Day Four

Unfortunately, I had to work very early in the morning on Saturday and when I got home that night, I zonked out. I did make it to the midnight show at the Alamo and I'm glad I did, for although there was some crap shown, there was also a lot of good stuff here. The series was entitled "Good Pain" and this heading was used as an umbrella for several diverse films about friction between people among a few other themes.

When I got there, I saw Kari, the co-owner of the Alamo and Tim's wife. She is super nice. Inside, they were playing a Teletubbie's video and supplementing it with a 80's groovy new wave soundtrack. These 80's tunes perfectly accentuated the grandiose color of the Teletubbie's video. This was a visual acid trip. The Teletubbies without sound seem all the more dark and evil. And what's up with the laughing baby in the sun? Parents should run screaming from this stuff...

(Random thought: I need to get a pair of cool PJ's to wear to midnight shows.)

The crowd on this night was made up of several rowdy frat boys and their bitches. The group in the front row, ahead of me, were the most obnoxious people I have ever had to sit near in an audience. They waited much too long to leave. But, by the end of the night, again at almost 3am, the group staying had really dwindled down to nothing.

The first film was a fake movie trailer for a Kung-Fu epic called "Black Fire." It was humorous and action-packed and a great calling card for director James Lu of UT.

Next was an awesome 3 part short called "Migratory Losers: Epics of an Oakie Diaspora" by UT's Travis Marriott.  Though the opening and closing segments were interesting, with no new real ground covered, the mid-section, about a guy who has a gay one-night-stand was revolutionary. Never before has the confusion associated with a man's momentary excursion into homosexuality been dealt with in a more humorous and honest way. I think the piece is supposed to be a bit homophobic but it, nonetheless, confronts this idea, a guy waking up with another guy and realizing his had sex with him, in a pure and honest way. It may treat this with levity and a bit of homophobic ideology, but it never seems to judge the character or question his actions. It simply exposes them and let's us decide what to think about it while reminding us of the homophobic and overtly heterosexual landscape this confused gay must navigate.

Next up were two animated shorts that were wonderful. Don Hertzfeldt's "Billy's Balloon" is guaranteed to pop up on your TV at home one day.  This thing will win awards until the end of time. It's bold, evil, simple and hilarious. Although it is nothing like that film, it is sort of the "Bambi Meets Godzilla" of the new millennium. I have not laughed so hard in a long time. It's dark and horrific landscape juxtaposing the characters of youngsters in the park with their balloons against an surprisingly deadly force is quite unique and interesting. The simple drawing, again recalling the innocence of the characters in the piece, makes the cartoon all the more funny. And the sound, though simple as well, is perfection. And just when you think it can't get any more crazy and hilarious, Hertzfeldt takes it to another level that is twice as funny and twice as wild. It's a great short film. One that's guaranteed to make Hertzfeldt a name for himself.

Another good animated piece is "Monkey vs Robot," by UT's Geoff Marslett. Although it is rather simple and finds it's humor mainly in the theme song which acts as it's soundtrack, Marslett's animation is quirky and fun. Riffing off Anime and computer generated quickies, Marslett brings forth a new wave cartoon-theme-song short that is as amusing and it is beat-laden. You'll want to see it again and again...

"Titanic," by Ben Cooley also finds it's strength in it's soundtrack which is recorded off of an FM radio pop station playing Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" bookended by a video giveaway of the "Little Mermaid" videocassettes.  Cooley uses far too dull art type animation throughout the piece (been there, seen that) but does have fun with spelling out things in quirky-jerky motion as the reel unspools. For example, towards the end, the letters cascading through the film spell out "For the victims" and we see that Cooley is making a statement about the commercialism of the tragedy of Titanic. Too bad his visuals are rather drab or this film could be an epic piece.

"A Common Confusion" by UT's Spencer Parson" features video projection by Luke Savinsky. Too bad it goes on way too long but it does, at least, convey an idea of the complexity of business and personal relationships in the 90's. It also claims to be based on the works of Kafka.

The centerpiece of the evening was an exceptional 29 minute video work by Caveh Zahedi called "I Was Possessed by God." In it, a man who is obviously of foreign descent yet American, and obviously gay as well, drinks mushroom tea, or some other narcotic concoction and then proceeds to go into a weird trace. For the next 25 minutes he rambles about everything from "love" and "the human body" to Passolini, Godard and "Harold and Maude." It is a remarkable trip he takes us on, one filled with pathos and humor and outright mind-boggling craziness. It's so real, so bold, so in-your-face that it hushed the crowd into shocked submission. This is a remarkable piece. Truly unique and full of insight about drugs, art, religion, sex, and the inability of the human mind to comprehend and rectify it's own troubled, out-of-control, pop-culture infected psyche, "I was Possessed by God" is the kind of film that should be shown as many times as possible to as many people as possible. It often times makes fun of it's main character, who is obviously, truly under the spell of some strong hallucinogenic, but this humor and somewhat abusive quality to the film makes it so crazy and so hilarious that the filmmaker can be forgiven.  That being said, it is quite possible that Zahedi is the man in the film. If so, he is bold, daring and beautiful. This film splays the main character out for us with nothing held back and the value judgment we make about what he says is also the judgment we make about who he is. It's video technology used for an incredible purpose. One of the most audacious and open films I have ever witnessed. A raw moment in time encapsulated for us to view and be amazed by.

Sadly, nothing else after it could come close to this piece. Henri Mazza's "Lightbulb" is a dumb and derivative short about an artist who comes to fame by drawing the "industrial" signage that permeates our society, like "No Smoking" signs and "Handicapped" signs. It has only two things in it's favor: A cute little star named Burke Blackmon and a final scene that pays homage to the beauty of Austin.  Other than that, it's dreck. But watching Blackmon for 14 minutes is like sweets for the ocular senses, even if he is totally unbelievable and much too young to play the protagonist Will in the piece.

Blackmon also had a hand, behind the scenes, in "At Room Temperature" by Tim Warden of UT. An equally dumb but more artistic black and white film about the, sigh, banality of modern executive lifestyles. It's 7 minute running time seems like an eternity and it says nothing new.

"Homebody" by Steve Collins is a gross out and not much fun to endure. "Hairyman" was a drab little pointless cartoon, "Coldcuts from Elroy" by UT's Mark Miller was amateurish crap that should have been rejected from the festival and "Sugo" was a fairly interesting industrial piece that was more art than film. In this latter piece, a grungy couple spew string in strobe. It looked cool but said nothing else new.

The final insult of the evening was the 21 minute computer generated "11" by Joost Rekveld of the Netherlands.  While it took early-Kraftwerkian-like computer generated music as it's pulsing, rhythmic soundtrack and seemed to generate cool vibrant images to this subsonic aural landscape, it was ultimately completely devoid of any interesting visuals. It might be great if your on some heavy drugs, but by the end of this evening's 2 and 1/2 hour screening, my buzz had definitely worn off.