Jason goes to Indiefest--day 7

Okay, first that pic I snapped of the "Stalking Santa" guys that I couldn't get from my phone yesterday (it tried to e-mail it from my phone and it wouldn't work)? I manually transferred it to my PC last night, and here it is: Wasn't that worth the wait?


Well, the first movie I saw last night was "The Substance of Things Hoped For", as in "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Heb. 11:1, KJV). Here's a pic of director/co-writer Greg Morgan and co-writer Duke Addleman:

"The Substance of Things Hoped For" is an amazing movie about faith, hallucination, sanity, family, ethics, science, choice,...did I forget anything? Oh yeah, dolphins. And I could go on and on--it's a very rich movie. It's the story of Daphne (Vanessa Lengies), a young woman who in a medical double-whammy is diagnosed with a rare form of schizophrenia and told she's pregnant (although she doesn't remember anyone who could be the father). The dilemma: the drug that will cure her insanity will kill her unborn child, which she doesn't want. Furthermore, her disease may be hereditary, but to find out she must find the father she's never known (Ray Wise from "Twin Peaks", awesome as always) and get him to take a blood test. However, he's a scientist who's had an attack of religious faith, and refuses to let science--in the form of a blood test--make the vital moral decision for her. So she decides to try to deduce his sanity for herself by studying his controversial research on dolphin linguistics. And then things get weird and maybe it's all a product of her schizophrenia. Or not, it's a movie that holds up a mirror and lets your reaction tell you more about yourself than about the movie. I just have to say, I'm an athiest, but I loved this movie. I don't believe in God, but I worship great movies, and this is a great movie.

Oh, and I almost forgot about the short before it. Which would be wrong of me, because it was one of the best pairings of short and feature I can remember. "God's Little Girl" is a fantastic, religious hallucination of its own. When a baby dies suddenly in its crib, the mother's heart stops beating but she doesn't die. If when God loves someone so much he takes them to heaven early, how do you balance being good enough to get into heaven but not so good that you die young?

And then it was time for the Indiefest Valentines Day special--"Unholy Women", a trilogy of Japanese horror films. The middle one, "Hagane" (Steel) was particulary romantic.

But first, "Kata Kata" (Rattle Rattle), about a woman who while walking home late at night hears a strange rattle. She's then thumped on the head and wakes up dazed, but unharmed. Then her lover's ex-wife starts attacking her, then she (the ex-wife) turns into a monster. Then it gets weird and freaky!

"Hagane" (Steel)--This movie made me wish I could find a woman who's beautiful from the waist down but from the waist up is a burlap sack full of razor blades. Maybe I should wait by the river until one floats by. What can I say, I'm a romantic!

"Uketsugumono" (The Inheritance)--When will Japanese children learn that if you have an uncle who died at a young age, don't go poking around in the creepy shed where you might disturb his ghost. Silly kid!

Okay, and that's the end of day 7. The end's almost in sight now. Just 3 more tonight, 4 on Friday, 5 + the Crazy Go Nuts show on Saturday, 5 on Sunday, and bonus shows Monday and Tuesday. Wow, it's almost over!

Jason goes to Indiefest--day 6

And first off, I must thank Indiefest for linking to me from their myspace blog and their press page. My visits shot up by about a factor of 5 yesterday. Woo hoo, 50 visitors in one day! That's almost enough to not qualify as pathetic!

Anyway...I got up to the city early enough last night to grab a couple of beers courtesy of Guba.com (which I haven't had a chance to check out because their site is blocked from work, so I'll check it out once I'm home for more than just my requisite 4 hours of sleep) before the first movie.

So the first movie was an investigative documentary about the biggest conspiracy of all time. The truth is out there, seen in ancient cave drawings, debris from a crash site in Roswell, New Mexico, classified US military reports, etc. Dr. Lloyd Darrow has dedicated his life to researching this phenomenon, and finally presents this irrefutable proof that there is indeed...a jolly old fat man in a red suit who gives presents to children every Christmas! "Stalking Santa" convinced me. Not only is Lloyd Darrow the world's preeminent Sant-ologist, but the movie's narrated by William Shatner. You can't argue with Shatner! It was hilarious, and the little side gags are so fast I would certainly benefit from multiple viewings.

Anyway, the director Greg Kiefer as well as the editor (I think? And I don't remember his name, he was a pretty quiet guy. But if he was the editor he did a great job) were there, and I did snap a quick photo with my cell phone, but I'm having problems transferring it to my PC, so you'll just have to live with one less grainy, blown-out photo. I'm sure you're all heartbroken. If it's any consolation, I did get the photos of the filmmakers who were there for the late show.


Well, then it was time for the late show, the shorts program "Breath, Death, Prayer", the collection of more or less "experimental" shorts--although I'd take some issue with that classification. To me, experimental means that the filmmaker tried a new technique and didn't entirely know what the result would be--they try an experiment, and view the results. However for these films I would guess that for the most part the filmmaker knew exactly what they'd look like up on screen. So I would call them more "audience challenging" than experimental, but that's a minor semantic point, on to the movies.

"Rumsfeld Rules"--Re-edited interview Donald Rumsfeld to make it look like he's saying the Bill of Rights is dangerous and the founding fathers are traitors. It's surprisingly easy.
"Breathing Chamber"--Life is tough when you're a little boy with gills instead of lungs. A metaphor on suffocation.

By the way, here's a pic of Carlos Marulanda who made "Breathing Chamber" with Bryan Boyce who made "Rumsfeld Rules":

"13 Ways to Die at Home"--Very informative...I mean, funny. And quick. I guess it's just to give you ideas and you work out the details at home. I'd probably go for #1, poison toads. They look yummy.
"Untitled Video on Lynn Stewart and Her Conviction, the Law, and Poetry"--Lynn Stewart is the lawyer who was famously charged as a terrorist a couple years back for sneaking correspondance out for her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. She's a fascinating character and at first I liked this movie. But when it went off on her love of poetry, it lost me. If you want to put poetry in there, fine. If you want the screen to go blank except for some dim, muted colors while she's reading poetry, fine. But the third time that happened, I lost my patience.
"Io il mare non lo sento (I Can't Hear the Sea)"--The US premiere of an Italian film that's basically a poem of a guy watching the sea. Here's a pic of the star, all cleaned up (in the movie he was as scruffy as...well, me):
"NYC Weights and Measures"--Street footage of New York, including a ticker-tape parade for geriatric astronaut John Glenn
"A Prayer for Area 23"--A docu-poem about children with AIDS in Africa.
"Bug Cemetery"--Ummm...damn, I don't rember this one. I'm sorry. Anyone out there who saw it, can you give me a hint that might jog my memory?
"Petrolia"--a 21 minute, silent meditation on the beauty/ugliness of oil drilling platforms off the shore of Scotland. Here's a film festival tip--if you doze off during a movie like this, it's only 5 minutes long, and you still get the general idea.

And that's day 6. Tonight I'll be up to see 2 more movies--"The Substance of Things Hoped For" and "Unholy Women".

Jason goes to Indiefest--day 5

Two more movies last night, first up was the shorts program "Desperate Measures", here we go:
"The Trainee"--A guy has a really, really hard go at robbing a convenience store.
"Shank"--Teen girls, soccer, and sexy hijinx. These are a few of my favorite things.
"Musi Byt Ma (She Must Be Mine)"--Sometimes a little infidelity can be a good thing.
"The Portrait"--A Japanese man on his deathbed asks his nephew for a photograph.
"Alcatraz"--The recollections of a fat teenage girl, her overbearing mother, hypnosis, and sex.
"The One"--Dave has just met a girl and thinks it would be cool to videotape himself every day while the relationship progresses. Let's see how it goes. By the way, this won totally sucked me in and fooled me. Kudos, Dave!

Some filmmakers were in attendance. Here's Juan Reyes who made "Alcatraz" and Jenessa Joffe who made "Shank":
Here's Brian Emery who made "Musi Byt Ma", with Dave Laden of "The One" in the background:

Here's Dave Laden talking about his film while Brian Emery passes him the mic.

Then next up was "Green Minds, Metal Bats" from the awesome Indiefest favorite Kumakiri Kazuyoshi ("Antennae", "Kichiku Dai Enkai: The Banquet of the Beasts"). Here's a pic with him (left) and translator/subtitler/SF International Asian American Film Festival assistant director Taro Goto (the SFIAAF schedule should be online today!)

"Green Minds, Metal Bats" is a story about baseball, and losers hanging on to former glory, and the ultimate swing, and a really drunk woman, and baseball as healing, and a crazy old guy who claims to be the spirit of Babe Ruth (even though he bats righty instead of lefty), and violence and love and I laughed and laughed and loved it!

Okay, that seems like a pretty terse review, but I was trying to capture the manic, psychotic energy of this film, which is pretty impossible to do is a stupid little blog post, but this movie is awesome. Find it, watch, and if you're not afraid of Kumakiri after it, watch his other movies (because you will be afraid of him after watching "Kichiku Dai Enkai", but that's another story).

Jason goes to Indiefest--Day 4

Let's jump right into it. I got 4 hours of sleep and I was back up to the Roxie for the documentary "Rock 'n Tokyo". Here's a pic of the director Pamela Valente:




"Rock 'n Tokyo" is, as the name suggests, about Japanese rock and roll. And, as Pamela's name suggests, she's not Japanese. In fact, she speaks very little Japanese, but loves the country and the music and so moved to Japan for a while to make this movie. Mostly it's concert footage--Guitar Wolf, the 5678's, and Jet Boys (whose lead singer is quite and exhibitionist)--and some backstage hijinx and fan reactions, with very little explanation. This is probably because of her language barrier, but she explained that she was more interested in just capturing the energy of the Japanese rock scene. Personally, I could've used more explanation or story to tie it all together, but still the resulting movie was very good at what she wanted to accomplish. A good wake-up call to start me on another long day of movies.

Next up was a trio of mid-length shorts (25-40 minutes) about loneliness and perversity. First up was actually a film from 1950 that was banned for decades. "Un Chant d'Amour" was initially made for a Parisian gay porn collection. Completely silent (not just dialogue-free, but completely silent), it's a story of a voyeuristic prison guard and his two prisoners trying to connect with each other through the concrete walls. I'm pretty proud that I was able to stay awake for it, especially considering all the snoring I heard by the end.

Then there was a beautiful and funny animated Mexican-American film, "El Doctor", about a 1920's Mexican doctor with surreal patients--a guy with 100 holes shot in him from his angry wife, a girl who sprouts flowers, a guy with knotted up guts, and a woman who's a horse. But he'd rather just get drunk.

And finally, there was an Argentinian adaptation of a Charles Bukowski short story of necrophilia. "Mermaid of the River Plate" (based on "The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, CA") is a story of two drunks who steal a body bag from an ambulance and drag it home. After more drinking, they open up the bag and discover a beautiful, recently dead woman, and proceed to have the best night of their life. Ummm...gross...but funny. At least, I laughed.

So then I walked over to the Victoria to see "Dance Party USA", by Aaron Katz. Here's a picture of him:

Oh, but first there was the short, "Nameless", a dark, funny story of a real scumbag picking up women at parties without even bothering to learn their names. A nice lead-in to "Dance Party USA".

"Dance Party USA" (which, by the ways, contains no dancing) is part of the new wave of American filmmaking (or video-making/movie-making, as one audience member vocally pointed out) with the likes of Joe Swanberg ("LOL") and Andrew Bujalski ("Mutual Appreciation"). The movie is inspired by conversations overheard by Aaron as he rode public transit in Portland, and it follows the lives of some Portland teenagers going to a 4th of July party that's not actually that good but there's free beer and you don't have to be 21. Gus likes to regale his friend Bill with half-truths about his sexual and drug-use exploits, and in fact opens the movie describing basically a really gross episode of statutory rape (according to Aaron, this scene is almost verbatim something he overheard). At the party, he meets Jessica who's something of an outsider and has heard rumors about Gus. The movie is a great example of the naturalistic dialogue prevalent in this new style of American movies, to the point of being almost entirely based on rather awkward conversations. And it was very well done and very engaging. Interestingly enough, when I saw one of the first examples of this new wave, Andrew Bujalski's "Funny Ha Ha", I didn't like it at all. But his follow-up "Mutual Appreciation" was excellent, and I loved "LOL" and now "Dance Party USA". I think the key is that with the realistic dialogue and characters, there's not an easy handle on the characters--they're not just simple one word archetypes, it's on the audience to pay attention and get to know the characters as if you've known them for years, because the camera has. This insight actually makes me want to go back and watch "Funny Ha Ha" again, because I think I'd get more out of it this time.

And finally there was, "Rolling", a movie who's manifesto was to realistically portray MDMA (Ecstasy) use. They had a huge cast and crew all there. Here's the director Bill Saleeby and breakout comic e-tard dork Clinton Cargile:

Here's a bunch more of the "Rolling" team:

"Rolling" employs a faux-documentary style of intercutting interviews with the subjects and the narrative of one long night rolling (being high on Ecstasy) in LA. I just have to say, I love Indiefest audiences--whatever subculture a movie is about, that subculture will attend. I was watching this movie and cracking up, but at least 3/4 of the audience was cracking up at completely different scenes. A prime example, one character is explaining the nasty taste of Ecstasy, but how you know if it tastes really bad then it's really good. I thought that was an interesting piece of information, but the rest of the audience apparently thought it was a hilarious joke. Anyway, I can say that even having never taken Ecstasy, it was still a brilliant, touching, and hilarious movie with great performances all around. Why, I'd even believe that most of the cast has actually done E!

Anyway, this was actually the day that I scheduled an early night so I could go home and rest. So of course I went to the after party and drank with the "Rolling" crew for a couple of hours instead. But I still got home okay, I didn't jump around like an idiot until dawn or dehydrate, so I guess no one slipped anything into my drink.

And that was day 4 of Indiefest. Tonight I'm seeing "Desperate Measures" and "Green Minds, Metal Bats".

Jason remembers he has a camera phone at indiefest

So here's some really low-quality photos of filmmakers at their Q&A sessions. If you want good photos of the festival (taken by other people) go to http://sfindiefest.imeem.com/

But as for my photos:Here's Tara Wray, director/star of "Manhattan, Kansas":

Here are David Lawrence and Leslie Ellis from "My Name is Wallace"

Here's Jacob Himmon of "Night Becomes Day"

Here's Joe Swanberg (left) and part of his team from "LOL"

Here's the "LOL" team minus Joe. By the way, given the techniques used in "LOL", I think posting low-quality cell phone photos of them is perfect:

And here's the team from "Mojave Phone Booth", director John Putch, writer Jerry Rapp, and star Robert Romanus:

Okay, that's all for now

Jason goes to Indiefest--day 3

I got a good 4-5 hours of sleep, then up to the Victoria by noon for "Manhattan, Kansas" followed by the short "A Drop in Oicata" (an unexplained glitch kept it from playing first). "Manhattan, Kansas" was an extraordinary documentary of raw emotional power by Tara Wray. Tara was raised by her mother alone after her dad left them. Problem is, her mother could be charitably called a free spirit (or uncharitably called fuckin' nuts). When Tara was young they were inseperable, even sleeping in the same bed until she was 13. When she was 19, and planning to move out to her own apartment, her mom threatened to kill both of them. Years later Tara works at NYU (in the Manhattan where she should've grown up, instead of Manhattan, Kansas) and has barely spoken to her mom in years. She decides to return home and document her confrontation with her mom, aided by two filmmakers and a psychiatrist. The juxtaposition of Tara's sweet, uncomfortable vulnerability with her mother's riotous, inscrutable hijinx is striking. I have enormous respect and admiration for anyone who can give so much of themselves. It was frankly awesome.

Then the short was pretty good, and sort of ties together in a "returning home" kind of way. Diana Logreira takes a trip to her native Colombian village to take part in a festival that includes such oddities as blind pig-catching and a donkey beauty pageant. Specifically, she's a judge in the donkey pageant.

Then I was over to the Roxie for the short compilation "All the Lonely People", which consisted of:
"Happiness"--A woman who works in quality control in a condom factory tries to buy happiness at the store, but then returns it for a nice pair of shoes.
"Night Becomes Day"--A guy turns his car into a taxi in an effort to meet people and make friends, with mixed results.
"Die Besucher (The Visitors)"--A german movie about a woman in trouble and then I don't really remember what.
"My Name is Wallace"--A hilarious story of a lonely man looking for love, so he calls an ad in the paper promising love over the phone. Neither party in the ensuing 1-900 call have any idea what they're in store for. Look for the feature length version coming soon!

Then it was back to the Victoria for "LOL", by Joe Swanberg ("Kissing on the Mouth" from last year's Indiefest). Joe's out in front of a new wave of filmmakers based on real, contemporary, naturalistic acting (often improvised by non-actors). It's more slice-of-life than slice-of-cake, to use the old Hitchcock line, and it has taken me a bit of effort to warm up to it, but now I totally dig it and "LOL" is a great use of the technique for humor. It follows three couples, specifically from the male perspective. One is in a traditional relationship (Swanberg himself) but he cares (or pretends to care) more about his computer than his girlfriend. One is in a long-distance relationship, but treats his girlfriend like crap-even complaining when she sends him sexy photos of herself that they're not dirty enough to turn him on. And the third is in an imaginary relationship with an internet porn star, and takes his imaginary band (he actually makes some pretty cool music from footage of people making random noises with their faces) on an imaginary tour just to try and visit her in St. Louis. Basically, it's about communication technology and how stupid, selfish guys are using it to destroy rather than further their own communication skills. One of the most brilliant scenes is with Joe and his friend (the one in the long-distance relationship) sitting on the couch next to each other IM'ing each other about Joe's girlfriend, who's sitting right in front of them. Brilliant and hilarious, it had me LOLing (that's Laughing Out Loud for those of you not up on the lingo)

Then next up was "Mojave Phone Booth", one of the most cleverly written movies I've seen in quite a while which uses the true legend of the Mojave phone booth to tell four interweaving stories. The phone booth of the title used to exist about 70 miles outside of Las Vegas, and when it's number was posted online, people started calling it and other people would camp by it hoping to receive a call and have a conversation with a complete stranger. And four strangers go there and have conversations with a mysterious woman named Greta, and in so doing basically provide voice-over for their stories. First Beth, whose boyfriend wants her to move in with him, but she thinks it's too fast, even though she lives in a crappy neighborhood and her car radio keeps getting stolen. Then there's Mary, who's down on her luck and needing cash, and stays with her friend who tuns out to be a prostitute (with an odd turn by Steve Guttenberg as her client). Then there's Alex, a lesbian who's lover is going crazy from a belief that her body is infested with aliens. And finally Richard, who is going through a painful divorce and stumbles on the phone booth after a failed suicide attempt. Their lives all interweave in a tapestry of phone calls and magnetic tape.

Then it was back to the Roxie for good old-fashioned WTF 70's Shaw Bros. fun with "Infra-Man", from the good people at Cosmic Hex. When the evil Princess Dragon Mom tries to enslave the human race with her army of monsters, the Professor enlists a brave soldier to become Inframan, powered by nuclear energy and with the incrdible thundrball fists he saves the world. The perfect movie to watch drunk (sadly, I wasn't) and yell stupid things at the screen (which gladly, I did).

And finally there was the midnight movie "S&Man". Not quite documentary, nor really mockumentary, I will try to coin the term what-the-fockumentary to describe it. JT Petty made "Soft For Digging" which played at Indiefest a few years back. Then he got interested in a story from his hometown about a peeping tom who videotaped his neighbors and escaped charges when it became apparent that the tapes would have to be shown at trial. He completely failed to interview the peeping tom (who chased him away with a chainsaw!), but he used it as a jumping-off point to explore the sick world of underground horror films--specifically focusing on a series called S&Man (that's Sandman, not S&M Man), about a guy who films himself killing women (faked, but choosing random "victims" off the street and approaching them after making sure they look good on camera). He also interviews Bill Zebub (that's Beelzebub, get it?) who makes exploitation nudie snuff flicks with his team of actresses. And he interviews psychologists and scholars on the subject of voyeurism and horror films. Fascinating, and without giving anything away I'll just say that JT is not the outsider documentarian he presents himself as. However, in the Q&A he insisted it is a documentary, from the point of view that all documentaries are a biased, filtered version of fact. It made me think of the famous first documentary--"Nanook of the North", a day in the life of an eskimo...shot entirely on a stage in LA.

Jason goes to Indiefest--Day 2

I took today off from work, mainly because I didn't get home until 3 am and was pretty hungover. But as a bonus, this allowed me to see the early show of Chris Gore's live talk, "Filmmaking in the Nude". After initially promising that the festival description was wrong and he wasn't going to be funny, he proceeded to break that promise for an hour and a half. He ran off on odd tangents on creating Film Threat, selling it to Larry Flynt (after a stint as a joke writer for Hustler), making "My Big Fat Independent Movie" (which I saw at Cinequest a couple years back). He gave advice to aspiring filmmakers, he made silly sexual metaphors about asking for money to make a movie. He ripped on Canadians. And overall, just wallowed in movie geekdom. He's a pretty cool guy, and since he'll be around the festival for at least the weekend, I hope to have time to have a beer with him.

Then it was over to the Victoria for a couple of neighborhood history documentaries. First was the short, "Mischief at 16th and Florida". "Mischief" being the term for a group of rats (a gaggle of geese, a pod of whales, a murder of crows, and a mischief of rats), and "16th and Florida" being an intersection in San Francisco's Mission District. Rats tend to stay in a 60 foot radius, and get to know their area very well, and the movie uses that as a jumping off point to explore the history first of that intersection and expands to where it impacts on all of San Francisco. Pretty interesting.

And then there was the feature documentery, "The Ballad of Greenwich Village", exploring in an all-inclusive manner the history of the artistic, social, political, bohemian culture of the famous New York neighborhood. Mixing archive material with interviews with local residents and interviews with famous people who got their starts in the village (like Woody Allen, Tim Robbins, Norman Mailer, etc.) A pretty interesting look, focusing more on breadth than depth (as filmmaker Karen Kramer noted, any of the subjects could be expanded to its own feature length doc).

Next we switched from recent culture to renaissance culture with a new adaptation of "Dante's Inferno", this time in a contemporary setting made with paper cutout puppets from the team of Sean Meredith and Sandow Birk who made "In Smog and Thunder" a few years back. Hilarious, and by wonderful coincidence I actually read "Dante's Inferno" just a year back. Here they stayed sorta close to the text, but mixed in their own politics and jokes (Dick Cheney is the only guy evil enough to be in hell without being dead). Oddly enough, my favorite circle of hell both in the book and the movie is the false flatters, but for completely different reasons. In the book, I liked how they were drowning in a river of boiling shit, and in the movie I liked how it was turned into a musical number about Congress. Still, I do miss the boiling shit.

And the torture of the inferno led well into "The Third Eye", a thriller about treppanation--the practie of drilling a hole in your head to release pressure. Nika's brother died of a drug overdose about a year ago, and she's finally eager to get back to work as a photojournalist. However, she still talks to her brother's ghost, and there are clues that maybe he didn't overdose. And I guess I've already revealed that it has something to do with trepanning. Oops, sorry for the spoiler. Anyway, as many gory movies as I see, I thought this would be nothing, but I was wrong. It still made me squrm to see a drill going into a skull. Very well done. Oh yeah, there are rabbits featured in this movie, too--her brother's dealer and trepanning enthusiast is a musician named Charlie Rabbit who wears bunny ears at his club, and there's a bus stop poster featuring rabbits. Have I spotted the first theme of this Indiefest? I'll keep an eye out for rabbits and let you know.

And it turns out that the squirming I did watching the trepannation was a good warmup for the midnight show. First was "Rick Trembles' Goopy Spasms Live Cartoon Show", a sick and twisted autobiographical cartoon about sex, masturbation, and shit-play based on Rick Trembles' comic strip "How Did I Get So Anal?"

And finally, there was the uber-sick and utterly hilarious feature "Neighborhood Watch". Billed as the sickest thing to ever play at Indiefest, and as one who'd know I can say I can't think of anything that would prove that wrong. Bob and Wendi have just moved into a new neighborhood, and their neighbor Adrien is there to welcome them. But behind his friendly demeanor he's actually a complete fucking psycho inspired by the rantings of a radio evangelist. And what happens next has to be seen to be believed. In fact, I just saw it and I'm not sure I believe it. Interesting point, in talking to director Graeme Whifler, he explained that the radio evangelist is based on a real guy.

Anyway, then I hopped on the bus home, which is where I'm writing this. So day 2 of Indiefest is done.