ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Darrel Manson

Reporting from Slamdance – The Winners Are…

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Now that the 2021 version of the Slamdance Film Festival is over, it is time to look back at some of the best films that played at the festival. The festival included 25 feature films and 107 shorts. Of course, the festival this year was almost completely virtual (the opening night and closing night films played at drive-ins), but the festival provided excellent Q&As with filmmakers to go along with the screenings. My thanks for the organizers and sponsors, and especially the filmmakers, for the wonderful experience of this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance has several juries that gave out awards. There are also audience awards based on ratings made after viewing the films. And I’ll include my on top films as well. This year’s winners:

Jury Awards | Narrative Features

  • Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize: Taipei Suicide Story directed by KEFF (Taiwan)
  •  Honorable Mention: ​A Family directed by Jayden Stevens (Australia)

Jury Awards | Documentary Features

  • Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize: CODE NAME: Nagasaki directed by Fredrik S. Hana (Austria)

Jury Awards | Breakout Features

  • Breakout Grand Jury Prize: No Trace directed by Simon Lavoie (Canada)
  • Honorable Mention: A Black Rift Begins to Yawn directed by Matthew Wade (USA)
     

Jury Awards | Documentary Shorts

  • Documentary Short Grand Jury Prize: Unforgivable directed by Marlén Viñayo (El Salvador)
  •  Honorable Mention: ​Ain’t No Time for Women directed by Sarra El Abed (Canada)
     

Jury Awards | Unstoppable Shorts presented by Hulu

  • Unstoppable Grand Jury Prize: The Bin directed by Jocelyn Tamayao (Philippines)
  • Honorable Mention: Feeling Through directed by Doug Roland (USA)
  • Honorable Mention: Full Picture directed by Jacob Reed (USA)
     

Jury Awards – Narrative Shorts

  • Narrative Shorts Grand Jury Prize: ​In France Michelle is a Man’s Name directed by Em Weinstein (USA)
  • Honorable Mention: ​MADA (Mother) directed by Joseph Douglas Elmhirst (USA)
  • Honorable Mention: Delimitation directed by Tereza Vejvodova (Czech Republic)
     

Jury Awards – Experimental Shorts

  • Grand Jury Prize: ​Passage directed by Ann Oren (Germany)
  • Honorable Mention: Mountain Lodge directed by Jordan Wong (USA)
     

Jury Awards – Animated Shorts

  • Grand Jury Prize: ​Return to the Peach Blossom Wonderland directed by Haomin Peng, Yue Huang, Yuchao Luo (China)
  •  Honorable Mention: ​Lizard Ladder directed by Ted Wiggin (USA)

Slamdance Acting Award

  • Tender Huang​ from the film Taipei Suicide Story​ (Taiwan)
  • Honorable mention: ​Michelle Uranowitz of the film The Ultimate (by Lou Fescano)(USA)

Audience Awards Winners:

  •  Best Narrative Feature: Taipei Suicide Story directed by KEFF (Taiwan)
  •  Documentary Feature: Holy Frit directed by Justin Monroe (USA)
  •  Episodic: The Little Broomstick Rider directed by Matteo Bernardini (Italy)

The AGBO Fellowship Award Winner, presented by Joe and Anthony Russo

  • Agnieszka Polska, director of Hurrah, We Are Still Alive! (Poland)

Slamdance Founder Award Winner

  • Award Winner: Tilane Jones, President of ARRAY (USA)

George Starks Spirit of Slamdance Award Winner

  • Award Winner: Chelsea Christer, director of Bleeding Audio (USA)
  •  Honorable Mention: Mohammad Mohammadian, director of LIFE (Iran) 

Creative Future Innovation Award Winner

  •  Opera by Erick Oh

My own favorites were Holy Frit, directed by Justin Monroe; Opera, directed by Erick Oh; Taipei Suicide Story, directed by KEFF; Feeling Through, directed by Doug Roland; and 18th & Grand: The Olympic Auditorium Story, directed by Stephen DeBro.

Reporting from Slamdance – a few final films

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A few more films as I wind down my coverage of Slamdance Film Festival. It has been a wonderful experience, as most film festivals are.

In Jim Bernfield’s documentary feature Me to Play, Dan Moran and Chris Jones, two actors with Parkinson’s Disease, set out to perform Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Jones describes the project at one point as “two actors with diminishing physical abilities playing two characters with diminishing physical abilities trying to get through the last stages of their lives.” The film is built around the five weeks of rehearsal leading up to the single performance. Along the way the two actors share the ways the affliction has changed their lives. For actors, their bodies and voices are essential not only to their profession, but to their sense of who they are. This film serves well as a look into the kinds of struggles people face with debilitating diseases, and the bits of hope they can find along the way.

Race and rage are the focus of The Sleeping Negro, directed by Skinner Myers. In a frequently surreal film, a young black man is trying to get by in the world, but the rage he carries over the racist system leads him to push away the people closest to him. He argues about racism with both a black friend and his white fiancée, both of whom don’t think racism is as bad as he claims. In many ways, the rage is directed at himself. He is conflicted to be trying to find success in a world that is racially unjust and wanting nothing to do with it. The film serves as an introduction to some of the ways the African-American experience can wear on the emotional and psychological well-being of people.

After America, directed by Jake Yuzna, grew out of a project involving criminal justice de-escalation workers in Minneapolis. They used theater workshop techniques to portray their struggles with their real-life pressures. There are a series of different storylines, some of which converge briefly. The film seems to be going off in several directions at once, making it a bit chaotic. Some of the stories focus on relationships, connections, loneliness, brokenness, feelings of uselessness. Some bits have a surreal feel to them, especially when much of the film takes place in an empty shopping mall. There are other visual shots that show the emptiness that the characters feel they are living in.

Reporting from Slamdance – 18th & Grand

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Growing up in Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s, I was well aware of the Olympic Auditorium. That was where they held wrestling, roller derby, and boxing that came into our homes on local TV. Later it was the scene of punk rock shows. In the years since, I’ve driven by it often (although it is now The Glory Church of Jesus Christ). So it was a given that I was going to want to see Slamdance’s Closing Night feature, the world premiere of 18th & Grand: The Olympic Auditorium Story. Would it just be a fun nostalgic trip or something more?

Certainly, there was some wonderful nostalgia, but director Stephen DeBro was much more interested in showing not just the history of the venue, but how that history reflects the city’s history and the cultural aspects that were reflected in the sporting and entertainment events that took place there.

The film spends little time on the early history of the Olympic, built in 1925 and serving as the venue for boxing, wrestling, and weight-lifting competitions in L.A. first Olympics in 1932. The film’s story really begins in the 1940s when Ailene Eaton becomes the business manager. Eaton, who had never seen a fight at that point, went on to become an extremely influential boxing promoter, promoting fights from the Central Valley to the Mexican border, but primarily at the Olympic which was seen as the West Coast equivalent of Madison Square Garden. The Olympic holds an important place in the history of boxing. The film touches only briefly on fight fixing and mob involvement, but gives the impression that it didn’t last long at the Olympic.

But the film also shows the way the Olympic reflected the city. Eaton created boxing cards that attracted the Mexican-American population. This at a time when L.A. was very divided (and in many ways it still is). She promoted fighters like Enrique Bolanos and Art Aragon, who represented two very different views of how Mexican-Americans fit into society. In later years, among those who were got important career opportunities at the Olympic included Julio César Chavéz, and Carlos Palomino (both of whom are interviewed in the film).

When the film turns to the wrestling that took place at the Olympic, it shows the way the good vs. evil aspect to this scripted sport reflected the geo-political tensions of the post- World War and later the Cold War period.

The film is bolstered by interviews DeBro has done with various people who have been involved at the Olympic, including fighters, wrestlers like Roddy Piper and Dick Beyer (aka The Destroyer, who was interviewed in his mask); Dick Enberg, who announced boxing there early in his career; Mamie Van Doren, part of the celebrity scene at fights; and Gene LeBell, son of Ailene Eaton and an important part of the Olympic in his own right. Those interviews are important bits of history, because some of those interviewed have since past away.

I love the nostalgia of seeing these bits of my childhood recreated, but I appreciate even more the depth that the film goes into to put it in a particular cultural setting—something we rarely think about, especially with sports like boxing, wrestling, or roller derby, with their violence and in the case of the latter two, scripted showmanship. The film’s exploration of the Olympic serves a way to look into L.A.’s and the broader society’s past, and allows us to rethink the present in that light.

Crisis – Trying to Take on Opioids

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The opioid epidemic is the setting for Nicholas Jarecki’s Crisis. The film looks at the issue from different angles by using three storylines (two of which converge) that allow the film to explore the pain caused by this problem as well as ethical and law enforcement issues that complicate the issue in many ways. The film rapidly flips from one story to another.

Jake Kelly (Armie Hammer) is an undercover DEA agent who is working to bring together a sting that will break up an international fentanyl smuggling operation. Kelly has a sister who is struggling with addiction. His operation has him serving as a middle man between Detroit drug dealers and a supplier in Montreal. As he tries to negotiate the dangerous landscape of such an operation, he is also brought back to the consequences of addiction as he tries to deal with his sister.

The emotional side of the story focuses on Claire Reimann (Evangeline Lilly), a woman with a past of opioid problems whose son goes missing. When he is found dead, he seems to have overdosed. But it becomes evident that this was not an accident, but a murder to deal with loose ends of a smuggling operation that her son unwittingly was part of. As she seeks to find out more, it will lead her to Montreal as well.

The more complex storyline focuses on ethical and business aspects of the opioid issue. Dr. Tyrone Brower (Gary Oldman) is an academic who does research for at a university. In doing tests on a prospective non-addictive painkiller about to be approved, he discovers some disturbing information. But he faces several dilemmas, including being offered a huge amount of money to underwrite his lab (if he’s willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement), and threats to his reputation and job. Should he blow the whistle and risk everything he has? What is his responsibility to the university? What is his responsibility to society as a whole?

This storyline also takes us into the Big Pharma business world where companies are looking for profits, but at what cost to society? Is their product a blessing or a curse? Will the profits from the new drug make it possible to develop even better ones?

The storylines focusing on Jake Kelly and Claire Reimann create a crime/thriller kind of film. The tension builds throughout the film to lead to a showdown that will end up with gunfire and death. But this is a storyline that grows out of anger and pain. It looks for revenge and making someone pay. There really isn’t anything new in this part of the film.

I found the Dr. Brower narrative much more interesting. It asks questions that are important to consider, both on about academia and the business world and their responsibilities to society. The question is brought up in various ways concerning doing what is practical, what is profitable, and what is right. I thought this plotline could have easily been expanded to be a complete film in itself by delving a bit deeper into the business and governmental aspects that are only briefly touched on.

Crisis is available in theaters (where open) and coming soon to VOD.

Photos by Philippe Bosse, courtesy of Quiver Distribution.

Reporting from Slamdance – “Unstoppable” filmmakers (part 2)

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Diversity is being recognized as an important goal in the film industry. Many voices and many perspectives are needed in every art form, and that is very true of film. This year’s Slamdance Film Festival has made an express effort to bring the idea of ablism and the perspective of people with disabilities (PWD). There is a special section of shorts called “Unstoppable” that focuses on films by or about peoples with disabilities. It has a wide range of styles, tones, and content. There are documentaries, music videos, and narrative films. There are 22 films in the section, so I’ve divided my comments into two reports. This is the second report. The earlier report can be seen here. The Unstoppable section is presented by Hulu.

On the Outs. (37 minutes, directed by Jordan Melograna). This documentary follows three inmates with disabilities as they prepare for their release and reenter the world. One has mental illness, one has brain damage and has had hip replacement, one has visual impairment. Their disabilities certainly complicate the process, but even more that film shows the way the system falls far short of preparing even those without disabilities for a time after their sentence.

Safety Net. (12 minutes, directed by Anthea Williams.) A thirteen year old boy living with a disability has just entered emergency care after his mother was arrested. He is staying in a seedy motel with a guardian present. The first guardian is compassionate and encouraging. The relief guardian is stern and demanding. The boy’s future may well depend on this care and which guardian will dominate his time.

Single. (16 minutes, directed by Ashley Eakin). A young woman born with one arm faces the world with an attitude. She doesn’t want to be pitied or thought of as disabled. She responds to most people with anger when they note her missing arm. She’s been set up on a blind date, and discovers that her date only has one hand. She is irate at the person who set them up. Her date convinces hre to come to his rooftop and throw eggs at the wall to take out her anger at all those who have slighted her. A good therapy session for her.

Stilts. (7 minutes, directed by Dylan Holmes Williams) A young man who, like the rest of his family, lives with very large stilts attached to his legs. Because he’s so tall, he can’t get through an exit to the outside world. He seeks surgery to remove the stilts and be set free.

The Bin. (15 minute, directed by Jocelyn Tamayao). A father and his hearing impaired son are at odds over getting cochlear implants versus using sign language. The father wants to make his son “normal”; the son wants to live his own kind of normal.

The Co-op. (7 minutes, directed by Cameron S. Mitchell). A thief attempts to hold up a market late at night, but his plans hit a snag when the store is filled with PWD.

Union. (19 minutes, directed by Julia Neill). During the Civil War a woman returns home for Christmas, she brings with her a Union soldier to meet her family. They met when she, a surgeon, amputated his arm. Now they come for her father’s blessing. But how does he know the man will be able to take care of her? Perhaps it is his own insecurities that cause him to hesitate.

Unspoken. (27 minutes, directed by Emma Zurcher-Long, Julia Ngeow, and Geneva Peschka). Emma Zurcher-Long is a fourteen year old girl with autism. After years of not being able to communicate, it was discovered she could write using a keyboard. She shares information about her world and how it differs from ours. She breaks down the stereotypes and prejudices that surround her.

Verisimilitude.  (14 minutes, directed by David Proud). An actress who can’t get roles because she is in a wheelchair is hired for a movie to teach an abled actor how to act disabled. There are also several abled extras in wheelchairs. This film serves as a bit of judgment on an industry that often fails to see beyond a first appearance.

Road to Zion. (16 Minutes, directed by Andrew Reid). A undocumented Jamaican young man and his family (which includes a brother with a intellectual disability) struggle to make ends meet. Without a green card it is hard to get the kind of job that will bring the money his family needs. A local drug dealer makes it know he can work for him. What will he do to take care of his family?

A truly appreciate Slamdance and Hulu for making this special section possible. Of course, not everything suited my taste, but the voice that comes through from many of these shorts is important. It also shows how valuable it is to have diversity in filmmaking.

My top favorite from the section is Feeling Through. Others that I deeply appreciate are How Much Am I Worth?, On the Outs, and Unspoken.

Reporting from Slamdance – Narrative Features (part 2)

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Here is another round of narrative features that are part of this year’s Slamdance Film Festival. This set of films is from around the world.

The world premiere of No Trace (Nulle Trace) from Canadian director Simon Lavoie served as the Opening Night film. Set in a dystopian future, the film begins with watching railroad ties go by before we discover “N”, a woman whose face shows years of struggle, driving a handcar along the tracts. When she stops, she picks up Awa, a young Muslim woman and her baby, and secrets them away in a crate to smuggle across the border. After a successful drop off, uniting the young mother with her husband, N returns to her travels. But misfortune will reunite the two women in a struggle to survive in the wilderness.

The film is shot in stark black and white in such a way to portray a cold, empty world. The world the two women inhabit seems to have lost all morality beyond the rule of the strongest. N is a survivor and is not opposed to using force if necessary. Yet when she finds Awa a second time, she cares for her, even at a cost to herself. The two women are very different, not just in age and looks, but in perspective. A part of that difference is faith. At one point, Awa asks N if she is a believer. N responds that she has never been that desperate. She tells Awa that belief “won’t help you survive.” But Awa continues in her prayer and trusts in God to deliver her—either in this world or the next.

The world of foreign domestic workers is the focal point of Alberto Gerosa’s Dea, making its world premiere at Slamdance. This is the story of a 20 year old Indonesian woman who contract to go to Hong Kong as a domestic worker. The understanding is that she will make enough money that she can send most of it back to help her family. What seems like an opportunity for a good life, ends up with many slights and disrespect, some small, but others serious, including sexual assault. When she loses her job, she has no real status in the society.

The film has 40 co-writers listed, each only with a first name. It is the result of an acting lab made up of immigrants in Hong Kong and Macau. Everything that happens to Dea in the film is based on things that happened to these young women. The socio-economic realities that the film brings forth are not limited to Hong Kong, of course. Exploitation of the poor is a near universal occurrence.

Isaac (Izaokas), from director Jurgis Matulevičius, is a Lithuanian film noir, set in Soviet Lithuania in 1964. In an introduction that takes place during World War II, with Jews being tormented and killed by Nazi sympathizers. This event becomes the focus of a film that Gedas Gutauskas wants to make. Gedas has just returned to Lithuania from 20 years in the US where he’s gained fame as a writer and film director. He reconnects to two old friends, Andrius and Elena. The three were very close until Gedas escaped to the West. Andrius and Elena are married, but the marriage has gone sour. The authorities are following and bugging Gedas. An investigator wants to re-open the case of a murder during that World War II event because Gedas’s script is so accurate, he thinks Gedas must have been involved. In reality it is Andrius who is tied to the story.

As with any noir film, there are twists as we slowly come to understand the truth, not only of that terrible event that opens the film, but also the relationships between Gedas, Andrius, and Elena. It also reflects a bit of the Soviet era angst with police surveillance and a hint at official corruption that only wants certain truths to be exposed. The film is mostly black and white, with the middle section in color. That middle section is the least noirish part of the film.

Reporting from Slamdance – a Sampling of Narrative Shorts

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Narrative shorts are films that are storytelling stripped down to the essentials. You don’t have time in shorts to develop side plots or bring in very many characters. You just put the story out there to be enjoyed or thought about. As I’ve had time, I’ve looked at a few of the narrative shorts that are part of the Slamdance Film Festival this year. Here are a few of my thoughts.

Autoscopy. (14 minutes, directed by Claes Nordwall). A young man goes into the woods with sound equipment capturing the sounds of nature. Along the way he finds an abandoned floatation chamber that leads him to a trippy chance to look at himself.

Blue. (15 minutes, directed by Ali Şenses). A man walks through the city carrying a paint bucket and a long-handled brush. As he walks the handle of the brush hits everything, making noises. Until he hits a particular piece of fence that makes the sound he’s been searching for.

Each Other. (6 minutes, directed by Oskar Weimar). This is more dance that story. A very limber naked man emerges from a tree and seeks to understand what his place in the world is. Cow? Chicken? Something else?

Trammel. (11 minutes, directed by Christopher Bell). A solitary man comes in to the local pharmacy to talk to his friend behind the counter. He tells his stories. We may or may not believe him. The key question I asked myself during this film is what assumptions I made about the man based on his appearance and his stories.

Inside the Storm. (14 minutes, directed by Daniel Bloom). A man who has had a break up goes to visit a friend he hasn’t seen in a long time. The man isn’t in a healthy place. I found it a bit hard to watch for the ways he seemed to be degrading himself.

Returning. (14 minutes, directed by Lucy Bridger). A retired teacher, whose husband is away for a few days, deals with a man helping her with her garden. It’s interesting how much we learn about the married couple and the desires and frustrations the woman experiences.

 Mada (Mother). (20 minutes, directed by Joseph Douglas Elmhirst). A young woman in rural Jamaica has conflict with her devout mother over allowing her son to play with a doll. The grandmother wants them to go to church so they don’t fall into the wrong paths. But we see both women are seeking what is best for the boy, even if they have very different ideas of what that is.

Young Forever. (15 minutes, directed by Stevie Szerlip). A Korean woman in Los Angeles, struggles with a pyramid cosmetic sales program, gambling, debt, and loss. Her sales pitch is about getting away from stress, but her life is filled with it.

There. (29 minutes, directed by Wu Yu Fen). An Indonesian caregiver mourns “Grandpa”, whom she has been taking care of. She is now planning to return to Indonesia to care for her ailing mother. But with Grandpa’s children all working abroad, there are few people around to mourn Grandpa at his funeral. The key contrast is seen in the care the woman has for the deceased in her prayer by herself as opposed to the prayer cried by the professional mourner.

Reporting from Slamdance – Docs of Empowerment

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Time to take a look at some of the feature length docs showing at Slamdance. I’m pulling some films together here from a couple of sections, but the films I’m looking at for this report are about community, voice, and empowerment, either as a group or individuals.

Jason Polevoi’s A Tiny Ripple of Hope is making its world premiere at Slamdance. The film follows activist Jahmal Cole as he seeks to influence the lives of high school students and bring change to Chicago through his non-profit “My Block, My Hood, My City.” The foundational idea is that for many young people in poorer sections of Chicago, they only know their immediate surroundings. By taking them other places, even within the city (but also elsewhere) it broadens their view of the world and provides hope of better life. As the film progresses we see how the task he has taken up brings a great deal of personal stress into his life: his house in in foreclosure, his marriage is in trouble, he must work through depression.

It is clear that this organization has a wonderful effect on some of the lives it touches, even though it is a very limited program. The title comes from a quote from Robert Kennedy, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…” Ripples of hope such as Jahmal Cole brings to Chicago can grow into larger waves. It’s not just about what we see happening in this film, but about what it might inspire us to do in our own block, hood, and city

End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock by Shannon Kring is also making its world premiere at the festival. In 2016, Native American peoples joined together to try to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. The film follows some of the women who were involved in leading the protests that gained national attention. The tribal complaints were about the danger of the pipeline fouling the water for the reservation (and many others downstream), as well as damage being done to sacred heritage sites. A key objection was that the process did not respect the sovereignty of the Lakota people. As the protests gain momentum, we see the pushback from the government and police. Whereas the protestors were unarmed, the police used lots of pepper spray and “non-lethal” ammunition against them.

Along with documenting the protests (which also attracted supporters from a wide range of non-Native groups, including clergy), the film chronicles the abusive way the government has treated indigenous people throughout history. It notes that it wasn’t until 1985 that native people had the right to raise their own families—not having children taken away for schooling and raised without cultural contact. Eventually, under President Trump, the pipeline was completed, but the fight of those involved continues in many ways.

What began as a once-a-week ten week program for six African-American middle school girls in East Baltimore is the focus of Anatomy of Wings, directed by Kristen D’Andrea Hollander and Nikiea Redmond. The program was run by a local arts college and taught the girls video skills. They discovered that the cameras not only recorded the world around them, it created a way for them to be heard. Through the years, the girls created a very intimate bond between themselves, their mentors, and others who joined the group.

This film was filmed over an 11 year period to show bits of the important issues they shared with each other and the ways this helped to form them as women as they entered adulthood, some becoming mothers, some going to college, others into jobs.

Photos courtesy of Slamdance Film Fesival.

Days of the Bagnold Summer – Nothing Important, Just Life

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For most of us life isn’t like the movies. We seem to go day by day without a great deal of drama. And yet those days that seem so ordinary are what life is made of. Days of the Bagnold Summer, directed by Simon Bird, is that kind of movie. The drama and the comedy are just the kinds of things that may not seem like much at the time, but they are bricks of life.

Sue Bagnold (Monica Dolan) is a single mom raising her 15 year old son Daniel (Earl Cave) in the English suburbs. Daniel is your typical metalhead wannabe. He dreams of being in a band, but he’d have to be the front man since he doesn’t play an instrument. He’s scheduled to visit his father and his pregnant young wife in Florida that summer, but when his dad decides it’s not a good time, Daniel is left with an open summer. Daniel, the personification of ennui, is set to sleep the summer away, but Sue isn’t having it. She sends Daniel out to apply for jobs (which he does in a manner that is doomed to failure). And she tries to do things with him to rekindle the fun they had together when he was younger. Daniel just wants to listen to Metallica.

Sullen teenagers just don’t want to have fun, though do they? Daniel is at an age where he hasn’t really discovered who he is or even who he wants to be. That metalhead persona is really just a form of holding pattern. And so the summer goes, through “early days”, “salad days” and “dod days”. Along the way Sue gets asked out on a date by Daniel’s former teacher, which only complicates things for both of them. But basically, the two struggle to find a way to coexist in the new world teen nihilism.

It’s interesting the way Bird has found to show the distance between the two visually, like the clothesline with black on one side and pink on the other, or Daniel in the foreground eating and Sue in the background a room away eating separately). But as the summer moves forward, they come together more often, even though each is also finding a new understanding of themselves in the process.

There is not big event or blowup that summarizes the summer. And yet, we seem to understand that this summer is in its own way an important time in their lives. As such, this is a movie that captures the kind of lives most of us live. Little by little all these days add up into a life.

Days of Bagnold Summer is available on virtual cinema through local theaters and on digital platforms.

Photos courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

Reporting from Slamdance – Narrative Features (Part 1)

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I want to use this report to touch on a few of the films that are part of the Narrative Feature section at the Slamdance Film Festival. I’ve got to admit that as I’ve been focusing on shorts for a bit, it took a bit of a mental shift to wait for a story to develop. But watching films is sort of like riding a bike, it comes back to you quickly.

A film with a somewhat off-putting title was far more engaging than I expected. Taipei Suicide Story, directed by KEFF, takes place in a specialty hotel—it caters to people who want to die. The desk clerk is informed by one of the cleaning crew that there is a guest in one of the rooms who has been there a week and still alive. When he goes up and finds a young woman who explains that when she arrived, she knew that everyone there was like her, so she no longer felt alone. She no longer needed to die, but she also didn’t want to live. He tells here she has one last night to either die or leave. As the night progresses, the two spend some time together talking—connecting. Will this be the push she needs to end it all or to choose life? How will her decision affect the clerk?

While the film is very brief for a feature (48 minutes), it pulls us into the strange world of the hotel. The daily cleaning service is obviously much different than the hotels we visit. There are some bits of very dark humor that just show up as seemingly throwaway lines. (She’s contemplating buying some instant noodles, and he suggests there are healthier options.) But mostly we are drawn to these two people who are meeting on what may be the last day they will be together. I was a little surprised how much I liked this.

In A Brixton Tale matters of race and class complicate a relationship between two young people. Leah, a young vlogger from a well-to-do family connects with Benji, a shy black young man from the Barrier Block. and uses Benji as the subject of a videoed documentary on Brixton. They become close and are falling in love. But when Benji sees the way she’s edited his life, he feels (rightfully so) that he’s been used. When someone posts a sex video of Leah online, she and Benji seek revenge, and the violence ends up greater than they had planned, but given their social disparity we know that Benji will pay the price.

There are levels here. The film is a minor indictment of voyeuristic filmmaking that wants to show a gritty side of life that the filmmakers are not part of. When we see Leah’s film exhibited to a very upscale crowd, we know that they care more about the quality of the film that the quality of life that Benji lives. It also points out the discrepancy of hope for the two characters, especially when legal troubles come. A Brixton Tale is making its world premiere at Slamdance.

The Polish film Hurrah, We Are Still Alive, directed by Agnieszka Polska, is a noirish story of a group of “socially engaged” filmmakers who are in a holding pattern as they await the return of “the director”. Even in his absence, he seems to have some effect on what is going on in their lives. In part this is because he has taken some of the money left with the group by the Movement (a revolutionary organization) to “invest” to finance his movie about Rosa Luxemburg.  When a woman from the Movement shows up wanting the money, she reconnects with one of the actresses. Some cowboy police officers are also threatening the group. But we also know that an enforcer is being called in—from two different directions.

There is a certain Waiting for Godot vibe to this plot, but without bowler hats or the existential reflection. But there is a sense that all these people are lost and floundering in the director’s absence. It has places where it gets a bit to artsy (especially a few interludes with a rose and blood in the early part of the film that don’t seem to fit with anything). But the noirish feel is well done.

Photos courtesy of Slamdance Film Festival.