the girly who shall end all girls

since 2021 SIFF has had festival films available for streaming. it's typically a small subset of the fest, but enough to help with schedule conflicts. i don't enjoy the experience as much as going to the theater - while it's nice to eat real food and pause for the bathroom, it reminds me of a really low point for me during pandemic lockdown. anyway...

first thing was to rewatch Porcelain War with C, who has been tracking the war in Ukraine obsessively since it started. i already thought the film was great, but on rewatch i appreciated the editing and soundtrack more. really great film, won the audience award for documentary, deserves industry recognition.

399: Queen of the Tetons
this one will be on PBS. perfectly cromulent story about a grizzly bear who has figured out the safest place to raise her cubs is near the road (males who are likely to kill cubs don't like it). this is a great adaptation inside a national park, wandering outside it, not so great. full of beautiful scenery and sweet bears. also full of not-great human-bear encounters and the ick of national park traffic jams.

Fish War
the story of the Northwest Treaty Tribes' fight for their fishing rights before, during, and after the Boldt decision. this was produced by the tribes and has a strong POV but also amazing access and interviews - lots of great stories from the elders who were there. whatever your thoughts on the reach of Boldt, there's no question that Washington royally fucked up. glad i arrived here after Slade Gorton lost his senate seat, what a tool.

Grandpa Guru
doc about Srđan Gino Jevđević, the leader of Seattle band Kultur Shock on his 60th birthday. it's not really made for the US audience - it's mostly in Croatian. he was a pop star in Yugoslavia before he became a war refugee. really interesting backstory; he ended up in the US because he was part of a wartime production of Hair and a Hollywood director was trying to have them perform it here. lots of fun Seattle and NW recent history interspersed with more usual Behind the Music kind of stuff

My Sextortion Diary
mostly phone camera, about the experience of having a laptop stolen that had some semi-nudes on it. the thieves were trying to extort money, and they were ramping up their harassment by sending these photos to her professional and personal contacts. it's intimate, and scary, and weird. definitely one that was fine on the tv since it was mostly vertical phone cam, screenshares, and text messages.

The Primevals
a midnighter I skipped for streaming (and because I knew C would want to talk over it). this is a film that had a bunch of stuff go wrong during production, including its director dying before it could be finished. there's a yeti, a secret temperate valley in the Himalayas, and lizard people. there are also randomly cast and un-researched sherpas and a young female lead who is completely vacuous. the yeti and the lizard people are done with incredibly charming and expressive stop motion. there was an arena scene with an entire crowd animated! it was absolutely MST3K fodder (C started riffing almost as soon as it started) but it was also weirdly good for what it was? it would have been nice to see on a big screen, but i had a really good time listening to C go off.

Sono Lino
a local glass legend who is not Dale Chihuly. i didn't know the name but i totally recognize his signature pieces. unfortunately i was dozing on and off for this one so i don't know a lot beyond that he was very talented and well-loved, pretty sure i used to walk by his studio all the time, and i really need to get to Tacoma Museum of Glass (they have a glassblowing demonstration auditorium) which is a thing we have never done for some reason

Subterranean
i think this will be on public tv in Canada. i love crazy rock climber and mountain climber documentaries. like i think what they do is terrifying and kind of foolhardy but i can't look away from the trainwreck, which is also generally breathtakingly beautiful, and i love the anthropological view of the subculture and the grit of the subjects.
so this film is kind of Dirtbag meets Free Solo/Dawn Wall but they're going down instead of up. which i think is even scarier and crazier than the climbers, although they also have to be climbers for these caves (and sometimes scuba divers). the film is following two cave exploration groups, one trying to beat the record for the longest cave in Canada, and the other for the deepest (they're both in BC, although the deep exploration group is folks from Alberta). this film is not for the claustrophobic, or if you're squicked by mud that looks like liquid shit, or have any kind of nightmares about being trapped, or my personal terror of being underwater and unable to surface to breathe. but it is interesting and there are some cool rock formations to see; i grew up in a region with limestone cave tourist attractions so it was both familiar and strange. i did wonder where all the money comes from - the deepest cave entrance was up a mountain in the Canadian Rockies and they got there via helicopter and didn't seem to have sponsors like the climbers do

Ultimate Citizens
sweet doc about Jamshid Khajavi, a school counselor in a Seattle K-8 school who coaches Ultimate Frisbee. he's a real character - chicken rescuer, endurance racer, former high-powered business guy, Iranian immigrant. he goes the extra mile to make sure that his students can participate in the sport and succeed in school. we see a slice of his life, and a bit of a sports doc about the team prepping for and participating in an open tournament. they don't have the money or time to do traveling league, so they come into the tournament as an unfamiliar element. it includes interviews with some of the parents, and it was shocking to me - two they spoke to were working two full-time jobs and running on almost no sleep. so he does a lot of extra work to make sure that those kids get to do extracurriculars, giving them rides home from practice, helping them get to appointments for glasses, etc. he seems genuinely lovely and the kids are learning to be better people together. it's nice

and that's a wrap on the film festival. the last time it felt right was 2019, i'm glad to have it back. next year i'll take a week off for it again.

squeezed one in before game.

Captains of Zaatari
paired with a charming short Maradonna's Legs about a couple boys in Israel trying to complete a sticker collection during the 1990 World Cup.

the feature was a slice-of-life story of a couple Syrian refugee teens attempting to pursue their dream of becoming soccer pros. i liked it. mild spoiler: i was struck, as i often am during the festival, that if this was an American film it either would have a triumphant feel-good ending or there would be a conflict that would tear the boys' friendship apart, and that doesn't happen here. the ending is happy-for-now, and that feels about right.

streaming film festival isn't film festival and deciding to watch feels like an obligation. i don't grudge SIFF the money (that was spent long ago for the 2020 festival, and there's still some left over to kick into 2022) but yeah this kind of sucks.

today when i woke up i wanted two things: to spend time with C and soak up sun on the balcony. i did both of those things and didn't start watching movies until sometime in the afternoon, and then i had a social date and walked the dog and i'm not feeling like watching another today.

Conductivity
doc that follows three students at the Sibelius Academy learning to be conductors. this was very much a Sunday afternoon SIFF experience in that i was tired and there was a lot of nice symphony music and i nodded off a little. it was a fly-on-the-wall piece and it was pretty cool, just not gripping per se. i found myself more caught up in the details of life in Finland (double revolving doors, folks in a swimming hole that seemed to be cut out of the ice) than the actual conducting story.

Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation
it turns out two popular gay American writers from the 50s were friends. the doc is a narrative of their friendship told by interview footage and audio of actors reading their letters and diaries. as a Theatre Person i wanted to like this more than i did, i found myself most fascinated by seeing Capote age from an ethereally beautiful young man into a bulgy-headed troll.

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

are Sesame Street documentaries a sub-genre? this is the thirdfourth one i've seen at SIFF over the years, i love them all, and this was no exception. it's a well-made combo of archival footage, archival interviews, archival behind-the-scenes footage, and new interviews. they had some relatively recent interviews with the late Caroll Spinney (Big Bird/Oscar the Grouch) but many of the early creative team has passed on or looks pretty frail; this might be the last chance to talk to the ones that are left. it will be on HBO eventually - recommended.

if you are old enough to remember Sesame Street before Elmo it will give you all the feels.

SIFF is virtual (and early) this year, which is better than no SIFF last year. I've built my watch list in the Roku app and tomorrow I'll just... watch movies on my couch like I've done for the past year+. Not feeling a sense of excitement or adventure or specialness. One of the great things about the pass is watching something random because you really want to see the movie before and after it at the same venue, and then it turns out to be amazing. That's not happening this time.

I'm afraid that it's going to be like my attempts at online conferences and I'm just going to slide off. It's okay, SIFF can keep my money. But maybe a film festival I'm not excited about *is* worse than no film festival.