After the challenges booking my films I was eager to see how my seat selections would work out, especially with the new venue (Reading Courtenay) and thus having to guess the ideal seat in a relatively unknown venue from what was still left. So far it seems to have worked out, although I have learnt that row F is not ideal in most Reqding theatres as the aisle and shiny barrier are immediately in front (it is reasonably good, but a row further back or probably forward would likely be better).

I had 7 films in the opening weekend — one late Friday night, three on Saturday and three on Sunday. The majority of them were relatively short — 65 to 75 minutes, so it did leave a bit of spare time during the weekend. Below are some brief notes about the films in order of viewing.

American Animals

“American Animals” is an “I can’t believe it is true” documentary about the (attempted) robbery of valuable rare books from the special collection of a Kentucky, USA university library. It is partly a “heist gone wrong” movie, and partly a retrospective. The intercutting of reenactments of the action and interviews with the original protagonists works surprisingly well, and helps ground it in “this is a true story”. If you enjoy your “truth stranger than fiction” it is a fun tale worth seeing. I could see this movie coming back for some post-festival screenings.

Brimstone and Glory

Continuing the “truth stranger than fiction” theme, “Brimstone and Glory” is a relatively short documentary (just over an hour) about an epic annual fireworks festival in Tultepec, Mexico. The festival features a lot of home made fireworks, exhibited over two days in a night of “castles” and a night of “bulls”. The “castles” are huge tower structures built into the air, with gigantic fireworks displays mounted on them, set off in turn. The “bulls” are larger than life bull sculptures, built on wheeled platforms, with fireworks mounted on them — the brave participate in a running of the bulls, seeing the fireworks from within in. While it is clearly a budget movie, there is some amazing footage from within the fireworks display, and enough behind the scenes story to make bring the festival and its origin story to life. If you like your fireworks manic, this is the movie for you.

RBG

“RBG” is a much deserved documentary about “The Notorious RBG” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a long serving liberal Supreme Court judge who in more recent years has come to fame for her dissenting opinions on contentious Supreme Court rulings. The documentary takes us through her early history, including as an activist lawyer (for gender equality), and her influence on the legal framework of the United States. Now in her 80s, she’s still actively serving the Court, including working the midnight hours to stay prepared — and working out with a personal trainer every week. She is an amazing role model to multiple generations of lawyers and activists who wish to change the world — no wonder she has a posse! I highly recommend the movie if you want to understand how American society’s attitudes to gender equality have been changed over the last 50 years. It was particularly touching that the film, and RBG, argued for equality in all directions — including for a man to get benefits to be able to raise his child after his wife died early.

Rafiki

Switching from documentaries, “Rafiki” is a Kenyan film that highlights the difference in societies attitudes to same sex relationships in Africa, compared with many “western” countries. The (female) lead is very well cast, and clearly has a great career in acting ahead of her if she chooses. The film apparently was banned in Kenya, and appears to have been finished with a range of European funding sources, which just makes it all the more important it got made. It was great to see an insider made story about an important topic, told through a well written drama. There are definitely rough edges to the film, including apparent dialogue changes in editing not really hidden well in the editing (one audience member wondered if they were “internal voice” segments, but they play as an outside conversation so I think it was just “no budget for pickups” when the storyline needed refining). The movie is well worth seeing both for the story, and for the real life footage of Nairobi, Kenya.

The Green Fog

“The Green Fog” is a marvel of editing, creating a visual collage of San Francisco, drawn from dozens of films shot on location in San Francisco. There is a very loose storyline (apparently inspired by Hitchcock’s Vertigo), to tie it together, but mostly it is a visual ride held together through copious use of match cuts and other clever editing. The editing is very clearly down to indvidual frames, with several scenes playing as a series of very short (sub second) clips carefully cut together for effect. If you enjoy creative film editing, or have a broad visual knowledge of movies set in San Francisco, you will probably like the film. While I liked the movie, I did find that the 65 minute run length was more than enough of that editing style, and it felt like it might have worked better as a series of 5 minute YouTube clips released over a few months. (Obviously that would not have provided a funding source for the enormous amount of editing work, or all the clearances required to release the film.)

Overall "The Green Fog" is the sort of movie where I would really like to see a director's (or ideally film editor's) commentary about all the scenes the selected, why they chose them, and how they were edited together. There is an epic amount of detailed film editing in the movie, most of which goes unnoticed beyond the effect.

Terror Nullius

Continuing the theme of marvellous editing, "Terror Nullius" embraced "remix culture", in a way that would make Lawrence Lessig proud, to produce a biting social commentary on Australia politics -- and also more generally on modern conservative social norms in the western world at present. They sampled from dozens of movies, mostly from Australiasia but not exclusively, rotoscoped in elements from other movies, and overlaid audio recordings of Australia MPs (including the Prime Ministers of the day) speaking about controversial subjects. The four months of rotoscoping (!) and eighteen month editing process paid off, producing a movie that felt like a seamless whole telling a clear narritive, despite sampling from source material produced over many decades in many countries.

The political issues raised will be no surprise to anyone paying attention to Australian social justice issues, but the movie manages to address them in a way that is both entertaining and thought provoking at once. I hope it gets seen by a wider audience, and not censored due to being "too contoversial" (they lost the support of the Ian Potter Cultural Foundation, who funded and commissioned the film (!) days before the premiere, apparently due to the Board of Trustees having second thoughts).

The screening was followed by a very interesting question and answer session. It revealed that they never ask for permissions to use the sampled source material, relying on Fair Use in the USA where they are now based, and constructive conversations with the creators of the original material sampled. We were fortunate to also have Jonathan King, director of "Black Sheep" in the audience -- and as part of the question and answer session. "Black Sheep" was one of the films sampled by "Terror Nullius", and Jonathan even appeared on screen -- as a cameo in his own movie in a scene which made it into "Terror Nullius". And Jonathan seemed happy that it had been used, and a fan of Terror Nullius, saying he preferred his work being reused by an artist with something to say over clips being taken for random "top 10 FOO scenes" clips on YouTube clearly just there to get advertising revenue off someone else's work.

Liquid Sky

My final film of the weekend was the beautiful restoration of "Liquid Sky", a gender queer club scene movie intermixed with an odd tale of an alien race feeding off opiate effects on humans. The visuals in the film, and the restoration, were stunning, showcasing the (early) 1980s in all their colourful, big hair, glory. Anne Carlisle was fantastic as the lead, playing both the butch girl "Margaret" and the androgynous/femme drug-addled boy "Jimmy" -- the characters appear in many scenes together, but mostly through clever intercutting rather than other visual trickery. Sadly she appears to have stopped acting by the early 1990s.

As @hroethgar said there was "Waaaaaaaaay too much rape", some of it quite difficult to watch, although it is somewhat paid off by the plot in the end. I also agree that it would probably have benefited from another pass at editing to tighten it up into a great 80-90 minute movie, rather than a somewhat drawn out 110 minute movie.

It was well worth seeing as a slice of New York, and movie, history, and for the visuals and characters -- with just enough plot to mostly hold the story together. The 1980s computer graphics are a reminder of just how far the effects industry has come in the last 30 years. I am pleased to see it got a fantastic 4K restoration.