March 28, 2005

Oh Bermuda.

It's funny how you can spend months with nothing going on in the industry and as soon as you head to a glorious island in the Mid-Atlantic with nothing to do but to enjoy the atmosphere, drink too much rum and watch a bunch of terrific movies, all hell breaks loose in Hollywood.

Oh well.

The Eighth Bermuda International Film Festival was loaded with quality films this year, led by a run of top notch indie and dependent films from the States. Opening with New Line's The Upside of Anger and closing with Paramount Classic's Mad Hot Ballroom (which missed winning the Audience Award by less than one percent of the average vote), there was a liberal dose of Sony Classics, IFC, Lions Gate and Miramax to bounce around.

But there were some fresh titles that were dressed to impress as well. Fanny Armstrong's new, longer version of McLibel, expanded for Cinema Libre, but probably available for a distribution outlet with a few more dollars to expend on theatrical, treads familiar ground after the year of Super Size Me. But this is much more of a traditional documentary, in this case following McDonald's effort to silence two pamphleteers using strict British libel law. The expansion was natural, as it turns out that the duo went all the way to the Brit version of the Supreme Court with their case. Did they win? Did they lose? Don't want to ruin for you. But while this is not the entertainment that Morgan Spurlock's film was, it is a solid piece of storytelling with similarly exploitable ties to one of the biggest self-promoting companies on the planet.

Francois Prevost and Hugo Latulippe aren't going to win any filmmaking awards for What Remains of Us. In fact, the film may go without distribution since its stars, the people of Chinese-occupied Tibet, would be so endangered by the Chinese government seeing that they participated in the film, that heavy security was used to avoid anyone leaving the Bermudian cinema with any image from the film. Basically, the film is about a woman, Kalsang Dolma, traveling around the country with a smuggled-in video player and showing small groups something now illegal in that country… a five minute message from the Dalai Lama. It is very powerful to see the images of people watching this tape, from people who were in their teens and 20s when the Dalai Lama left the country 55 years ago to the young generation of Tibetans who have never seen any visual or aural proof that the Dalai Lama is really alive and well and thinking of them. Unfortunately, as emotional as this is, after about 20 minutes, the filmmaking becomes repetitive and the power weakens little by little.

Ganapathy Bharatbala's Hari Om has the raw potential to be another The Gods Must Be Crazy. It's not quite as widely accessible, in many ways a "chick flick." But its like kind of small, charming travelogue of a film that could end up making a slow, steady run at a few million dollars at the American box office… even if it makes some critics run for the exits. The very simple story of a rickshaw driver on the run and the beautiful girl who is in the Far East with a man who loves himself above all, and ends up traveling with the rickshaw man on a life changing adventure. Bharatbala does a nice job of keeping his French female star, Camille Natta, working her sensuality without ever making her sexuality become an irritant for women. (Natta is heating up as a star in France, co-starring in the sequel to The Crimson Rivers, which is a much bigger franchise in France than it was here.) I found the film relentlessly pleasant… which may not be enough for some. It was a real old fashioned night at the cinema.

Other films left audiences very happy, though they had their limitations. Campfire is a beautifully acted film from Israel about a single mother and her two coming-of-age daughters. It digresses a little into an Afterschool Special, but it is just the kind of foreign language film that would be an excellent way to gets kids into the headspace to pay attention and be more open to the idea of subtitles… even though it is a tough story. Chiefs is a pleasant documentary about a semi-pro Canadian hickey team that is loaded with flaws… but the audience I watched it with just didn't care and they laughed their asses off. (Just how many Canadians are there in Bermuda?) And I was enraged by The Last Mogul… because it only screened once… and I couldn't see it. I am really looking forward to seeing Barry Avrich's film, which was well received by those who did see it.

Only one film really pissed me off at the festival. It was a short by a guy going by "Stevo" (real name: Steven Chang) called Fields of Mudan, about child abduction and prostitution. Besides the fact that it was terribly flat in terms of production, there was something horribly banal about the film, despite the choice of such a completely loaded subject matter. The center of the film is the slow march of an eight or nine year-old towards her first act of rape/sex.

Perhaps I am being unfair, but it felt a lot like a sample film. And if you are going to delve into young girls being forced into prostitution, it better not come off as simply a way of trying to get your shot with an episode of The Shield. I have rarely found myself so disgusted with any film.

That said, it was another good year and another year of growth for the festival. Murderball took the Doc Award, Stray Dogs took the Feature Award and Les Choristes won the Audience Award.

What is magical about this festival is the place and the people. But the films just keep getting better year after year.

E-ME: Let me know what you've been up to while I've been gone...