By Ryan Thomas
Last week saw two historic movie milestones: 1) the 16th iteration of the Charlotte Film Festival, held at The Independent Picture House, and 2) my first-ever film festival experience (the world was on pins and needles). This year’s slate had inventive animated shorts, slick sports documentaries, humble indie dramas and everything in between. Here’s a rundown of every film I saw in the six days.
Opening night: An informative, if paint-by-numbers, portrait of Roberto Clemente, one of the greatest baseball players of all time. The film was executive produced by Clemente’s son and LeBron James, among others, so you can understand if journalistic rigor isn’t a top priority here. After establishing his bona fides, the film has some great anecdotes about Clemente the everyman and humanitarian, plus his tragic death. Being only a casual baseball fan, I learned a lot.
Probably my favorite thing from the fest, a mumblecore-ish dramedy about a man who marries (and gets paid by) an immigrant stranger so she can remain in the U.S. Jeff Man wrote, directed and starred in the film; he also worked as an assistant for the Duplass brothers, the film’s executive producers. Highlight of the night was the post-screening Q&A with Man and his dad — who plays Man’s dad in the movie — and hearing about Paper Marriage’s long road to the festival circuit.
“Tears for Fears” Narrative Shorts
A collection of horror-based shorts with predictably varying degrees of production value and effect. Highlights included Dream Creep, in which a man shoves a [REDACTED] into his partner’s [REDACTED], and The Door, which follows a couple haunted by their daughter’s death in more ways than one. I also enjoyed the campy Bobby Came Home and subsequent Q&A with director Dave Harlequin, a Charlotte indie filmmaker.
Follows the former child idol of a right-wing extremist group who’s being tailed by her recently freed cult leader — an interesting premise that goes almost totally unexplored. We learn practically nothing about the cult, its members or its discontents, beyond the obvious, and the film never decides what it wants to be. Is this a chase picture? A conspiracy thriller? An indie road drama about overcoming trauma? We don’t know. Some good tunes, though, and cool title sequence.
Animated Shorts
Some needed Saturday-morning solace after a late night at Eighty Eights, the snazzy new jazz bar next door to IPH. Highlights here included The Boy From Lookout Mountain, a minimalist eulogy for a father; Worry World, about a couple in an anti-imagination dystopia; and Deadline, about machine-gun wielding grandmas staving off the grim reaper. A really fun and packed screening. The animation crowd always shows out.
CFF’s closing film that answers the eternal question, “What if the Elephant Man was a struggling NYC actor and turned out to be kind of an a**hole?” Much funnier than it has any right to be, considering it’s a movie about two characters with physical deformities. It spends most of its second half pulling Kaufmanesque stunts. Still, Sebastian Stan is great. A mixed bag for me, but worth the watch. (See for yourself! It’s playing this week at IPH.)
I came away from my first-ever film festival feeling charged by the possibilities of cinema. I enjoyed hanging out in the filmmaker lounge, chatting with fellow movie lovers and meeting tons of new people. Good food. Good drinks. There were plenty of good movies to go around, too, which always helps. I will be returning.