Attending A Film Festival
- Fernanda Fisher
- Dec 2
- 5 min read
Attending a film festival can be very rewarding. In October, we attended the Manhattan Short Film Festival at the Great Lakes Center for the Arts in Michigan. Last weekend, we attended the Alexandria Film Festival in Virginia.
Both events showed new long and short films, asking viewers to vote on their favorites. However, the formats of the two festivals were different.
Manhattan Short Film Festival
The Manhattan Short Film Festival began in 1998 bringing together 500 cities across six continents to screen and vote on the best short films of the year. Our small, rural town in northern Michigan was chosen as a venue this year and we were lucky to participate in the voting. The viewing and voting took place over one afternoon. We saw several short films made in several different countries.
There were so many interesting films shown. Each one was highly polished and gave the look and feel of something that I would see in a movie theater. There were two animated shorts including one called Overy-Acting about a woman getting pressured to have children and her visible ovary which tagged along to baby showers and the store with her. The woman used her walking/talking ovary as a sounding board on if she should start having children. It was funny but also highlighted an issue many young women likely experience.
We Have Sinned Before, is an Israeli made film about a family playing a game during Yom Kippur. In this film, what starts out as a family table game to pass the time turns into an explosive revelation about lies and infidelity.
Peer pressure can make anoyher excellent film subject. In Chasing the Party, Melissa wants to be a popular girl and she throws herself at an older male photographer who she believes will get her the attention she desires. When he grabs his camera and asks her to leave the others and follow him to the quiet kitchen she has to decide if fame and popularity is really worth what he is asking.
Passarinho was both a sad and funny film. Two girls thought their father was going to take them to see their soccer hero at a match. They had secretly hatched a plan to get noticed by the soccer star so they could secure his autograph. When the stressed out and clueless mother realizes she can make her daugher's dream come true, she takes matters into her own hands to a hilarious but disastrous ending.
Alexandria Film Festival
The Alexandria Film Festival takes place over three days with showings of very short pieces and a few feature length films. Here, there was no way that viewers could see all the films offered because the times and venues overlapped. We saw several locally made films along with a few local Virginia directors.
One evening billed as a night of humor seemed more like mediocre community theater than a night of comedy. I outwardly cringed at one of the pieces and figured the people who enjoyed it and laughed were friends of the director and cast. I will admit, there was one political satire that got the audience roaring because it was wickedly funny.
While some selections were rather amateurish we also saw several very powerful films. In fact, Alexandria’s festival left us moved in more than one way on several occasions. We went to three different viewings over the weekend. Of these sessions three films stand out.
Sitka could easily have been a National Geographic special. Showcasing the many layers of life found in Sitka, Alaska, the footage of animals and nature were simply breathtaking. We left the theater thinking that it would definitely be the one that we would vote for.
On Sunday we saw four very different films. The first two, Takeout and Brunch! made me feel like I was in the scene with the actors. Takeout, a story about the beginning of the end of a long relationship, had no sounds other than the actors voices and the pregnant air when they didn’t speak.
Brunch!, a story about a woman poised to propose to a girl who doesn’t want commitment, had music that enhanced the agony that the devastated woman felt knowing that her feelings were not returned.
Having the Directors explain their choices of sound and no sound was enlightening. Hearing them answer questions and explain their work shed new light into what Directors consider when making films. It was like going to a museum and having a docent tell you the history behind a painting so that it opens your eyes. Learning their techniques enables me to think more about the subtleties of film making.
The final two films we saw were by Kelley Kali, a producer, director, and actor who graduated from Howard University and now lives in Los Angeles. Her film Elle/Elle is about a married gay couple that is going through a major life change because one of the men is transitioning to become a woman.
The entire 20 minute film is set prior to and during a dinner party where the transitioning partner wants to be a fierce and beautiful woman, while the male partner wants him to dress as a man and pretend he is gay and not transitioning.
The hurt and anguish on the transitioning partner’s face is real. The actor drew me and the rest of the audience in with his expressions and movements. The other actors were equally strong and carried off their roles with emotion and conviction. Kali spoke about the difficulties of making the film, based on a true story, which enhanced the entire experience for me.
Finally, we saw a docudrama feature film called Kemba. Wow it topped Sitka and Elle/Elle haunting me to this day. In the 1980s, Kemba Smith was a privileged young black woman living in Virginia. With two loving and successful parents she was studying at Hampton University. She fell in love with a man who turned out to be something other than what she thought he was.
For some time she continued attending classes and even introduced her boyfriend to her parents. Sadly, Smith made the mistake of agreeing to carry money for him on at least one occasion and was implicated in the drug dealing of her boyfriend. When he was found murdered the prosecution decided to pin the entire case on Kemba Smith.
This true story, directed by Kali, shows the negative implications surrounding the mandatory minimum sentencing laws in our country along with the disparity between sentencing for black and white people possessing crack versus powder cocaine.
Because of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, Kemba Smith was sentenced to 24 1/2 years in prison. The police charged Smith with the sale of all the drugs her boyfriend ever sold. She was only a money courrier for I believe one deal.
It was very sad to not have had a larger audience for Elle/Elle and Kemba. Both were beautifully directed and so incredibly moving. Having Kali and Kemba Smith there to talk about how the movie was filmed from both the Director’s view and the subject’s view gave the audience a chance to ask the kind of questions you want to ask but never can.
If you ever get the chance to attend a film festival, you should go. It is a fun way to spend an afternoon or weekend. Plus, you get to see films and actors who may be getting their first real break into the world of film.
To see a promotional video on the Manhattan Short and learn more click these links https://youtu.be/eex9nt8FgCQ
To learn more about the Alexandria Film Festival click these links
Comments