siff days 3 & 4
May. 27th, 2008 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaidenSecret Festival #1
was good. and long.
i spent the midsection of the day at Folklife (and only slightly regretfully dropped my planned last film from my schedule so that i could get C from the airport). yay! beautiful weather. i sang part of the Vivaldi Gloria with a pickup group, among the other usual pleasures. my favorite performers today were buskers - a six-person tap and rhythm performance group who danced, drummed on 5 gallon buckets, and did an elaborate beat by stamping down mop handles. i hope they made good money. i got henna done (pics if i remember before it fades) and got bargains from the sale bucket at Island Tribe and met my apple dumpling needs for the summer. it was just one of those stunning Seattle days, all sparkling blue skies and low humidity.
Up the Yangtze
Good documentary, sold out house, director present. we follow a couple kids working for a cruise company that is doing farewell tours of the Yangtze, and the one kid's family. over the course of the film we see the rising water from the Three Gorges project erase the family farmland and house. the doc focuses on the people rather than the modern marvel of the dam. (one of my favorite touches was the occasional shot of the girl's kitten getting larger as time passes.) it's stunning to see a city that looks like something out of Blade Runner cheek-by-jowl with a farm that has no electricity/running water/sanitation. the director, a Chinese-Canadian, was present and gave us updates on the people in the film. i was fascinated to learn that environmental issues are acceptable topics for public discussion and criticism, so there were no restrictions or reprisals for the people who expressed their opinions on film. this has distribution and is very well done. totally worth seeing. (this was partly financed by CBC, so Canadians and Seattlites may be able to catch this on tv eventually.)
Nocturna
a sweet animated story of a little boy learning to conquer his fear of the dark. kids who are little enough to need the message would have the bejeezus scared out of them. the animation is very pretty and the style is influenced by Miyazaki. it was good enough, but not remarkable.
Heartbeat Detector
i can't give this an adequate review, because i fell asleep. it was a good nap, and much needed.
Hair: Let the Sun Shine In, plus The Bohemian Rhapsody Project and Shake Off
i went to this one to see the short film The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, which is a bunch of people from Singapore acting out the song. it has been suggested that there's a critique of the Singaporean justice system in there, but i wouldn't know. for me, it's not great art, but it would be a great YouTube clip that i would play a few times and probably post here.
Shake Off was a wordless dance piece, notable because the dancer is live and the environment is CG, which allowed it to be shot in one continuous take where the camera dances with the performer through several settings. pretty cool. again with the YouTube sharing.
the Hair doc was as unspecial as i expected, but i stayed for the whole thing because i was tired from walking from Pacific Place to SIFF Cinema. they tried to tie the atmosphere of 1968 to today, with mixed results. (dear old hippies: do not say that Hair's message of free love changed the world, and then follow up with how half the old cast died from AIDS and when the show broke up everyone was addicted to speed. social conservatives see the deaths and addiction as proof that the show and everyone involved was eeeeeeeeevil.) the best part of the Hair movie for me was interview footage with an incredibly beautiful young Tim Curry, who was speaking in French to the French press about the London production. since half the talking heads had written a book on the show, i'm betting there are better docs out there.
i am now wondering if there has been an uptick in productions of Hair and Lysistrata recently, or if no theatre would bother to be political these days lest they piss off their donors...
(your moment of Zen:) i walked out of the documentary about Hair and into Folklife, pretty close to a drum circle.
the Bag'n'Pipe Hoppers were back this year and had attached a tribal bellydancer. redhead in a bangled top, red plaid kilt, bangled scarf...and step dancing shoes. shortly thereafter i saw a little crowd of steampunk goths complete with goggles. i love this town.
Sita Sings the Blues
this film is made of awesome. it breaks my heart that this film doesn't have distribution yet. (i'm thinking about sending Nina Paley some money. she animated every frame herself, and wrote an extremely clever script.) it's an animated retelling of the story of Sita and Rama, and of Nina Paley's marriage falling apart. it is beautiful and funny and poignant and a joy. sections of the story are set to blues songs by Annette Hanshaw: the audience broke into spontaneous applause after this one. one of the other elements is the audio from three Indian friends of Paley talking about what they know about the Ramayana with visual accompaniment, which is freaking hysterical. the speakers are rendered as shadow puppets laid over the visualizations. (OMG Ravana playing the veena with his intestines! everything about Sita is beautiful like the lotus! Hanuman was a monkey, well part-man, well...) i can't recommend this film highly enough. the experience of discovery when watching a film like this is why i go to the festival.
i decided to skip Mermaid in favor of sleep before going back to work today. and even though Mermaid has good buzz, i wanted to savor the high from Sita.
was good. and long.
i spent the midsection of the day at Folklife (and only slightly regretfully dropped my planned last film from my schedule so that i could get C from the airport). yay! beautiful weather. i sang part of the Vivaldi Gloria with a pickup group, among the other usual pleasures. my favorite performers today were buskers - a six-person tap and rhythm performance group who danced, drummed on 5 gallon buckets, and did an elaborate beat by stamping down mop handles. i hope they made good money. i got henna done (pics if i remember before it fades) and got bargains from the sale bucket at Island Tribe and met my apple dumpling needs for the summer. it was just one of those stunning Seattle days, all sparkling blue skies and low humidity.
Up the Yangtze
Good documentary, sold out house, director present. we follow a couple kids working for a cruise company that is doing farewell tours of the Yangtze, and the one kid's family. over the course of the film we see the rising water from the Three Gorges project erase the family farmland and house. the doc focuses on the people rather than the modern marvel of the dam. (one of my favorite touches was the occasional shot of the girl's kitten getting larger as time passes.) it's stunning to see a city that looks like something out of Blade Runner cheek-by-jowl with a farm that has no electricity/running water/sanitation. the director, a Chinese-Canadian, was present and gave us updates on the people in the film. i was fascinated to learn that environmental issues are acceptable topics for public discussion and criticism, so there were no restrictions or reprisals for the people who expressed their opinions on film. this has distribution and is very well done. totally worth seeing. (this was partly financed by CBC, so Canadians and Seattlites may be able to catch this on tv eventually.)
Nocturna
a sweet animated story of a little boy learning to conquer his fear of the dark. kids who are little enough to need the message would have the bejeezus scared out of them. the animation is very pretty and the style is influenced by Miyazaki. it was good enough, but not remarkable.
Heartbeat Detector
i can't give this an adequate review, because i fell asleep. it was a good nap, and much needed.
Hair: Let the Sun Shine In, plus The Bohemian Rhapsody Project and Shake Off
i went to this one to see the short film The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, which is a bunch of people from Singapore acting out the song. it has been suggested that there's a critique of the Singaporean justice system in there, but i wouldn't know. for me, it's not great art, but it would be a great YouTube clip that i would play a few times and probably post here.
Shake Off was a wordless dance piece, notable because the dancer is live and the environment is CG, which allowed it to be shot in one continuous take where the camera dances with the performer through several settings. pretty cool. again with the YouTube sharing.
the Hair doc was as unspecial as i expected, but i stayed for the whole thing because i was tired from walking from Pacific Place to SIFF Cinema. they tried to tie the atmosphere of 1968 to today, with mixed results. (dear old hippies: do not say that Hair's message of free love changed the world, and then follow up with how half the old cast died from AIDS and when the show broke up everyone was addicted to speed. social conservatives see the deaths and addiction as proof that the show and everyone involved was eeeeeeeeevil.) the best part of the Hair movie for me was interview footage with an incredibly beautiful young Tim Curry, who was speaking in French to the French press about the London production. since half the talking heads had written a book on the show, i'm betting there are better docs out there.
i am now wondering if there has been an uptick in productions of Hair and Lysistrata recently, or if no theatre would bother to be political these days lest they piss off their donors...
(your moment of Zen:) i walked out of the documentary about Hair and into Folklife, pretty close to a drum circle.
the Bag'n'Pipe Hoppers were back this year and had attached a tribal bellydancer. redhead in a bangled top, red plaid kilt, bangled scarf...and step dancing shoes. shortly thereafter i saw a little crowd of steampunk goths complete with goggles. i love this town.
Sita Sings the Blues
this film is made of awesome. it breaks my heart that this film doesn't have distribution yet. (i'm thinking about sending Nina Paley some money. she animated every frame herself, and wrote an extremely clever script.) it's an animated retelling of the story of Sita and Rama, and of Nina Paley's marriage falling apart. it is beautiful and funny and poignant and a joy. sections of the story are set to blues songs by Annette Hanshaw: the audience broke into spontaneous applause after this one. one of the other elements is the audio from three Indian friends of Paley talking about what they know about the Ramayana with visual accompaniment, which is freaking hysterical. the speakers are rendered as shadow puppets laid over the visualizations. (OMG Ravana playing the veena with his intestines! everything about Sita is beautiful like the lotus! Hanuman was a monkey, well part-man, well...) i can't recommend this film highly enough. the experience of discovery when watching a film like this is why i go to the festival.
i decided to skip Mermaid in favor of sleep before going back to work today. and even though Mermaid has good buzz, i wanted to savor the high from Sita.
