#61 ·
Amanda Nguyen5 said:What kind of comments, man? I’m constantly posting stuff here that either nobody reads or people just bash me for afterward, so I figured I’d just stop writing altogether.
Whether it's the second festival or whatever, people either don't show up or they just love to complain—but they realized long ago that the best move is to just shut up and stop writing.
Watched:
"The Smiling Lady Beudet" - Germaine Dulac - interesting enough, but without sound or subtitles (at least English ones, because I’m not about to sit there guessing what they're saying in French when I don't know the language) it was pretty exhausting.
"Girl in Uniform" - Leontina Sagan - almost brilliant. At the very least, it was excellent.
"Dancing, Girl, Dancing" - Dorothy Arzner - easy on the eyes, interesting story, good vibes.
"Orlando" - Sally Potter - the idea is solid (well, the book is solid), but the execution is weak. A bit pretentious and honestly, kind of a letdown.
"Tracker 2.0" - Alex Cox - I haven't seen "Tracker" or anything else by Cox, but this was top-tier stuff. The camera work and directing parody the genre brutally at times, and that final sequence where they shoot off the names of Leoneov's stuntmen as a parody of actual bullets is hilarious. Positive vibes here.
I couldn't make it to "Bobby" or "Redacted" because Antonioni's films were playing over in Beverly Hills at the same time. I'm also going to have to miss Seidl ("Import/Export") and Sokurov ("Alexandra"), much to my huge disappointment, but that's just how it goes.
Tomorrow I'm still debating whether to catch the Chantal Akerman film. It gets high marks everywhere and even made it into that famous book... "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die." My only gripe is that it runs for 200 minutes, but that's not even the main issue—it's that Antonioni is on in the evening, so I'm wondering if I can actually stomach two heavy hitters in one day.
I saw Polimac once and Mima Simić constantly. Since he deals with gender studies anyway, I bet the next Chronicle will have a report on the Human Rights Watch Film Festival regarding the women's programming.
Overall impression is way worse than I initially thought:
1. All the side program films generally lack subtitles, which means I have to hunt down Swinton's lines whenever they start getting fancy with Victorian speech.
2. The first Germaine Dulac film was shown completely silent (mostly, anyway; before every side screening, they go on stage and give these intros like, "We couldn't get this or that to work, so we had to show the film anyway because better late than never"... seriously, I heard that at almost every single screening.
3. Everything is being played off a DVD, which means a small screen and a crappy feel. Total waste.
4. The scheduling is a disaster—Antonioni is in Beverly Hills, and college finals are in full swing (a few hardcore cinephiles chose studying over the Human Rights Film Festival, which tells you everything you need to know).
Anyway, if you can, go see Seidl and Sokurov. The Gianvito and Aaltonen films look interesting too, if you're looking at the main lineup.
As for the side programs, you know the drill—Varda and Jan Švankmajer are must-sees, and tomorrow it's Akerman, if you're into that sort of thing.
I called it.
The latest issue of the Annals features Mima Simić’s report on the Human Rights Festival side program.
Honestly, who doesn't love a good prediction...