We reviewed a number of features at the 2021 Dances with Films – with more ahead – but the short film program is such a powerful part of Dances with Films, it’s time to take a look at some of truly terrific offerings we viewed this year before I return to the feature offerings we screened.
Outside the shorts program per se – a part of the Downbeat music selections – was the absolutely charming animated squirrels in The World’s Gone Nutz. This hilarious – and insanely catchy musical featurette is part of a series from animator Daniel Robert Cohn’s squirrel world. In this iteration, the first all-squirrel band, Squirrel Me Bad offers a pithy comment on politics and social mores over the past year. Seasonal squirrel offerings are also afoot on Cohn’s website which thanks to DWF 2021 I’m alerted to enjoy.
If you’ve ever flown in one of the great birds of the sky known as airplanes, there was plenty of fun to relate to in “Airway,” a smart, quick, hilarious fear of flying gone mad.
“Anniversary” is a visual and emotional stunner from writers and director Craig Ouellette & Neal McLaughlin that looks to be just the beginning of the road for this team. Subversive and strange. We were ready for more.
Generally creepy was the tension-filled and sleek “Black Hole.” “Bossbabes” was a ride with lots of humorous twists and turns to keep viewers guessing and laughing. Vibrant and compelling the music pulsed through the message of a powerful “Enough.”
“Georgia” was a heartbreaking and perfectly told story of parents seeking justice for their daughter’s tragic attack and death.
“The Huntsman and the Hound” created a brilliant atmospheric that anchored the tale of two hitmen at odds.
“Incognito” was a well-polished period story of forbidden love and secret consequences that offered a nice mix of the imagined and the real.
All nightmare was the mordantly funny, riveting, horror-tinged “The Jester’s Song,” offering the aftermath of a Rapture in which all the good people seem to have left the earth behind. But briefly, let there be music. Hope to see much more from writer/director Michael Woloson.
“Klutz” offered a happy ending to a sorrowful but sweet story of loss and spiritual connection in a tale of sisterly love and supernatural conversation.
More shorts coverage is coming, but for now –
Returning to feature selections at DWF…
New Year is an emotionally harrowing long night’s journey into New Year’s Day. Beautifully shot in black and white, the intimate cast moves from edgy friendship and sputtering marriage to confessional disaster. Director and co-writer Nathan Sutton keeps viewers as tense and involved as his characters celebration, as married duo Benjamin and Katherine, host a party with closest friends before moving from LA to NYC.
A sense of elegy also permeated Sing to Me Sylvie, in which former bandmates reconnect in Portland. One is married but still attached to her past, the other a surprisingly content homeless itinerant musician. This was one of the film’s that didn’t quite connect for me, but the turbulence of a touring performer’s life had undeniable appeal.
In another encore performance from the virtual 2020 fest, Take Out Girl pulls viewers into the nightmare that pursuit of the “American Dream” has often become. Here, the “take out girl” for her family’s struggling restaurant begins to deliver the goods for a drug kingpin as well, with potentially shattering results.
With festival offerings overall less lighthearted than some viewed in previous years, They/Them/Us with a zany blended potential family and kinky sex play offered a humorous perspective in this slice of the Brady Bunch life for modern times.
A festival standout for me was Voodoo Macbeth, a collaborative work by multiple directors and writers through the USC film program. This simply terrific film took on a true story and made it sing with heart and hope. Set in a beautifully realized 1936 Harlem, the first all-Black cast production of ‘Macbeth’ struggles toward opening night under the helm of an increasingly unhinged young director, none other than Orson Welles. Fascinating story, filmmaking, and a fantastic cast – it glued viewers to their seats. An incredibly fine film.
Black and white, Chaplinesque from its score to shooting style, What? offered an engaging look at today’s LA in silent-movie style. The fairytale-like quality of this story of a deaf actor tired of discrimination against him, the film is reminiscent of 2011 Academy Award winner The Actor, and equally lovingly-made.
Also calling back a previous film for me – in this case Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, was the extremely well done and haunting love story that marks the central tenet of the Russian film Dreamover. Mysterious and magical, a journey from loneliness into the the love language of the past proves a trip worth taking.
And, speaking of journeys, there’s Holidays at All Costs. This French comedy of errors takes viewers into an hilarious and harrowing vacation, hard earned by a loving father who has more than earned a far better resort stay than this one. Lots of fun.
More features and final words ahead and so many rising stars and smart screenings at DWF 2021.
- Genie Davis; photos courtesy of filmmakers, also by Jack Burke