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Chicago International Film Fest - Take 3
The Future Filmmakers Festival gives props to a handful of young directors, all under the age of twenty, who are doing exemplary work on the filmmaking front and deserve to have it shown on the big screen. The flyer claimed that some of the young visionaries were supposed to be at there to take questions after the 2:00pm screening. It was kind of disappointing to see so few people in the audience, and only one young director (Dane Shubert) and a screen writer, who both worked on the short drama “Voicemail.” I sympathetically watched as the Dane’s father’s hand shot up time and again to ask him existential questions about death and who is supposed to pay for his college tuition. I don’t know where the other directors were, perhaps in school? Nonetheless, eleven short films were shown, in categories ranging from Experimental to Long Form Drama to Animation and quite a few of them were impressive enough to warrant big pats on the back (and a shout out from The Aspect Ratio!) Who needs an Oscar, right? So without further ado:
Some Studs:
“Evolution of Street Ball” (Conscious Youth Media Crew)
A short documentary and counter-culture chronicle on the origins of street basketball, this film was part performance and part homage to a game that gets little recognition off the local courts it’s played on. With rapid riffs and hip hop flair, the narrators break down the history of street ball into four parts, recognizing its innovators as James Naismith, the Harlem Globetrotters, AND 1, and the players themselves, past, present and future. A fast-paced, no nonsense approach to documentary, “Evolution of Street Ball” was definitely an eyeful.
“Schooling Baltimore Street” (Lendel Tellington and Kyle Halle-Erby)
A social commentary on the poorly funded inner-city public schools in Baltimore, this film exploded with a voiceover slam poem, pictures of the degraded public school buildings and the activist groups that are trying to do something about it. Interviewing and filming activists as they stormed city hall in an attempt to make politician Nancy Grasmick live up to her promises to better fund education, “Schooling Baltimore Street” proves that revolutionary young minds can and do have an impact on federal policy and on the issues that matter to them personally.
“Seventeen” (Jenny Kwon)
From a fade-in strobe light dancer to the filming of a camera filming a white wall, Jenny Kwon’s Personal Essay film had a Donnie Darko-esque magnetism, replete with a one-eyed stuffed bunny and thematic pre-life crisis. “Seventeen” is a rumination on childhood and adulthood, told through an Instant Messenger conversation between her present self and past self that takes place on blank surfaces of her house. Innovative and melancholic, “Seventeen” takes a bipolar stance on what it means to get older.
“Toys: The Homemaker’s Tale” (Peter Gundling)
Using Legos and Gumby to illustrate the evils of discrimination, Peter Gundling takes an ambitious approach to animation for such a young director. The Homemakers are a typical family of Legos, going about their routines of television watching and trips to the park with Grandma, when suddenly Mr. Homemaker is fired for not being made out of clay! He stands up to Mr. Bossman and with the aid of Gumby is re-hired and all is restored to the land. Cutesy and kind of contrived, “Toys” animation techniques are enough to save this film from its sour storyline.
Some Duds:
“Oasis” (Jacob Mendel)
Gratuitous swearing and suburban white yuppies sum up the entirety of this Long Form Drama. Joe is an angsty teenager who hates life and spends it mostly by whining, playing videogames and ordering Chinese take-out. One day Joe invents a kind of Prozac that makes him instantly wealthy, which only drives him further into depression because he’s become one of “them.” Joe decides that the ticket to his happiness is depriving others of happiness and invents another drug that will do just that. The bloated vocabulary and oh so tortured mentality of the main character are extremely irritating and function little more than as gimmicky pit stops in this long-winded excursion into the travesties of the white middle-class male mind.
“Second Chance” (David Turvey)
A Public Service Announcement on the evils of smoking cigarettes, “Second Chance” shows a young man smoking in front of a Dunkin Donuts before the camera cuts to images of gravestones, cancerous lungs and people weeping into caskets. Somehow enlightened, the young man decides to throw his pack of Basics into a nearby trashcan, successfully thwarting death. Cliché and melodramatic, this will probably show up on all the major networks in the near future.
“Voicemail” (Dane Shubert)
A short drama (in this case really short, 2 ½ minutes) about a woman who is murdered and robbed by a kid who looks about nine, “Voicemail” presents a series of innocuous voicemails between a couple and the homicidal aftermath that is somehow supposed to be connected to them. As a sociopathic little boy swipes things from a house, a soundtrack of four voicemails tells the viewer that a woman is “at the airport” and that a man is “going to be late for dinner” before showing a woman (presumably the same one who was at the airport earlier) hog-tied and with a plastic bag over her head. I didn’t see any real connection between the action and the voicemails. And even more pressing is the question of how someone can check their voicemail when they’re dead
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