Opening Night 

The first night was held at Austin Museum of Art at Laguna Gloria and it could not have been a more perfect setting. This beautiful natural space was accented by a wonderful opening light show and live music by Tick Tock. We waited for dusk to come and in doing so we could see the image and color on the screen at the bottom of the hill, overlooking a tranquil lake, become more obvious and clear as the night fell.

Opening announcements were made and then the shadows of trees on the colored landscape projected on the screen began to meld with actual footage of trees. Tick Tock again played accompaniment to this and the waves of sound and image lapped over us. In this natural setting, we sat and watch projected images of trees. It was breathtaking.

Even though it went on much too long. 

Unfortunately, after that, the films began. Not one - not a single one - is worthy of any real praise. All produced apparently by members of the Austin Cinema co-op, the first composition was Aaron Valdez's "windowfilm." This is a piece that has been produced over a series of weekly showings. All it contains is found images, from old movies, industrial films and educational film, edited together with no coherence or cohesion. It's not quite as boring as watching the pieces used to assemble it in their original form, but almost. Valdez had other boring films in the program, thankfully much shorter than this one. His/her work was only saved from being the most awful in the show by Jen Proctor's lousy "art" films where celluloid is damaged in some way (with ink or acid or paint) and then shown anyway. Not only is this derivative. It's boring. Well, this of course, coming after watching flies around a light-bulb shot in negative, i'm not sure I can even define boring anymore.     

God, there were 18 film shown on this night and only 3 were really worthy of any mention. So let me start with what I thought was the best film.

 I guess the best of the show had to be "The Noise of Angry Candy." I know I am not a linear person. I understand the aesthetics of film as art and the idea that films do not have to have story or plot or characters or traditional cinematic ideas in them. But, goddammit, they got to have something. Not just boring repetitions of images that are not interesting, unique or, even , a new idea, for that matter. "The Noise of Angry Candy" almost has a story. It has a great visual style. This is mainly brought to us by filmmaker Justin Hennard's use of his relative Zach to star in the film. Zach looks like nerdy anime come to life and the ensuing film where we come to understand that flowers are driving him insane by apparently making noise that we cannot hear is truly fun to watch and visually stimulating. The locations and the black and white images are at least within the realm of location and images. And the plot, what of it there is, is somewhat unique. Too bad the filmmaker lets the piece go on for way too long. At half the length, it would be quite good.

Hennard also made the final film in the show, "Ass-Kenesis" but for the life of me I cannot even remember what it was about. I was pretty beat down by then.   

"Dirty Bunny," meanwhile, uses a tired technique, of a dream as film, but it's amusing and well done. There is at least an idea that the person making the film understands how to script, shoot and then edit his film so it makes coherent sense. It's main asset is it's humor however. It's kinda like an frat boy film made by the seeming collegiate intelligentsia. It was made by Shawn O'Keefe and Leslie Sisson, by the way.

Finally, "The Better You Look, the More You See" should be noted. It not only has humor and interesting visuals, it questions our interest in celebrity, sexuality, murder and drug use. It makes no particular new statements about them, but it does at least use them as a milieu. Filmmaker Donald Thalhubler uses actors in masks of celebrities to humorous and startling effect. This challenges our concept of what a celebrity is because, even though we know it is just some girl in a paper mask made with a picture of Madonna on screen, we still understand that it is supposed to "be" Madonna. We think of that person on the screen "as" Madonna. Thalhubler uses the novels of Bart Easton Ellis as a sort of background for the work, citing it as the source material, so that we see the ideas at work. Someone does cocaine, has bad thoughts, inspired by a black voodoo mask, and then kills a celebrity.  We "get" it. It proves that the language of film, and the modern novel, is a language of immediacy. It shows us that this idea can be expressed to us in a matter of minutes instead of the usual hours it takes to watch a film or, God forbid, days it takes to read a book, even a pulpy one. Sure, this has been done by Warhol before to a certain degree (with "Vinyl"), but Thalhubler updates it, he doesn't simply copy it (as fellow filmmaker "Gonzo" does in a horrible film called "Sleeping Dragon," which basically rips off "Sleep").     

As for the films worthy of some mention: 

"Milk" is a visually interesting piece. It's a bit sophomoric in it's use of the dairy product as goo/sperm/vomit... but it has some striking visual images that work well within the context of the black and white art film genre. It was prurient, erotic and disgusting all at the same time. That's saying something.     

"OK, Great" has the best sound provided for it's 8mm images, so perhaps it should be recognized as well. There's a lot of milk in this film too.     

"Dracool" wants to expound upon the idea of Dracula as a seducer of women but abandons this proposition mid-film to become nothing more than a sort of homage to Dracula films. Assuming that Adrian Arculetta is a female then one would hope that the film would turn the stereotype of Dracula as suave, debonair, lady-killer on it's ear. The film begins to imply that this is what we will see then falls into the trap of simply emulating Dracula films. I don't quite understand what it is meant to be about.     

Finally, the worst piece in the entire program, even more insipid than Proctor and Valdez's tired visual collages, is "Idealism." A sophomoric and ridiculous piece where a man in white lays a flower on the grave of "idealism" and then discards his "pure" clothing and reveals the business suit he has on underneath. He chomps on a big fat cigar and gets in the car with "big business" and rides off.

Yes, it had a story. But, God, please. Please. Okay. Say something new. And if you can't say something new, then shoot pictures of hubcaps in zooming close-ups for 3 minutes like your peers and be done with it.

Report Card

To do a Report Card for each short would be a waste of my time.

Suffice it to say I would rate the entire evening a C with the natural venue, coupled with the opening light show and music by Tick Tock, as the definite highlight culminating in the uncredited film of the trees.

An awesome "event" and the kind of "performance" and cinematic and artistic expression I hope to see more of at Cinematexas. The films were all, in my opinion, basically failures leaving me plenty concerned that the $25 I spent on a film pass for Cinematexas is a big waste of money.