16 May 2004
Documentary Fest
I love movies. I especially love documentaries. In just a couple of hours, you can digest a lot of information about some odd topic or other, a real life topic, but with all the personal details and style of a drama: the demeanors of the people affected, the sights and sounds of their milieu, the music and editing that reflect the director's response, and more. This weekend is the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. Yay!
I bought myself a five-movie pass (some of the five were shown with additional short films) and saw these:
- Black Hair (short)
In the Q&A session following this film, the director noted that our mostly-Caucasian audience reacted much differently than the mostly-African-American audience to which he'd previously screened it. Whereas they reacted with outrage and thanked him for enlightening them to their economic exploitation, our audience mostly asked, "Why didn't you capture more of the Koreans' perspective?"
- Trading With The Enemy
This guy is a homely dork, but in Cuba he's the man! He spends about $400 on Cuban cigars, smuggles them back to the States, and sells them for $4400. Cha ching! And while he's in Havana, he samples lots of beer and hookers.
- Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea
Ecology is hard! Meanwhile, you can buy an undeveloped lot in Salton City for $3500 or a waterfront home for $20,000—if you can stand the smell. This one reminded me why I like Northern California so much. Also the director is cute.
- Keep the Change (short)
New York can show you that maybe it was nicer back home in Mexico.
- Alone Across Australia
This one is really fascinating, exciting, and heartbreaking, by far the most powerful movie I saw in this festival. One stunning scene had me and many others in the audience in tears. I'd like to read the book, but so far it's only available in Australia.
- In The Shoes of The Dragon
This one is only mildly interesting, but the protagonist is a likeable person.
- I'm Dead After Work (short)
Just some short scenes of a man who works at an animal crematorium and lives alone in a trailer with his cat. Every night, he slices lemons. Every day, he keeps lemon slices in his mouth while he pushes dead pets into the incinerator.
- Starlet (short)
The struggling actresses in this film think they're interviewing for a part in a film, but actually the interviews are the film. The results is a series of monologues about what it's like in the Hollywoood rat race.
- Kosher Cop (short)
A Stanford (Boo! Go Bears!) film student's first project, in black and white, the only film in the festival that was shot on actual celluloid, analog-style. We follow an Orthodox rabbi as he "kosherizes" various objects around Berkeley.
- Dirty Work
People are weird. Some of them genuinely love pumping septic tanks, collecting bull-semen, or embalming corpses.
In other movie-thoughts: As expected, Troy is pretty lame, yet sexy. I think Brad Pitt is now too beefy for my taste and has a monkey-face whenever he's not smiling. That Orlando Bloom sure is a tasty slice of boy-cake! Too bad about his acting. Nevertheless, I'm entirely in favor of any movie featuring hot men wearing masculine skirts. San Francisco metrosexuals regularly wear these, but now Brad Pitt predicts that man-skirts will become a more popular trend as a result of this movie. On that basis alone, I give this movie a thumbs-up.