Being the consummate patrons of the arts that we are, we couldn't pass up a film festival in a city that is synonymous with great cinema, Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Of Fort Smith, itself, what can I say except that people here are trying. Many of them are trying to sleep in the park. Most of them seem to be trying to ignore the fact that this city even has a downtown. A small handful are trying to make good things happen here, like film festivals, and God bless 'em.
Due to the lack of much real information on the festival website, we arrived Friday afternoon with very little idea what to expect. The website just said the festival started at 5:00. Our experience with other film festivals has been long lines and full theaters, so we showed up around 4:30 to make sure we could get seats to the movies we wanted to see. With no films list on the internet, we didn't know what those films would be, but we wanted to be sure we could see them once we found them. What we found was a bunch of smiling volunteers, some filmmakers (for some reason, all wearing hats), and a mostly-empty auditorium. The only food available was chips and popcorn, so we grabbed one of each, figuring we were up for a full evening of movies.
Turns out, the first movie wasn't playing until 6:40. For our punctuality, we got to hear the opening address and a presentation by the film distributors who have agreed to purchase at least 5 films from this year's fest. It honestly wasn't all that bad! The opening address centered around Fort Smith's relationship with a couple of Italian sister cities that were liberated from the Nazis by U.S. troops led by Fort Smith native General William Darby. I usually scoff at the whole “sister city” concept, but it turns out Fort Smith does have a shared history with these towns. So, that was charming. The distribution guys actually had some interesting things to say, too.
Still, we could have skipped some of this stuff along with the popcorn and chips in favor of a good dinner. Once we realized it was going to be a while before any movies played, we slipped out for dinner at AJ's Oyster House. In Fort Smith, AR, 8 hours from the ocean, and in 100 degree heat, we skipped the oysters and dined on shrimp.
Back at the ode to Egypt that is Temple Live (Sphinxes, statues of Anubis, you get the idea), we watched 4 short films from Arkansas and Oklahoma filmmakers.
I'm reminded of something a friend used to say all the time, “You've got to sift a lot of sand to find the cat turds.” It's a good thing to keep in mind if you are going to attend a film festival of any kind, especially a small one. You have to judge everything on a different scale. Even the best films at a festival may still be diamonds in the rough, with some bad sound and lighting. Many of them are absolutely horrible. The wonder of it is that sometimes you see something truly brilliant, something that would never make it past the studio heads and ratings boards, something that makes it all worth it.
In light of that, I am going to rate the films I saw according to the following system, separate from my usual system:
1 star out of 5 – so bad, you really can't believe Siri didn't auto-delete it (it was obviously filmed on an Iphone)
2 stars – really bad. Bad acting, bad writing, bad filming. A triple threat.
3 stars – reasonably decent, for a film festival movie. I didn't want to walk of out it.
4 stars – good stuff. I might not watch it in a theater, but one of the better things I saw at the festival.
5 stars – This is why you attend a film festival! Maybe a little rough around the edges, but shows flashes of genius.
I'm reminded of another saying, from my grandmother, “Don't be ugly.” With that in mind, I'm not going to bother talking about the bad stuff we saw. Many of these filmmakers are beginners or amateurs, and made their films on a budget of $1000-$3000. I'm proud of them for trying. Anyway, there's no chance I or anyone else is going to be exposed to most of their stuff, so there's no need to be ugly.
So, back to night 1:
“Banana Triangle Six”, by Fayetteville, Arkansas resident Marc Crandall, is about a grumpy retirement home resident who is showing signs of dementia. Sounds hilarious, right?! Actually, the filmmaker managed to inject some humor into the story, although it still has its share of pathos. On the film festival scale, I'd give it 3 stars out of 5.
“Lowlifes” is a story of gang culture in Little Rock back when it was the murder capital of the U.S. A pair of brothers get drawn into the orbit of a charming local gangster and drug dealer, and then, to quote Monty Python, “we see the violence inherent in the system.” This was one of those short films that I wished were longer. It's a tight, little narrative that could easily be expanded into a feature film or a show. Several of the actors are outstanding. 4 stars out of 5
Things got better Saturday morning. We showed up halfway through the animated shorts, some of which were really cool!
“Nightlife” was one of my favorite pieces from the fest. It's about a wolf cub exploring the night, experiencing a variety of animals and sights. The animation is really striking, and it's just a brilliant little piece from an indigenous artist.
5 stars!
“Prey of the Wendigo” is about a winter hiker who has an encounter with the Wendigo. It suffers a bit from uncanny valley, but it was pretty cool.
4 stars
Next up was the Romance & Drama segment. Standouts here included:
“Friday Night Fish” - In this Canadian short, a philosophy student suffers through a series of blind dates at the same sushi restaurant, finding that his real connection is with the waitress. This is the kind of diamond-in-the-rough that you go to a film festival to see. The main actor is pretty good, and the chemistry between him and the actress who plays the waitress is incendiary. This one really deserves to be expanded into a feature-length Rom-com.
5 stars!
“The God of Cats is Immortal” - In this Italian short, a teenager named Aco wants to impress a girl, so he sets out to find her lost cat. Goaded and teased by his thuggish skateboarding bros, Aco searches for the cat and for himself.
The lead actor in this one is outstanding, and his goofball friends are hilarious. I found the teen-boy interactions very realistic, and the cinematography was good.
4 stars
In the afternoon, we sat down for a documentary about black craft brewers. “One Pint at a Time” featured some interesting stories and made me want to sip some brews, but it leaned too heavily on a sense of aggrieved victimhood. I expected a certain amount of talk about how hard it was for a black (or black female) brewer to get into the industry, but the film kept circling back to the subject without saying anything new.
Meanwhile, all of their subjects made reference at some point to beer brewing having started in Africa, or at least having been done there for thousands of years. That would have been an interesting subject to pursue. How did they brew beer thousands of years ago? Did they even have hops back then? How do traditional people brew beer there today, and how does that differ from the way beer is brewed in the U.S.? Have any of these black brewers considered making a traditional, African beer? Documentarian Aaron Hose does not explore any of these questions. It's really just lazy filmmaking, with 45 minutes worth of interesting material packed into 1 ½ hours.
stars out of 5
We left “One Pint at a Time” early to see what was playing over in the main theatre in the Experimental/Comedy section.
“Polterguest” was a fun, silly story about a Halloween-loving couple who buy a haunted house. 3.5 stars
“How to Hide a Body” is a goofy short from the UK. A couple accidentally kill a plumber, and try to figure out how to hide the body before company arrives. Things escalate. Nothing about it was remarkable, but there were a few laughs.
3 stars
In the American short “Come On,” a lonely guy is jealous of his roommate's ability to engage in one-night stands, and vows to have one himself. When a drunken night out actually leads to a casual hookup, he feels bad afterwards. He and the girl keep running into each other afterwards, and eventually make a connection. It's a silly story, and the director does not try very hard to sell it, but the 2 leads are charming enough to make it reasonably entertaining.
3 stars
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For my money, the best thing we saw at the fest was the dark comedy feature “Unfriending,” by Canadian brothers Brett and Jason Butler. These guys have been making independent films since the early 2000s, but are relatively unknown in the U.S. With “Unfriending,” they have created a wickedly-funny and wholly-inappropriate black comedy.
Blake and his group of yuppie friends have decided that Blake's childhood friend, Isaac, no longer fits in the group. With a dead-end job, no girlfriend, and terrible taste in beer, Isaac has to go. The friends have invited him over for one last dinner party. They plan not just to unfriend him, but to convince him to kill himself. Convinced that this is really in the best interests of Isaac, their friend group, and the world, they plan to present him with the evidence of his unfitness for life. When the shy, awkward Isaac shows up with a beautiful date, the plan is thrown into chaos.
In the real world, in 2014, a 17-year-old named Michelle Carter bullied her depressed boyfriend into suicide. Over a couple of weeks, through texts and phone calls, she repeatedly urged him to kill himself. When he had second thoughts and got out of his carbon monoxide filled car, she told him to get back in and die, which he did.
In light of this real-world “unfriending,” I found the theme of this film unsettling, to say the least. A few people walker out. Maybe they just had another movie to go see, or maybe they felt deeply uncomfortable with the theme.
Despite the creepy theme, “Unfriending” is actually hilarious, a testament to the quality of the writing and the cast. These are relatively unknown actors, but they are impressive, especially Alex Stone, who plays Isaac. Sean Meldrum is delightfully hate-able as Blake, and Honor Spencer carries more than her weight as Darby, the friend who is least comfortable with the Plan. Golden Madison, who plays Isaac's date, Lexxi, is extremely easy on the eyes. The whole cast comes together to make “Unfriending” a wicked delight. If the film transgresses on standards of good taste, well, that's what you go to a film festival for, to see cutting-edge art that isn't afraid to take chances.
5 stars
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“Unfriending” is a hard act to follow, but we did see a few memorable shorts in the Action/Sci Fi segment.
“Parking Spot” stars a couple of stunt-people: Alfred Hsing (“Everything, Everywhere, All At Once”) and Thekla Hutyrova (“Logan” “Pacific Rim: Uprising”) as a couple of angry drivers who square off in a magnificently-gonzo kung-fu battle over a parking spot. The short is silly and fun, and it showcases the talents of director Robert Stronger and its stars.
4 stars
“What Is Mine” (Quello Che E Mio, Italian) is a story of 4 Italian soldiers, suffering health problems from their military service, who set out on a crime spree. It is dark and action packed and features some compelling performances.
4 stars
Fort Smith is not the obvious place for a cultural experience. There is not much to the downtown, and it is hot as balls in the summer. I thought they put on a pretty decent film festival despite all of that. The Temple Live venue worked pretty well for the smallish crowd that was there, and the volunteers were super-friendly. They managed to attract some really interesting films, and it made for a worthwhile weekend.
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