Christian Gaines, my colleague at WithoutABox, shares his final thoughts on the festival below.
In my last post, I said I’d write a little about what it was like being on the Narrative Shorts jury at SXSW 2010. Shorts are really the building blocks of film festivals. First, the distribution options for short filmmakers are few and far between, especially in the United States – film festivals and the internet being two great places to get caught up. At film festivals, shorts filmmakers are often given the chance to debut their talents (short films are sometimes referred to as a “calling card”), and shorts programs are often among the most popular and anticipated at film festivals, if just because festivals are your best (and quite possibly only) chance of seeing them on the big screen. I was lucky to have on my jury team two affable and articulate lovers of movies – Todd Luoto, a shorts programmer with the Sundance Film Festival, and Amy Dotson, Deputy Director of the Independent Feature Project. We were charged with watching three feature-length programs of shorts over a two day period, each handpicked by the SXSW shorts programming team. It’s worth noting that the shorts programs that we attended at the festival were always full, no matter the time of day. People love their shorts here. Watching these three programs was truly a pleasure: there was really something to recommend each short that we watched, and we knew from the first frame of the first film we watched that it wasn’t going to be easy to select a winner. Some highlights from each program:
Gaysorn Thavatt’s Brave Donkey is a delightfully bleak and twisted tale of how an ex-husband’s clandestine, revengeful visit to the house of his ex-wife’s new family takes an unexpected turn
Adam Locke-Norton’s delightfully deadpan Pancake Breakfast shows how one hipster couple’s initially humorous preoccupation with ironic banter gets seriously in the way of some critically needed honest communication
From the UK, Dan P.K. Smyth’s gritty The Mess Hall of an Online Warrior profiles the tenuous grip one single and lonely mother has on her son, as lost in his own angry and isolated adolescence as he is in the world of online gaming
Girls Named Pinky features Michael J. Burg as a timid traveling salesman who befriends a woman alone in a bar
The trippy and fantastical Televisnu from director Prithi Gowda delves into cultural issues like arranged marriages, outsourcing and conflicts between the old and the new
The tense, ambitious drama The Big Fiddle is an assured directorial debut from Will Patton, about a wealthy New York couple’s attempt to celebrate their anniversary, even as their lives are rapidly unraveling
Oliver Refson’s hilarious send-up of the modern British film world The Hardest Part, follows faded former TV-star George to audition with up-and-coming hot shot director Eddie Brick
The sublime Teleglobal Dreamin’, about an American corporate-trainer in the Philippines out on the town with his new friend from the call center (which we awarded the Runner Up award to, incidentally).
But the winner for this jury was captivating, uncompromising Cigarette Candy the fourth short from director Lauren Wolkstein, who’s bold directing decisions coupled with a drum-tight screenplay from Jeff Sousa produced a tense, ambitious drama about a young Marine home from war and attending a neighborhood party in his honor. While friends and family shower him with attention, the shell-shocked warrior can’t seem to focus on anything but the mysterious, seductive charms of the rebellious Candy. We loved this film, in particular the astonishing performance of Jonathan Orsini.
Other random highlights in no particular order…
It was a thrill to witness to the world premiere of the documentary The Canal Street Madam, Cameron Yate’s fascinating yet troubling account of infamous New Orleans madam Jeanette Maier’s brothel, which she ran with her daughter and mother until an FBI raid put a stop to the partying, silenced her best customers (corrupt local politicos and influence peddlers), thrusting Jeanette into a harsh national media spotlight. After a spirited Q&A, the madam herself and many in the audience removed to an after-party in a nearby luxury penthouse apartment replete with souvenir condoms, breathtaking Austin views and a rumor circulating that this lavish suite of circular beds and deep pile carpet was itself occasionally the site of insider-Austin swinger get-togethers.
Continuing on my catching-up-on-missed-Sundance-movies theme, I was also pleased to catch a screening Sundance favorite Lovers of Hate, from Bryan Poyser. This slyly entertaining tale of two competitive brothers and cements Bryan’s place in the ever expanding “Austin filmmakers made good” list.
It seems like documentaries are ruling the roost at film festivals recently and for good reason, because films like The Oath – a methodical insight into the complex roots of jihad-ism as seen through the eyes of Abu Jandal, a former bodyguard to Osama Bin Laden and the first man to face a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay – are offering a perspective completely missing from the regular news media. …and, no visit to Austin is complete without a visit to Torchy’s Tacos. Yum!
