontal male nudity. I thought this might have upset the American MPAA judges who are known to appreciate violence but make a fuss about scenes with male-nudity or masturbation. I still remember Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut years ago, when certain scenes had to be blacked out for a non X-rating. These scenes turned out to be not as all as scandalous as they made you believe. I was wondering how would Thailand treat such an unusually graphic scene? When I looked up some information I found that this scene indeed caused it to become the first Thai film under Thailand’s motion-picture rating system to be given the most-restrictive 20+ rating. Be sure to bring your ID if you want to see this film in Thailand.

In contrasting moments of silence, weariness, frustration and anger, bitterness and disappointments, dreams and hopes this film also made some comments about Thailand’s class society. Mundane History surprised again later with the psychedelic cg-animated exploding star and the Cesarean birth of the child, a graphic scene during which made a point by showing how the umbilical cord was cut twice. Perhaps symbolizing the separation from the mother followed by a separation from father, class, expectencies?

I don’t want to attempt to analyze and over-interpret these scenes, but I couldn’t help to think of 2001 — A Space Odyssey when they hit the screen. No doubt, Mundane History was totally unrelated to Kubrick’s movie, but these two scenes were so unexpected and felt so out of place, I had to wonder if this could have also been a nod to one of the most remarkable movies in history of cinema. This was probably nothing but a coincidence…

Too bad there was no Q&A afterwards. I’d have been curious to hear more about this film.

Beijing Taxi

After a short break we entered our second screening of the day with Beijing Taxi, a documentary by Miao Wang about…

Three Beijing taxi drivers – two male, one female – prepare for an explosion of international customers in the days leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympics. Fifty-something Bai Jiwen came of age during the Cultural Revolution, and faces some harsh realities with hardened humor; Thirty-something Zhou Yi, remains optimistically grounded in his traditional lifestyle; while thirty-something mother Wei Caixia is a financially-minded go-getter driven on finding a more comfortable life.

—from the Film Festival Guide

This synopsis interested me. I had the feeling I would see a different, more realistic view of China’s people and culture that transcends the stereotypes the media generally seems to be most attracted to. When I read that it was co-shot by Sean Price Williams, who already caught my eye last year with Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo and in 2007 with Frownland, I had to put this film on my must-see list.

Beijing Taxi absolutely met my expectations, even exceeded them. It not only presented a character study of three individuals with their dreams, hopes and daily lives, but also details of Beijing I haven’t known or heard of before. In old Beijing, one of the taxi drivers explained, people didn’t need to be ambitious. The new and changing Beijing with the generation born in the 80s is very different and driven in comparison. I also didn’t know that to control traffic on Beijing’s roads they only permitted even license plate numbers on some days, and only odd numbers on other days.

The music in Beijing Taxi was remarkable, too! Beijing artists and bands like Sand, Zhou Yunpeng, Sound Fragment or Miserable Faith deliver music I would have never heard without this film. I may not understand the lyrics, but I love the sound and mood of Together by Sound Fragment. Sand’s Consumer’s Song is great, too. A few tracks can be found on the movie website at www.beijingtaxithefilm.com. The site also has a playlist of the beautiful score by Stephen Ulrich and Itamar Ziegler. Beijing Taxi was one of my highlights at the festival this year.

Dogtooth

Father (Christos Stergioglou) lives with his wife and children on an estate not far from the big city. He’s raised three teenagers in a gated community of sorts – except that the community contains only his house, and his children have never travelled further than their own backyard. Despite having no friends, no knowledge of telephones or computers, and a limited understanding of television and radio, some “tainted” words pertaining to sex, violence, and travel do somehow enter their vocabulary. Thus, they’re told that “telephones” are salt shakers, that “the sea” is their living-room armchair, that the cat that scampers into their yard is a rare and dangerous beast, and that the airplanes they see in the sky are no larger than toys – leaving the teens to play (and live) in the distorted world Father’s lies create.

Far from understanding that they’re prisoners of a sort, the children believe Father when he tells them that they, like him, will someday experience the outside world – as soon as their third set of teeth comes in.

This unsettling vision offers a riveting hybrid of dark comedy and psychological thriller as it explores language and morals, and probes the point at which unconventional parenting crosses over into social experiment or even abuse. Dogtooth won the Prize Un Certain Regard at Cannes, played Toronto and New Directors/New Films, and, in the humble opinion of this programmer, stands as one of the great accomplishments in recent world cinema. (Eric Allen Hatch)

—from the Film Festival Guide

Doogtooth. Wow… I don’t think I have ever seen a movie from Greece, and this debut has definitely left a lasting impression. It created memories I will not easily forget. It was probably the biggest surprise of this festival, too. This movie wasn’t what I expected after reading some comments and watching a clip. I expected a dark comedy… and what I saw was dark, yes, but not a comedy in my opinion.

There were scenes that would have been somewhat amusing in a different context and a different movie. In Dogtooth’s context, however, I quickly lost any desire to laugh about what presented itself on the screen. And I don’t mean it in a negative way. Not in the slightest!

Dogtooth was a true masterpiece in how effectively it managed to establish an uncomfortable, disturbing and nightmarish microcosm of years of psychological abuse. It took what could perhaps be called parenting to new and perverse extremes. But if you step back and take a look behind the atrocities taking place in this family, you might find some analogies to the real world.

Dogtooth

We grow up with truths and imprints provided by our parents and closed family unit. These truths don’t necessarily match with other families’ truths. If we expand our social circles and look at what’s happening in other families, a class room, office, or in the society, culture, religion, country as a whole… these truths or half-truths are often biased, and may not represent the ultimate reality we believe or trust it to be.

The more closed the borders of this social unit are, the more likely are these alleged truths further away from reality than its members might realize. It’s easy to find examples in closed neighborhood communities, prisons, religious cults, East Germany when it was still separated, or dictatorships throughout history. But even in the open enlightened world most of us live in nowadays, the truths presented to us, for example through the media (tabloid or serious), are often just a very distorted image of reality.

Truths need to be shared and transported very carefully, with reason, especially to children who have to rely on their parents and authority figures in their lives. What took place in Dogtooth, even though it appeared very extreme and out of this world, could really take place somewhere, sometime, more easily than one might expect.

Dogtooth reminded me a bit of Michael Haneke. I didn’t think it was a dark comedy. Dark comedies, in my opinion, present terrible and horrific events or actions in a humorous manner. I would count films like American Psycho, Heathers, Secretary, Very Bad Things, After Hours or Fight Club to the genre of dark comedies, but not Dogtooth. I was surprised to hear people in the audience laugh. But yes, maybe it was just their way to cope with the horror that unfolded in front of their eyes.

Dogtooth was really excellent and extraordinary, definitely one of my favorites this year. But would I recommend anyone to go see it? I don’t know — I always hesitate to recommend very disturbing movies even if I appreciated them personally. This doesn’t happen very often, I think the only other movie I felt a similar hesitation about was Lars von Trier’s Antichrist a year or so ago. Maybe I don’t want to anger my friends with uncomfortable or traumatic movie experiences :) However, if you are ready and willing to take a challenge, I’m sure Dogtooth will give it to you, make you think long after you’ve left the theater, and provide you with a memory for life.

Funny People Shorts

There are not many opportunities to see short films, especially not on the big screen. But you can’t watch them on television or rent them on DVD either. The film festival provides some great and rare opportunities to discover some mini masterpieces. Several short film programs looked really interesting to me this year, especially Dark Comedy Shorts. I would love to see Daniel Martinico’s Bike Thief! And The Armoire by Jamie Travis’ whose Saddest Boy in the World was one of the short film highlights a few years ago. But, I didn’t manage to fit it into our schedule.

What I did manage to fit in were the Funny People Shorts which seemed like a nice way to ease the weight of some of the other screenings we attended and would attend later. Funny people could be found in…

Good People

On her way to work one morning, Amy comes across a suicide note. She doesn’t know who wrote it, or where they are, but she is convinced she needs to take action. The problem is that she only has until 5 o’clock to find the person who wrote it, and help them to do what’s right…

—from the Film Festival Guide

Haha… a few weeks have past now after the film festival, but I remember how much I enjoyed Alex LeMay’s short. Completed early 2009 it’s not the newest film anymore, but it was great to have it in the series. The conclusion was great, and quite surprising (to me at least) :)

Planet Sun

Over-tanned and distracted employees of a strip-mall tanning salon ignore and insult customers as they obsesses over themselves and their boyfriends in this comedic short, which had its world premiere at Slamdance 2010.

—from the Film Festival Guide

What I still remember best about Matthew Atkinson’s short is Jim Annan whose name I didn’t know before, but his face that looks a lot like somebody’s face I know. Every time I saw him on the Verizon commercials I had to ask Alice “Isn’t that Tim?” It’s an old face recognition game I’ve been playing for years. And there I spotted him in Planet Sun. I looked him up later, and there: I was right! It really is the guy from the commercials. However, it also proves that Jim and Tim are not the same person or even related :)

Poi Dogs

Poi Dogs is the story of two local Hawaii teenagers and their awkward attempts at expressing a budding romantic interest in each other. Toa, a tough-acting lineman on a crappy high school football team, has just lost the big game. Distraught and alone, he drives home on his old ramshackle moped, which breaks down in the shadow of an abandoned sugar mill. Enter Anela, the tough-acting tuba player on his team’s marching band.

—from the Film Festival Guide

Joel Moffett’s short was sweet and amusing. I especially appreciated the moped. The background scenery reminded me of an area I pass through on one of my bicycle routes.

Gayby

Jenn and Matt are best friends from college who are now in their 30s. Lately, their relationship has dwindled to the occasional social-networking exchange. In an effort to ‘reconnect,’ they decide to have a baby together, taking the easiest, cheapest route of just having sex—even though Matt is gay and Jenn is straight. From the award-winning director of Woman in Burka (MFF 2008). Warning: this film contains an incredibly awkward sex scene.

—from the Film Festival Guide

Gayby with Jenn Harris and Matthew Wilkas

Absolutely brilliant and funny! I loved it. This 12 minute short by Jonathan Lisecki was my favorite in this short program. The title alone was great, but the interaction between the stars was priceless.

We also saw Trevor Cohen’s

Public Access

A satirical short about a dysfunctional suburban couple whose problems are falsely resolved by watching a talk show on public-access television. When the show is cancelled, the couple is forced to take matters into their own hands.

—from the Film Festival Guide

and James Johnston’s

Receive Bacon

The charming tale of a raunchy bathroom tryst interrupted by an unfortunate case of the giggles. From James Johnston, the director of the short Merrily, Merrily (MFF 2008) and producer of the feature St. Nick (MFF 2009).

—from the Film Festival Guide

Both were funny, and I enjoyed them both, but I can’t think of anything meaningful to say about them. So I will just leave it there. :)

The last screening of the day was

Daddy Longlegs

Thirty-something film projectionist Lenny (Ronald Bronstein) lives in a studio apartment in New York City, jumping from adventure to adventure and, when possible, from bed to bed. His love of spontaneity and loathing of structure collide with his responsibilities as father to two precocious children, 9-year-old Sage (Sage Ranaldo) and 7-year-old Frey (Frey Ranaldo), who he cares for just a few weeks out of the year. While his freewheeling ways and vivid imagination often delight Sage and Frey, it also makes their stays with Lenny frantic and chaotic, filled with impromptu babysitters, unexpected daytrips, and bizarre encounters on the streets. When one of Lenny’s hasty solutions to a scheduling conflict at work leads to high drama, Lenny and the people around him are forced to take a hard look at his parenting skills and the blurry line between childhood and adulthood.

This is the Safdie Brothers’ singularly offbeat ode to their own father and childhoods, concentrating on the emotional truth found in their memories rather than factual autobiography. As with Frownland (MFF 2007, directed by Daddy Longlegs star Bronstein), Daddy Longlegs seems to exist simultaneously in the present day and the New York Cities of the 70s and 80s. The instinctive connections their lens makes to the last 40 years of their city’s cinematic history – from the underground to big names like Cassavetes, Jarmusch, and Ferrara (who also appears) – help the film stake its own major place in that still-unfolding timeline. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, and never predictable, it all culminates in a stunner of a closing shot, one of the most resonant in recent memory. (Eric Allen Hatch)

—from the Film Festival Guide

I hadn’t read much about Daddy Longlegs before we went to see it, so I was quite unprepared and didn’t know what I was about to see. I have to admit, it took nothing more than reading about Frownland director Ronald Bronstein’s acting debut in Daddy Longlegs to spark my interest.

Frownland a few years ago was one of the most memorable favorites at the Maryland Film Festival. And although he didn’t direct Daddy Longlegs, I had the feeling I was going to watch something special, personal and real, a film you would only find once in a few years. I compared Ronald Bronstein to one of my master filmmakers once in one of my posts and I still think he is member of a new generation of filmmakers who could add a lot of timeless brilliance and depth to cinema as an art-form, and produce movies that will find new fans even decades later when many of today’s major or independent productions are long forgotten.

I haven’t been familiar with Josh and Benny Safdie before, but I was curious to find out if they, too, created something that would speak to my taste in filmmaking. And after watching Daddy Longlegs I have found the answer. Their movie was a total success, brilliant from beginning to end!

In Daddy Longlegs I watched and followed Lenny who had his children with him for one of the brief periods in a year, as he slips further and further down the spiral of stress and chaos. I was wondering how much further he could let it go on like this without taking control and responsibility for once. A grown-up child trying to take care of children who were more grown-up than he was. For a good while it was easy to forgive him for his irresponsibility, take his side and defend him when mother and teacher of the kids give him a hard time, but eventually he takes it one step too far and it doesn’t seem so easily forgivable anymore.

Funny that John Cassavetes was mentioned in the film festival guide above. During the festival and shortly afterward I was introduced to his movies with Faces and Husbands both of which he created in the style of cinéma vérité. I love the style and perspective both of these films presented to me, and that’s what I really loved about Daddy Longlegs, too. Other movies in the mumblecore genre have this in common as well.

Daddy Longlegs surprised me with an appearance of Abel Ferrara and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. The two boys in the movie are actually Lee Ranaldo’s kids Sage and Frey Ranaldo.

I couldn’t conclude it any better than this reviewer on IMDB:

It’s autobiographical, yet collaborative and imaginative. It’s improvisational, yet very well planned. It’s appalling, yet also appealing — a film that sticks in the craw but also lingers in the mind and the heart. It signals the arrival of yet another team of film-making brothers whom we need to watch.

—Chris Knipp

That’s so true, I couldn’t agree more. I absolutely loved this film and know I will be watching it again sometime. One of my favorites this year. Congratulations Josh, Benny, Ronnie, and everybody involved in making this movie. With Daddy Longlegs you have created a masterpiece. Oh, and the best opening scene I have seen in a long time! I’d love to insert a clip of it here :)

I wonder why its title is listed as “Go Get Some Rosemary” on IMDB. Legal issues?

From left to right: Josh Safdie, Ronnie Bronstein, and Programming Administrator Scott Braid

This was the end of our amazing movie-trip on Friday of the MD Film Festival. It took me forever to write this, but I hope I will find some time to write a bit about Saturday and Sunday very soon!

The Charles Theater

During this year’s film festival I once again realized how much I love the Charles Theater and the Maryland Film Festival. I always appreciated classic, independent or international movies and documentaries and was eager to see them on the big screen, but when I grew up I didn’t have easy access to them. My hometown in Germany used to have a hand full of screens for the big mainstream releases, and everything used to be dubbed in German, so if I wanted to see something the way it was intended I had to import videos from other countries, and make sure my vhs-player was able to handle the foreign video-formats. In those days it would have taken years to download a video. Occasionally I could tune to arte, a French/German tv-channel that sometimes presented movies with subtitles and original audio tracks. This channel helped me discover a number of interesting and unusual movies, but I also imported many of my favorite movies and directors from the UK, Belgium, Canada, and the US.

When we attended the Maryland Film Festival for the first time in 2002 I knew what a priceless treasure we had found with the Charles Theater — not only during the film festival, but also all year long. Where else would you ever get an opportunity to watch a dozen Ingmar Bergman movies on the big screen? Where else could an event like the film festival take place if not at the Charles?

Last week I thought to myself: “What if the Charles had to close one day?” Would there be a film festival? Would there be any alternatives? Other theaters, like the historical, famous and celebrated Senator had to struggle for many years. I can only hope the Charles will continue to do well. Baltimore would become a film desert without it. Or even worse, it would be the death of the city. It is really important to support this theater. If you are slightly interested in good movies, I recommend to check their schedule on a weekly basis. Some movies are only there for a week, so be sure not to miss them! But enough of my shameless blatant advertising insert.

Preparations

Eight years ago we attended the festival for the first time, six years ago we joined the Friends of the Festival sponsor program, three years ago we decided to attend the festival with All Access passes rather than buying so many single tickets. This year we increased the number of movies we were going to watch on a single day from previously three or four to a lot of five per day! We also broke with some of our old traditions and decided not to watch the classic 3D movie, the silent movie with live music, and the annual selection by John Waters. We also skipped the closing night this year in favor of Mother’s Day and a mother’s pleasure to have dinner with us and the rest of the family.

We kept the Opening Night of course, but on the other days we decided to focus on the amazing selection of new and international films in this year’s line-up. It was quite difficult for us again to come up with a weekend schedule. But I think we are getting used to it, facing the same problem every year. I just added the movies we were not able to see to our Netflix queue. Hopefully they will get released one day so we can catch up with them later.

So this year we were going to see:

• Opening Night Shorts at MICA
• Mundane History
• Beijing Taxi
• Dogtooth
• Funny People Shorts
• Daddy Longlegs
• Mama
• Faces
• And Everything is Going Fine
• Liverpool
• Until the Light Takes Us
• General Orders No. 9, and
• Earthling

I will write a little bit about them in this and my following blog posts.

The Opening Night

Jed Dietz opened the 12^th Annual Maryland Film Festival a few weeks ago on Thursday, May 6 at the MICA Brown Center with a series of seven short films all of which I enjoyed. I don’t remember the exact order in which these shorts were presented, but one of the first films was Bikini Lighters by Andrew Blackwell and Andrew Goldman. It was about a few kids who shoplifted a bag full of cigarette lighters to create an explosion in the woods.

We also saw Junko’s Shamisen by Sol Friedman which stood out as one of my favorite shorts that evening. A young girl in old Japan returns to her grandfather and finds him murdered. When she leaves to find another place to live she encounters the evil samurai who killed her grandfather. This film was a hybrid of live-action, cell, stop-motion and computer animation. Stylish, visually attractive, funny and dark… I can imagine watching a full feature created in a similar fashion. Thinking of hybrids…imagine Sol Friedman had added some of his creative magic to A Scanner Darkly a few years ago! I could have loved this film.

The Late Mr. Mokun Williams by Kenneth Price was about a letter that sends a farmer on a mission to help a girl in Nigeria. It didn’t take long to figure out where this story was going, but that didn’t matter at all. It was a great idea, and very funny. I can imagine a whole series of shorts to visualize certain mail or email pieces I received over the years.

Patrick Bergeron’s experimental short film LoopLoop can be described as moving photographic sculpture. Short films that withdraw themselves from a standard form risk to be misunderstood like some I have seen in previous years, but I was fascinated and impressed by this one. The film festival guide describes it as a sequence “[...] mimicking the way memories are replayed in the mind,” and if I think about it, it really did succeed with it.

Monroe St. by Durier Ryan is a film about finding the courage to open up — the story about a teen who is passionately capturing his neighborhood in Brooklyn with a borrowed video camera but keeps his creative ambitions a secret from his girlfriend.

Another remarkable short film was Slow Pitch in Relief by Mark Cummins which was set in 1957 and told the story of Bill Herman, a door to door salesman who meets Jolene, a working single mother. To impress her son he told him the story that he once played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. This film’s look and feel reminded me of something that really could have been produced in the 50s. Mark Cummins, who played Bill Herman looked as if he traveled through time and arrived straight from the 50s. I was fascinated and impressed. Mark Cummins is no newcomer. When I looked him up on IMDB I found that he’s been active as actor since the early 80s.

My favorite of the opening night was Voice on the Line by Kelly Sears. Voice on the Line was a brilliant collage of vintage archive footage, bit and pieces from many different sources, tied together to a unique fictitious document on the history of telecommunications since the cold war era. Brilliant from beginning to end! I loved how the animated wallpaper background served as a glue throughout. It was very inspiring. I felt invited to begin collecting media artifacts myself. During this film I was wondering if Kelly Sears had the story and narration first and looked for clips to support her story later, or if she started off with the clips and then added the narration & story to it later. During the Q&A she explained that she had all these telephone operators and thought she needed to do something with them, and the story kinda grew around these clips.

Left to right: Andrew Blackwell (Bikini Lighters), Mark Cummins (Slow Pitch in Relief), Durier Ryan (Monroe St.), Kenneth Price (The Late Mr. Mokun Williams), Festival director Jed Dietz, Patrick Bergeron (LoopLoop), Sol Friedman (Junko's Shamisen), Kelly Sears (Voice On the Line), Director of Programming Eric Allen Hatch, Programming Administrator Scott Braid

We concluded the opening night with a fine bottle of imported beer outside the crowded MICA hall and were ready for the 3-day movie marathon. Were we? Stay tuned, my next post follows shortly :)

Armée des Ombres by Jean-Pierre Melville

Chatte à Deux Têtes by Jacques Nolot

Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran by François Dupeyron

Les Quatre cents coups by François Truffaut

Les Triplettes de Belleville by Sylvain Chomet

Les chansons d’amour by Christophe Honoré

Une affaire de femmes by Claude Chabrol

De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté by Jacques Audiard

Alphaville by Jean-Luc Godard

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux by Jean-Luc Godard

The Mother’s Day weekend was dedicated to the Maryland Film Festival for as long as I can remember. I think only once it took place a week earlier or later. I have been lucky because my mother lives in Germany and six hours ahead of our time-zone. But not everybody is so lucky. Other people have mothers here, who may want to spend their day with their children, and who may not be interested in movies. This has always been a problem…it never felt right to ignore Mother’s Day in favor of our movie habit.

So this time we made a compromise: We skipped our first movie and had a nice Mother’s Day breakfast instead before we started our festival day in the early afternoon. We missed our traditional silent movie with live-music — this time it would have been probably the most important film of the silent era: Man with a Movie Camera — but I think we made the right decision and it all worked out very well. I have seen this film several times before anyway, with Cinematic Orchestra’s soundtrack being one of my all-time favorites.

Our first screening was a short film program called These People Have Issues [MFF] including:

• Butthole Lickin by Kanako Wynkoop
• Cold Turkey by Kyle Spleiss
• Countertransference by Madeleine Olnek
• FaceMouth by Dave Kratz
• Hungry for Love by Ruckus Skye
• Imminent by Randall Good
• Power Mini Ultra Flex Turbo by Better Hollywood

All of these short films were amusing to some degree. Some were funnier or sillier than others, some were darker than others, some were more dramatic than others, but I thought they all were solid and pretty well done. I did enjoy watching them to some degree, but I have to admit that I found none of them really that outstanding, extraordinarily great and groundbreaking. Something was missing in this short film program…but I’m not sure what.

Maybe the title promised more than the candidates were able to deliver? Maybe I expected something like the On The Edge shorts we saw last year or something more dark-comedic? I don’t know. The films presented in These People Have Issues had a few humorous moments, but they didn’t grab me that much. Compared to other short film programs we have seen in the past regardless of whether it was comedy, narrative, animated or documentary, this selection felt incomplete, unfinished or perhaps just uninspired. At the same time it wasn’t bad either! I have seen a lot worse before. Perhaps I just entered this screening with the wrong expectations.

Our next screening was The Overbrook Brothers, directed by John Bryant, starring Nathan Harlan, Mark Reeb and Laurel Whitsett [IMDB][MFF]. The screening took place in the large theater 1 of the Charles which usually finds a rather large audience. The Overbrook Brothers, however, didn’t seem to attract a large audience at all, which really surprised me. It’s possible that it was because of Mother’s Day, or a lot of people were already done with the festival, or those who were interested already saw the first screening on Friday.

The Overbrook Brothers are Jason, a sensitive writer and Todd, who is cruel, immature, abrasive, and pretty much the opposite of Jason knowing just how to push his buttons. When they find out why they have always been the least favorite children of the family they both go on a trip to find their true origins.

This movie is a feature adaptation of John Bryant’s earlier short film, Momma’s Boy, which screened at the 2006 Maryland Film Festival. I haven’t seen it back then but I would be very curious to find out how they compare. I loved The Overbrook Brothers, Todd’s character and the dynamics between him and Jason. I have rarely seen a character that is so sinister, manipulative and at the same time very cool and likable. The only one I could think of is Rob Lowe’s character in Bad Influence, but they don’t really have that much in common. Mark Reeb who played Todd was really wonderful bringing this character to life, but I kept wondering: “Is he somehow related to Eric Roberts?”. Haha, of course he isn’t, but I felt like there was a slight resemblance. With a really nice mix of dark comedy and drama I absolutely enjoyed The Overbrook Brothers! Unfortunately, there is no trailer for it yet.

Matthew Modine and Jed Dietz

After a short break it was time for the last movie of the festival and the closing night party. The movie and its director were introduced by Matthew Modine who played Pvt. Joker in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket back in the 80s. I saw him earlier in the filmmaker’s lounge — dressed in all white he lightened up the tent — but I couldn’t place him at all until his introduction when he spoke about filming Full Metal Jacket. Wow… that’s so long ago. After I checked his long film career on IMDB and noticed that I’m not familiar with any of the movies he was involved in since then… no wonder I wasn’t able to recognize him first! Hm, so I was in the same room with somebody who worked closely with Stanley Kubrick, the master himself? What an awe-inspiring moment!

But it was not him who was involved in the following movie, but Kathryn Bigelow who created with The Hurt Locker [IMDB][MFF] a war action-drama about a bomb expert and his work in the chaos of the Iraq war. Constantly living on the edge and having his hands on explosives that could go off any moment while often under sniper fire from insurgents, he not only remains calm, collected, curious and easy, but also develops a resistance against and an addiction to the unimaginable dangers that surround him on a daily basis.

I liked about this film that it mostly focused on an individual and the nature of his job, and how this war affected him or not. Thanks to an extraordinary camera and editing job it also illustrated how everybody lived in a constant state of alert and uncertainty, surrounded not only by bombs but also people in every angle who may or may not pose a threat to them. In the wide open landscape she managed to create a very claustrophobic atmosphere as if you were locked in a small room. This was captured very well and something I don’t think I have ever seen in a movie before.

Having said that, I felt it lacked some depth portraying the characters, especially Saff Sergeant William James. It fell a bit flat for me. I was hoping to get more insights about him, how the war affected him and how his brain works. I’m not a huge fan of war films, but I remember some great films with Oliver Stone’s Born on the 4th of July or Heaven and Earth that succeeded in this regard. But maybe there was not more than we were supposed to see. After all he was addicted to war and rather divorced from the normality of a safe and secure life.

Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow and the press

If I take this film as a war drama and action thriller I think it was a good and solid film for its genre. It’s not a movie I normally would have chosen to watch, but once I was in, I stayed interested from beginning to end and didn’t get bored. I liked that this film stayed non-political, non-propagandistic and not overly patriotic unlike some other movies or Army commercials. Kathryn Bigelow, by the way, also directed Strange Days and Wild Palms back in the nineties, both of which I loved.

After The Hurt Locker we spent a few minutes at the closing night party and headed back home. That was the end of an exhausting but very wonderful and exciting movie weekend.

It was a wonderful year for the Maryland Film Festival. The line-up included so many great movies. I especially appreciated the foreign movie choices even though we were not able to see all of them. I hope we will find such a nice selection again next year.

The filmmakers lounge was moved to the tent village across the Charles again like once before. I love this location. I liked this setup much better than the other venues of the past few years.

I loved the opportunity to purchase the All-Access passes at a lower price this year. Overall, this festival felt very close to what made me fall in love with it back in 2002 when I visited for the first time.

I like some of these equally as much, so it was nearly impossible to give them a fair spot in my list, but here it is! My top-11 of all the feature length movies seen on Friday and Sunday:

1. Modern Love is Automatic
2. Love Songs
3. Invisible Girlfriend
4. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
5. Strongman
6. The Overbrook Brothers
7. Stingray Sam
8. Lake Tahoe
9. World’s Greatest Dad
10. The Hurt Locker
11. Seventh Moon

The MFF2009 Crew

Last but not least I would like to thank everybody who made this festival possible! We had a fantastic time — thanks very much!!

Maryland Film Festival 2009

Lake Tahoe [IMDB][MFF], directed by Fernando Eimbcke, starring Diego Catano, Hector Herrara and Daniela Valentine…a story of Juan, a teenager who crashes his car on the outskirts of a sleepy Mexican town and tries to find a mechanic. During his quest he doesn’t seem to find what he is looking for, but meets an old paranoid dog owner who wants him to walk his dog, a young punk mother who is looking for a babysitter and a Kung Fu fanatic who’d like to watch a Bruce Lee movie with him. Their relationship to each other is quiet, perhaps as sleepy as the town, but during his mission to get the car running again he slowly finds some friendships and people he hesitatingly begins to care about.

Lake Tahoe was a genius mix of deadpan humor and drama that kept me interested from beginning to end. I loved the overall mood and atmosphere, the characters and how they interacted with each other. It was slow and quiet, but in a very good way. Very nicely paced, beautifully photographed, it managed to say a lot without using many words or music. Watching this movie reminded me of spending a relaxing vacation in another country…and I could have stayed a bit longer.

Our second screening was Stringray Sam, directed by Cory McAbee, starring himself, Crugie, Joshua Taylor, Willa Vy McAbee, Bobby Lurie, Frank Swart, Caleb Scott, Jessica Jelliffe, Ron Crawford, Michael DeNola, Michael Wiener and David Hyde Pierce [IMDB][MFF]. It actually was a story split in six Youtube-friendly parts…a sci-fi-western-musical. Another musical?! Yes! When I looked at the film-descriptions all it took to make me want to see it were Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and “homage to the cinema, rock & roll, comic books, and everything else cool from our childhoods.”

I didn’t expect it to become our second musical this year…and what a cool and fun musical! I absolutely enjoyed the songs, I loved director Cory McAbee in his role as Stingray Sam and guitarist Crugie as Quasar Kid, the Monty Python’esque collage-art…and how it managed to speak to the kid inside of me. During the Q and A Cory McAbee told his story when he was interviewed in Europe about one of his previous features The American Astronaut. The interviewer explained to him that many people in Europe were very angry with the American government and what they were doing at that time…that they feel like they don’t like Americans. His movie, however, included many things Europeans always loved and enjoyed about America and American culture. With this conversation in mind he wrote Stingray Sam including the Wild West, Cowboy, Sci-Fi, Musical, Space-Travellers that Europeans (or Germans in my case) always loved about American culture, but also highlighted the dark side with Tobacco and pharma companies, the privatised prison system, etc. Being European myself I can confirm that in Stringray Sam you can find the “cool” things we love about America, without ignoring the not so cool things.

It felt a bit strange to see six separate episodes in a row and not one full-length feature, but these episodes had cult-potential, were a lot of fun and I absolutely enjoyed them. I haven’t seen American Astronaut yet, but will have to check it out sometime.

After a short break we saw a documentary about Stanley “Stanless Steel” Pleskun in Strongman [IMDB][MFF] by Zachary Levy. A man strong enough to leg-press massive trucks and bend pennies with his fingers reaches his middle age and struggles with difficult personal relationships and a number of career disappointments. This documentary was filmed over the course of several years and presents a close portrait of Stan who wants to prove that he’s still got it, and that he is more than a kids’ party-attraction. Life, however, presents him with another reality…other strong men who bend bolts with much less of an effort or pull nails with their teeth…problems to stop smoking, breathing issues…family and relationship problems…and an alcoholic brother who developed a crack habit.

This film moved me on several occasions. It seemed obvious that Stan invested a many years and a lot of discipline to train and build up his strength, to become “the strongest man on earth”. I had the impression he might have found his motivation in an attempt to find a better life for himself than what his background was like growing up. His brother was presenting him an example of what not to become. I felt reminded of my own background… I, too, put a lot of work, time and discipline into my education to break out of my working class background and find a better living for myself. I don’t think I’m the strongest man, but there was a time I felt like I was the best software developer on earth. After a few disappointments I had to realize that was a big mistake. There were a few other moments in Strongman that reminded me of my own history in one way or another, turning this documentary into more of a personal experience than I ever anticipated. I really enjoyed this film.

Your Humble Narrator

In a slightly different matter: The film description in the festival booklet calls Strongman a cinéma vérité portrait. I think the director mentioned this documentary style during the Q and A as well. Not familiar with this expression I looked it up and found that it combines “[...] naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camera work, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects.” I might be wrong but I didn’t feel this applied to Strongman. Direct cinema on the other hand seemed to be a better fit. I read that both cinéma vérité and direct cinema have in common that they don’t use voice-overs, they both try to let the subjects speak for themselves, avoiding to make them dependent on the filmmaker’s interpretation, and they both try to avoid assigning social problems to a larger political or cultural context. Instead, they both try to capture truths and the everyday reality.

Furthermore I read that the difference between cinéma vérité and direct cinema is that direct cinema tries to put the camera and film maker as far into the background as possible. The camera is as a “fly on the wall” supposed to be as unnoticed as possible. Camera and crew should try not influence the situation at all to capture the “privileged moments” in which the person forgets about the camera’s existence and reveals truths you otherwise wouldn’t get to see.

Cinéma vérité, so I read, follows a different strategy…instead of being a “fly on the wall”, the film maker becomes a “fly in the soup”, actively participating in the situation and trying to provoke those “privileged moments”. Some examples would include reality-television or interview movies. Even fictional movies like the Blairwitch Project used this technique. I wonder if I understood it right… how would you as educated film people define the difference between cinéma vérité and direct cinema? It has nothing to do with Strongman, but I was curious because I wasn’t familiar with this word before.

Off to the next and last movie of the day, presented by director Bobcat Goldthwait himself: World’s Greatest Dad [IMDB][MFF] with Robin Williams, Daryl Sabara, Alexie Gilmore, Geoffrey Pierson, Henry Simmons, Mitzi McCall and Tony V. It’s the story about a middle aged author and poetry teacher Lance who fails to find somebody to publish his writing. He also seems to fail as single father of an abusive son Kyle. After an abrupt turn of events, Lance faces new challenges, fame and respect approaching from all directions.

Bobcat Goldthwait and Jed Dietz

Bobcat Goldthwait originally planned somebody else for Robin William’s role, and his character as poetry teacher was not at all related to the old Dead Poet’s Society at all, he explained during the Q and A. I enjoyed this film. It was very entertaining, funny, and sometimes also very dark which I always appreciate in a comedy. Similar to Sleeping Dogs Lie (a screening we saw a year or two ago), he managed to play with a darker, unspoken side of an individual’s psychology or social/cultural standards as a whole, while giving it all a very entertaining, lightweight appearance.

The following list is in order from my top pick down for both Friday and Saturday:

1. Modern Love is Automatic
2. Love Songs
3. Invisible Girlfriend
4. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
5. Strongman
6. Stingray Sam
7. Lake Tahoe
8. World’s Greatest Dad
9. Seventh Moon

Our day started with Modern Love is Automatic [IMDB][MFF], directed by Zach Clark, starring Melodie Sisk (as Lorraine) and Maggie Ross (as Adrian).

Modern Love is Automatic was a dark and dry comedy-drama about nurse Lorraine who, bored with with her environment and the people in her life, detached herself emotionally and socially from everything. Controlling every detail in her life it doesn’t seem surprising when she finds interest in a dominatrix magazine. When she finds her boyfriend cheating she decides to look for a new roommate and becomes a dominatrix at night. She finds aspiring fashion model Adrian, whose emotionality and bubbliness very much is Lorraine’s total opposite. But just as opposites attract, they very slowly develop a friendship in the background of their individual lives and Adrian’s boyfriend Mitch who is uncontrollably obsessed with Lorraine.

Zach Clark, Maggie Ross, Melodie Sisk, Daryl Pittman

This movie was easily one of my favorites this year. I not only loved the great performances, cool sets, colors and costumes, but also the pace and quiet as well as Melodie Sisk’s facial expressions that said more than could ever be said with words. Modern Love feels like a nice companion to my other favorites from the last two festival years when I saw Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland and Mary Bronstein’s Yeast. In these movies I was able to identify with the characters and their paralyzed social lives and relationships to an unusual extent. What can I say, I loved everything about Modern Love is Automatic. Even the bursts of doom metal worked really well in there. Definitely a movie I would like to see again sometime, and one I can highly recommend.

David Redmon

Our second screening this Friday was Invisible Girlfriend [IMDB][MFF], directed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, with and about Charles Fihoil, a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic who lives in Monroe, Louisiana with his parents and children. He is in love with his invisible girlfriend, the spirit of Joan of Arc, and decides that DeeDee, his pen pal and New Orleans bartender, might be Joan of Arc in the flesh. The filmmaker follows him on a 400-mile bicycle journey to find DeeDee.

This was a wonderful documentary about a man who may be a bit crazy, but also very intelligent, insightful and caring. During his journey through rural Louisiana, which lasted about 12 days, he met several generous, kind and very down-to-earth people who gave him a ride or shared food and stories with him. I found it interesting how this journey was accompanied by a number of moments of death and decay that foreshadowed what he would find at his destination. Beautiful, sometimes funny, but also very sad, this film managed to create a non-judgmental portrait of Charles Fihoil and the people he met on his way. I really liked this film. I was also very impressed by some of the music choices.

Another documentary we saw this Friday was Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, directed by Jessica Oreck. This film portrayed a part of Japanese culture I was completely unfamiliar with before: Japan’s love and fascination with insects that is inherent in the whole society and all generations from young to old age. Insects are collected like trading cards or comic books, are part of quite a significantly sized industry of collectors and breeders. Insects appear in shape of dolls, toys, video games, candy, but also inspire art and literature, dating back to the beginning of Japan’s history.

Jessica Oreck and Sean Williams

Beetle Queen was partially in English, partially Japanese with English subtitles and filled with a great amount of insight, history and poetry about an ancient and still mysterious culture that may mostly be known to the Western world for their car and electronic brands, fashion and pop culture, their tv-shows or cuisine. I can highly recommended it to anyone who is interested in learning more about Japan from a slightly different angle. The cinematography comes from Sean Williams who also shot Frownland and Yeast I mentioned above. I would love to see it again and follow the history and poetry in more depth than I was able to comprehend upon my first viewing.

I have to admit: A few days ago, if someone had told me to watch a romantic musical, I probably would have would have smiled and dismissed it without giving it a chance. The musical genre was not one I was particularly interested in before. The few musicals I have ever seen were entertaining to a degree, but they didn’t manage to grab me. Why? I’m not sure… perhaps it’s something I wasn’t properly introduced to growing up in Germany. About every movie made in Germany of the 50s and 60s was incredibly silly and featured a lot of bad German Schlager music. Television was practically non-existent, and eventually the popularity died off and no musical films were produced anymore for a very long time. I can’t really think of any musical film produced in Germany since the days of the economic boom.

In the mid to late 80s (stage) musicals became very popular with Cats. Many others including Starlight Express, Phantom of the Opera followed later, and they are still popular in Germany, but as far as I know, there haven’t been any movies to speak of. Every time I saw a movie with dancing and singing people they appeared very foreign to me. Something I couldn’t connect to.

Perhaps the setting and background were too artificial…perhaps the music was too methodical or constructed…perhaps I was thrown out of the story every time one of the actors starts to sing instead of keeping his character. How believable is the evil villain, mad professor or action hero who suddenly begins to dance and sing?

John Waters and Jed Dietz

Being a romantic musical I never would have volunteered to pick Love Songs [IMDB][MFF] if it hadn’t been the John Waters pick this year. The annual “John Waters Pick” has been one of our traditions since we started attending the film festival. His movie selections did never disappoint in the past few years. Most of his selections, including Story of Women, Dog Days or Head-On offered an extraordinarily realistic view on love, people and the complexity of their emotional, social, sexual, human interactions…reflecting what life is really like, challenging what most movies try to suggest as reality.

Love Songs was directed by Christophe Honoré and stars Chiara Mastroianni, Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier and Clotilde Hesme. It’s a romantic musical, yes…but one I actually enjoyed very much! It felt very current and natural, the songs and music were beautiful and were very elegantly woven into the story. So fluent, it almost felt as if these moments could have happened in real life… although I have never seen someone walking down the street singing, have I?

Everybody looked great, very natural and likable, the story was beautiful, so was the atmosphere and mood. I still find myself surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. Another contemporary musical film I saw a while ago (Sweeney Todd) left me with the same impression I had of other musicals before, not so Love Songs. Perhaps it worked so well because it was in French and playing in Paris? I don’t know, but I really enjoyed its pace and rhythm. I think I might have to correct some of my views I used to have about musicals. Perhaps there is more out there I would enjoy if I gave it a try.

After Love Songs we had our first break of the day and we used the opportunity to celebrate our 5th filmfest membership anniversary with a pitcher of sangria. I should have eaten something first, because the wine quickly made me feel a little fuzzy-headed.

Of course this didn’t help when we entered our fifth and last screening of the day: Seventh Moon [IMDB][MFF] directed by Eduardo Sánchez, starring Amy Smart, Dennis Chan and Tim Chiou. The story takes place in China where Melissa and Yul enjoy their honeymoon. Their visit coincides with the sacred Seventh Moon festival, celebrating the full moon of the seventh lunar month, which, according to a Chinese myth, is a time when the dead are free to walk the earth. The couple, drunk after celebrating, start a late night cab-drive to Yul’s grandmother’s house in the countryside. This trip will of course end somewhere lost in the middle of nowhere where the horror is about to take place.

Directed by Eduardo Sánchez who with Daniel Myrick also wrote and directed the Blair Witch Project, Seventh Moon felt a lot like Blair Witch Project including its shaky camera work. Even without sangria I got motion sick when I watched the Blair Witch on the big screen. The same happened Friday night during the Seventh Moon. I survived about three quarter of the movie, but I had to close my eyes because I felt increasingly dizzy. A few minutes before the movie was over I had to leave the theater to breathe some fresh air and get stable ground under my feet which made me feel better. Unfortunately I missed the ending of the movie and the Q and A afterward, but my stomach wasn’t ready for it. Next time I should probably take some pills for motion sickness before I watch another shaky movie.

The following list is in order from my top pick down for Friday, May 8:

1. Modern Love is Automatic
2. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
3. Invisible Girlfriend
4. Love Songs
5. Seventh Moon

PS: Sorry about the bad quality of these photos. My camera didn’t take the low-light too well. I hope I got all the names right. Please correct me if I made a mistake.

But once in a while I discover a movie like Together or The Fall too impressive not to mention in some way. I may not analyze it deeply, take it apart and write about every single aspect, but I feel I have to create a record of its existence and make a recommendation. Yesterday I watched such a film: Vozvrashcheniye or The Return, by Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev.

What a brilliant and unforgettable movie! Although it was his debut directing a full-length feature after working only with commercials before, it instantly found a place in my list of top-favorites. The Return is a masterpiece and I can only hope that Zvyagintsev continues his path that started out so promising. He could be worthy to become Tarkovsky’s, Truffaut’s or Ingmar Bergman’s successor.

Everything was as close to perfection as it can get. The photography was just beautiful, the camera work outstanding. The actors, especially Konstantin Lavronenko were fantastic. The music (as well as the silence) was wonderful, the mood and setting, psychology, characters and story, the ending, the complexity within the minimal, the unexpected…

I can’t wait to see what his next projects will be like. After The Return he also directed a film named Izgnanie or The Banishment released in 2007, also starring Konstantin Lavronenko. I have to watch it as soon as it becomes available on video.

I have to thank Zvyagintsev for enriching the movie industry with The Return. I can highly recommend this film.

How lucky I was to finish my pumpkins in time for today’s Halloween display. This year I had a lot of trouble coming up with ideas first until I surfed the web for inspiration. I actually found some material I can use next year.

The weather was cool enough and helped these pumpkins to stay in a good shape for a few days. It was also good I started out quite late this time. We got the pumpkins last Sunday. I was still working on some of the patterns before I could begin to transfer them. On Monday evening I carved my first pumpkin. The following evenings were dedicated to the other pumpkins.

When Ingmar Bergman died last year I thought about dedicating one pumpkin to one of the greatest directors in cinematic history. I tried to create a pattern based on one of his movies, I thought about The 7th Seal or Hour of the Wolf, but then I thought nothing would be more appropriate than a portrait of the master himself. It turned out really well. I’m very happy with the result.

This motive was such a lucky find. Originally I was just looking for ideas relating to George Orwell’s 1984, and got reminded of Shepard Fairey‘s work who impressed me with his Orwell book covers, Obama posters, and his other propaganda style obey posters and stencils before. I found this ‘obey frank’ stencil here, and thought it was just perfect and almost already made for my pumpkin. A few minor adjustments and I was ready to carve Donnie Darko’s Frank.

My third pumpkin was dedicated to Stanley Kubrick’s unforgettable Clockwork Orange and my costume this year. It turned out well although I once lost a bit of track in the facial area.

With these more complex patterns of 3 shades it’s nearly impossible to work with a ‘poke-along-the-outline’ technique. I found it very difficult to trace the outline with a pen, too–pressing hard enough, or using transfer paper. Standard carbon transfer paper doesn’t stick on the pumpkin surface. A blue textile transfer paper worked better before, but not well enough. I found the best way to transfer a pattern is to print it out, perhaps in 4 tiles, then cut the carving areas out with a scalpel or sharp blades. Paper is easy to cut, and such a template will make it much easier to transfer. All you have to do is fill the holes with a sharpie and then carve out the filled areas. Spray paint might work there, too. Maybe I will try that next year.

The last pumpkin was inspired by M.C. Escher’s tesselations, in this example his lizards. Actually, it was my first pumpkin I carved as a warm-up piece on Monday. I tried to save it later, but without much success. I made so many mistakes with this one: It all started when I cleaned the interior of the pumpkin out. I didn’t remove enough from the inside, so the wall I had to carve ended much thicker than I wanted it to be. Mistake #2 was the transfer. I first used my old method that worked alright for simple one-sided patterns. But it didn’t work well  in 360 degrees around the pumpkin-shape. The lizards didn’t match up properly, and I tried to fix it manually with a pen. In the end I got nothing but a chaotic pen-drawing on the pumpkin’s surface that didn’t work at all.

So I started over and cut out a single lizard to use as a template. This worked much better because a single lizard fit much better on the pumpkin surface and made it easy to trace along its outlines without having to use transfer paper, pushing pens hard or poking needles. With the existing drawing the outlines turned even more chaotic and difficult to identify. I could hardly see which lizard to carve as a hole, shave off from the surface or leave intact.

The first test didn’t look great at all, you couldn’t recognize any of the lizards. Yesterday I worked on this again and completed the 360 degree circumference. I could improve the outcome somewhat, and it didn’t look too bad after all. However, it didn’t look as I intended. Next year I will have to try another one. :)

Happy Halloween!

There will also be games, displays, food, beer, and music. Check out the JonesFalls.org site for more details and photos from last year’s Rally on Flickr. That looks really fun–I wonder why I didn’t know about it before. I’m already looking forward to this!

When I browsed Jones Falls Watershed Association to register for the Rally I also spotted the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival which is actually a nationwide festival that started off in Nevada City, CA and celebrated its 7th anniversary last January. During the year a selection of films makes a round on tour through the US. More details and dates can be found here. The festival will reach Baltimore in October and will be hosted by the Jones Falls and Herring Run Watershed Association. Find more details on the Herring Run site. It will take place on October 16 from 7pm-9:30pm at the MICA Brown Center (map). I’m curious about the selection of films and definitely look forward to this event as well.

The winners are announced today at the awards ceremony and party that begins at 7pm. Unfortunately we won’t be able to attend because we had the car for only one day, but we watched all 20 candidates yesterday, most of which I enjoyed a lot. Before getting to my conclusion I can already say upfront that this was a fantastic little film festival with a really nice and diverse choice of short and medium length films. We both were glad we could come. All of the films were nice for one reason or another, so I will try to make it shorter this time. :) I especially liked the “deeply personal” and the “unusual funny” candidates of the following films we saw yesterday:

Cause

Documentary (57 minutes) by Denise Prichard – Washington DC

Meet four Americans who have dedicated their lives to a cause — putting their ideals on the line, every day, every hour.

Britt, the Minuteman, living his life out at the U.S.-Mexico border, defending his America from invasion; Kayla, the PETA Activist, exposing the plight of animals, while sometimes exposing herself; Dennis, the Pro-Life Minister, crisscrossing his way through the country spreading his truth about abortion; and Concepcion, the Peace Activist, maintaining her twenty-six year long anti-nuke vigil just steps away from the White House.

This film, entitled “CAUSE”, peels back the layers to uncover the personal histories and motivations that make these individuals who they are, and what drives them to behavior some would call extreme. Going beyond the labels and what initially meets the eye, their stories weave together to form a collective thread and reveal that they have more in common than one would think. (from the official website)

Vignette

Experimental narrative (17 minutes) by Dustin Thompson – Forest, VA

Quick Feet, Soft Hands

Drama (25 minutes) by Paul Harrill

Set against the backdrop of our national pastime, Quick Feet, Soft Hands follows a young couple trying to pursue the American Dream.

Greta Gerwig (Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs) stars as Lisa, a young woman whose hopes of moving up are tied to Jim, a minor league baseball player.

As Jim falls deeper into a batting slump, the couple must cope with the day-to-day realities of being young and poor. And they must confront the prospect that they may never make it to the big leagues.” (from the official website)

I was quite amused to find that we actually missed only a minute or even less when we had to leave the screening back at the Maryland Film Festival. It was nice to see this film again, and I still have the same good impression. It’s a sad but very realistic slice of life applicable to many individuals, couples, relationships, hopes, dreams and failures.

Rogue Gnome

Animated music video (5 minutes) by Stephen Guidry – Arlington, VA

Richard Wants a Nickname

Drama (9 minutes) by Julie Haberstick – Arlington, VA

Nunna Mia e la Barca

Documentary (13 minutes) by Jacob Dodd – Richmond, VA

Nunna Mia e la Barca is a short film about an Italian grandmother, Nunna, who endured the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956. Despite living 50 years in the U.S., Nunna continues to preserve her Italian heritage. Through the act of preparing a meal and selflessly giving of her time, Nunna passes on the heritage to her grandchildren.” (from the official website)

Alchemy

Experimental (2 minutes) by Victoria Hanabury and Joshua Rachford – Charlottesville, VA

Birds

Drama (17 minutes) by Mark Betancourt and Marc Ryan – Washington, DC

I really liked this short film and its conclusion. They packed quite a large emotional spectrum into the 17 minutes. It was humorous and thrilling, personal and serious, and also very wise at the same time.

Mexico Painting

Video art (3 minutes) by Vin Grabill – Ellicott City, MD

Lustig

Drama (16 minutes) by John Black – Gainesville, VA

Lustig, set in the years after the end of WWII, tells the story of a man’s solitary journey for redemption. Carrying haunting memories from time spent in a concentration camp, the man seeks out the family of a friend he knew there. He brings a secret to their doorstep that only the strength and courage of the deceased allows him to reveal. In admitting his own cowardice, he creates the heroic legacy of a man. A man a young son will always remember.

The title “Lustig” is not the German word for “funny” here, but the name of the main-character in this film. It actually is a true story about Branko Lustig, a Croatian Jewish survivor of Ausschwitz, who produced a number of movies including Schindler’s List. He was the inspiration for this short film. I liked this film which was very moving, personal and very well made. John Black chose to have all dialog in German, but only the mother (played by Ilka Fischer) spoke German fluently without an American accent. While I could believe that the Croatian visitor wasn’t fluent, I didn’t buy her son’s and the Nazi commander’s accent. I found this a little distracting. That’s a shame because I really liked this film otherwise. I thought it might have been a better decision to keep the dialog in English instead.

Dance Party: The Teenarama Story

Documentary (57 minutes) by Beverly Lindsay-Johnson – Washington, DC

Untitled No. 9

Comedy (5 minutes) by David Butler – Annapolis, MD

This short film shows where you might end up if you let your life be guided the philosophy found in pop lyrics. Some of the philosophers quoted in this film include Paul McCartney and Wings, Janis Ian, Elvis Presley, Paul Simon, Don McLean, Bob Dylan, Three Dog Night, Melanie, Simon & Garfunkel, Don Henley, Carole King, Bread, The Rolling Stones, The Romantics, U2, The Beatles, Petula Clark, The Talking Heads, 10cc, Elton John, ABBA, Tracy Chapman, Bryan Adams, John Cougar Mellencamp, Jimi Hendrix, Harry Nilsson, Bruce Springsteen, The Drifters, Billy Idol, Rappers Delight and Baha Men.

Oh how I loved this film! It was one of my very favorites of the day. What a fantastic idea to tie all these song lyric fragments together to a “lyrical meditation on life”. And what a brilliant camera-work and delivery. I really liked Mark Redfield in this and would love to see more of him. It made me think of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation and Spalding Gray in Steven Soderbergh’s Gray’s Anatomy which I loved. But Untitled No. 9 was still different and very clever. I wonder what Untitled No. 1-8 may be like? David Butler’s site is butlerfilm.com.

My Best Friend Mark

Personal narrative (5 minutes) by Renee Shaw – Washington, DC

Las Historias Mas Sexy del Mundo No. 2

Comedy (15 minutes) by Eric Cheevers – Washington, DC

This was another of my favorites. Brilliant, funny, cool, hot, surreal, mesmerizing, fascinating, sexy…a kind of 70s Swedish soft-core porn meets Quantum Physics meets Matthew Lesko (the infomercial questionmark-suit-man played in this film) meets David Lynch’s red room meets a weird but great music performance by The Raveonettes. I read that the predecessor, Las Historias Mas Sexy del Mundo No. 1, won the Rosebud Film Festival in 2004 and I think No. 2 might win again this year. Unfortunately I didn’t find a clip on the web, but here is an an interview with Eric Cheevers and Scott Mueller, also also a few pictures. I loved it.

Unraveling Michelle

Documentary (85 minutes) by Michelle Ann Farrell – Bel Air, MD

I loved Unraveling Michelle. I haven’t read any reviews or watched any trailers before we watched it at the Rosebud Festival. I didn’t know anything about it at all. So the documentary started with a very funny guy working on indie-horror-comedy type movies. He just announced something like “I want to be a female filmmaker” and it sounded as if he wasn’t really serious about it. It could have been just another example of his wicked humor. The clips that portrayed the old filmmaker Joe O’Ferrell and his history looked too crazy and unbelievable to be true. There you saw the athlete, the addict, the film-maker and businessman, the dude and manly man. At first I wasn’t even sure if I was looking at the same person or just different actors representing him in his different life stages. I thought it was all staged, and that what we were about to see was a funny kind of mockumentary, but not a serious documentary about a sex change.

The first facial surgery approached. It was again very funny, in a similar dry Tom Greenish humorous kind of way, as he leaves the hospital looking painfully awful and his head wrapped in bandages, but still making jokes about it. When they lost their way he moved over to the driver’s seat in the state he was in, with bloodbags hanging off his face… and I still thought, that has got to be a joke… after all he is in the horror-comedy industry.

But as the story continued it became more and more clear that his/her journey was very real, and that the male Joe O’Ferrell was really about to become the female Michelle Ann Farrell. The documentary followed the transition from the beginning to the end and revealed so much in addition about her past and present life, the problems and challenges without losing a healthy sense of humor. I couldn’t believe how many really extreme changes she went through in her life. If I trace back my own life of the last 20 years I can find many drastic visual and physical changes that make it sometimes hard to believe the person from back then was really me. But Joe’s and Michelle’s roller coaster history exceeds everything I could ever imagine. I have to admire the strength and courage she was able to bring up and transform her life through all these stages.

This documentary was about a journey of a sex change, but there really was so much more. It was a very personal portrait of an extraordinary, interesting, humorous and very likable individual. It was also a milestone for both: Joe’s final masterpiece and best work in his filmography, as well as Michelle’s debut, marking the beginning of a great future. Very impressive — I just loved everything about this film… the film itself and its flow…it was really well done…the deeply personal portrait…the very unusual history with all transformations…the humor, and of course, last but not least, Michelle herself. :)

Headache

Experimental (8 minutes) by Robert Parrish – Arlington, VA

This film was entirely made with public domain clips taken from archive.org. I loved how cleverly it recycled old footage to tell a completely new and different story. We once saw a short film at the Maryland Film Festival that made use of public domain footage and thought it was such a great idea. Headache was very well done, but unfortunately I couldn’t find anything on the web.

Signage

Drama (12 minutes) by Rick Hammerly – Washington, DC

A receding hairline, the beginnings of crow’s feet, and a chance meeting with a young shirtless deaf man in a bar, force Lex to confront getting older in a youth-conscious world.

I loved signage — “when life calls the last shot” and the way it touched this internal battle of aging, self-doubts and insecurities that tend to increase proportionally with the gap between oneself and the youthful generation you still might like to be a part of or at least connected with. I loved how main character/writer/director Rick Hammerly made his story turn even more personal and internal, as there really is nothing wrong with him. He looks just fine and not old at all, and yet there are these self-doubts.

Freedom Dance

Animation (28 minutes) by Steven Fischer – Crofton, MD and Craig Herron – Baltimore, MD

A cartoonist keeps a diary in cartoon form during his adventurous escape from the deadly 1956 Hungarian Revolution. (from the official website)

tar guys

Video poetry (5 minutes) by Cathy Cook – Baltimore, MD

Widow’s Meal

Drama (8 minutes) by Arnon Shorr – Baltimore, MD

Conclusion:

When we arrived in Arlington Alice and I both were very surprised to find a very empty and dead-silent building. The garage was empty, all stores inside the building were closed, and at first we seemed to be the only visitors to a private viewing. Eventually a few more people showed up, but the theatre never filled up. I thought it was a real shame. The Rosebud Festival has already been around for almost two decades. The film selection was wonderful, and I couldn’t see why it couldn’t attract more independent film lovers. At only $8 for an all-day pass it was a real bargain and I’m already looking forward to Rosebud 2009. Thanks to everyone who made this festival possible, and thanks to Paul for the recommendation.

I’m curious to find out who won this year, but the winners haven’t been published yet. I will follow up with another blog as soon as I find out.