We Have Never Been Modern

There is so much going on in this film! It's a mystery about a stillborn intersex baby. It's about life in rural Czechoslovakia in the 30s. It's about starting a planned community/factory town and all that is good and bad about "progress". It's about intersex people and their place in the world. It's about a marriage disintegrating.
It's a period film, so it's a complicated watch because of period appropriate terminology and attitudes. but I think it's also a good conversation starter. I went on a wiki tear afterward - the setting is a real place that seems to have been portrayed pretty honestly. (It's wild as an American to think of a place in Europe as so remote that it's being accessed by plane like it's Alaska)
it seems like other pass holders were less into this than I was, but there was enough complexity that i felt compelled to learn more about everything going on politically and socially at the time; the friction of Czechia and Slovakia being glommed into one country is an underlying theme but it's assumed that the audience is familiar. (I'm guessing there's a whole dynamic about how people speak that is lost with subtitles)

anyway I dug this and want to have C and varina8 see it to get their takes on the historic moment and the ethnic conflict. it's the kind of thing I love getting from the festival

Resynator

The resynator is a rack-mounted analog synthesizer that takes the input of any instrument you plug in (so not just keyboard, but guitar, microphone, etc). It never went into full production because its inventor died.
He had a daughter who was 10 weeks old when he died. The doc is about her finding the prototype in the attic, getting it working, and connecting to her bio dad through investigating the machine.
I wanted a music doc about the synth, she had a personal story that was more suited to her rudimentary film skills. Glad I saw it but kind of felt it was her therapy. Good for her I guess. I was also pretty squicked that the credit song used AI-generated voice to have her dad do a duet with her. (admittedly he was very into technology and probably would approve, but I think it's a terrible idea. We already have a problem with old music outcompeting new music, we don't need zombie vocals. blech)

Bring Them Home

Doc about the Blackfoot buffalo herds. Complicated by politics, special interests, and generations of cultural erasure, the goal of free-roaming buffalo on their land was finally realized just last year.
The crowd was amazing - lots of people involved in the film were there for Q&A, and there were tons of local Native folks.* So much joy in the crowd, spontaneous whooping and cheering. I ended up sitting by some of the buffalo stewards, and got info on a nonprofit that is all about indigenous-led environmental restoration.



*as someone noted at the Q&A there are 29 federally recognized tribes in Washington (plus the Duwamish but that's kind of a third rail).

Red, White, & Brass

Absolutely adorable crowd-pleaser about Tongan New Zealanders forming a brass band in order to get tickets to the Tonga vs France game in the 2011 rugby world cup. Very funny underdog story full of New Zealand humor, completely centered on people of color. as always I'm sure there were plenty of things that went over my head as a white American but family is universal. (I was feeling the spirit of my grandmother as our hero's mom shamed a gang into doing her bidding.) it was in theaters in NZ and AUS a while ago, hope it becomes available here, it's such a pick-me-up

Bonjour Switzerland

Frothy comedy about Switzerland after a referendum passes to make the country monolingual - French only!
learned from the intro that this was the same team who made Streaker. Shared some actors, had a fab trio of retiree revolutionaries and a wannabe spy. good times