Super Saturday at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival

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We had a super Saturday indeed at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival, from morning ‘til the lively after party, replete with Tiki drinks.

Shorts Block 4

A strong block of short narrative films offered comedy, whimsy, and the tragic.

Vegeversary

Director Sarah Smith  tested a brightly colored animated story in which on the anniversary of a bunny’s vegeversary she and her friends spend a weekend over indulging in tons of meat. Smith who is a long term vegetarian/pescatarian says she thought it was a fun idea to present a celebration with friends in this way especially as imagined vicariously through pandemic years.

Stuck

A smart and funny slice of Austin life as  roommates in a large group house make a music video and a pesky mouse gets stuck in a glue trap before compassion prevails. Director Brittany Reeber says she created an existential autobiographical story. Great music by Austin band Neville, too.

Work Life

Brilliant comic gem as office workers discuss – or rather don’t discuss, but remember they’re eventful, and unbeknownst to them, connected weekends. Cambodian American director Kevin Ung says he wanted to make sure the film visual enough to understand by even those for whom English is not their first language. In the process he created a terrific film with both compulsive narrative and viewing appeal. Both he and DP Oscar Ramos created this as a USC grad project.

Baloney Beacon

Balloons as nature documentary in another dimension – that’s how director Max Landman describes this visually fascinating stop action experiment with animating balloons.

Landman works in the Bay Area as a balloon twister, but during the pandemic he created this super fun piece extemporaneously.

Wild Card

Director and co-star Tipper Newton creates lush neo-noir vibes in her second “serious” film short, as she describes it.

A desperate doctor is looking for a girlfriend, and joins a dating service that sends VHS tapes to its subscribers.

Dressed in red, the femme fatale who chooses him comes with plenty of baggage and her own needs for a “date.”

With a tense score and LA-setting, this damsel in distress film has gorgeous art direction and pitch perfect acting.

Wolf

A young Iranian boy follows his grandfathers advice to end the suffering of the lives of ailing animals – in this case the grandfathers own in this sorrowful story of the inevitability of death.

Documentary Shorts 2

Becoming Howard

This is a sweet and thoughtful doc following Howard, an autistic crossing guard in CA, returning to his Indiana high school reunion. There, he reconciles with those who weren’t that nice to him in high school. Today he writes a blog about bullying, and receives former classmates support.

According to thew project’s skilled filmmaker Matt Fuller, Howard came to CA following a passion for arm wrestling, but wonders what life would’ve been like if he stayed in Indiana.

Squid Fleet

Poetic and fascinating film about life on a squid boat in China. As beautiful as it is sorrowful. Ed Ou and Michael Hsu create both a very real and mythological world.

Animal in Ascension

Cocky young Floridian experiences other worldly sensations in another dimension. Director Ian Clark describes his lively film as living DMT in a non-DMT world – and exploring the margins of human experience.

Balloon Boy

Watching Balloon Boy unfold in real time, directors Brian Gersten and Arlin Golden describe their project as an early indicator of negative American emotional behavior.

During the pandemic ,the duo found  and cut footage together of the hoax, from the moment it occurred to today’s current footage of the kids involved making a heavy metal song about it. The result is a lively, fascinating archival doc.

Ukarjo

Exploration of daily life in a pristine jungle habitat living in Indonesia. The message of natural peaceful lives is beautifully done by Cannelle Guhur.

Mississippi River Styx

Director Tim Grant creates a riveting feature film study of a likely con man navigating the Mississippi  River on what were supposedly his final is beautifully done,  but the subject is now living in Slidell, La.

Said to be dying of cancer, Kelly Phillips took his houseboat down the Mississippi from Wisconsin to the river’s end in Venice, La. Originally intended as a short, riding along was hazardous but so compelling an experience that directors Tom Grant and Andrew McMillan turned a four day filming schedule for a short into a feature, Grant’s first.

Is Kelly conning people? The filmmakers fairly present each side in a gorgeously scored, shot, and fascinating character study.

The danger of shooting in the river waters is palpable – Kelly was allowed to go down river only because of his story about his end of life journey, with the coast guard helping him despite standard safety restrictions.

Grant says “We didn’t make it an investigative film about Kelly’s diagnosis – we were more interested in presenting various perspectives and emotional reveals than justice.” The result was an incredible, harrowing film.

Requiem for a Whale proceeded the feature film, an important elegiac short from Ido Weisman, a beautiful rumination on life, death, and ecology.

Also viewed today: a twisted mother and son story in Joey Hirsh’s body horror Pure Gesticulation, which I was unable to view in entirety, and a dark depiction of highly symbolic outcasts in a terrifying Polish forest enclave in the beautifully wrought fable of The Horse Tail.  With the former feature was a sweet gritty take on social anxiety in Zane Stein and Nate Pringle’s Super 8 short Hey Guys, How are You? which combines humor with pathos.

Many terrific films today – Mammoth Lakes Film Festival rocks on as truly a fest for filmmakers, innovative and fresh.

  • Genie Davis, photos by Jack Burke

 

Friday is Festival Time – 5 Film Screenings at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival

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It was a fabulous Friday at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival. The fest runs through Saturday with more great films ahead and the mountains are beautiful, too. Drive on up!

A Still Small Voice

An absolutely riveting, superb documentary following the residency of Mati, a hospital chaplain; her supervisor; and the courage and sorrows of the patients at Mt. Sinai Hospital. Such a strong and deeply moving film, it’s rare to see such a beautiful evocation of faith, loss, life, death, and personal struggle presented on screen.

Along with ministering baptisms, emotionally supporting suicidal relatives, and those dying of illnesses and age, Mati must deal with her own personal grief experience and a disconnect with her supervisor.

Glowingly photographed, incredibly intimate, and thoroughly absorbing, it’s a soaring, passionate, and at times devastating work.

Luke Lorentzen is a brilliant filmmaker who has made a compelling film touching on profound topics, and this is a must-see film.

The film was accompanied by a dreamy, gracious doc short about life in a small Southern grocery store, From Fish to Moon directed by Kevin Contento. 

Shorts Block 2

A mixed bag of experimental and more narrative delights. Highlights:

Chiaroscuro – Clair Obscura

Director Elias Djemil-Matassov works mainly with dance subjects, but was approached to work with a contemporary puppet theater for this beautifully shot film. Creating the  all music film involved puppeteers and a professional dancer to create the movements for this elliptical piece about the memories contained in each part of the body – including the life in the hands of the puppeteers.

The Actress

Filmmaker Steve Collins created an amusing story about a manic actress, her put-upon brother and his chef girlfriend. The sister’s surprise visit triggers an upheaval in the sparkly three-person cast, who clearly shared in the fun of their production.

Filling Holes

A Flatbush slice of life between two roommates, an a/c, and a boyfriend. Triangle? Dynamics of moving in and friendship and surviving romantic loss? All of these plus best friends supporting each other, finding family, a go-pro camera depiction of moving chaos,  and parental relationships in the mix.

Juice (Saft)

Viscerally animated slug-like creatures ooze green goo and absorb red bugs. Visually stunning look at acceptance.

Other shorts  screened included a statement of faith and race relations, Blind Color, and a wildly visual Fellini-esque film about two women and their relationship to a violent male photographer, I Love Pictures, awash in reds, blacks, and noir

I Said Daddy I Said

Filmed at Bombay Beach by the Salton Sea, (but passing for Texas) there’s a mysterious object in the water that might just cause time travel.  Living near it, there’s LaLa, who wants to leave her abusive drug-dealer lover, the massive hammer-wielding Daddy, but is hampered by the fact that someone’s watching her every move.

A tense, fresh score and smart direction  – both by Sebastian Karantonis, create the terrific vibe of this gritty thriller, where the frightening elements of being trapped in a terrifying relationship meets sci fi, and psychological horror.

Nut Jobs

Artfully shot in black and white, this French- Canadian film is both a noir comedy and a reconciliation love story.  In it,  a motley crew of “nice terrorists” try to take down a right-wing radio station using mind control to destroy the world. The reconciliation is the framework for relating the twisted tale of the attempted radio station takedown, which sounds like a crazy fantasy, but is definitely not. There’s a gorgeous cat named Harriet and a hypnotizing record involved in Alexandre Leblanc’s film, too.

The feature was paired with a comedy short, Carol & Janet.

Set at a jewelry warehouse, work friends Carol and Janet receive a truly surprising delivery from the UPS man who can’t tell them apart. The result is a bright nine minutes of friendship and laughs from Andrea Rosen.

Short film Mahogany Drive is an absolutely hilarious comedy about three Black men on a comedy tour who awaken in an Air B &B and discover an apparently dead white woman. As bodies pile up and one of the trio assumes the house must be cursed, the perfection of the comedy tension builds to a terrific surprise ending.

Originally a part of a network pitch for a comedic Twilight Zone, the three stars including director and co-writer Jerah Milligan  also have a podcast live in LA titled Black Men Can’t Jump. Los Angeles – do go see them at UCB Franklin June 4th, or the first Sunday of any month this year –  they’re brilliantly funny.

Love Dump

Parodying  Hallmark movies, this is a quirky and absurd romp about Jessica Dump, a junk shop owner, and Todd Barkley, a canine lawyer, who fall in love. The Chicago-set romantic comedy also include a dump owner who is Jessica’s long-lost dad. Along with bursts of dancing, dogs – that per the star and co-writer Jesse Kendall were a bit of a challenge for him and director Jason Avezzano – love gets played with crazy absurdist glee. 

A great day at the cinema and more to come tomorrow!

– Genie Davis; photos: Jack Burke and provided by the filmmakers and festival 

 

 

Always Exciting – Mammoth Lakes Film Festival Thursday

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The first full day of the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival included meaningful documentary shorts and the always stellar Mojave to Mammoth shorts line up. We saw two innovative features and their accompanying shorts with plenty more to come the next three days!

Starring Jerry as Himself

You know all along there’s a twist – the opening graphics say it’s almost completely true – but what that may be gets superseded by the very real horror of retired Chinese American engineer Jerry being scammed out of his life savings.

He believes he’s under investigation for money laundering at first and must prove innocence; then that he’s being recruited to help catch criminals – as an undercover agent helping police in Shanghai.

Law Chen’s film is billed as a documentary, but it is primarily a reenactment of a true and horrible occurrence starring the real and titular protagonist.

Living in Orlando, elderly, and parsimonious to a fault, despite three adult sons and his friendly but ex-wife being all a part of his life, he doesn’t confide his situation until too late.

And then another situation reveals itself – one I won’t reveal here, which is partially the twist, but ultimately Jerry has chosen to make this true story film both to warn other seniors about the dangers of being scammed and fulfill a lifelong dream of being an actor instead of the engineer he became. The story is a moving one, tensely and entertainingly told. 

The film was accompanied by an experimental short called A Throwing Forth, evoking haunting family memories via a single window, colors, and image.

Unicorn Boy

Animated feature six years in the making chronicles a break-up and a coming into acceptance by a struggling non-binary artist vaulted into saving themselves and a unicorn kingdom. All this unfolds while protagonist Matty survives a break-up, explores how to love and examines the reasons why the world can be a dark place. Lush animation using varied techniques and a vibrant palette of color is well-matched by a sweeping emotional musical score. Varied cameo voice actors includes turns by Maria Bamford and Patton Oswalt as the unicorn kingdom’s king and queen in this tour de force by lead, writer, and director Matt Kiehl. The message: let your freak flag fly through rainbow animation that visually dazzles.

The animated short that accompanied this film, Eclipsed,  is the short story of a world in which eclipses are the norm and the sun coming out is entirely unique. It well conveys anticipation and anxiety in its spaghetti-o’s-consuming and witch-like main figure.. Director Jamie Wolfe creates a bold experimental narrative.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Jack Burke and film stills courtesy of MLFF

Mammoth Lakes Film Festival Opening Night Begins Powerfully and Provocatively

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The setting is galvanizing from the moment the film begins. Queendom, set in the heart of Russia, is a compelling documentary from Agniia Galdanova.  The film profiles transgender artist Gena, as she navigates her life – in which she becomes a living art form and activist, wrapped in fabric, repurposed trash, and painted tape.

The artist moves in a snowy small-town landscape, navigating troughs of predjudice, and the confining love of her grandparents, who cannot accept her art or her rebellious nature, much less her gender transformation. There are conversations with friends, the abandonment of a school of cosmetic study in Moscow due to Gena’s acts of protest, and most of all the growing awareness – as she moves from the village of Magadan to Moscow, and by film’s end, Paris, that she can shine her artistic light on the brutality and cruelty of the Russian regime and its war with Ukraine, exposing both.

The imagery of the film – Gena’s amazingly created costuming, the icy and bleak backdrop of her home village, the harsh lines of Moscow, and the almost palpable sense of relief the viewer and the subject feel as she moves through the more gracious architecture of Paris, is deeply engaging.

If Gena begins the film as a misunderstood misfit in the unyielding winter of Communist Russian culture and politics, viewers watch as her work grows to embrace the power of artists. Artists, after all, are something of the canary in the coal mine, pointing out danger and distress. Artists like Gena can effectively call attention to brutality, inequity, and violent injustice.

The film starts with her building an Instagram following, creating set pieces with her fabulous, sculptural costuming for views, and follows along quietly and decisively as she turns her art into a potent weapon for political activism, at great risk to her own well-being – by birth gender, she might very well be drafted to fight in the war.

Over the course of the film, she moves from a somewhat self-serving personal view to one of force, bravery, and action; discovering that to use her art and truly be herself, she can become the focal point of an important movement that radiates beyond her personal desires.

Visually stunning and yet intimate and quiet in approach, the film makes an excellent opening night salvo in what is sure to be another exciting year at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival.

  • Genie Davis; images provided by the festival