Sunday, October 15th

Whew...Sunday was a killer. There were no round table discussions or anything today so we got off to an early start watching films at 11:15. I missed the very first work of the first program, Living, but managed to catch the subsequent films in it, Passing by Harry, a mini-road doc by James Prange and Lay Down Tracks, a feature length narrative documentary about travel by Danielle Lombardi and Brigid McCaffrey. While both films took a significantly more sentimental look at humanity than any film in the festival previously or since, Prange's subtle interweaving of rather context-free homage (of Harry Truman?!?) with a deftly edited romanticizing look at childhood innocence made for an amusingly touching visual experience.

Hardly jettisoning a sentimental angle, but certainly making it less overt, was Lombardi and McCaffrey's documentary that dealt with both the personal sacrifices and pleasures of constantly moving. The subjects in their documentary were all quite diverse and though McCaffrey informed me after the screening that many people had had a problem with her father appearing in the film, I have to say that his presence was very welcome.

The following program, Where Am I? was a really off-the-wall collection of films. Starting with Gregory Godhard's direct-to-film manipulated A Darkening Slumber, we moved right into one of the most bitter, self-affirming, and personal works of the whole festival, Sandra Davis' amazing anti-medical institution tale of personal survival Ignorance Before Malice. Visually, the work was a combination of repetitious elements: religious iconography, MRI images, and text, which narrated her struggle in the first person while a voice over narrated in the third. All in all a very powerful piece.

The next film, Kerry A. Laitala's Orbit, while not quite as emotionally moving as the previous film, was certainly great to look at. Jorge Lorenzo's Blue-Up took a significantly different approach than almost any other film in the fest, mirroring his conceptual preoccupations with projection (both in the mechanical and psychological sense) and the formal properties of film.

Telemach Wiesinger's Augenblick N 38 came after and featured a high contrast black and white sustained shot of some sort of gooey substance. It was beautiful and came across to me like Jean Cocteau shooting a still life.

Unfortunately I missed almost all of the subsequent program, Freeze Pour Glide Dissolve, although I heard great things about many of the films and from my position just outside the theater (manning the door!), the use of sound especially seemed really interesting in this program. I did catch the first film, Gerard Holthuis' Careless Reef Part 2, which I've seen like 7 times in the past month. It's so awesome and so covertly hilarious, like watching one of the space ship docking scenes from 2001: A Space Oddysey on a lot of cough syrup. Totally rad!

For the second to last program, I got to do some presenting once again, which I don't think came across as well as I would have liked. Regardless, this was one of my favorite programs of the whole event ranging from some assured re-handlings of the hand-manipulated film process to bits of totally beautiful absurdity to a meditation on the exuberance of love.

There's really too much to talk about here, but suffice it to say, Ben Russel presented two completely black and white examinations of symmetrical optics, filmic artificts, and complete psychedelia in his series Black and White Trypps Number(s) 1 and 2. Though I completely adore 1, I was really pleased with how 2 actually looked in a theater.

Michael Robinson's two films, The General Returns From One Place to Another and And We All Shine On dealt with the numerous ways spirituality, heroism, and beauty are mediated, destroyed, or satirized in popular culture. Both films were willfully obscure, surfacey, and painfully touching all at once.

Telemach Wiesinger's second film of the day, Augenblick N 19 was another sumptuous (whoa) b+w still shot. Only this time, there was a sense of austere Japanese aesthetics and an absurdist interest in the two different kinds of planes (not to spoil the surprise).

Jason Livingston's film was brief but stunning, with the overall effect being that of a pet dog's POV on acid in a field of beautiful flowers. And it was all set to a warped version of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me"! Livingston claims the film captures the feeling of being in love and I believe him!

Finally, Dan Baker's gorgeous but somewhat frightening direct-to-film piece wrestled with the problems of "exploration", while I personally found it to be a visionary warning of a post-oil apocalypse. And everyone's entitled to their opinion, right? Right.

The last film of the entire festival came next, a totally rare showing of old school master Gregory Markopoulos' feature length artsy extravaganza, The Illiac Passion. In some ways mirroring the audience's complete filmic exhaustion at that point, Markopoulos' film combined all manner of well-lit nubile bodies, gay fantasies, complete absurdity, costumed spectacle, and maddeningly repetitious voice over. Truly an ideal choice to end the festival.

After stumbling out of the Starz theater that we had all collectively lived in for the previous 5 days, those of us inclined to do a little imbibing did just that over at Globeville Studios for the 2nd time that weekend. This was a slightly more sedate affair than Friday's party, with no keg, but a decent amount of champagne, cake, and pretzels. Plus, the group I was with brought some "borrowed" liquor! Our plans to check out some cool underground type noisy music following the party were totally stymied but some of us ended up at a diner and finally Chris May's lawn! What a blast! Thanks to everyone who came, spoke, emailed, watched, created, and contributed! You are all beautiful amazing people who will live forever!

-JT Rogstad

[Pics: Ignorance Before Malice by Sandra Davis & The Illiac Passion by Gregory Markopoulos.]