Four more programs on Sunday, the last day of the short-but-intense festival.
The first two programs were short programs, starting with the local high school program REEL FRESH. This is the program of shorts made by students in video production classes in the Santa Cruz County Regional Occupational Program (ROP).
Ummm...this was almost two weeks ago, and I don't have a list of the films with descriptions. I do remember being pretty darn impressed at what high school kids could do. And I remember it ended with one that turned into a documentary about why their movie project failed, and it was pretty funny. But other than that...sorry I don't remember them that well.
Then graduating from high school to college we saw the UCSC shorts program Desire Obscured. This time I do have the advantage of a list of films, so here we go.
UNTITLED: An experimental, backwards, hand-drawn animated piece about memories of childhood.
BITS AND PIECES: Home movies...pieced together...to make...I don't know what.
DAYDREAMERS: A student's mind wanders, and in her wandering mind, she lives in a musical.
RUNNERS, SWIMMERS, BANDERS, AND TRACKERS: A sort of "ride-along" documentary on the day in the life of scientists tracking and banding birds in the South Bay.
A RIFT BETWEEN: The difficulties of trying to reconnect after years of estrangement.
I'M BLACK AND I THINK I SHOULD BE PROUD: A personal documentary, using Superman as a jumping off point, about white people dominating the television landscape and a dearth of black role models.
FERN BABY FERN: A woman and her prize-winning fern...who becomes a little too emotionally attached with her.
LOVE, OBSESSION, DESIRE: Director Carmella Crissman explores issues of femininity, sports, and body perception in a series of scenes dressing (and undressing) her in a baseball uniform and a dress...and playing baseball in a dress...and really, really enjoying holding a bat in her hands.
HIGH WIND ADVISORY: A daughter interviews her father on camera about his cross-dressing, which he kept secret for so long. Issues of trust are brought to the surface.
VENUS: A black and white animated homage to Venus Xtravaganza, who...I admit I had to look up on Wickipedia to understand who she was.
PRIMAL: Stan is bullied by Ted, just for talking to his ex-girlfriend Sarah. Sarah defends Ted. More bullying, leading up to a horrible event in a pool, that leaves everything changed.
FRAGMENTS: An experimental piece made from what looks like 8 mm home movies.
Then the next show was a short followed by a feature. First the short, MAGI, about the magic of Christmas. Specifically, about how on Christmas an excited little boy learns something about how sick with cancer his mom really is, and what sacrifice really means. Very sweet, and a little heartbreaking.
And that led into the feature documentary, ANNIE: IT'S A HARD KNOCK LIFE. It's a behind the scenes look at the recent Broadway revival of Annie. Specifically, about the kids and the choreography behind the featured song "It's a Hard Knock Life." There's some historical context from the writers of the musical, a little dig at the movie for making the song too fun, a nod to Jay Z and how he re-purposed the song to apply to life in the ghetto. But most of all, it's about the kids. Starting with auditions, we see how hard they work to get the steps right, how hard the choreographer works with them (and doesn't seem to know how to tackle it until very near the end) and how they somehow still manage to stay kids and laugh and have fun with it. It's a pretty pleasant film, and leaves the audience with a smile (this isn't a hard-hitting exposé on the working conditions of child actors--by all accounts they seem well taken care of.) I was just hoping all the way through we'd finally get a performance of the full song...and spoiler alert, that's exactly what you get for the finale.
And finally (only two and a half weeks late with this post) I ended the festival with the very funny CEMENT SUITCASE. Franklin is a wine salesman in Yakima Valley. And he's good at his job--he's very personable, knows a lot about wine, and gets people to laugh and buy a lot. Only problem is, he hates his job. It's not fulfilling. Instead, he has all these wild, impractical ideas that aren't of any financial value--like building a structure out of shopping carts and calling it Carthenge. Plus, he finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him and he...does nothing about it. Actually, he befriends the guy. Oh, and he can't keep up with the mortgage payments on his mom's house, so he's looking for a roommate. The only guy to answer his listing is an eccentric who breaks into his house. They have wacky adventures (including an explanation of the title) and despite a major nervous breakdown, Franklin ends up...well, somewhere. It's a movie that encourages you to...if not follow your dreams, at least indulge the crazy ideas you have, even if you can't make a living off them. Maybe not the most practical message, but it sure is fun to watch.
And that's my (very late) take on the 2013 version of the Santa Cruz Film Festival.
Total Running Time: 349 minutes
My Total Minutes: 342,365
Showing posts with label santa cruz film festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label santa cruz film festival. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Jason goes to the Santa Cruz Film Festival--Saturday, November 9th
Okay, I'm officially waaaaay behind on my blogging, so this will have to be unfortunately short.
First up on Saturday was a program of LGBTQ themed shorts collectively titled Genre Queer:
CHANGE OVER TIME: Genre - avant garde/experimental. Subject - sex reassignment. In an autobiographical, semi-animated poem director Ewan Duarte examines his first year on testosterone therapy and contemplates the changes ahead of him.
CONTRIBUTION OF A VERSE: The struggles of Jo, a genderqueer teenager who has been kicked out of her home. She lives in her car, showers in the school locker room before classes, and scrounges for whatever food she can find. A tough life, with almost no support, and invisible to the teachers.
PLANÈTE ROUGE: Two gay men in Los Angeles meet on grindr and go on a date. A look at a first date that's as sweet, tender, and (extra)ordinary as any first date.
STRAIGHT DOWN LOW: An adolescent noir film with a gay twist. A smart young man investigates a gang murder, with some surprising results.
Then the next show was the documentary MUSICWOOD, and it was a real surprise. Starting with the fine are of guitar-making, it gives a quick primer on the specific types of wood that are best for making guitars. And it specifically focuses on the spruce that is the best wood for the face/soundboard of the guitar. See, a lot of the woods used in making fine guitars are actually being rapidly depleted. And given that you need a pretty large piece to make a guitar face, you specifically need old growth spruce. So the film moves to southeast Alaska, home of the largest forests of old-growth Sitka Spruce in the world. The thing is, these forests are under the control of the Sealaska native corporation, and without a lot of other economic opportunity, they're being rapidly clear-cut. Just a tiny fraction of the wood goes to guitars, but the luthiers (did you know that's the word for guitar makers? I didn't, and I find that pretty cool) have a pretty vital interest in keeping enough old-growth trees around for their needs. So enter a three-way discussion between Sealaska (who wants economic activity), Greenpeace (who wants an end to clear-cutting, period) and the guitar makers (who want a sustainable source of spruce). Sometimes things get tense, sometimes they're downright cordial. To many natives, their visit is kind of a wake up call that they've gotten away from the land. On the other hand, they don't really have a lot of other opportunities. And on the other other hand (apparently this is a three-handed issue, at least) many of the natives complain that they don't see any of the benefits of the timber industry and the pollution has actually decimated their subsistence fishing. It seems like the obvious solution is to get Forest Stewardship Council certification, ensuring that the forestry practices are sustainable, and allowing them to charge more for their wood. But at least by the end of the movie, that's still not settled and negotiations were strained to the breaking point. I don't know if there are updates on this, but the movie gives you a good overview of the issue, from an interesting point of view, and full of gorgeous shots of Southeast Alaska forests (and illuminating shots of clear-cut forests.)
The next program started withe the short BARE AS YOU DARE: PORTLAND'S WORLD NAKED BIKE RIDE. Umm...that's exactly what it sounds like. The world naked bike ride is a (counter-)cultural phenomenon that takes place in several cities, and Portland's is one of the biggest. We get to briefly meet some of the participants--from long-time riders and organizers to first-time riders who are nervous not just about riding naked but about being in a movie about it. And we also get to see some of the audience and their reactions--from stunned, to amused, to wanting to join in.
And that was the lead-in to the feature, THE ORGANIC LIFE. Director Casey Beck turns her camera on her boyfriend, Austin Blair for a year-in-the-life look at the grueling, low-paid, but somehow rewarding work of being a certified organic farmer. Spurred heavily by his desire to eat good food, Austin starts working for Paul’s Produce in Sonoma, CA. Paul Wirtz proves to be an excellent mentor for Austin, and Austin's enthusiasm invigorates Paul. In fact, in the Q&A afterwards Casey and Austin revealed that one of the original ideas for the film was to focus on the relationship between Paul and Austin. Unfortunately, Paul simply isn't very charismatic on camera, and they wisely chose to focus the film on their own relationship instead. So we get to see the frustrating moments, the times when they (Casey especially) question the decision (did she really study film to live on a farm?) And it becomes more than just a story about growing organic vegetables. It's a story about growing a life, about creating a home, and about two people sharing their life. And that's pretty freakin' cool.
And then a real oddity, DIAMOND ON VINYL. Henry has an odd...hobby? Fascination? Quirk? I don't know what to call it, but he likes to record conversations, play them back, and study them. He's a big fan of the Safe at Home series--records of people having mundane conversations. The idea is you play them when you're out so that would-be burglars think people are home (what happens if you're out for more than 90 minutes? Umm....) Anyway, his latest recording--of him and his fiancee having sex--doesn't go over so well when she finds out about it. Even less well when she rewinds the tape and hears him practicing proposing to her...including him voicing his own doubts. Well, she kicks him out, he obsesses over her. He meets a fun, spontaneous young female photographer (the opposite of everything he is) who...fixes him? Not really? Breaks him? He was already kind of broken. But definitely dangerous, as they act out various imagined/practiced conversations and blur the line between fantasy and reality. Not said in all of this is what the heck is up with Henry anyway. It's never said, but I assumed he had some sort of high-functioning Aspergers Syndrome that made him unable to carry on a real, spontaneous conversation and so he was practicing every possible conversation in order to fit in.
Then I skipped the late movie to go to the Big Lebowski party instead. Interesting, Indiefest has done this party for ten years in San Francisco. This is the first year of doing it in Santa Cruz, and nearly everyone upon entering the party went straight to the screening room to watch the movie. I, instead, had an obligatory White Russian before moving on to "oat soda" and having...several of those. Hung out with The Dude and Walter for quite a while, somehow ended up at a vegetarian restaurant downtown at ~3 am before heading back to the hotel to sleep it off. Woke up with quite the hangover the next morning, but that's a story for a different blog post.
Total Running Time: 306 minutes
My Total Minutes: 342,016
First up on Saturday was a program of LGBTQ themed shorts collectively titled Genre Queer:
CHANGE OVER TIME: Genre - avant garde/experimental. Subject - sex reassignment. In an autobiographical, semi-animated poem director Ewan Duarte examines his first year on testosterone therapy and contemplates the changes ahead of him.
CONTRIBUTION OF A VERSE: The struggles of Jo, a genderqueer teenager who has been kicked out of her home. She lives in her car, showers in the school locker room before classes, and scrounges for whatever food she can find. A tough life, with almost no support, and invisible to the teachers.
PLANÈTE ROUGE: Two gay men in Los Angeles meet on grindr and go on a date. A look at a first date that's as sweet, tender, and (extra)ordinary as any first date.
STRAIGHT DOWN LOW: An adolescent noir film with a gay twist. A smart young man investigates a gang murder, with some surprising results.
Then the next show was the documentary MUSICWOOD, and it was a real surprise. Starting with the fine are of guitar-making, it gives a quick primer on the specific types of wood that are best for making guitars. And it specifically focuses on the spruce that is the best wood for the face/soundboard of the guitar. See, a lot of the woods used in making fine guitars are actually being rapidly depleted. And given that you need a pretty large piece to make a guitar face, you specifically need old growth spruce. So the film moves to southeast Alaska, home of the largest forests of old-growth Sitka Spruce in the world. The thing is, these forests are under the control of the Sealaska native corporation, and without a lot of other economic opportunity, they're being rapidly clear-cut. Just a tiny fraction of the wood goes to guitars, but the luthiers (did you know that's the word for guitar makers? I didn't, and I find that pretty cool) have a pretty vital interest in keeping enough old-growth trees around for their needs. So enter a three-way discussion between Sealaska (who wants economic activity), Greenpeace (who wants an end to clear-cutting, period) and the guitar makers (who want a sustainable source of spruce). Sometimes things get tense, sometimes they're downright cordial. To many natives, their visit is kind of a wake up call that they've gotten away from the land. On the other hand, they don't really have a lot of other opportunities. And on the other other hand (apparently this is a three-handed issue, at least) many of the natives complain that they don't see any of the benefits of the timber industry and the pollution has actually decimated their subsistence fishing. It seems like the obvious solution is to get Forest Stewardship Council certification, ensuring that the forestry practices are sustainable, and allowing them to charge more for their wood. But at least by the end of the movie, that's still not settled and negotiations were strained to the breaking point. I don't know if there are updates on this, but the movie gives you a good overview of the issue, from an interesting point of view, and full of gorgeous shots of Southeast Alaska forests (and illuminating shots of clear-cut forests.)
The next program started withe the short BARE AS YOU DARE: PORTLAND'S WORLD NAKED BIKE RIDE. Umm...that's exactly what it sounds like. The world naked bike ride is a (counter-)cultural phenomenon that takes place in several cities, and Portland's is one of the biggest. We get to briefly meet some of the participants--from long-time riders and organizers to first-time riders who are nervous not just about riding naked but about being in a movie about it. And we also get to see some of the audience and their reactions--from stunned, to amused, to wanting to join in.
And that was the lead-in to the feature, THE ORGANIC LIFE. Director Casey Beck turns her camera on her boyfriend, Austin Blair for a year-in-the-life look at the grueling, low-paid, but somehow rewarding work of being a certified organic farmer. Spurred heavily by his desire to eat good food, Austin starts working for Paul’s Produce in Sonoma, CA. Paul Wirtz proves to be an excellent mentor for Austin, and Austin's enthusiasm invigorates Paul. In fact, in the Q&A afterwards Casey and Austin revealed that one of the original ideas for the film was to focus on the relationship between Paul and Austin. Unfortunately, Paul simply isn't very charismatic on camera, and they wisely chose to focus the film on their own relationship instead. So we get to see the frustrating moments, the times when they (Casey especially) question the decision (did she really study film to live on a farm?) And it becomes more than just a story about growing organic vegetables. It's a story about growing a life, about creating a home, and about two people sharing their life. And that's pretty freakin' cool.
And then a real oddity, DIAMOND ON VINYL. Henry has an odd...hobby? Fascination? Quirk? I don't know what to call it, but he likes to record conversations, play them back, and study them. He's a big fan of the Safe at Home series--records of people having mundane conversations. The idea is you play them when you're out so that would-be burglars think people are home (what happens if you're out for more than 90 minutes? Umm....) Anyway, his latest recording--of him and his fiancee having sex--doesn't go over so well when she finds out about it. Even less well when she rewinds the tape and hears him practicing proposing to her...including him voicing his own doubts. Well, she kicks him out, he obsesses over her. He meets a fun, spontaneous young female photographer (the opposite of everything he is) who...fixes him? Not really? Breaks him? He was already kind of broken. But definitely dangerous, as they act out various imagined/practiced conversations and blur the line between fantasy and reality. Not said in all of this is what the heck is up with Henry anyway. It's never said, but I assumed he had some sort of high-functioning Aspergers Syndrome that made him unable to carry on a real, spontaneous conversation and so he was practicing every possible conversation in order to fit in.
Then I skipped the late movie to go to the Big Lebowski party instead. Interesting, Indiefest has done this party for ten years in San Francisco. This is the first year of doing it in Santa Cruz, and nearly everyone upon entering the party went straight to the screening room to watch the movie. I, instead, had an obligatory White Russian before moving on to "oat soda" and having...several of those. Hung out with The Dude and Walter for quite a while, somehow ended up at a vegetarian restaurant downtown at ~3 am before heading back to the hotel to sleep it off. Woke up with quite the hangover the next morning, but that's a story for a different blog post.
Total Running Time: 306 minutes
My Total Minutes: 342,016
Friday, November 8, 2013
Jason goes to the Santa Cruz Film Festival--Opening Night
I haven't been to the Santa Cruz Film Festival since...[looks up his records]...2007. And even then I only made it down for one movie. Mostly that's because of a combination of A) it's kind of a long schlep down there, and B) it used to be in the spring, and butted up against the big San Francisco International Film Festival, which took all my time and energy. Well, two things happened in the past year that made me give it another look: A) it moved to the fall, which...is still heavy with lots of mini-festivals (e.g., 3rd i, the SFFS Fall Season, Jewfest South, etc.) but doesn't have the the big dog dominating the calendar, and B) Jeff Ross, the impresario or Indiefest, joined their team as director. Now he doesn't really do any programming of the movies, but he puts on a darn good festival and I like to support his work (and I'm looking forward to the Lebowski Party on Saturday).
Anyway, after fighting a little bit of traffic down from Palo Alto after work, I made it there with about 15 minutes to spare before the opening night film, GOODBYE GAULEY MOUNTAIN: AN ECOSEXUAL LOVE STORY. Beth Stephens and her wife Annie Sprinkle travel to West Virginia (the state where Beth was born and raised) to protest mountain top removal (MTR) by coal mining companies. But they're not your typical eco-warriors. Annie is a former sex worker/current sex educator and they are both "Ecosexuals." That is, they take tree-hugging a bit to the extreme side. They don't think of "mother" Earth, but instead take the Earth as a lover, engaging in the sensual delights of nature (I've never seen so many vaguely erotic shots of tomatoes in my life.) And they ceremonially marry various aspects of nature--the water, the sky, and in this instance the Appalachian Mountains. That's the climax of the movie, and it's pretty fun, but the journey there is even more interesting. They meet a variety of locals, including legendary (and recently deceased) Keeper of the Mountains Larry Gibson. He's an inspiring guy and a lot more should be devoted to him in another movie (sadly, he's not around to give any more interviews).
The movie played to a very like-minded audience in Santa Cruz, and of course I'm like-minded as well (fuck MTR! I don't care if half the electricity in the U.S. comes from coal. It shouldn't, and even so we used to be able to extract coal without blowing up entire mountains.) But for my money the best scene of the movie was when they had a surprisingly agreeable conversation with a guy (the boyfriend...or husband? I wan't quite sure...of Beth's childhood friend) who considers himself a tree-hugger but still supports MTR. It's in no small part because his livelihood depends on it, and his argument eventually devolves to 'In The Bible, God gave man dominion over nature' but it felt like the one time the thesis of the film (MTR is bad, and here's a creative way to combat it) was challenged. This is my personal taste, but I'd rather see a film that challenges my beliefs than one that reinforces them.
Running Time: 70 minutes
My Total Minutes: 341,346
Anyway, after fighting a little bit of traffic down from Palo Alto after work, I made it there with about 15 minutes to spare before the opening night film, GOODBYE GAULEY MOUNTAIN: AN ECOSEXUAL LOVE STORY. Beth Stephens and her wife Annie Sprinkle travel to West Virginia (the state where Beth was born and raised) to protest mountain top removal (MTR) by coal mining companies. But they're not your typical eco-warriors. Annie is a former sex worker/current sex educator and they are both "Ecosexuals." That is, they take tree-hugging a bit to the extreme side. They don't think of "mother" Earth, but instead take the Earth as a lover, engaging in the sensual delights of nature (I've never seen so many vaguely erotic shots of tomatoes in my life.) And they ceremonially marry various aspects of nature--the water, the sky, and in this instance the Appalachian Mountains. That's the climax of the movie, and it's pretty fun, but the journey there is even more interesting. They meet a variety of locals, including legendary (and recently deceased) Keeper of the Mountains Larry Gibson. He's an inspiring guy and a lot more should be devoted to him in another movie (sadly, he's not around to give any more interviews).
The movie played to a very like-minded audience in Santa Cruz, and of course I'm like-minded as well (fuck MTR! I don't care if half the electricity in the U.S. comes from coal. It shouldn't, and even so we used to be able to extract coal without blowing up entire mountains.) But for my money the best scene of the movie was when they had a surprisingly agreeable conversation with a guy (the boyfriend...or husband? I wan't quite sure...of Beth's childhood friend) who considers himself a tree-hugger but still supports MTR. It's in no small part because his livelihood depends on it, and his argument eventually devolves to 'In The Bible, God gave man dominion over nature' but it felt like the one time the thesis of the film (MTR is bad, and here's a creative way to combat it) was challenged. This is my personal taste, but I'd rather see a film that challenges my beliefs than one that reinforces them.
Running Time: 70 minutes
My Total Minutes: 341,346
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