I didn’t get to see many of the films at the Austin Film Festival because I was spending most of my time in panels at the conference, or hanging out in the bar, or drinking like a Wisconsin native at the parties. But once the conference part was over, I got to see a fair share of films.
Here’s the viewing rundown. Every entry is going to have a link to the AFF entry, where you will likely find pictures, info, and possibly video clips.
I’m also going to mark it according to whether or not there’s women characters who talk to each other about something that is not men. On her personal blog, Toasterwaffel talked about that as a metric for judging the merit of a movie. I’m not certain if it’s fair to draw a feminist meaning from that observation, but Toasterwaffel is right in that it happens very rarely.
Title: Serious Moonlight
Type: Feature indie drama
Desc: This is the last screenplay by Adrienne Shelly, an actor from many Hal Hartley films. She was murdered in 2006, which is one of the biggest tragedies to hit cinema in recent years. This movie was directed by Cheryl Hines who many will remember from her role on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Meg Ryan plays the main character, a tough and quirky career woman who looks cute in knee-high wellies. She goes to her country cottage to find that her husband is about to leave her, so she takes drastic action.
Female Dialogue: There is quite a lot of woman-to-woman dialogue, and it is exclusively about men.
Male Dialogue: There is a little man-to-man conversation, and it is exclusively about women.
The documentary shorts program was without exception amazing.
Title: A Day Late in Oakland
Type: Documentary Short
Desc: A hair-raising investigation into the murder of a journalist in Oakland. The community that was responsible for the murder was part of the American Black Muslim faith, so nearly all the villains had the last name "Bey." I can tell you it was weird sitting in the theater while looking at news reports where "Bey tortured a man for two hours" or "Bey was charged with rape of a minor."
Female Dialogue: No women.
Male Dialogue: The men talked about serious issues.
Title: The New Canvas
Type: Documentary Short
Desc: You ever wonder what’s with those little collectible toys that look totally bonkers? This is all about that. You see both sides of the subject, the people who think that it makes high art affordable for the masses, and one guy who thinks it’s a bunch of crap.
Female Dialogue: There’s one female artist and she talks into the camera about her art. I’ll say that counts.
Male Dialogue: Same as above.
Title: Little Ripper
Type: Documentary Short
Desc: In Australia there’s people who are really serious about racing pigeons. It makes you want to build a pigeon loft and get really obsessed with birds that most people would prefer run over with their car.
Female Dialogue: There’s one woman, and she’s talking to the camera about pigeons.
Male Dialogue: There’s a lot of men, and they really love pigeons too.
Title: Mr. Okra
Type: Documentary Short
Desc: Mr. Okra drives around New Orleans, singing through his loudspeaker about all the different produce he has. There is no moment when the camera is on Mr. Okra when he is not fascinating.
Female Dialogue: No women.
Male Dialogue: Mr. Okra does indeed talk about okra.
Title: Team Taliban
Type: Documentary Short
Desc: This is about a young man who uses his Arab ancestry to inform his pro-wrestling persona of a terrorist. It’s an interesting contrast, between the man inside the ring, who is the brunt of audience hatred, and the man outside who is soft-spoken and thoughtfully ruminating on the racial and cultural ramifications of what he’s doing. What the documentary doesn’t talk about is how playing a heel is the traditional way for a wrestler to advance their career.
Female Dialogue: No women.
Male Dialogue: Wrestling.
Then of course there were all the features. The context for a feature film in a festival is much different from the context in a main-stream movie house, so who knows if you will enjoy these as much as me should you ever get to see them.
Title: Tobruk
Type: Feature drama
Desc: Supposedly it’s a re-telling of The Red Badge of Courage, as told through the experiences of the 500 or so Czech soldiers who fought in North Africa during World War II. It’s all in Czech and there’s some significant male nudity for those of you who are into that sort of thing. Here’s the structure of the film: 95% male camaraderie, beautiful views of North Africa, hardscrabble living; 5% extreme violence.
Female Dialogue: There’s one woman, a prostitute, and she mainly talks about getting paid.
Male Dialogue: The war, women, Judaism, food, drink.
Title: Punching the Clown
Type: Feature comedy
Desc: This super-low budget film follows a comedic singer-songwriter and his mis-adventures in L.A. culture. It’s genuinely funny and the main character is personable and charming.
Female Dialogue: There are women, but they don’t talk to each other. Mainly they talk about the main character.
Male Dialogue: They talk about comedy, L.A., Batman, and bagels.
Title: Passenger Side
Type: Feature drama
Desc: Two brothers drive around L.A. Because this is partially funded by Canadian TV, they have to mention hockey a couple times. The directing is sloppy, the cinematography ugly, the script over-written, and the acting frequently clunky. But for all that, it’s a good film festival entry because it’s all super-low-budget, quirky, and about relationships and shit. It took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t supposed to be period piece because the car which is the main set and the music they play is so old.
Female Dialogue: There is one woman who shows up in the end, and she only talks about the dudes. I guess there’s also an old lady who is there just to be spooky.
Male Dialogue: Hockey, dismemberment, drugs, and family drama.
Title: Herpes Boy
Type: Feature comedy
Desc: Herpes boy is a guy who has a birth mark on his face and does a series of webcam journal entries about how much he hates people. Before long his cousin shows up and there’s some nifty contrast between her perky, pretty, and narcissistic character and his dour, ugly, and self-hating character. There’s a lot of Napoleon Dynamite in this movie, and it’s probably not as funny as everyone thinks it is, but it’s entertaining and quirky nonetheless.
Female Dialogue: The cousin talks mainly about herself.
Male Dialogue: Herpes boy talks mainly to the internet, and it’s mainly misanthropic.
Title: Thor at the Bus Stop
Type: Feature drama
Desc: Thor is waiting at a bus stop. There’s a bunch of other weird things that happen surrounding that. This is my favorite film of the festival hands down. Just about every scene is brilliantly hilarious, especially the one about a guy who is extremely laid back who gets carjacked. There’s a cameo by Teller of Penn and Teller fame, and there’s an extremely efficient use of low-budget film making strategies. How low-budget is it, you ask? It’s so low-budget that there’s a scene where they have to destroy a pizza, and it’s a cheese pizza. That’s right, it’s so low-budget that they didn’t even spring for an extra topping on a prop pizza.
Female Dialogue: There’s two women, one who talks exclusively about her relationship to her boyfriend, and one who talks mainly about waitressing with a digression into Norse mythology.
Male Dialogue: Ragnarok, pizza, and the planetary status of Pluto.
Title: Up in the Air
Type: Feature drama
Desc: This is the George Clooney movie written and directed by the guy who did Juno. It’s about an executive who spends most of his time flying from city to city and staying at the Hilton. His job is firing people, so there is plenty of comedic and tragic possibilities which I can assure you are fully explored. This was pretty subtle, striking a balance between the dark comedy, the character development, and an in-depth contextual reading. That being said, I think it’s harder to imagine a more depressing film.
Female Dialogue: There’s a long conversation between two women where they discuss their perfect man.
Male Dialogue: Firing people.
I spent an entire evening watching animated shorts, two back-to-back shorts programs. It was interesting to note that most of the shorts were CGI, and most of them had no dialogue. It was sort of the Pixar format of shorts, where you develop a single character who acts out a drama or a slapstick routine through the established visual logic. I talked to some of the animators about this, and I got the impression that it wasn’t so much because they were interested in the international aspect of non-dialogue animations, so much as animators that’s just how they express their art, in the purest most visual terms.
Title: Garb Age
Type: Animated short
Desc: This the only animation with actual dialogue, and I kinda wish it didn’t have any. It’s about a bunch of water-dwelling organisms that are formed from garbage that is dumped into the ocean. It made very little biological or narrative sense.
Female Dialogue: No females, but then it was hard to tell.
Male Dialogue: Garbage.
Title: The Incident at Tower 37
Type: Animated short
Desc: This was a surreal exploration of a colorful future world. There’s a good deal of humanity and a few surprises. There’s a short video clip on the AFF page if you’re curious.
Female Dialogue: No dialogue. No females. Probably.
Male Dialogue: N/A
Title: The Incredible Story of My Great Grandmother Olive
Type: Animated short
Desc: An old lady in a wheelchair gets visited by an alien. Old-people slapstick ensues.
Female Dialogue: No dialogue.
Male Dialogue: N/A
Title: Lost and Found
Type: Animated short
Desc: This was extremely beautiful and touching, a story about a small boy and the penguin who won’t stop following him. The graphic style managed to be realistically textured, but with the impressionistic style of a children’s book.
Female Dialogue: No dialogue, no females.
Male Dialogue: N/A
Title: The Mouse That Soared
Type: Animated short
Desc: A funny slapstick series of events involving a mouse who is adopted by birds.
Female Dialogue: Just animals, no talking.
Male Dialogue: N/A
Title: Off the Wall
Type: Animated Short
Desc: A young boy is making shadow puppets on the wall of his room. This becomes unexpectedly dangerous. I talked to the filmmakers, and they had a lot of interesting things to say about the art of developing character.
Female Dialogue: No females. No dialogue.
Male Dialogue: "Aaaaaargh!"
Title: Ollie and the Baked Hallibut
Type: Animated Short
Desc: A broad ethnic stereoptype is trying to make his dinner, but a sea otter stops him!
Female Dialogue: All animals.
Male Dialogue: Broad ethnic stereotypical jabbering.
Title: Pigeon: Impossible
Type: Animated short
Desc: The animator said that the original concept was a man vs. a box. This was expanded a little to include a pigeon and spy paraphernalia.
Female Dialogue: No dialogue. The pigeon might have been female, they don’t go into it.
Male Dialogue: Silence.
Title: Pups of Liberty
Type: Animated Short
Desc: This is one of the few cartoons in the festival that appeared to be hand-drawn, it also had actual dialogue. This short (which was actually reasonably long) told the story of the American Revolution in Boston from the extended metaphor of Americans being dogs and the English being cats. Unlike Maus, the animal metaphor doesn’t withstand a lot of stretching. For instance, they use the slogan "No Laws Without Paws" which makes no sense. Cats have paws. They’re making laws. Sheesh.
Female Dialogue: The main character is a female puppy. She talks a lot about liberty.
Male Dialogue: Revolutionary fervor.
Title: The Way to Heaven
Type: Animated short
Desc: A giant ghost elephant leaves a caravan to heaven in order to bless China with prosperity. Or something like that. There was no dialogue so I’m pretty much guessing here. It was beautiful at any rate. It could have been producted by Disney.
Female Dialogue: No humans, no dialague.
Male Dialogue: N/A
And here’s another short I saw from a showcase of Texas filmmakers:
Title: Quarter to Noon
Type: Dramatic short
Desc: This was made by a local director who recognized me because she used to be a regular at the bakery where I work. There’s no dialogue, and the acting is stylized to match the broadly abstract narrative about a woman with an adult job who secretly yearns to come unwound and join the children in playing on the playground. When she finally joins the playground of paradise, it’s pleasing to note that the field is populated primarily with children and grackles. If heaven doesn’t have grackles, then I want nothing to do with it.
Female Dialogue: No dialogue, and only one woman, who is the main character.
Male Dialogue: There’s some broad pantomimes about being on time and working hard.