The Flint Film Festival – 2005

The 2005 Flint Film Festival

Having had such a good time at last year’s Flint Film Festival – a first for the city – I was pretty excited for this year’s to come around. Despite the luxurious pay we earn at JAC I haven’t ever gotten a chance to get to a film festival before last year, and it’s neat to have one right in what is essentially my backyard. Or, well, at least a neighbor’s backyard. And the thing that impresses me most about this festival is that the people running it are all movie people. They work, breathe, and to some degree live movies and many have made them themselves, so they work to get the best films they are able to. Sometimes it doesn’t always seem to happen – hey, I am a reviewer, I can say this stuff – but overall both years have had good, solid entries.

It was held again in the Mott Regional Technical Center, a beautiful building that makes you long for the zombie Armageddon so you hide out there with your friends and wait until civilization returns. Or maybe that’s just me and my friends thinking that. The festival still has some bugs to work out, the main one being that they need to get the word out about it much more efficiently, but those that attended saw some really wonderful films. Here are the ones I was able to see.

 

The Collector – 7 short film – William O’Kelly

A fun short subject horror film about a girl walking home through an area surrounded by cornfields after a fight with her boyfriend and the evil thing she finds waiting in that corn. A nicely done little chiller that is light on plot but handles the scares well.

 

Feeding Patterns – 7 short film – John Benjamin

Another short subject from Flint company Blackmore Filmworks. This tale is about a woman in desperate need of a repairman, though, much to his chagrin, it isn’t to fix her phone, but to feed her vampiric daughters. Not as sharp as Collector, but another solid effort that has a surprising amount of blood.

Both films would work well on an anthology disc and I hope that the company gets enough material together to do just that.

 

David and Dee – 5 short film – Jonathan Vara

An interesting mix of Wes Anderson and Citizen Kane, this is the story of two children, emotionally (and to a degree physically) abandoned by their mother in the grand mansion they all live in, and the things they do to cope with their isolation. An interesting idea, and a beautiful set design can’t overcome an odd, vague plotting, and bizarre ending. A lot of people liked this one but it didn’t work for me.

www.davidanddee.com

 

Land of Life – 6 ­– short film – Vincent Argentine

A unique blending of traditional Native American storytelling and modern computer animation, this is the story of a young tribal lizard that ventures out to find the answer to a great mystery. A beautiful idea that is a bit jagged around the edges. It’s hard to translate something like a Native American story because part of the thing is the story itself, and it doesn’t always lend itself to translation. But a nice film that shows promise for some really good things from Mr. Argentine.

www.landoflife.com

 

The Decisive Moment – 7 – short film – Andre Lyon

An interesting, if not entirely effective film about a man trying to cope with the loss of his young son. Unable to face the loss of his son, the man, a photographer, begins to take pictures of boys he imagines would look like his son, one boy for each year of the dead child’s life, and each picture taken secretly from afar. But when he is spotted by the young man that is to be the twenty-first subject, he must face the truth of his son’s death, and what it means to him. A haunting film that isolates the viewer as the father is isolated, but this emotional distance works also to disconnect you from the piece as well. Had I not read the festival program I would have no idea what this was about, which is also a problem. Interesting, but flawed.

 

The Wasted Drink – 7 short film – Robert Fox

A really well conceived, though poorly realized, story about two sets of three friends that go out to the bar to get one of their group to approach someone from the opposite sex for a date. A great idea, and one long in coming, that has moments of sheer and utter truth about the human dating ritual and the fear of rejection that holds many of us back from approaching someone. The filmmakers try too hard to be clever and hip – too many references to Swingers for one – and the music will get them in deep crap should this make the rounds – but a film with a really sincere heart and a charming heart to it. I really liked it, despite its flaws. Definitely promise as a writer here, if nothing else.

 

Samuel Demango- 7 – short film – Everett Aponte

A surreal and fun story about a young man with a mother so controlling that she holds him as a sort of hostage within the house and forces him to eat mangoes to keep his health up. When the young man sees he will never be free of his mother’s suffocating love or gain the affection of the girl he watches from his window, he decides that death is his only way out. He soon realizes that though that the mangoes he has been eating are not only keeping him alive, but are making it impossible for him to die. Lucky for him Death is a mango and decides to appear and help Samuel find an early exit. Strange and fun, this is a really interesting film that falls apart at the end, when it becomes a David Lynch film and decides to give you a sort of symbolic ending that I can’t even figure out. Well made, clever, and unlike anything else in the festival, this shows some really good skills but is just too damned odd for its own good.

 

The Lemonade Stand – 4 – short film – Robert Neary

A touching tale of a young boy trying to get the last bit of money together to get ‘his girl’ some flowers for his birthday. A wonderfully sweet story, and a heartbreaking story behind the film cannot make this more than a weepy short meant more for churches or after-school specials than a film festival. Though I admit, I am not the audience for this film at all. And to the audience that this film is intended, this will work wonderfully for them and will really pull at their heartstrings. I found it manipulative and predictable but a lot of people loved this movie and I applaud the director for doing this film with his own friends and family and for coming out to the festival. While I may not like it, this little short will touch a lot of people and will lead to a lot of work making religious and inspirational pieces.

 

Ultra-Violent Ray – 6 – short film – Tanner Shay

The story of a young woman waiting for a husband to come home on his birthday and pondering their and her own fate. Beautifully shot and edited but too vague and artsy to really make a connection with the viewer. Great to see a truly local film in the festival, but it just didn’t quite hit its mark. There is a lot of talent here though and I really think Mr. Shay has huge potential. And whoo, the lead is cute. HAHA.

 

Pillow Girl – 9 – short film - Ronnie Cramer

An utterly ingenious short film that really blew my mind with its simple complexities. Basically morphing hundreds of covers for old pulp books (from trashy tales of lust to mysteries to old laddie mags) around the woman in each cover. It becomes a beautiful examination of the sexual violence and lust that still infects how many men view women. The one woman with a thousand faces (each cover dissolves and reforms using the woman as the focal point, so it appears that it is the same woman in ever picture) becomes both victim and accuser as we see how sex and violence have sold out women’s rights in order to make a buck. The best short I saw all weekend and one to really look for if you can. Tremendous work.

 

Lily’s Detroit – 7 – documentary – Kevin Leeser

An intriguing conversation with Lily Tomlin in which she talks about some of her memories of her childhood in Detroit and her reaction to what has become of some of the places from her past. A wonderful idea with some really great stories but it is too unfocused and it is too loose. It would have been more effective if they had taken Ms. Tomlin to the places from her past or had gotten more comments from the pictures and video they show her. She sorta goes off on her own tangent and, as interesting as it is, the stories are just too disjointed. Might work more effectively if edited into a larger piece.

 

Aqua Burn –7- documentary – Bill Breithaupt

A beautiful look at the Burning Man festival that happens every year out in the deserts of Western America. Essentially a counter culture festival that is a modern party version of ancient Celtic ritual – the festival pulls artists of every stripe and type together to create art and life in this wasteland of debauchery and dirty people. A compelling, if longwinded, glimpse into a party that is unlike anything on the face of the earth and that is as close as we modern humans come to a real pagan festival – the festival ends with the burning of a several story high man, which was part of Celt celebration – and that celebrates and gives honor to the weirdos amongst us. Should either be cut or expanded so it can follow individual stories through the festival, this is still a very fine doc about a subject that had to be hard, if fun, to get a fix on.

www.aquaburn.com

 

Battered, Bruised, and Broken –7 – documentary – Debra Hussong

A powerful doc that lets the battered and batterers tell their tales in the hopes of finding some help or hope for a world that still looks away too often when someone is abused. Great, effective concept that tugs at the heart strings, but again, it could really make a bigger impact if it were longer and had some of the darker stories. There is a story that is very strong about a woman who left her husband and thought she had escaped, only to have him kill the children on a visitation, and that should have been the heart of the film. This is a great film for sociology and psych classes though.

 

Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea – 8- documentary – Christopher Metlzer and Jeff Springer

Terrific look into the weird world of the Salton Sea, an area in California that was once a great American tourist spot. Created as a man-made sea that has done nothing but wither and create despair as it and the area around it died, this film gives us glimpses into the strange, wonderful lives of the hearty few who still live in this dying area. A bit too similar to a Michael Moore doc (things edited to push a point, whether it be right or wrong, is still manipulative) but still effectively made and realized, this was easily the best doc I saw. At times funny – a nudist, a lewd Hungarian freedom fighter named Hunky Daddy, and some weird old ladies are but a few of the sights – only to become poignant, the tone is well done and very thought provoking. Hopefully this will get some wider distribution, as it’s a fantastic film.

 

Hill 16 – 6 – feature - Dermot Doyle

An Irish made thriller about a teenage and the obsession he develops for a teacher he has befriended and the dark secret she is hiding won for best feature as presented by the Flint Film Fest panel. It began interestingly enough, with a lot of interior monologues and quick cutting ala Trainspotting but the film soon becomes a muddled mess of gangsters, suspicion, drugs, and plotting. The idea of the romance with the teacher, the most interesting aspect of the film, is sadly dropped for gun-running plot and the heart of the film is lost with it. The night scenes, of which there are many, are muddy and hard to see and the sound is too low in the film. It isn’t poorly made so much as overly long and lacking a solid center. There are a lot of good ideas, but in the end the film just isn’t engaging or gripping and works more to confuse the audience than anything else.

 

Believe – 8 – feature – Loki Mulholland

Easily the best film of the weekend and the one that won the award for audience favorite, this sly mockumentary is my pick for Spirit Award and the film that we will hear a lot more about. A mockumentary about a laid off factory worker gets conned into working for Believe, a multi-level marketing company that sells low grade consumer goods. Smart, funny, wonderfully shot and acted, this doesn’t look at all like the first film that it is for director Mulholland. It’s well polished and professional and I can easily see this playing well in a theater. Take the least of the Christopher Guest comedies and this is easily on par – which is a big compliment. The film nails its subject perfectly and really creates a world. Great movie.

www.believethemovie.com (the site will be up in about a month so if you have questions direct them to – Loki Mulholland – believe@kalpics.com)

 

Another fantastic festival and a lot of great films. The awards ceremony needs to be tightened up and made a little more professional, and some of the technical glitches still need to ironed out, but another solid year. I would love to see a room for international films and one for Michigan films, and the music videos could be shown, as friend Oktober pointed out, between films in the rooms. I would love to see them also play some of the best shorts from the previous year before the next film to show in a room. And I hope to see more horror, fantasy, and sci-fi movies pop up over time as well.

Run by a crew of smart, professional people, it’s been a pleasure to cover this festival for the two years I have, and I truly look forward to next year’s, which, being the third year, I demand to be in 3-D.

 

Information, applications to submit films, and other info can be found at -

www.flintfilmfestival.com

 

…c…