After a much needed day off, I went headlong into another couple of days and six more screenings. I was prepared to talk about some of the highlights. How much I was charmed by the Israeli film Jellyfish. How I enjoyed The Cake Eaters, whose director--actress Mary Stuart Masterson--was a special guest and was just as lovely to listen to as her movie was to watch. How surprised, after a tedious and clumsy first few minutes, I was at how affectionate I felt toward Tom Gustafson's gay fantasia (that sounds like porn, but it's not) Were the World Mine.
But instead I am compelled to relay two stories. The first comes after watching The Cake Eaters and the subsequent Q&A with Mary Stuart Masterson. So I go to the bathroom to, you know, use the bathroom. For people who have never been, the Enzian theater has a fairly small one. Anyway, I open the door and what I assume is a line is actually a couple of guys waiting to pass by because a guy in a motorized wheelchair is somehow stuck in the little nook behind the door. What exactly the problem was I couldn't figure out, but there was another man helping the guy in the wheelchair and eventually he was able to get out. After a couple of seconds, I realized that the guy helping out was actually the director of a short called Shrinks. I'd seen him at a Q&A earlier when I saw a shorts program and, while I also gave him a good score on the audience ballot, I'd like to give him a good samaritan shout out. Not only did I like your film, Gregg Brown, I admire your citizenship!
On a less happy note, a terrible incident happened at the Animated Shorts program I attended. Five of the filmmakers whose shorts were being screened happened to be sitting in front of me. After A Letter to Colleen started, I heard Carolyn London--one of its directors--say to one of the house managers that there should be audio that isn't being played correctly. They shut off the movie and tried to fix it so it could be started again from the beginning. This started to take awhile and since it was the second-to-last short in the program, people got impatient and decided to leave. The film got rolling again--sound on this time--but after a few minutes just cut off completely. More people left and the directors, Carolyn & Andy London, understandably looked even more upset than they already were. Their film was in competition, up for a jury award and an audience award. With maybe a quarter of the people gone, that's a quarter of the people in the audience who won't even vote for their movie (and the one after it) while all the other movies got votes. I find this massively unfair and I am just as massively disappointed that this festival--my festival--would conduct itself in this manner. I walk around wearing my various festival t-shirts this week and all year-round with pride, proud to even be just a participant in a 10-day event that celebrates something I love dearly. Maybe tomorrow I'll decide to wear a different t-shirt.
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