I got an unexpected surprise when I popped this tune into the DVD player. The Dastoli Brothers are famous in the microcinema scene for their incredible visual effects capabilities and their beautiful cinematography. When it came to their stories though, I felt they always fell a bit short. Much to my surprise, That’s the Name of That Tune is not one of their typical short films.
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They aren’t friends, but they do see each other in the hallways between classes. Occasionally they even say hello. Tracy and Chris, two students at fictional Hillcrest High — which could easily be any high school in America–are the protagonists whose lives unravel in heartbreaking detail throughout the course Maria Petros’ debut film Ascension. Hiding their deeply personal struggles under a thin guise of false smiles and mock indifference, these two corridor acquaintances are, in actuality, trapped in a private hell and nearing the precipice of their own emotional endurance.
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Gritty drama features a professor who becomes attracted to a student with a sordid private life in An Apology to the Dead. Although initially put off by a dark, grainy look that may have been only partially intentional, I was drawn in by strong performances from the leads. Troy Randall-Kilpatrick, albeit boneheaded in some of his character’s decisions, was well-rounded, and I especially liked Jenelle Mazaris’s shaded turn as the strong-willed but wounded student. Jonathan Victor also gives a shot of kinetic energy in an edgy spin as a brutal pimp.
“The Family Johnson” was a hip band on a meteoric rise when front man Bugs (Royce Peterson) flamed out in the usual way.
Later, post-rehab, he tries to reconnect with a former bandmate (Wilder Selzer) who is rocketing to stardom of his own accord in Cara Maria O’Shea’s urban fable Aesop’s Diner.
Crackling noir short features an up-and-coming exec who gets mugged in the parking garage by a crook who, it turns out, grew up in the same neighborhood. How this dynamic unfolds over a tense span of minutes is the crux of Mitchell Cohen’s effective Peter’s Price.
The tagline is: “Apathy, technology, paranoia, disease and medication” This is so far the best achievement that I’ve seen in the so call mumblecore genre, which up to now, I quite often considered it an example of lazy filmmaking. There is still no excuse for auto focus, auto iris, and the absense of a tripod no matter how small your budget is. It is fine as an aesthetic choice, but the excuse “I don’t care about those things” is not good enough in my book. Art should have a discernable style, even if you do hand held and out of focus. And this film certainly does in its own pastiche kind of way.
An office drone finds his life changed by a free-spirited young woman in Mark Thimijan’s whimsical short drama The Girl Who Could Run 600 Miles Per Hour!
Donlee Brussel’s Intoxicated Demons is a hard-edged short drama featuring a young man drinking away the relationship blues who strikes up a conversation with a steely-eyed older man that perhaps, in retrospect, he should have stayed away from.
This no-budget multi-award winning Cuban film caused a sensation when it Premiered in Havana because its honesty on breaking an often taboo subject in Cuban filmography: A family divided because of political differences and subsequent exile of one its members. A young homosexual man who has kept his sexual preference a secret from everyone except his sister (Yipsia Torres) emigrated to the US. Cuban veteran actor Enrique Molina plays the dogmatic father, Veronica Lynn his mother who strives to keep the family together. Together they decide to send a video letter to Miami.
The story begins when the family decides to send the exiled homosexual son a video letter. Things go wrong as a few secrets are unleashed during the making of the home video. One of the first things that grabs you by the neck
is the bravura of the performances. The film was shot in 5 long un-interrupted takes crammed inside one small apartment with a handheld shaky VHS camera. But if this sounds suspicious, please do yourself a favor and see it. Video de Familia is a perfect marriage of style and content: It’s dirty visual aesthetic is perfectly justifiable by the story, which is after all, a video letter (meant to be shot by someone that doesn’t know much about filmmaking) But It’s also a tour de force of narrative control and what microcinema is about in terms soaking emotions with the most limited resources. This film elicited tears from almost all the members of the audience that attended its limited theatrical release in Cuba.
It is an important film because it calls for a reunion as the only way to make things work in a country usually stubborn when it comes to politics. In the last 47 years certain Cubans shared a sad history of sacrificing family ties to preserve ideological convictions. Video de Familia’s humanistic intentions are as noble as the honesty of their moving portrayal.
Four stars
This Cuban short picks the ever effective troubled teenager theme to create an cryptic and oppressive mood of alienation in contemporary Havana. Our protagonist is a college student obsessed with finding a solution to an apparently absurd mathematical problem that relates deeply to his own existence. The story is fed to us through signs and icons. I could delve into its meanings but since its open for interpretations and the running time so short, I’ll simply refer to the mood it evokes.
Stand-By is tightly cut (if not always photographed equal precision), in a way it feels like a set-up for a larger story that never gets to unfold, almost as a trailer for a feature film. This feeling is re-enforced by an open ending that leaves you wanting for more or as glimpse of the themes this director will deal with in the future. I’ve always felt that mood pieces work better as features when you truly have time to develop a universe, filled with details that conform a more complete atmosphere devoid of time constraints.
Stand-By doesn’t break new ground, but it’s nicely done and it’s great to see a young filmmaker searching for a voice through alternative ways of storytelling rather than the same tired formulas.
Three stars