If I had a few less kids and a lot more free time, I could see myself being a full-time film-festival groupie. I'd discard everything in my wardrobe that wasn't black, gray or chocolate and, like a freakish, feverish soul in search of my next fix of cinematic nectar, I'd follow the migration trail through the film festival circuit. I'd move from city to city, always staying in a Courtyard Marriott so at least I'd have some kind of safe familiarity to come home to at the end of a long day of extended periods of sitting on my ass in a darkened room interspersed with lively bouts of powerwalking three miles in 10 minutes, deftly maneuvering around elderly people with walkers and moms with double strollers, to make it to the next screening.
If I was living that festival circuit life, baby, I'd hit 'em all. The big ones, the small ones, the specialty fests for every subgroup you can think of. I'd winter at Sundance and summer at Telluride, and in between I'd hit everywhere from Newport to the Hamptons to Vancouver. And right about October 5-19, I'd be living it up in Chicago for the Chicago International Film Festival. And yeah, I suppose it's rather telling that I'm so dorky I get excited looking at festival schedules for fests I'm not even attending. Anyhow, here are some highlights of the CIFF lineup:
A week or so ago, whilst discussing possible candidates for a year-end, Cinematical-wide Ten Best Films list with a couple of the bloggers, I realised that, despite the absolute power I weild as editor, I'd have a tough time getting a few of my picks into the top ten, for the sheer fact that I was the only one on staff that had seen any of them. The only solution was to create a seperate list. What follows are seven films which, though they've made the festival rounds or have wrangled some kind of microdistribution, have yet to break through to the top level. In short, these are seven great films that I've seen, and that you probably haven't.
In the latest in his ever-growing line of personal docu-narratives, San Francisco-based filmmaker Caveh Zahedi plays himself – the titular sex addict who comes to admit that his personal fantasy world, through which he justifies everything from sex with whores to the taking of hallucinogenic drugs at in appropriate times, has become his ultimate undoing. After taking us through twenty years of highly quixotic relationships (and that's sort of putting it mildly), at the end of the film, Caveh walks down the aisle with wife number three. How can a man whose entire life has thus far been defined by
spectacular romantic failure suddenly about-face for a happily-ever-after? Not
so fast: the film closes on what is probably real footage of the
wedding, and after kissing the bride, Caveh walks past the camera with
a familiar look of terror in his eyes.
There may be no fantasy more commonly ingrained in us than that of physical reconstruction - of making over and starting over and, essentially, getting over the gulf between who we are and who we think we deserve to be. The most recent cultural manifestation of this common thirst for self-renovation is the string of "reality" makeover shows – Extreme Makeover, The Swan; to a slightly different degree, the "life makeover" shows like Made, Pimp my Ride, and EM: Home Edition; and on some level even American Idol – all of which are structured around the climactic reveal of the new self. And whilst the "stunning reveal" may be the logical, necessary conclusion of the rebirth fantasy, there's no after without the before – the New You only stuns because memory of the Old You still lingers. The makeover only makes its impression in relief.
When Marc (Vincent Lindon) shaves off his image-defining facial hair in Emmanuel Carrère's La Moustache, he waits until his wife has gone to the store. His eyes twinkle with the prospect of surprising her, and when he hears her on the stairs, he playfully hides his face, first behind a towel, then behind her own back. But Agnes doesn't notice that Marc has changed, and when the couple go out to dinner, three more friends fail to recognize Marc's transformation. Marc silently seethes through the meal, quietly livid over the lack of recognition. When he finally presses Agnes on it that night on the way home, she thinks he's joking. "You've never had a moustache!" she insists.
Though screenings continue for several more days (and I'm still frantically writing up reviews from my sojourn in the city), the Chicago International Film Festival held its award ceremony this weekend, and honored a mostly international slate of films, including NYFF hitThe Death of Mr. Lazarescu, and one of the more controversial films that I saw whilst in town, La Moustache. The international jury awarded its top prixe, the Gold Hugo, to My Nikifor, a period piece about an artist struggling under Communist rule directed by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Krauze. Second place in that category went to Lazarescu, whilst the documentary grand prize was awarded to The Boys of Baraka. Moustache, a dark French psychological comedy that sparked much discussion over its open-ended, non-linear narrative, took home the FIPRESCI Prize, which is awarded to emerging filmmakers, and Inka Friedrich and Nadja Uhl, the very good stars of the German, Dogme-esque Summer in Berlin, shared the actress prize.
I'll be posting reviews of Moustache and Berlin today and tomorrow. If you're in Chicago tonight, try to check out Alicia Scherson's Play. An award winner at Tribeca, it screens tonight at 6:15 PM at the River East.
I wasn't immediately taken with The Puffy Chair, when I first saw it last spring at SXSW. The dictionary definition of "unassuming", the video-shot road trip comedy of discomfiture follows the disintegration of Josh (Mark Duplass) and Emily (Kathryn Aselton), a couple whose multi-year relationship melts down when Emily accompanies Josh and his brother Rhett (Rhett Wilkins) on a roadtrip to his parents' house. A minor hit at Sundance, it eventually won the Emerging Visions award at SXSW, and already halfway through that festival a kind of Puffy Chair mania seemed to be in the air. In short, I think my hype allergy flared up before I had even seen it; I walked out of the film's screening at the Paramount Theater and prompty shrugged. But in the months since, I haven't been able to get its first sequence out of my head, and so I made a point to see it again at CIFF.
Puffy opens on a tight, shaky shot of Duplass (the film's screenwriter and co-producer, as well as its star; it was directed by his brother Jay, and "executive produced" by their parents) goofily dancing with a fried chicken drumstick in his hand. The handheld shot opens up to reveal Josh and Emily, sitting across from one another at a kitchen table, deep in the middle of what we'll soon realise is an all-too-rare moment of euphoria for them. And the mood starts to fall apart as soon as we're in it: when Josh thanks his girlfriend for making him dinner, Emily quickly slips into baby talk – all the better to passive-aggressively express her displeasure over Josh's impending journey. "I wanted to make sure you knew what you were leaving behind," she coos insistently. "I wanted to make sure you knew how much you were going to miss me." Josh plays along: "I know," he sings, trying to match her register. "So much I'm going to die." Without dropping the affectation, he drops some exposition: the trip is really important to him; he's really looking forward to getting out on the road; he's eager to get away. Emily suddenly drops the singsong act – and if this is her standard cadence, it's no wonder Josh needs a vacation: "Yeah, I know," she snaps. Josh's cell phone rings, and he takes the call. Within moments, the attention-hungry Emily has upended the dinner table and stormed out of the apartment. "Just the TV," Josh says into the phone. "I'm ... I'm gonna go turn it off." Needless to say, the happy, dancing, fried chicken reverie has been completely lost.
Tuesday night saw KOTM hitting the Chicago screen for the last time as part of the 41st CIFF. There was another great crowd, which made it that much worse when the film started and the audio kept cutting in and out. This is a filmmaker's nightmare, and suddenly we were experiencing it. I tried to keep my cool and find a Festival staffer to figure out what was wrong, but I was freaking out on the inside. At first I thought maybe the problem would go away, but the film kept playing, and suddenly people were missing dialogue. Eventually they finally got a clue that they should stop the film, rather than let it keep playing while the audience sat there unable to hear what the characters were saying.
Elizabethtown, Camerone Crowe's much maligned latest film, opened the Chicago International Film Festival last Thursday night, and people were still talking about it on Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday ... but not in a good way. Everyone I talked to who went to the opening night gala, at which Roger Ebert conducted extensive pre-screening on-stage interviews with Susan Sarandon and Cameron Crowe, seemed overwhelmed. A festival staffer – looking both ways to make sure no one was listening – told me that the interviews were part of the problem. "They're up there, talking for hours, about something we haven't even seen!" The same staffer told me that he hadn't seen the Toronto cut, but that the version that opened CIFF (which is presumably the cut that opens wide this Friday) felt long, draggy and aimless. "There are good ideas there," he said. "It just doesn't come together." He also confirmed that the infamous Susan Sarandon in the funeral parlor scene is still there; it is also, in his words, (still?) "uncomfortably tasteless."
I'd been sick the whole time I was in Chicago, and, for the first few days, after shuttling around in the cold from film to film to film, all I wanted to do was go back to my hotel and eat soup in bed. But Monday night, my last night in town, I slapped myself in the face and forced myself to go out and party. It's a tough job, having to hang out with smart, interesting and funny people for hours on end, but someone's got to do it.
Generally, CIFF sponsors two parties a night: a dinner, and a "late night event". Monday night's dinner was somewhat sad, a soggy-calamari-strewn affair in an empty sports bar on Madison Street. On the left, that's Nick Redman and Vassilis Katsikis. Nick is a filmmaker and a member of the CIFF documentary jury, and Vassilis is the director of World Cinema entry, the experimental pseudo-documentary CCTV. They arrived at the airport at the same time and came, brutally jet-lagged, to the evening's first party together. I sat with them whilst they debated whether or not to go on to the second, which was to be held at a legendary former-speakeasy called The Green Mill. The promise of the ghost of Al Capone got Nick there; I didn't see Vassilis, so I assume he went out to the hotel.
Nick, a documentary filmmaker and frequent festival guest, said something interesting about the psychological downside of sitting on a jury. "The worst part," he said, "Is when you realise you've given the award to the wrong person." Joe Swanberg asked, "How soon does it take you realize?" Without missing a beat, Nick responded, "About 10 minutes."
I'm back in New York after five hectic days at the Chicago International Film Festival. The Festival is still going strong until October 20, and whilst I really wish I could have stayed in town longer, Joe Swanberg will continue keeping his diary for us. And as I was too busy the past few days festivaling to actually write anything, I still have lots to post about – from party gossip to the details on Peirce Brosnan's disasterous post-Bond venture – so keep your eyes peeled. Below you'll find a quick guide to what we've already covered – and don't forget about our recent coverage of NYFF and Fantastic Fest as well.
Since I'm also working on a new film, LOL, in addition to screening Kissing on the Mouth at CIFF, today was a day of work, not just play. I had some things to shoot out in the suburbs with Kevin Bewersdorf who is acting in the film and writing the music. That took up my afternoon and evening, and I didn't make it back into the city until about 9PM.
No worries, as the Festival party was just getting started at 9:30. I picked up Kate, Karina, and Kris (why does everyone I know have a K name?) and we headed over, where I got a chance to meet more filmmakers and jury members. I chatted with the team behind the Greek film CCTV, and I met documentary jury member Nick Redman. We all headed over to one of the Festival's favorite late night stops, The Green Mill, a cool joint where Al Capone hung out. There is rumored to be a secret tunnel out of the place, in case the cops busted in, but I haven't seen it with my own eyes. Miroslav Mandic, the director of the documentary Borderline Lovers, had the best comment of the night while watching the band at the Green Mill play, stating, "I'm beginning to respect bass players. They are lazy, but they deliver."
Tuesday afternoon we get to have lunch with students from Columbia College. I've been looking forward to this all week. I think it's really great that the college uses the opportunity of the Festival to put their students in touch with filmmakers. I'm honored that we were invited to spend an afternoon with them. I hope our experiences can be useful as they start to make films and navigate the Festival scene.
After a much needed nap, I hit a Festival party at a hotel in downtown Chicago, where I finally got a chance to meet a lot of the other filmmakers who are in town from other countries. Showing your film to an audience is an incredible experience, but right up there with that is the chance to meet interesting and creative people from all over the world. The highlight of the party was when Melvin Van Peebles accidentally walked in on Kevin Pittman in the bathroom, and Pittman jokingly hassled Van Peebles that if he wanted to see him naked, he would have to pay the ticket price to see Kissing on the Mouth. Classic!
The Chicago Marathon was Sunday, and all the runners were trying to get some sleep Saturday night, so eventually the hotel party was shut down, and we had to find the fun somewhere else. Everyone who was up for it went out to a bar in a trendy neighborhood, but not before loading up on free food. One piece of Festival wisdom I have picked up is: when there's free food, eat as much of it as you can, because you don't know when you will come across your next meal. I just ate a huge breakfast, knowing that I probably won't eat again today, other than maybe some snacks at another Festival get together tonight. Now I'm off to catch some films. We don't have another screening until Tuesday night, so for the next two days I get to relax, meet other filmmakers, and see films. That's what it's all about.
Though its scope might be a little large, more and more this year's CIFF strikes me as an extraordinarily well curated film festival. For one thing, they're covering their bases as far as programming goes, with a healthy balance of foreign and domestic, micro-indie and name talent – and people are coming out in droves. Every public screening I've so far attended has been packed, if not oversold. Not only that, but the films have been scheduled extremely well amongst themselves; when you're sitting through three or four films back to back, it's always nice when it feels like each slot has been filled with purpose, so that the films bounce off of and react to one another. It certainly makes my job a little bit easier, and that's even nicer.
I sat through just such a double feature yesterday: Everlasting Regret, a film from Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan Kam-Pang, and Free Zone, from Israeli auteur Amos Gitai. Both films are primarily concerned with bringing major political conflicts down to the level of the personal conflicts of beautiful women. Results are, perhaps predictably, mixed: Regret, a gorgeous-looking film, gets bogged down by its determination to hold a mirror up to forty years worth of Shanghai history. Free Zone is a greater success, but it seems to dance around its true aims a little too gracefully; it fails to pack a significant punch.
We threw a party Friday night to celebrate the CIFF screening, and I stayed up way too late. After a few hours of sleep, I had to sit on the "Making It In The Midwest" panel. We joined Pete Jones (Project Greenlight film Stolen Summer), Ruth Leitman (right, Lipstick and Dynamite), and a few other Chicago peeps to discuss what it's like to live and make films in this great city.
I managed to stay awake during the panel, and we found some free pizza afterward, which gave me just enough energy to make to the KOTM screening. The film showed at 2:15PM to another packed house, and I found a back office at the AMC theater where I could lay down and take a nap during the screening. I made Kevin Pittman promise to find me a wake me up before the Q&A.
I managed to stay awake for the entire "Homegrown" shorts program, featuring films made in Chicago or directed by Chicago filmmakers. I went to Southern Illinois University with the filmmakers of two of the films (Chicle and Divorce Limonade), and a third film was made by a former graduate of SIU (Estes Avenue), so we all talked afterward and told stories about the teachers we had in common. It's nice to know our small film school is producing quite a few accomplished filmmakers.
Now it's time for a nap before I join everyone for a Festival sponsored dinner and more late night partying.
Joe Swanberg (above, second from right, with Kate Winterich, Kris Williams and Kevin Pittman) the director, co-writer and co-star of CIFF entry Kissing on the Mouth, is keeping a diary of his experience at this year's festival for Cinematical. You can follow the process of his next film, LOL, at www.lolthemovie.com We surveyed the reviews this morning, and they weren't great. Luckily we got a lot of local coverage that we hope will offset any negative or mediocre write-ups of the film. We had no idea what to expect when we showed up to the theater. The weather was cold and drizzly, which is a good thing for film festivals. We always have the most trouble when it's beautiful outside. We were happy that our first screening fell on the the worst weather day this month.
The line of people at the theater slowly started to get intimidating. Tonight was our hometown premiere, so we knew a lot of friends would show up, but we were seeing a lot of strange faces, and the number continued to grow. By the time they started letting people in, the line was snaking around the lobby of the theatre, and we were all freaking out.
Wanna hear a funny story? One involving a broken cell phone, a missed flight, a flat tire, my general inability to wake up before dawn, the horror that is ATA Airlines, and what was, overall, the most comically disasterous day of my life?
Well, because this is Cinematical, and not Karina Longworth's Diary of Sad Days, I won't go delve much deeper into it than to say that my plan was to arrive in Chicago yesterday around 9 AM, check into my WiFi-equipped hotel, and immediately head down to the Loop to pick up my press pass and start designing my coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival. None of that happened except for the picking-up-the-press pass part, and that didn't happen until around 5pm. Click after the jump for a dramatic illustration of my frustration, and more details on the few festival-related things I did manage to get to before I crashed for the night.
If I had a few less kids and a lot more free time, I could see myself being a full-time film-festival groupie. I'd discard everything in my wardrobe that wasn't black, gray or chocolate and, like a freakish, feverish soul in search of my next fix of cinematic nectar, I'd follow the migration trail through the film festival circuit. I'd move from city to city, always staying in a Courtyard Marriott so at least I'd have some kind of safe familiarity to come home to at the end of a long day of extended periods of sitting on my ass in a darkened room interspersed with lively bouts of powerwalking three miles in 10 minutes, deftly maneuvering around elderly people with walkers and moms with double strollers, to make it to the next screening.
Though screenings continue for several more days (and I'm still frantically writing up reviews from my sojourn in the city), the Chicago International Film Festival held its award ceremony this weekend, and honored a mostly international slate of films, including 
Elizabethtown, Camerone Crowe's much maligned latest film, opened the Chicago International Film Festival last Thursday night, and people were still talking about it on Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday ... but not in a good way. Everyone I talked to who went to the opening night gala, at which Roger Ebert conducted extensive pre-screening on-stage interviews with Susan Sarandon and Cameron Crowe, seemed overwhelmed. A festival staffer – looking both ways to make sure no one was listening – told me that the interviews were part of the problem. "They're up there, talking for hours, about something we haven't even seen!" The same staffer told me that he hadn't seen the Toronto cut, but that the version that opened CIFF (which is presumably the cut that opens wide this Friday) felt long, draggy and aimless. "There are good ideas there," he said. "It just doesn't come together." He also confirmed that the infamous Susan Sarandon in the funeral parlor scene is still there; it is also, in his words, (still?) "uncomfortably tasteless."
After a much needed nap, I hit a Festival party at a hotel in downtown Chicago, where I finally got a chance to meet a lot of the other filmmakers who are in town from other countries. Showing your film to an audience is an incredible experience, but right up there with that is the chance to meet interesting and creative people from all over the world. The highlight of the party was when Melvin Van Peebles accidentally walked in on Kevin Pittman in the bathroom, and Pittman jokingly hassled Van Peebles that if he wanted to see him naked, he would have to pay the ticket price to see Kissing on the Mouth. Classic!
We threw a party Friday night to celebrate the CIFF screening, and I stayed up way too late. After a few hours of sleep, I had to sit on the "Making It In The Midwest" panel. We joined Pete Jones (Project Greenlight film Stolen Summer), Ruth Leitman (right, Lipstick and Dynamite), and a few other Chicago peeps to discuss what it's like to live and make films in this great city.
