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Saturday, February 17, 2007
Missoula's most famous son is David Lynch. The Wilma Theatre is allegedly the inspiration behind scenes in Eraserhead and the thetre in Blue Velvet. I can see it, I really can. In fact the whole town is a little Twin Peaksy. Apparently David Lynch does a weather report from his home each day - I must look into this, sounds almost too good to be true.
I caught half of Distorted Propoganda (67 mins) (part of the Asia Docs series) and felt that although the images were stunning and the interviews interesting that after 30mins I had really seen enough.
The afternoon screenings were the films made as part of the International Documentary Challenge which is run by Doug Whyte. The premise is - can you make a documentary in 5 days from start to finish. Participating teams from all over the world sign up, pay their admission fee and on the first day are sent a genre and subject. They are then given 5 days to shoot, edit and complete their film. All the films go in to competition and the top eight films are shown at Hotdocs and at Big Sky.
The films shown were refreshing and entertaining. My favourite - Relatively Free - took a tour from east to west Berlin in a clapped out old Lada with a charismatic driver who stopped every now and again to manually work his windscreen wipers. It was one of my films of the festival and shows that there's a lot to be said for a simple story and a good character.
I'd really like to give teh challenge a go this year - it was described "as the most fun you probably wouldn't want to do again" but I'm afraid the timing is all wrong for me this year.
At lunch (really getting the hang of this Missoula Dining thing now) I gave a copy of Teenland to Sky Sitner, programmer of Silverdocs. I really hope that Big Sky will be the first of a few screenings. With my next project taking place in the States it would really good for my work to be seen more widely here.
How it is with Phooie was a sneak preview by Mike Steinberg about his Father Phooie and daughter Ella. I was very interested to see how he would tell the story of his family as I've been filming my Mother and am not quite sure about telling her story publicly. His film became as much about his relationship with his daughter that with his Dad and I warmed to it very much. I think when you become a parent it's inevitable that you re-examine your parental relationship. Phooie's life starts to fall to pieces on screen and Mike was there trying to make sense of it all with a camera in his hand. The most revealing part for me was when his wife asked hoim if he thought that the camera would reveal something that he wouldn't normally be visible. When I've been filming my Mother I keep imagining that the camera is a magic filter that reveal hidden stories. Maybe it doesn't at all and can just reflect what's there.
the big evening film was The War Tapes produced by Steve James. I was keen to see this as it won best international film at Britdoc last year and I missed it. the film follows 3 national guard soldiers on a year in Iraq. The Iraq footage is solely shot by soldiers and the action - car bombs, explosions, missiles and bombs are terrifying close to the protagonists. It's a devastating film and was especially interesting to view it in a sold out crowd of 1100 Americans. There's a scene in teh film where teh soldiers make it back for the big Homecoming. I was crying and then realised that everyone around me was sobbing. the men onscreen could be anyone's son, brother or father. It's a film that politicians should be made to watch.
The evening was rounded off with drinks in the film-makers lounge and the dual entertainment of a blue grass band and the local wino hitting on (unsuccessfully might I add) ALL the women in the room. Apparently my red hair was 'dashing'.Labels: big sky, david lynch, international documentary challenge, missoula
posted by Jeanie Saturday, February 17, 2007 | 0 comments
