Coming to a close

SLC


So that’s it for me at the 2007 Sundance film fest. Over seven days I managed to see four short films, twelve dramas and eight documentaries. So… 24 films in all. There was a lot of phenomenally good stuff this year. Wish I had another week to see all of the other films that I wanted to check out but didn’t have the chance. But… now it’s back to LA and real life…

In other news, I just learned that The Weinstein Company and Lionsgate came together to buy the rights to Teeth, so hopefully it’ll find some kind of theatrical distribution without too much being cut.


So... the rundown on films for yesterday and today:
Teeth – Wow… definitely one of my top films of the fest. NOT a film for everyone (read my thoughts above)
Songbird – One of the better dramatic shorts I’ve seen.
Hounddog – Panned by critics and slammed by the media. But… very well received by the audience. I thought it was quite good.
Blame it on Fidel – Fun to watch. I enjoyed this one quite a lot.
Welcome Europa – Great documentary. Totally immersive in the world of illegal immigration to Europe.

Haunting

SLC

We just finished our last screening of the festival with Welcome Europa, a visually poetic portrait of several young immigrants to Europe. It’s a devastating story of Kurdish, Moroccan and Romanian immigrants who come looking for a better way of life, hoping to make enough money to send something home to their impoverished families. What’s revealed is a community of men who move from city to city, hoping that each will be better than the last. Instead, they’re left destitute and struggling to survive, most sleeping in boxes and turning to male prostitution as a way to simply survive. Before embarking on the project, Bruno Ulmer spent nearly a year living with these men and getting to know them before turning on the camera in an attempt to show the world their amazing story. The documentary that was born from his experiences blurs traditional lines and immerses the audience in this gritty world, using vivid, sometimes impressionistic imagery. Sorrowful, humiliating and emotionally powerful throughout, Welcome Europa is a documentary with a lot to say. Highly recommended.

A good night's sleep

SLC

Today we're only catching one screening for which we already have tickets, which of course means that I was able to sleep in until 10:30a, thus getting over ten hours of much needed sleep. Currently we're waiting in the Broadway theater for a screening of Welcome Europa.

Blame It On Fidel, the film we saw last night, was really pretty good. The story follows Anna, a young girl who's parents are political activists in France. They try very hard to teach Anna the importance of standing up for one's beliefs, showing group solidarity (ie protesting) and for speaking out against evils in the world. Unfortunately, Anna doesn't quite understand the contextual importance of these lessons and applies them incorrectly to her daily life. She attempts to show group solidarity at school and otherwise applies the concepts of political activism to things to which they were never meant to be applied. The result is an intriguing and very funny film that seeks to show how personality and social interaction are influenced by the world around us. Worth checking out.

Freakin' exhausted

SLC

The three hours of sleep from last night and a week's worth of rising at 5:30a have caught up with me. Thoughts on Blame It On Fidel will need to wait until tomorrow.