Friday, April 4, 2008

Take me to the magic of the moment... FFF: Day 7 & 8

A quiet two days had me attending only three screenings, but they were among the three best of the week so far.

Late Thursday night I watched the very funny romantic comedy In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Wonderfully shot in black and white, the film is like a more modest, L.A. version of the Before Sunrise/Sunset movies. At a Q&A afterwards, director Alex Holdridge mentioned that he was good friends with Richard Linklater, who of course directed those Before movies, so the connection is tangible. In Search of a Midnight Kiss doesn't possess the lofty ambition of those films, but in its own way, it has as much to say about love at the particular age these characters are in, the loneliness of living in a big city, and of dreams that go unfulfilled.

Friday afternoon, I screened Chris Eska's August Evening, an ultra low-budget movie that was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards this year. Like Holdridge for the previous film, Eska was in attendance and participated in a Q&A. Echoes of classic Ozu, especially his masterpiece Tokyo Story, the film centers around the familial relationship between Jaime and his widowed daughter-in-law, Lupe. The leads, Pedro Castaneda and Veronica Loren, are nonprofessional actors and, on top of that, also translated Eska's screenplay into Spanish from its original English.

Sometimes the best part of going to festivals is that the filmmakers get to participate and attend and answer audience questions. I often complain to some friends about how I don't like to hang around "film-y" people. I find that a lot of them are pretentious. [Your joke about me here.] I find that a lot of them are self-consciously quirky, edgy, and artsy. I find that many of them are just as fake as the Hollywood people they would presume to oppose. But after listening to both Holdridge and Eska, two people who seem both modest and unassuming, it renews my faith in independent cinema, both the culture of the indie world and the artists who help create it.

Quick note: Both In the Search of a Midnight Kiss and Situation Frank (part of the terrific International Narrative Shorts program) end with the old Scorpions' tune "Winds of Change". These movies couldn't be any further from each other save for the fact that they were both screened at FFF. Are the Scorpions going on a reunion tour or something?

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