Day Three

With notes on Michael Snow, Guillermo del Toro, Miranda July, and the midnight screening. The scene is dead!

Day three I had to work until 6pm, so I did not get to attend anything until the evening shows. I decided to take in Michael Snow's "The Frame is Eyelids" presentation. Snow's 4 1/2 hour avant-garde epic "Rameau's Nephew" is showing Sunday at noon and I thought this might be an indication if that film is worth the time/trouble. Snow was introduced by a woman who made a remarkably wonderful preamble to his speech in a sort of stalling English. It was great. And Snow seemed like a very nice gentleman. But the two short films we were subjected to were anything but truly worthwhile. That being said, the first piece does have some merit, albeit small. "So Is  This" is an incredibly derivative film where

each

segment

is

a

word

and

each

word

is

shown

one

at

a

time.

So one sits and silently and slowly (or at the speed Mr. Snow dictates) reads this sort of letter/memo from Snow with an audience.

Although this is not a new idea, the text by Snow which made up the film was both interesting and amusing. While it even called attention to it's own derivative nature, it still managed to have moments of sublime humor and thought-provoking ideas.

The film, conceived in 1975 but not made until 1982, has, in it's favor now, an added bonus of perhaps being a statement about on line computer chatting, something that almost did not exist when it was made. Snow's work prefigures chatting where computer users wait patiently for words to appear (often one at a time) as they are being typed by their partners in chatrooms and other on-line areas.

But that being said, and taking into account the film's wonderful wit, it still has almost no reason to exist.

Worse yet to test my endurance, was the older guy who sat next to me during the film who drank stinky coffee and then proceeded to let loose with some of the most disgusting coffee farts I have ever had to endure. Luckily, like many, he left after this first film.

The second film was a dreary piece of dreck called "Seated Figures." The film begins with a voice track that claims it was made in 1988 and "The film is silent." This is an outright lie. This audio track, which eventually also features a baby crying and being quieted, runs throughout this  "silent" film.

The visuals begin with still shots of asphalt and after almost a second or two of static frames, the camera begins to move, eventually quite rapidly, until the image becomes obscured, blurred, (and boring) art. Then the camera stops on a static frame again and begins again. This is repeated several times and in each successive segment, the film moves more towards natures, first to dirt, then water and stones along the shoreline, than to sticks, then tress and shrubbery and then finally to flowers. By the time we reach the flowers segments, the motion of the camera has changed so that it begins with the blurring movement before coming to rest on a static frame of nature's beauty. This evolution, by the way, takes about 45 minutes.

One supposes that Snow is making a statement about nature conservation in that the film begins with asphalt and ends with flowers, but I think the film is a spiteful, mocking joke on the audience, the titular "Seated Figures." The film is an exercise in tedium and the almost incessant movement of the camera (signifying the speed of the Industrial Age) eventually serves no other purpose than  to make one sick to one's stomach.

There was to be a Q&A after the presentation, but I decided to skip it and move to the Alamo Draft House for the presentation of "Cronos" with Guillermo del Toro. This turned out to be a highlight of the event.

Del Toro, as it turns out, has moved to Austin permanently. The Mexican filmmaker is a joy to be around. His opening remarks preceding the presentation of a short film he made in 1984, was nothing short of wonderful and hilarious. del Toro called the film, "a little piece of shit," and explained that it would be in Spanish without subtitles and that it was a mixture of gangster violence and pop culture references. He mentioned that when it was made, Quentin Tarantino was about "16 years old."

As the film, called "Dona Lupe," began, del Toro chuckled at his creation and said loudly to the audience, "I was very young." The film, which concerns an old woman who takes in some policemen/drug dealers as lodgers, is a violent mishmash of style that couples traditional short films with Tarantino-esque violence. del Toro, after the film, told us some wonderful facts about it. It was called "Gray's Blood" at first. The DP was a pothead and when the film came back from the lab, much of the final shootout, which was supposed to be epic, was simply blackness. The film also has comic book style text drawings (in red) superimposed on the film itself which are supposed to make it look like the "little yellow comic book novels," which are popular in Mexican culture.

The acting in the film is interesting too particularly in the case of the lead character portrayed by an actress whose name I do not remember. Aging, large and with a huge mole on her face, this actress is a delight to watch. She has both humor and pathos at her disposal and calls on them whenever necessary. Sadly, she appears also in "Cronos," in passing, at the final scene, where her  picture is above a dying man's bed. And the film is dedicated to her memory.

del Toro talked a lot about "Cronos" before and after the showing of it. In this fresh and unique take on vampire mythology, del Toro brings us a world of stark beauty and crushing delicacy. A seemingly elderly antique dealer ("I've always liked old people. I don't know why I think senility is so cool.") discovers a device which makes him stop ageing and even begin to appear young. It also, slowly, gives him a thirst for human blood.

In this story, he is watched, almost continually, by his young granddaughter and it is her silent, ominous presence that will eventually cause him to reevaluate his new life. He is also pursued by a industrial tycoon who is hermetically sealed in his factory while his American nephew, Ron Perlman, does his dirty work.

Using elements of art films, the vampire myths, Mexican imagery, multi-nationalism, Hammer films, and other pop culture references as his tools, del Toro has crafted a film that flies in the face of genre and convention. "Cronos" is quite a wonderful work.

I didn't even remember that I had seen it before. And once I realized this, I could not remember how it ended, so it was still a pleasant experience for me to see the film.

The writer/director and special effects maven spoke for several minutes, answered a plethora of questions, even some by an obnoxious woman who talked loudly and didn't have a brain in her head. His wonderful sense of humor, intelligence and charm put the entire audience under his spell. He even ran over his allotted time and no one complained.

Before I get into the midnight show stuff, here's some notes on the del Toro screening:

Notes: In presenting del Toro, Tim of the Alamo Draft House mentioned that he and his wife Kari has tried a similar thing in Bakersfield, California, before coming to Austin and it was not a success. "Cronos" was a film they had shown at that facility.

del Toro spoke of his work on a Mexican television series in the late 80's which was sort of a "Twilight Zone" in genre.

del Toro cited Fassbinder as an influence in "Dona Luna." He later said he liked seeing it and saw that he still uses some of the devices he employed in making it. He said he had not seen the film in  about 12 years.

del Toro talked about dealing with the young girl in "Cronos" and said she had a "New Age" mom who was quite weird. The girl could also, supposedly, see objects with her hands. del Toro tested this by putting an item in a bag and then had the girl stand with a wall between her and the item and she described it perfectly, an old issue of "Tales from the Crypt."

del Toro is working on several projects. He is appearing in a new film called "Bullfighter." He is also working on adapting a comic called "Hellboy" for Universal, in which he wants to cast Perlman, for a 2000 release. He also mentioned a film called "Monte Cristo," that is the retelling of the story of "The Count of Monte Cristo" which he described as a gothic Western using a lot of  "red, black and gold at dusk."

Check out my review of Del Toro's "Mimic"

As people filed in for the midnight show, called "Sex Dangerous? OK? Experts debate," a group of college kids sat behind me. I thought I recognized one of them from the Michael Snow screening so I asked them if they had been there, as I wanted to know about the Q&A, but they said they had not been to it. They had seen Miranda July on Friday night. I asked about it and they described it as a performance piece with dialogue, slides and music. They said that it's theme was basically "relationships" but it was much deeper than that. I would have liked to have been able to see this performance.

The midnight show at the Alamo started late, a series of shorts in the Cinematexas festival with "sex" as their supposed connecting thread. Of the 14 films shown, 2 or 3 might have been quite good, but they were utterly defeated by the lackluster pieces that surrounded and dominated their work.

The series began, rightly enough, with a short piece (this is a pun) from Australia called "My Cunt." Humorous, and in black and white, the short was essentially a performance piece on film. This was followed by the bare-bones, "Removed," where a few short clips from bad 60's pussycat softcore porn were shown, with dialogue. However, the naked females in the piece were "removed" and whited out, hence the title. This was supposed to be some sort of essay on the nature of male dominance and male-themed eroticism in pornography I guess.

"Organics" is a Lynchian rip-off that goes on way too long and features much sex and nudity. It was dumb and pointless and reveled in it's want to be a pornographic "Eraserhead" without dialogue but with industrial ambient sound.

"The Bats" was an interesting cartoon but had no real punch. "A Fragmentary History of the 21st Century" was amusing at first but grew tiresome and esoteric until it was just boring.

"The Resort," made by Karen Skloss of UT had some excitement of movement in the early scenes involving a skateboarder but it segued into incoherence when a sort of "Westworld" like center for pleasure becomes part of the film. It doesn't make much sense unless the film is about the loss of exuberance in the teenage male brought about by the objectification of women. Could be.

"Workman" was a strange and long video piece using the naked human male form as an object. The male's face is never shown and the naked contours of his body, as he bends and flexes, creates unusual art-like implication. Okay. I thought it was fair but this is the only piece in the entire program that received no applause. Perhaps it's avant-garde homoeroticism and dissertation on the artistic nature of the male form were lost on those in attendance.

"Jesse Helms is Cleaning Up America" would be complete computer-driven cut and paste crap if it didn't in it's final moment, pay homage to "Piss Christ," the artwork which began the downfall of the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA is listed as helping with a grant to make the film, though this may be a joke.

"Fluff" was a horrible and homophobic piece of drudge that had computer generated oscilloscopic images assaulting our eyes and posing as video art while selections from gay pornography (seemingly blurbs used to describe and sell 70's porn loops) were recited at various speeds. It is my biggest fear that a gay person actually made this hateful piece of crap.

"Love Bites" was a video piece starring indie stalwart Kevin Corrigan as an obsessive boyfriend who thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him, when in fact she is a cannibal, and it is absolute trite tedium. ***(double space)*** After this, one might give up hope, but two of the best pieces in the presentation were saved for (almost) last. "Stubble Trouble" was a delightful comedy in rhyming verse that featured human feet made to look like faces. Sort of a "Senior Winces" homage but seemingly completely new and quite fun and humorous. The character created by American Philip Holohan is called Mr. Footface," and I imagine we will see more of him in the years to come.

Meanwhile, "Suckerfish" is a short film that seems designed to get funding for the feature project. In it, a young Welsh couple struggle to comprehend their relationship after becoming engaged. The flashbacks in the film, which feature lesbianism and reference fisting, are witty, insightful and interesting. This is definitely a case where we want to spend much more time with these characters and become much more involved with them. It's a great work and hopefully filmmaker Phillip John will get the funding he needs to make a feature based on this.

The midnight show, ended at almost 3am with a silly cartoon based on the legend of "Tiresias."

I'm still waiting to see something truly unique and original at this festival. "Suckerfish" holds great promise and has the distinction of being reminiscent of "Trainspotting," but only in that it's characters are Welsh (i.e. seemingly British to Americans) and speak with accents and are 20- something. I guess what I'm saying is it could ride that wave to great commercial success. It certainly has characters with a great aptitude for complexity and erotic pathos. Mr. Footface is fun but mainstream as hell, so it's certainly not the groundbreaking fare I hoped to discover at Cinematexas.

Note: I got a program for the series and I misspelled the name of the guitarist on Opening Night - correctly, it is Tik Tok.

The midnight show was introduced by Brian Poyser, Festival Director of Cinematexas.