The Sundance Film Festival - The Shorts

Published for www.filmclick.com

The fest is wrapping up, and the award winners have been announced, but for the hundreds of filmmakers that make Sundance one of the world's premier stages for emerging cinematic talent, this is only the beginning. The two-week event that yearly takes place in the idyllic ski town of Park City, Utah comprises programs in a variety of categories, including US and international, dramatic and documentary, with films screened in and out of competition.


Short Term 12

As Sundance has grown in recent years, high budget feature premiers have overshadowed many smaller productions, but for true cinephiles, often it's the under-the-radar releases that make a festival great, and what could be more under-the-radar than the short films? Short Term 12 earned this year's Jury Prize in US Short Filmmaking. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and featuring a remarkable dramatic performance by fringe Hollywood funnyman Brad William Henke, this story set in a halfway community for troubled youth poses difficult questions about choosing to bring a child into the world. Lies by Jonas Odell earned the International Jury Prize.


Jerrycan

An Honorable Mention when to Chema García Ibarra's unsettling Spanish short, The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5, which depicts a young man's attempts to warn his community of an impending alien attack, shedding more light on the relationships with his family and friends than on the aliens. Another mention went to a subtly complex film, Jerrycan, about an improvised boyhood masculinity trial, where a bully forces his playmates to light a fuel can on fire, causing a massive explosion. The film says much about the experience of childhood, proving that sometimes seemingly trivial events can be the most formative. It was directed by Julius Avery


Next Floor

But it's not just the award winners that enrich these programs. Ten for Grandpa, written and directed by Doug Karr, is one continuous, compounded conspiracy theory. Knife Point is a visually satisfying exploration into the darker mindset of fundamentalist Christians, directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis. Countertransference takes emotional therapy to hilarious new heights, and Next Floor is an incredibly elaborate allegory, with stunning production design, that warns of the dangers of an over-consumptive society.

For more information, please visit: http://www.sundance.org/festival

Of Time and the City

Published for www.film-forward.com




Written and Directed by Terence Davies
UK; 2009

"An excavation of Liverpool unearths more than just old memories."

According to Terence Davies, the influence of memory plays a central role in the human experience, but after an eight-year hiatus, his new feature may just prove him wrong. With narration written and performed by Davies himself, Of Time and the City pays painstaking attention to—and offers endless critique of—what are ostensibly the more-bitter-than-sweet details of his working-class Liverpool upbringing. But the jig is up. In his prior work, nostalgia’s formative effect on the human experience is essential. In the acid sarcasm that makes Of Time so memorable, however, nostalgia is more like a punch line. Mr. Davies does make every attempt to blame his characteristic (but ultimately harmless and, dare I say, appealingloveable) contemptuousness on his life’s trials, but a complaining voice persists throughout this autobiographical saga, subtly exposing him as the canny little snob he loves to be.

Not to deny that throughout this unique documentary, he is at times hilarious, or at others extremely intelligent perceptive. For so long, though, with such profound films as Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, he has taught us that specific experiences in specific places make up our defining elements. This time around, he seems to delight in his the assumed snobbish persona, belying his claimscontradicting his own claims to impoverished roots and social persecution. Financial struggle and closet homosexuality don’t produce the kind of elitist that Davies personifies. This craftsman is playing a part, and his witticisms are applied addenda to his history, rather than an organic product of it.

Of Time’s historical commentary is composed in part by an impressive collection of Bernard Fallon’s black- and- white expressionist photography from the 1960s and ’70s, as well as beautifully restored newsreel and home movie footage. The powerful images could probably stand as a piece on their own, but there is something more important that comes from the combination of narration and the host of brilliant musical selections (everything from Mahler to Peggy Lee to The Spinners’ Dirty Old Town) set to footage of demolished tenements, the British royal family in all its tacky splendor, and a small cache of contemporary locations shot by Davies and his crew. Davies’ narration is insightful, but it somehow doesn’t match the material.

What a character is this man, who’s been called “England’s greatest living director” (The Guardian). He’s admittedly seen hardly a new film in the last 10 years (for those of us who have, perhaps Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, a similar yet superior film to this one, can may be a point of reference). But Of Time is a great film, and of course how interesting it is also to share in the director’s identity crisis, imagining him identifying more with his namesakes Ray and Dave of the decidedly working-class Kinks than with fellow Liverpudlians John and Paul (Beatles, but apostles, too, I’m sure). Davies unabashedly hates Elvis, popular music, the Bourgeoisie, the British royalty, and the Catholic Church. I suppose when one diversifies one’s scorn, then poor people are the only ones left to champion.