I went to Balagan Films last Tuesday night for the screening
of highlights from the Clermont-Ferrand short film festival. The festival seems
like an interesting initiative, which was started when students were looking
for a way to make short films a respected and viewed genre at a time when there
wasn’t really a place for them to be shown. The screening was a blend of
animations, documentary, experimental and hybrid films. I am usually not a fan
of animations but I have to say that I was impressed by the animations in this
festival. The ‘Heavy Heads’ film by Helena Frank was particularly amusing and I
really liked the simple drawings. The film featured a lonely woman, whose only
companion is a fly, for whom she shows a perverted interest in.
Il Capo really stuck out in my mind. I enjoyed the concept
and particularly had an admiration for the imagery. The tones of the stark
white machinery, the rich dusty brown of the mounds of dirt, the swarthy olive
Mediterranean tones of the main subjects glistening sweaty skin against the
lush forest green tones of the shrubbery and trees and the pale blue was so
decadent and is still visually clear in my mind nearly a week after. The film
showed a man directing construction vehicles only with hand symbols, no words.
It was a nice romantic look into something otherwise overlooked as an ordinary
event and really focused on the hand motions but also aesthetic cinematic
features were clearly important to the filmmaker. This film was also exciting
and encouraging to me. I have become one of those people (a “snob”, perhaps?)
who will only shoot film and is totally turned off by digital technology
aesthetically and also in terms of the process. While I still don’t think I
will ever be able to enjoy the film of shooting digitally nearly as much as I
do enjoy shooting 16mm, (and the aesthetic will of course always be different), I was very encouraged by the
beautiful qualities of light captured shooting digitally. The imagery really
was breathtaking. I caught in the credits that the film was shot with three
cameras. I remember that it was shot with a 5D and also a Cineflex but didn’t
catch the name of the third camera. Cineflex could also be an incomplete name.
I’m not up on my digital technology but assuming film becomes challenging to
shoot down the road (for financial and perhaps one day issues with
accessibility) I would be OK with shooting digital after seeing the
possibilities in Il Capo. The sound in Il Capo was in the empathetic style we
learned about- sound of machinery moving and rocks tumbling was in sync and
enriched the tone, which was created by the imagery.
This is a trailer for Il Capo:
‘On The Way to the Sea’ didn’t really do much for me but it
was shot on Super 8 and 16 mm which was definitely nice to look at and was also
optically printed and looked solarized to me which were nice effects and it was
cool to see different possibilities for working in and on film.
Muro was an awesome Brazilian film, which had a surreal
feeling to it, stunning photography and a powerful and moving concept. The film
was rather poetic one line flashed across the screen, which translated to “a
man who thought and considered so long her fell”. This one was also shot digitally and was very exciting and
lush.
Bobby yeah was funny a funny animation and the graphics were
wild to look at but animation isn’t my favorite genre so I laughed and was
impressed but not inspired.
The Centrifuge Brain Project was awesome! This film used the
concept of a scientific experiment executed in the 1970’s, which put patients
on ludicrous roller coasters and amusement park rides, which theorized that to
put humans in antigravity situations would be the remedy to all their problems.
There were some really funny contraptions the commentary was humorous and I
enjoyed the “vintage” footage of the experimental rides. I’m curious to know
how the filmmaker had “footage” of these clearly impossible and fantasy
coasters!
No comments:
Post a Comment