My very first film fest, done! Like three days ago at this point! Driving up and back four or five times in the space of a week while also writing up reviews for every one of the eight pictures you saw in addition to a VR experience and some material from an entirely different film fest is tiring, so please excuse me for being a little late! Part of it is my fault for returning to my regular schedule and having to write stuff for that too, but we're here now, we're talking the CICAE Award nominees, and how I feel about 'em in brief! Let's have ourselves a quick little chat about these films, in ranked order, before talking about the judge's pick for the winner, and my own personal preference thereby!
ONWARD!
8) Falls Around Her: As mentioned in the review, I really wish Tantoo Cardinal had better material to work with. The story of her singer returned to the reservation with reservations of her own about reconnecting with friends and loved ones has many potentially interesting avenues to develop along, and a compelling small-town friendly vibe, but the film's threats to take greater interest in its least interesting mystery are, unfortunately, made good on, and produce a climax I simply cannot abide by. A disappointing entry, though one I'm glad to have viewed regardless for its star and overall presence throughout the first two acts. I have to also admit: not wanting to be down on this film anymore also contributed to this write-up's delay.
7) Hjärtat: Was it the fact of director Fanni Metelius playing her own main character here and not quite clicking with her romantic co-lead that kept me at arms-length from this modern love story? Was it the difficulties I experienced with her character's shallowness when it does still have merit as a human aspect and ties together thematically with her lover's own challenges in finding their respective ways through young adulthood? Was it being reminded of Blue is the Warmest Color during the ending without the utter gutpunches the older film served? Probably all of them, but at least the film still finds its feet and pulls a few resonant moments from its hat for good measure.
6) The Condor and the Eagle: Fine film, fine goals, fine execution, fine people behind it who do more important work than anything I do on this blogspace. But man, I just can't square away the crimes they show with the "slow and steady wins the race" approach to protest they advocate. The Guerras and the people they represent on the silver screen have extremely legitimate points about the need for a worldwide cooperative movement between indigenous persons to affect real change; I only wish they'd get louder and angrier about step-by-step tactics to help further said goals. Its low placement is ENTIRELY a philosophical difference between myself and the directors/subjects, so one's mileage may very well vary.
5) Always in Season: You know you've a solid documentary on your hands when my biggest complaint is wanting more of the stories that rend at my soul. Each of the subjects here could easily sustain a feature documentary of the same length all on their lonesome, so it'd be nice to see Jacqueline Olive's work stretch beyond its ninety-minute runtime to cast an even more damning light on these ugly parts of American culture, past and all-too-sadly present. What is here hurts to watch, and because it hurts so bad it is necessary viewing for all. I'm still knocked a little senseless by the first lynching reenactment scene.
4) I Was At Home, But...: I've been reading s'more reviews of this most enigmatic film at the festival over the last week, and seeing plenty of varying interpretations vastly different from my own. The old man with the voice box and the bicycle, the extended conversation about the nature of acting with an uneasy director, the way Astrid treats her children, the significance of the other children flatly reciting Shakespeare - every last one a turning point for one's opinion and final analysis. I remain staunch in my own view of it as the effects of depression on a small familial environment, but I'm always glad to see a cinematic Rorschach test in action, and rather wish I'd seen this with more folks I talk to on the regular to compare notes. Either way, the slowly paced, sterile atmosphere is wonderful on its own, and the events within highly compelling.
3) Temblores: Its frankness about how even the softest-spoken objections to homosexuality carries an undercurrent of hatred and desire to destroy hits and hits hard. Despite standard plot points and characters you might find in any queer narrative of this nature, the actors' pained performances and the distant promise of potential understanding before we're dragged through the jagged reality of conversion therapy and hollow eyed reunification grants it an impact and staying power beyond the nature of its components. As I say, until such time as the world entire has moved beyond this out-and-out refusal to acknowledge those in one's life as essentially human because of such small things as a differing sexual preference and the resultant cruel torture, films predicated on depicting this suffering remain necessary, however overwhelmingly prevalent they remain.
2) Advocate: The international three person jury's pick for the CICAE award, and one I can easily get behind. Handily the most artistic and clever of the three films here, it speaks volumes about the historical weight of its criminal subjects through the way it chooses to protect their identity, and draws you into the life of Lea Tsemel with a back-and-forth conversation between her life to this point and her activities in the modern day, before revealing a tiny yet crucial piece of information that completely recharacterizes the rest of the film. There's an ideal synthesis between fascinating subject and clever presentation here that makes for an exceptional documentary. I do not fault Boglárka Nagy, Luice Morvan, and Alison Kozberg for making this their selection at all, in spite of the crossness I indicated last week. Advocate deserves all the praise in the world, and as many eyeballs on it as it can get if it means more exposure to the true face of Palestine's plight.
My own heart, however, belongs to another...
1) Aga: Yeah, I was right, no other film could challenge Aga. It's more than a modern evocation of Flaherty's century-old documentaries, more than a climate change issue movie, more than an exploration between traditional and modern ways of living, more than an exploration of the effect of absence and the drive to reconnect, more than an allegorical representation of how stories and song echo in our daily endeavors, more than the quiet relationship between an old couple with lifetimes of experience between them on the barren landscape of a shrinking, increasingly hostile Arctic circle. Aga is, above all, what happens when you strive to depict all of these ideas in active conversation with one another, and succeed on every level. It is as immediate and vibrant and lively as every gasping breath Mikhail Aprosimov and Feodosia Ivanova take as they slowly go about the tasks they've grown old through, as expansive as the stories they tell to shredding emotional impact and the sounds of modern machinery that consume their whole world from miles away, as intimate and human as anything else I've ever seen. This here is life on-screen, with all that implies, and nothing lost in the effort. I say once more: this is a triumph of filmmaking.
I do hereby Award Aga The Gilbert W Hays Non-Accredited Bootleg CICAE Award. It has earned it, and every other ounce of praise I can heap upon it in the future. Please, God, let this thing have a wide release, or a physical disc, or a digital distribution deal, or SOMETHING I can use to show it to everyone I know.
And with that bit of gushing, I declare this year's film fest coverage over and done! See y'all on the flip-side with whatever comes next! Probably a review of The Bat, because we're being REAL slow getting through this season challenge stuff!
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