SF Indie Fest

Sleepwalking through the Mekong

Sleepwalking is a pretty amazing documentary. It's main thrill is from watching something as cliched as "the power of music to bring people together" actually happening in a way that doesn't seem really forced at all. I guess that aspect of it works mainly because the interviews with the band members make them seem really likeable and down to Earth. You get the impression that the just went on this trip essentially on a lark and they're just as wide-eyed about the level of connection they're able to achieve with the Cambodian people, just by playing their music. It's such a common thing to believe in for the type of people who like to believe in that sort of thing, and this film captures it actually happening without any ponderous ruminations on "the power of music to bring people together." Yeah, I liked it.

Also, aside from all that feel good stuff, the film is just incredibly well shot. There's some (especially) amazing shots of dusk and night in Cambodia that are absolutely beautiful.

The New Grass

This little doc was good enough to make me interested in checking out both the bands featured in it at some point, which I guess is probably the main point of it, so, kudos.

La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo

There are some really good ideas behind this film, but that's the best thing you can say for it. The problem is that a lot of the good ideas didn't actually make it into the film. I suppose it could succeed as something to show in a class about revolutionary Marxism, because ultimately what we get here is a movie that really needs every bit of external support to hold it up. Which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but there's no reason for none of that external stuff to actually be folded into the movie. If the conceit is that it's a "found" video of these women in this prison, just extend the conceit to include the idea (or fact or something...) that whoever found the footage actually turned it into a watchable movie. I feel a little bit uncomfortable about this criticism because I feel pretty sympathetic toward the idea that a film (or anything) doesn't need to be self-contained, but in this case the exclusion of that stuff from the actual film itself doesn't add anything to it's effectiveness, and actually kind of prevents the movie from being watchable. I mean, I was fucking bored out of my skull through most of this, and I never get bored watching movies. And, sure, I even agree that boring isn't necessarily bad, but in this case it is.

Cave Flower

Harmless.

Actually, there were a couple of really great things about this short: the first being the way the girl is reintroduced when she gets on the subway with shyguy: just that quick flash of red first through the window and then as she walks in front of the camera, and shyguy's reaction. It's impressive the level of control of the colors that the little shock of red sticks out so much that you know immediately it's her. Then shyguy's little fantasy dream shot on eight millimeter, with the footage of boating around and the shots of trees and stuff, all of that was very excellent. The whole romanticizing of the squatting life? Meh. (This part especially seems gross to me, considering the fact that in the post-viewing Q&A the director and actress both said they were pretty horrified being in squatting-guy's room to see the squalor and the used needles everywhere... even contact with and disgust of actual squatting apparently isn't enough to break through upper-middle class romantic notions of the freedom of absolute poverty...) The whole "quirky" meet cute where shyguy gets up the nerve to ask red girl for a date? Yuck.

I have to admit, though, the little touch of having her write the credits on a pad when she's supposed to be writing her number was pretty charming. Although I was a little disappointed to discover that's what she was writing after she began by writing "Cable: Youngblood" which immediately made me think the movie was suddenly veering into some completely unexpected place of geekdom. Alas.

(2/24)