Cinequest - lamest film festival ever

2/27 - 3/11 2018

This film festival was a waste of space. I went to the opening night which usually starts off with a great film. It was a new film directed by William H. Macy and he was there afterwards to speak. The movie was so bad my friend and I walked out without hearing him. Next I went to Luna's Revenge - a German film which I liked. The last film was sooo bad and racist (Bikini Moon) I have decided to stop going to Cinequest. They select based on quantity as they have 6 theaters to fill. They are not selective to the films they put in their festival. Unlike San Francisco whose film festival selection are finely combed through for a high standard to viewing. Here's a picture of Luna's Revenge. 

GET OUT

I saw this film twice. I enjoyed it very much then I listened to this great interview on NPR confirming points I thought about the film. Jordan Peele frequently commented on the Stepford Wives which is exactly how I described the film. A Stepford wife movie substituting Black people for Wives. Peele calls it a Social Thriller genre. He made that term. The subtle racist comments he calls micro-agressions. Comments that point to ones otherness.  Speaking with an accent or talking about black people they like or characteristics they like about black people. However they want black people in a white washed suburban persona that is like them. It is about cultural appropriation without wanting the rest of the person. He also talked about being bi-racial. He is half black and half white. In grammar school it was at first difficult for him to fill out the circle about race and he would put other until about 14 when he decided to identify as black. Here's the interview link to cut and paste.  (I messed up and lost the link).

SFIFF Day 3, Ticket 2

Well, I'll just put a photo and the description and then explain why I walked out after 15 minutes.

The Untamed

Program description: A sensual, erotic, and often bizarre meditation on pleasure and destruction, The Untamed is a cinematic adventure not soon forgotten. Ángel is a difficult man who exerts grim control over his wife Alejandra, while conducting an affair with her brother Fabian. All three of these characters find their lives lacking, whether it be unfulfilling jobs, abusive and adulterous spouses, or challenging economic situations. So when a willowy stranger named Verónica enters their realm and brings them to a remote farmhouse where a creature that can bring otherworldly pleasure resides, the result will transform all of their lives. Taking a grand leap into the fantastical after the brute realism of his celebrated 2013 Heli, Escalante has crafted a uniquely unsettling intersection between sci-fi horror, allegory, and messily dysfunctional domestic drama. Though very different in style, The Untamed acknowledges (literally, in its closing credits) one clear predecessor—the late Andrej Zulawski’s 1981 cult favorite Possession, another portrait of a deteriorating marriage in which love is a many-tentacled thing.

The picture above is a girl laying down on a bed in the barn and the first scene is of her nude with the large alien snake leaving her body. The next scene is a woman being taken from the back by her bisexual husband and the third scene is her masturbating in the shower. There was a lot more sex after that too. It seemed excessive and sometimes the suggestion is better than watching the acts. There was an unkindness also to the sex especially with the wife. Her husband is more gay than straight and is having an affair with her gay doctor brother. Which we also get to graphically see, too graphic for me and I left.

Here is a trailer where the woman who first had sex with the alien is talking the doctor into having sex with the alien. .Click here for trailer

The director is Spanish and this was filmed in Mexico with a Mexican cast in Spanish.

SFIFF Day 3, Ticket 1

Bummer Day...two bad films. I should have known though because they were at the Victoria which is the kiss of death. It's the low end theater and they still do not have butter for popcorn. They have butter flavoring - ugh.

Film one.The Future Present

Program Description: Eighteen-year-old Xiaobin travels from China to Buenos Aires to join her conservative family who immigrated years earlier. Her parents, who refuse even to learn Spanish, want her to fit in with the Chinese immigrant community and marry a nice Chinese boy, but the low-key teenager with a quiet smile has a few surprises up her sleeve. She rebels by secretly taking a Spanish class, hiding her savings, and spending time outside class with one of her fellow students on the sly. As the students in the class improvise simple dialogues to practice what they’ve learned, Xiaobin turns new lessons learned into a new experience in life. Improvising scenarios for what she wishes would happen, or not happen, the future perfect becomes not only a grammatical tense, but a way for her to imagine the life she wants to live. Director Nele Wohlatz recruited most of the cast, including her lead, from actual language-school students, and brilliantly uses their innocence and naïveté to create an atmosphere of spontaneity, realism, and genuine camaraderie. “The language school,” she says, “could be understood as a rehearsal stage for a new identity after immigration.” –Miguel Pendás

This was my second choice film. I missed the earlier one about the fun and the havoc of people living in Greece in their current crumbling economy. This film was interesting because it was such an unusual life we visited. This genre is called Docu-Fiction. The people are living their reality but there is some scripting. The earlier film I saw, Mr. Universo, was also Docu-Fiction.

The environment is a foreign language school in Argentina. The students are Chinese and have ended up in Argentina. Their Spanish is quite good. The story revolves around Xiaobin. She is giving a little biography of her life in class and then there are little breaks while it is re-enacted.In a review I read it said as she learned new tenses to explain herself the plot also expands as her life is also growing like her Spanish. I didn't pick up on that but it's a cool concept.

The interesting thing was getting a slice of her life as an immigrant from such a contrasting culture. Her parents had lived in Argentina for an unknown period of time and then bought her a ticket to come live with them. They wanted her to work right away to pay back the price of the ticket. The interviewer asked if they they were excited to greet her and she said no. It's nice to see her get an independent life until her mother gets her to work in the laundry with her and starts to find a husband for her.

I had the same problem with this as the Mr. Universo film. It is more of a reality show that rambles without a storyline.

These two pictures show one of my favorite parts, her suitor Vijay. An Indian programmer who innocently proclaims he wants her as a wife on their second date. It is innocent and sweet. Here is the trailer.Click here for trailer

SFIFF Day 2, Ticket 3

I stayed for more shorts and was pleasantly surprised.

Shorts 1

Program description: This compilation of narrative and documentary shorts showcases expertly crafted visual storytelling from around the world. Each film offers its own insight into a wide range of subjects and locales—from a young bride’s wedding in Armenia to a family excursion in the Florida Everglades to an unconventional convention in Washington—in ways that are surprising, captivating, and provocative.

And the Whole Sky Fit in the Dead Cow’s Eye
Anxiety falls upon a small village in Chile one morning with the unexplained death of cows and the return of an unwelcomed visitor. (Francisca Alegria, Chile/USA 2016, 19 min). A lovely story with magical realism as is used in latin american fiction. The cows dying overnight was first seen as a miracle and the town began pilgrimages with their village madonna on their shoulders.  They were so happy that God had chosen them. Later they find out that it was a strategic lightning bolt. The grandmother's husband comes to visit her 30 years after her death and she says you haven't eaten in so long and she feeds him and he is hungry. The husband has come from beyond to take her son, she tricks him in the end to take her.

And the Whole Sky Fit in the Dead Cow’s Eye Trailer - Click here

A Brief History of Princess X
An absurdist interpretation of Constantin Brancusi’s infamous sculpture, ‘Princess X.’ (Gabriel Abrantes, Portugal/France/UK 2016, 7 min)
Film websiteClick here

The Convention
An intimate gathering of transgender women in northern Washington reveals the affirmation of community as well as the psychological toll of dual identities. (Jessica Dimmock, USA 2016, 10 min)

Whole Convention film - Click here

Gut Hack
To treat his chronic gastro-intestinal problems, Josiah devises a bold biological experiment that involves the exchange of bodily excretions. (Mario Furloni, Kate McLean, USA 2017, 16 min) This is a Cinema by the Bay film.   There is no trailer

The Rabbit Hunt
A companion piece to last year’s award-winning The Send Off, this visceral film follows seventeen year old Chris and his family hunt rabbits during sugarcane field burning and harvesting in the Florida Everglades.(Patrick X Bresnan, USA 2016, 12 min). I had to close my eyes for most of this short. I wasn't prepared to see real killing of rabbits with sticks and then frying them up and eating them. The last scene had a close up of the 17 year old eating his rabbit drum stick and the veins and flesh were seen in close up. I heard people the day after saying that a warning should be placed on films like this and it was especially sickening for vegetarians. It was an honest life event and the bigger picture was that this family in poverty does what they need to do for extra cash and food.

Real Artists
Sophia, an ambitious and idealistic animator, interviews for a dream job at a top film studio and discovers the hidden secrets of success. (Cameo Wood, USA 2017, 12 min) This is a Cinema by the Bay film.
Trailer - Click here

Red Apples
A young Armenian bride’s hopes for a new life are dashed when an interfering mother-in-law imposes her will. (George Sikharulidze, Armenia/Georgia/USA 2016, 15 min)
Trailer - Click here


—Audrey Chang wrote the program descriptions

The directors that came were from Real Artists and Gut Hack. degrees from duke and stanford ui / fb google. gut hack ph.D.

SFIFF Day 2, Ticket 2

THE CHALLENGE

This picture tells a lot about the film. These affluent Qatarian men are setting in gold thrones in a luxury tent in the desert watching falconery. The program description is very accurate: At the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, a competition is about to begin. Where the sand dunes meet the sea, participants and observers converge: A Qatari biker gang cruises the desert highways, their leader astride a gold-plated Harley Davidson; elsewhere, a pet cheetah bounds into the passenger seat of a Lamborghini, and is soon joined by her kandura-clad owner. In the skies above, a gentleman dotes on his prized falcons, who rest sphinxlike on custom perches in the cabin of a private jet. These arresting and surreal passages form the visual grammar of The Challenge, director Yuri Ancarani’s immersive portrait of the ancient practice of Arab falconry. Filmed over a three-year period, this stylized film merges striking desert landscapes with the idiosyncratic details of a major falconry competition, revealing how a hunting tradition dating to antiquity has survived into the modern era by embracing technology rather than resisting it. While falconers still keep their avian familiars in leather blinds–gently releasing the drawstrings with their teeth–they also track the birds with modern GPS devices, follow them in roaring fleets of white SUVs, and watch their rivals on makeshift Jumbotrons planted in the desert sands. In the film’s remarkable centerpiece, one falcon is even fitted with a small camera, transmitting a raptor’s eye view of the austere desert plain and the inexorable pursuit of its prey.

Official site with trailer and history of falconry which they say is 40 centuries long - Click here for trailer