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Sunday, March 6, 2016

What Am I Doing So Far? (True/False Film Festival 2016)

Sorry for not updating this blog for a long time.

I have been SUPER busy lately with school stuffs. Again, I have been saying this for time and time again.

However, I have seen some good documentaries that screened at True/False Film Festival.

For those of you who don't know what's True/False Film Festival is, it is an annual documentary film festival that take place in Columbia, Missouri. When you live in Columbia, Missouri, it's pretty much a tradition to go there and participate in parade, watch movies or live music performances.

I have seen two movies this Saturday. And on Sunday I am going to watch Life, Animated, about a man and his obsession with Disney, and Weiner, a documentary about former congressman Anthony Weiner.

Let's start with the first movie I have seen today:

Behemoth
Behemoth is a documentary from China, done in Koyaanisqatsi-style, mostly visual and minimal use of sound approach. It is about a Mongolian mining communities and how its destruction effect on workers and local people living around the place. Most of the narrations, done by Zhao Liang the director himself and co-written by a French Sylvie Blum, were loosely inspired from Dante Alighieri's epic poem Divine Comedy. The director's poetic narration and destructive landscape juxtapose together very well, to present his environmentalist message he wants to deliver to his audiences.

From my impression, the first half of this movie bored me. I couldn't focus on the screen to the point I fell a sleep. Maybe because all of my energies were drained out to process digestion in my stomach. But in the second half, in other hand, I began to notice the message the director tries to tell and I find it effective very well. The first half of the movie shows the destruction the mining industry made and its unsafe working conditions and the later half shows how it caused so much injustices to its steel workers, who later get pneumoconiois, and their families.

The end is perfect. What I mean by perfect, it was a perfect way to end the movie. I can't tell too much about it (if you are familiar with the outline of Divine Comedy, you would probably get something what you have been expecting), but it really hit the nail on the head.

If you don't like big-visual, little-words documentary like Koyaanisqatis, this might not suit for your taste. But if you like environmentalist themed movies, go check it out.

Secret Screening Navy
I also went to see Secret Screening Navy - SO SECRET, that the festival would cancel the Secret Screening lineup if someone leaked more details about the film out to the public. Why so secret? Because the movie they are showing happens to be its premiere (often times, a work in progress/rough cut of the movie) and the filmmaker doesn't want the world to know about it.

In order to respect the festival's policy, I will not give out more details about the film, so I could only sums up the movie in a list of five words:
- brutality
- sex
- violence
- disorder
- training

That's the most vaguest description I could make. But I will give you all a hint that this movie will also premiere at Tribeca Film Festival (one of the largest film festival in New York) so you can catch up the screening of this film. (Note: I look the movie up on online and the search engine led me to an article about TFF lineups).

On Sunday, I have seen two films. Both of them were great ones and award-winners at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Weiner
Before I bought the ticket to the screening, I didn't know it was a top prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival. I went to see it just because it's about former congressman Anthony Weiner - the man who ended his political career by posting a picture of his erected genital inside his pants on twitter.

In this film, it focused more on Weiner's run for mayor of New York City in 2013. Done mostly in cinema verite style of filmmaking, we see Anthony Weiner desperately trying to make a comeback despite a media sensation around his previous sex scandal. His brash personality, progressive world view and strong charisma made him a leading candidate of the race. However, the news about his sexting habit broke out and the media turned his campaign into a 24/7 entertainment. (And as you may know by now, this was his last nail to the coffin of his political comeback).

The director of Weiner, Josh Kriegman, who was a chief of staff during Anthony Weiner's time as a congressman, give us a different perspective into a current world of politics through following the subject around wherever he goes. The result it funny, insightful, and sympathetic look into the man's ambition and a complication he made that wrecked his chance for victory. If you like movies that give you an honest look into the subject without making it boring, this might be your film.

Life, Animated
I have heard so much about this movie. It was a big hit at Sundance and the director of this movie, Roger Ross Williams, was known for making a controversial documentary from few years ago called God Loves Uganda, about American Evangelicals' anti-gay campaign in Africa. The subject he is tackling is not as controversial as his previous films, but it is worth to have a discussion on. At the same time, it is also a heartwarming coming-of-age story about an autistic man who's obsessed with classic Disney movies and his transition to an adulthood.

The movie follows Owen Suskind, a son of Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind. At the age of three, he stopped speaking. His parents couldn't communicate with him and this is where the family's struggle began. However, Owen's parents discover his epiphany toward Disney movies and we get to see Owen's imagination of him being "the protector" of Disney animated sidekick characters.

This is such a great movie. Maybe one of the best movies I have seen this year. I mean the best, like, top 10 list best. After the screening, the director announced that the movie will be released in sometime in July so if it is playing nearby, please go see it. It does a better job explaining how autism works and what autistic people need than other dubious sources that wrecked many autistic people's lives.

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