There were a couple of firsts for me last night. It was my first time attending the Atlanta Film Festival. It was my first time covering an event as a member of the press. It was not, however, my first time visiting the famed Plaza Theatre on Ponce de Leon in downtown Atlanta- I’ve done that plenty of times over the years, which I discuss in the embedded video below. I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere and the experience there, and that did not change last night as I attended the first night of the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival.
Last night almost didn’t happen. As I mentioned in my post about making my schedule for the next 11 days, life might intervene, and it very nearly did. And if that was the case, so be it: I would have missed out on the short films, but the other main order of business on Thursday- picking up my credentials- could be done today. Thankfully, life did not take up so much time that I could not do everything I wanted to on Thursday while also taking care of my loved ones, either. While it’s about an hour’s drive from my house to where I needed to be, I arrived in Atlanta with time to spare to pick up my badge. It also gave me a chance to get a lay of the land where I will be spending most of my time over the next week and a half.
After going to the bar next door to get some food in me before the festivities began, I waited and watched as the staff got The Plaza ready for last night’s first event, and for the rest of the festival. It gave me a good look at what to expect, and I got some pictures before going in line to get in for the first screening of the Festival- the local short film block, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”.
I’ve had plenty of experiences watching short film blocks thanks to DragonCon (and, now that I’m thinking about it, I remember watching one at the Sidewalk Film Festival in 2002 as I waited for Amber Benson’s “Chance” to play). One thing I always enjoy about these is the variety of the short films, even as they are grouped together by a particular thing they have in common. At DragonCon, it is often a genre or stylistic idea behind them, and that will be the case as I go through the Festival, as well, but tonight, the common denominator was that they were all made by Georgia filmmakers. It’s always nice to see what local filmmakers are doing, and to see how exciting the Georgia film scene is beyond what big Hollywood productions film here every year.
The block consisted of 9 short films, but we actually were treated to a 10th in the form of Crystal Jin Kim’s wonderful 2-minute short film, “Dated”, which had won Kodak’s recent “100 Feet of Film” competition, and was shown out of competition here. Like a few of the films we saw this evening, it plays more like a tone poem than a straightforward narrative, and it still came through with beauty and emotion in those images. Already, it was a highlight for me.
The film block began proper with Brian Lonano’s wild and dark “Gwilliam’s Tips for Turning Tricks into Treats”, a sequel to an earlier short about the weird Gwilliam, and it reminded me, in a lot of ways, of Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles” in tone and content. It was quite a way to begin the block. Up next, Jared Callahan kept the dark humor going with his micro-short, “Meat Eater”, as a father criticizes his daughter for the way she is going about her business.
The films take a turn to the more serious with Robyn Hicks’s tender and beautifully-acted “Nobody’s Darling”, as a young woman trying to get to California picks up an older man in a bar trying to get some money, and they find they have more in common than they realize. This is one of my favorite shorts of the festival thus far, and it was interesting to hear the filmmakers discuss it during the post-block Q&A as they were asked about the origins, which were a bit different than I expected (it was a reaction to the 2016 election), but it is about the characters first, about finding something in other people we can appreciate while also trying to understand who we are better, and it was everything you want in such a character piece. That was a good lead-in into Molly Coffee’s film, “Cracks”, which follows a punk-rocker welder in her life before, and after, a sexual assault occurs. As with “Dated,” there’s not dialogue beyond the music that plays in the film, and “Cracks” is equally potent as it reveals the silent pain of its main character after the assault, and how this was a way for Coffee to cope after her own assault. It’s quite a 1-2 punch of emotions with “Nobody’s Darling.”
As I’m writing this, the pattern in how these shorts were programmed reveals itself, and up next we have three that deal, in completely different and original ways, with the relationship between mankind and the animal world. The first up was the compelling documentary by James Martin, “Being With Elephants”, which looks at a group of elephant conservationists in Kenya, and how they handle the day-to-day efforts of their jobs. After that, we get our first real flight of fancy in Kristina Arjona Adler’s “Gatito”, which tells the story of a young Hispanic boy who likens himself a cat by day, and the father who accepts him for who he is, and plays to it. This was such a delight to watch, and I looked at it as a celebration of couples whose pets are like their children as much as a film about a father accepting his son’s quirky nature. That was followed by MT Maloney’s stunning “Gryphon Animo”, a brilliant work in animation about a young boy who goes on an adventure to try and save his sick sister. I love everything about this movie, from the style and designs to the music to the emotion of the story. Probably the best film of the night.
The block closed with two passionate works from African-American artists about the black experience that are personal and take us into a different mindset. The first one is “Dear, Dreamer”, a free-form documentary about writer Jason Reynolds, who wants to show people not only how he achieved his dreams, but how he hopes to inspire others. This got my vote for my favorite short of the evening, as what Reynolds’s trying to impart spoke to me on a personal level, and the way director Kristian Melom put it together is what really brought it home for me. The block then closed with Lonnie Holley and Cyrus Moussavi’s “I Snuck Off the Slave Ship”, which has the self-taught Holley trying to wrestle with the modern American slave ship through art and dance and images and music. This short was not for me- though the music is a howl of pain, and the images are haunting, I just could not get into the provocation of this film, though I really wanted to. Nonetheless, it was a Hell of a way for the first set of short films of the Festival to go out.
There was then a nearly 30-minute Q&A session with all of the filmmakers and artists in attendance, which was a significant amount. They asked one another questions about their films before taking questions from the audience. We probably could have been there longer, but the festival added an encore of the local shorts block at 10:15pm, so we had to clear out. I hope I’ll get a chance to see some of these filmmakers again as the Festival continues, so I can talk to them myself about their work. I would have stayed longer to do so, but it started to rain, and I did not have a coat.
Coming in the next few days will be a lot of reviews, some more video commentary, and more as the Atlanta Film Festival rides into its first weekend, and I cannot wait to share it all with you!
Viva La Resistance!
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
Sonic Cinema at the Atlanta Film Festival – Making the Schedule
Sonic Cinema at the Atlanta Film Festival
