Film Fest Winners at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Closing day at the Mammoth Lake Film Festival brought more fascinating films and some surprises – plus the fest’s awards ceremony.

Once again, before we get to the films, a shout out to festival programmer Paul Sbrizzi and festival director Shira Dubrovner for putting together a stellar festival that’s deliciously small now, but probably won’t stay that way. We see this fest growing exponentially each year. Our take away:  hey folks, if you’re looking for adventurous and varied cinema, and the type of experience where you can chat with the filmmakers and join in a Q & A comfortably, plan a trip next spring.

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Above, Learning to See director Jake Oelman with festival director Shira Dubrovner.

Today, two documentary features and one doc short took center stage.  Learning to See is an absolutely fascinating and personal story about the life and photography of Robert Oelman, who put aside his psychology career to move to Columbia, learn Spanish, and become a renowned photographer of obscure and often undocumented insect species in the Amazon basin. Stunning photographic images and a sweet and fascinating portrait of  filmmaker Jake Oelman’s father,  this is a vibrant, beautiful documentary that makes bugs, yes bugs, incredibly beautiful.  It also presents a cogent argument for the preserving the ecology of the rain forest.

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Appearing with Learning to See was Open Your Eyes, a touching and unique look at life in Nepal and an elderly couple whose cataracts led them to blindness, but through the efforts of the Seva Foundation, a relatively simple operation resorted their sight.  The short was created through HBO docs by Irene Taylor Brodsky who also directed the fest feature Beware the Slenderman.

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Next up was the narrative feature  Last Summer,  by Italian director Leonardo Guerra Seragnoli. Starring Rinko Kikuchi (star of Kumiko, Treasure Hunter, an indie fest favorite two years ago) as a mother forced to give up custody of her sweet six year old son, this is a moving and elegiac tribute to the resilience of the human heart.

Sonita was the closing fest film, a moving, deeply engrossing doc in which the director, Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami, becomes intimately involved in the life of 18 year old Afghan refugee Sonita Alizadeh, a talented rapper/musician whose mother plans to sell her into an arranged marriage for $9000. Heartfelt, riveting, and with the classic structure of fiction,  this festival favorite is one passionate piece of filmmaking that took Sundance by storm earlier this year.

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The fest concluded with a truly fun party at the Sierra Event Center, along with the fest awards ceremony. The awards themselves are as charming and unique as the festival: carved wooden bears.

Shorts award winners:

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Above right, Adrian Geyer

Narrative short:

Honorable Mention: Tisure, the brilliantly beautiful film shot in a remote locale in Venezuela by director Adrian Geyer. “I’m going back to m country with more inspiration,” Geyer said.  This one was my favorite short.

Winner: A Night in Tokoriki, the witty, fresh tragicomic tale of a love triangle unfolding in a small town Romanian nightclub.

Documentary/Animated short:

Honoable Mention: Night Stalker, a surreal and beautifully animated Claymation piece featuring a different dimension brought on by haunted/poisoned takeout food.

Winner:  The Second Life, a doc in which a Russian woman freezes her 91 year old mother in liquid nitrogen in the hopes of a future unfreezing and second chance at rebuilding her relationship with her mother.

Feature length winners:

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Above right, Jake Oelman with Shira Dubrovner and Kathleen and Paul Rudder.

Audience awards documentary:

Learning to See,  the poignant and exciting look at insects, photography, and a life reborn by Jake Oelman.

Presenting the award, fest sponsors Paul and Kathleen Rudder note that the filmmakers participating in the fest have “put Mammoth on the map along with festival director Shira Dubrovner and programmer Paul Sbrizzi, and we’re thrilled to have you all bringing culture and film to town.”

Audience Award narrative:

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Above, Robert Picardo (Innerspace) awards Alex Simmons (center) and Flula Borg

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Buddymoon, the hilarious buddy comedy set in the Oregon woods.  Director Alex Simmons notes “I can’t think of a better place to screen this movie about hiking in the woods than at the Forest Service theater in the woods here in Mammoth.”  Co-star Flula Borg added “We are prompt, sassy, and dope, and we love the award. We will saw it in half and share it.” This audience-pleaser was our top pick, too.

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Jury Narrative feature:

Honorable mention: Mad, for the film’s “deeply moving performances and beautifully realized drama about mental illness and the struggle to find equilibrium in a family,” as presenter John Kelly described it.

Winner: the lyrical Bodkin Ras, which combines fiction with documentary in a surprising and haunting story of a fugitive in a small Scottish town.

Jury Documentary:

Honorable mention:

Under the Sun, Vitaly Mansky’s look at North Korea through the eyes of a young girl and her family.

Winner: Sonita, the compelling tale of Afghan refugee and rapper Sonita,  and filmmaker Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami’s involvement in her life.

Below the crew that made the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival happen.

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Paul and Kathleen Rudder with Jake Oelman

 

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Alex Simmons, Flula Borg, and author

 

 

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Micah Vassau, Festival Programmer Paul Sbrizzi

There you have it: the final day of the 2nd annual Mammoth Lakes Film Festival. Director interviews and fest summary will be appearing  later this week. If you missed this year’s festival, don’t miss next year’s chance to see snowy mountain peaks, breathe in fresh air, acclimatize to 8000 foot elevation mountain heights, and most of all see great, eclectic filmmaking in a friendly, intimate atmosphere.

  • Genie Davis; All Photos Jack Burke

Cinema Classics New and Old: ML Film Fest Day 3

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Above: Sierra Spirit Award recipient director Joe Dante, festival founder Shira Dubrovner, actor Robert Picardo at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival

Saturday  – our third full day at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival started with terrifically insightful and fun interviews with Alex Simmons, director of Buddymoon and star/co-writer Flula Borg. That interview, along with a great session with director Joe Dante, awarded the first annual Sierra Spirit Award, will be published separately.

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Onto the films:

First up was Bodkin Ras,  in which an isolated Scottish town becomes a temporary hiding place for a fugitive, Bodkin.  Bodkin is  the only character played by an actor, all other characters are actual inhabitants of the Scottish town. Surprising twists and turns in a beautifully evocative setting make this a must see, directed by Dutch filmmaker and writer Kaweh Modiri. The combination of documentary story telling and narrative fiction was perfectly woven, resulting in a startling conclusion as inevitable as it is shocking.

Next up,  the short film I Would Like to Be Enraptured, Muzzled and on My Back Tattooed, a powerful  Brazilian short about a woman who may prefer to die than keep on living in her highly sexualized yet anonymous world. It made a great lead in to All the Colors of the Night, another film from Brazilian cinema, directed by Pedro Severin. The surreal yet somehow wonderfully novelistic story of a woman who discovers a dead body in her apartment the morning after a party, it’s a poetic tale related by shifting and unreliable narrators, as stunningly shot as it is haunting. There’s a Bunuel-like quality to the film, which will have you considering its realities long after the credits roll.

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Director Alex Simmons, left, and film co-star Flula Borg of Buddymoon, above

Buddymoon is unabashedly my favorite film of the festival, an inspired, loose comedy about friendship, the priorities of modern life, and a hiking trip undertaken by protagonist David and his best friend Flula after David’s fiancée dumps him just before their wedding.  Witty, fresh, and perfectly paced, this is a comedy that well deserves a scheduled mainstream release July 1st. Pitch perfect acting, dialog, and a lovely use of drone cinematography results in a comedy that has depth and never gets tired.

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Above, great give away “Honey Buddy” T-shirt from the film, which was originally titled “Honeybuddies.”

Director Alex Simmons has created documentaries and music videos for bands such as Death Cab and Sigur Ros, but this is his first feature. Simmons and stars Flula Borg and David Giuntoli were once roommates in LA, who had always planned to create a film together.  Giuntoli currently stars in ABC’s Grimm, the shooting schedule for which led to the team’s decision to shoot in the Portland area where the television show is also in production.  Produced on a shoestring budget and equally limited time frame, the economies of craft do not show on the screen.

“We had a crew of six,” Simmons relates. “All of us had so many different jobs. “ Flula Borg adds, “My job was counting everyone’s jobs.”  While shooting was accomplished in just ten days, it took Simmons two years to edit. Watch for this sweet, hilarious film in both theatrical release and on iTunes;  interview with the filmmakers  coming shortly to this site.

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Above: Robert Picardo with Joe Dante

The evening brought a tribute to director Joe Dante, who started his career working in independent cinema as an editor and director for Roger Corman.  Screened was the still-fresh Innerspace, a hybrid comedy-thriller with Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Short, and Robert Picardo. Crossing genres in such a thoroughly entertaining way is rarely done in mainstream cinema today, and this was a refreshing look at a purely fun genre film that was a true experience in clever storytelling.

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Following the film was the presentation of the Spirit Award to Dante, a truly iconic director. A lively discussion with Dante, actor Robert Picardo, who plays The Cowboy in Innerspace, and festival programmer Paul Sbrizzi included references to the extreme differentness of studio production today. “No one just comes up with a script  and asks if you want to make a movie. Now they come with a project, and if you’re interested, they try to raise the money with your name  attached. I prefer coming up with my own ideas and getting funded on my own. You find yourself spending so much time asking for money rather than filmmaking,” Dante says. A full interview with Dante, including his early filmmaking career in the indie world, will be appearing shortly on this site.

Summary:  arguably the strongest day of the fest so far, the ML Film Fest continues to surprise with challenging and exciting international films, a tribute to a true cinema icon, and the presentation of a comedy that is as fresh as it is funny.

It’s not too late to come up from LA or down from San Francisco and see what tomorrow’s Sunday closing has to offer. The relaxed and personal vibe of the festival creates experiences with filmmakers as comfortable as they are exciting. Cinemaphiles: take note.

  • Genie Davis; ALL PHOTOS Jack Burke

Mammoth Lakes Film Festival Day Two: Mountain High

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Beautiful day in the snow dusted mountains, and of course a stop at Schatt’s bakery is mandatory. Try the English toffee. But don’t stop there: try the fresh baked, often warm from the oven chocolate chip cookies for sale at the Edison, one of the ML Film Fest’s venues.

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Now let’s get to the films.

Shorts Block 2 began our film programming, with another eclectic mix of 8 films. The incredible animation matched the Elmore Leonard-esque v/o on the animated The Lingerie Show, a fresh cinematic short story well worth noting. Next up was the delightful comic tale of almost-adultery, The Truck. Below, the film’s charming screenwriter and producer Maryse Latendresse explained that the dryly comic near-sexual-liason was produced as part of a Canadian 72-hour filmmaking challenge project, and that the story line came out of her desire to, as a writer “write about the things we’d like to do but don’t do ourselves.”

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Below, Zach Strum and Micah Vassau director and writers of The Panty Symphonic, along with their music director and co-producer, explained the zany, anti-film-school approach to cinema in their surreal film – where a pair of magical panties creates a semi-feminist ideal, and involves a cellist, a last will and testament, and a man in a tutu in  a child’s swimming pool. The piece was shot on VHS, which was an interesting artistic choice. Speaking personally, while recognizing the element of craft the buzzy video medium added to the surrealist vibe,  the VHS medium was a bit of a distraction from an otherwise mysterious fairy tale set to music.

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A standout: A Night in Tokoriki,  a Romanian love triangle with a twist, offered a fresh take on a 21st birthday celebration.  Lots of buzz around this one, which took awards at the Berlin film fest earlier this year.

Next up, the feature Baby Bump.  How to describe:  a Polish Pedro Almadovar-esque chronicle of the tribulations facing an 11 year old boy whose mom doesn’t want him to grow up, but puberty is happening all the same.  Visually arresting, somewhat surreal, and a universal insight into the mind of an 11 year old boy.

Playing with this film was the short Infinite Water, a delicious animation of pastel-drawn art created by CalArts grad Sunn Liang, below.

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Last but not least, Beware the Slenderman from acclaimed doc director Irene Taylor Brodsky, below, with festival programmer Paul Sbrizzi.

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Brodsky chronicles the horrific attempted murder of a 12-year-old girl by her two best friends who lured her into the woods to appease the demonic Slenderman, an internet myth. While the film postulates the internet as a possible cause for the crime, a source of psychological terror for two impressionable girls, the more interesting story is that one of the two perpetrators is schizophrenic, the other, who tested completely normal, an outlier who may or may not have sociopathic tendencies. A cautionary tale of urban myth, impressionable youth, and a judicial system intent on punitive consequences regardless of age, this is a compelling doc that is well worth a view.

The second full day of the fest leaves this impression: eclectic, cutting edge, interesting works that shape a persona for this still-new festival as the place to be to see cinema that is thought provoking and unique.  Viewing all the films on tap results in an experience unlike other festivals – a mix of genres and unusual and often surprisingly wonderful cinema that you won’t see anywhere else. Slenderman’s director said she looks forward to saying her film was at this well-curated festival when it was still small – and to participating again as it grows. So do we.

 

 

 

Mammoth Lakes Film Festival: Intimate and Exciting

Posted on by Burke

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The Mammoth Lakes Film Festival is entering its sophomore year with a wonderful, eclectic selection of films and intimacy as refreshing as the crisp Mammoth Mountain air. We’ve been enjoying views of the recently snow-dusted peaks (yes, in May) along with three film offerings on the fest’s first full day.

 

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First up: Shorts Block One featured 5 cutting edge short subjects. Above and below the female duo behind The Emily & Ariel Show,  a fast moving, witty combination of stop-motion puppetry and live action depicting a night between 20-something friends.  Visually arresting.

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Below, fest programmer and Slamdance alum Paul Sbrizzi asks questions in Q &A’s refreshingly run right after each short with attending filmmakers.  No more mass questions at the end of the program – these immediate sessions provided a lot of insight into the making of the films.

 

 

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Below, director Adrian Geyer discusses Tisure,  my favorite of the shorts viewed so far, an incredibly poetic take on a relationship, set in a vast, natural setting in the hills of Venezuela. The remote location, which Geyer said took 8 days on horseback to reach, was discovered while he was researching a feature-length documentary. This beautiful short serves as both a fictional imagining of the early life of his documentary subject, and a completely immersive, experiential rumination on the fragile construct of human life and the awesome and fearsome timelessness of nature. Don’t miss.

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The filmmaker shot on 5D, but the look is that of classic widescreen film.

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Below, Got a Girl director Isaac Blade.  A witty study of relationships, this short played before a feature presentation later in the evening. Blade spoke on the collaborative process behind his project, and the strong use of music in a lively and truly fun film.  Blade, who fine tuned this perfectly crafted love story for nearly a year,  is already at work on his first feature project.

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And now the features:

Atlan is a simply terrific Iranian documentary that takes on a “man and his horse” story that stuns with its visual images and moves with its presentation of a Turkman horse trainer and his beloved but intensely stubborn horse, Ilhan. The title refers to a phrase its protagonist learned as a small child just beginning to speak “Mount a horse and depart.” Another must-see.

Mad is a narrative first feature by director/writer Robert G Putka, who while he was unable to join the audience in person, nonetheless participated in  a post-screening Q & A via iPhone. This family dramedy features wonderful performances by two estranged daughters and their just-past-a-nervous-breakdown, bi-polar mother. The “fun” is definitely in dysfunctional here,  as are plenty of poignant moments.

The fest also hosted a happy hour at the official accommodation of this 5 day event, Sierra Nevada Resort and Spa. It was a truly enjoyable beer, wine, and hors d’oeuvres gathering that allowed attending filmmakers, attendees, and press to mingle and discuss their work. The resort, by the way, is gorgeous.

So far, the fest has lived up to its founder, Shira Dubrovner’s wishes that the programming be thought-provoking and the atmosphere unpretentious. We look forward to tomorrow’s films – and if you have free time this Memorial Weekend,  consider a drive to the mountains.

 

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  • Genie Davis; All Photos: Jack Burke