Dances With Films Waltzes to a Close – Our Reviews Part 1

Dances with Films began June 13 and concluded June 23rd, but our reviews are just taking the stage. The 11 day festival offered a wide-range of exciting feature-length narrative films, documentaries, pilots, TV projects, and stellar shorts.

With more than 200 projects screened, we did not catch them all, but we did see 41 hours of cinema – with a small bouquet of screeners we have yet to view ahead.

Here comes the first installment of our capsule reviews; previously posted: opening night review of Apple Seed.

We saw three blocks of shorts in one day, and never tired of them: there were a profound number of gems.

Competition Shorts Block 1 included:

Master Yoshi’s Terrible Day, a delightful and poignant comedy that writer/director Ken Lin describes as “based on a video of a master sensai that went viral. He was beaten by a student and I wanted to explore what happens when you lose your sense of direction.” The film starred Lin’s actor/neighbor – Lin wrote the part for Jun Suenaga, speaking above.

The Beach was also inspired by a true event – a family history. The intense and moving story of a father trying to keep his children out of social services custody,  the passion project of co-writers Toroes D Thomas Jr., Blayre Pichon – Thomas also directed – was shot “rogue indie style” in Baton Rouge.

Infertile Hearts, a story told entirely through music and dance, tackled the difficult subject of infertility, seeking to raise awareness of the issues surrounding a common yet taboo-subject. Writer Colleen Hartnett (speaking above) also co-starred in a sweeping film directed by Kevin R. Phipps. Hartnett explained “I did infertility treatment for a long time. As soon as we got our miracle we shot the film quickly before I started showing. We filmed it to the song, but we didn’t edit it that way.”

Washland Express was an hilarious “crime noir” from writer/director Camille Campbell. “I usually write dysfuctional comedy,” Campbell says. There are elements of that genre here as well. Campbell’s first time directing effort sparkles in a story of a drug-taking doctor and her car wash hook-up tailor-made for her lead actress Jennifer Allcott (speaking above).

Evie tackles the subject of child brides. “I hear a story about this on the radio, and when I wrote this, we partnered with Unchained at Last who are working to help change laws and deal with this,” writer Marc Fellner-Erez and writer/director, Mike Peebler explained (speaking, above). It is their 5th short film together, and the lead was hauntingly performed by Caitlin Durkin.

In Consent, a reversal of sex roles makes sexual coercion into a comedy, with the tale of an aggressive female bar singer played by the film’s writer Rebekka Johnson. Director: Kimmy Gatewood “did a favor for me,” Johnson reported in helming the sharply funny project.

Fish Head, from writer/director Marcos Durian used events taken from Durian’s feature script based on family dynamics and social prejudices in the life of a Filipino-American boy.

The second block of competition shorts included the long-form, moving story of male friendship, Raceland. Set in the south, it is the story of two best friends for life who may or may not have sexual feelings toward each other.  Writer/director Scott Bloom said “It came about as a reaction to some of the toxic masculinity and homophobia swirling around the Internet. I dreamed up a story about two men who were incredibly close.” The actors all knew each other , and hewed closely to the intimate script.

Dance with a Demon tackled the subject of depression as if it were a demon who possessed the young mother in the film. “I’ve had family members who struggled with depression,  and for them it was as if they were battling a demon,” writer/director Mitch Bax said (speaking, above). The work combined the vibe of a supernatural experience with the highly pertinent yet persistently taboo discussion of handling mental health issues.

In Something Like Loneliness, writers Ryan Dowler and Seth Epstein used poetic visuals in piece that was originally a theatrical play. Directed by Seth Epstein and Ben Epstein, the story was based on a friend who was isolating himself, and searching for connection with an equally lonely neighbor, in a world where sounds are preserved like treasures.

The animated Retro was graphically gorgeous and filmed from story boards, according to writer/director/producer Aaron Lindenthaler. “I was interested in a charcter that you couldn’t tell if the guy was a hero or a villian. It was done in little bursts of color, greys, and sepias.”

The whimsical romance-that-never-was For the Girl in the Coffee Shop, came from writer/director Rebekah Jackson. “It’s about connection,” Jackson said, “And the use of some cutesie pastel dreamland sequences were used to take audiences on the same journey as (lead character) Will.”

The decidedly chilling Wanda, a French Canadian film about a very troubled girl running away from home, was one of the rare shorts shot on 16mm film.  It was directed by Benjamin Nicolas.

Shorts Block Three brought films including the gangster-film asethetic with “a modern twist of surveillance and the police depicted as a gang” of rival thugs in Five Families, directed and co-written by Adam Cushman, who penned along with Barry Primus.

Big Boy Pants was an hilarious, twist and turn filled romp between con artist brother and sister that grew out of a script originally written as an Upright Citizens Brigade live sketch performance by Scarlett Bermingham, and adapted with director Phillip Montgomery. “What stood out,” Montgomery said “was the conceit seemed like a typical groom with cold feet story, and it was twisted on its head.”

With The Automaton, writer/director W. Alex Reeves takes his “fascination with the turn of the century period science” and puts it to good use in the Old West-set relationship between a young widow, her dementia-inflicted mother, and the widow’s deceased husband’s robotic creation, Otto.

In The Night Before, writer Brendon Slee and writer/director Mragendra Singh give us a character study of a deaf Indian-American bride on the night before her wedding, as she means with her former same-sex lover in a take on “Indian guilt… I wanted to try something with sign language” Slee related.

One of my favorites, the very off-beat Mr. Sam, came about due to a part of an idea presented to writer/director Zeus Kontoyannis’ by his brother. “I took my brother’s pitch and nailed it down into a character I could create who does creepy things in the dark, but make him heroic, and someone you could root for.”  The short was originally intended as a feature – and Kontoyanis hopes to take this deeply involving, twist-and-turn-filled story of a small town mortician down that route soon. We hope he does.

The first of three competition features we viewed was Two Ways Home. The film, starring the dynamic Tanna Frederick (above), who also produced, tackled an important subject – bipolar illness and how like any other illness, it can be managed with proper care. Writer Richard Schinnow and director Ron Vignone said “our cast brought heart and soul to the film,” which was championed by the National Alliance for Mental Illness.

While it handled the shouldn’t-be-taboo but is subject of mental illness with care, the project was uneven with a story that included a cantankerous grandfather, a rebellious 12-year-old, an ex-husband, and the scourge of factory farming.

Written by Chris Lee Hill and directed by Tom Morris, the pitch-perfect romantic comedy/disaster movie fusion of Blowing Up Right Now was inspired by the false bomb alert that terrified Oahu last year.

Using friends and primarily one location in a ten-day shoot,  the falling-apart relationship of Shep and Mandy reaches its nadir as a missle strike is scheduled to hit LA. The script was brilliantly mordant with a terrific series of twists and turns throughout.

We only saw one midnight feature this year, but it was a fun ride. Driven, primarily shot in the car of an exasperated, wanna-be stand-up comic/rideshare driver, gave us demons and a demon slayer in a fun, tense two-hander with comic tone. Writer Casey Dillard (who also co-starred, along with the wonderfully matched Richard Speight, Jr) and director Glenn Payne are both from Tupelo, Miss., where the project was shot. Smart, sharp, and perfectly cast.

It was Dillard’s first feature script, and made with the goal of keeping the film primarily in the car, which had its own set of challenges. “We thought it would be interesting to shoot in the car,” Payne related, “and it was. But it was not easy.” They just made it look like it was.

More shorts and features to come!

• Genie Davis; Photos: Jack Burke