I have not been slacking, this I promise.
On occasion, I have to run off and actually make movies, rather than just write about them, and this past week was one of those times when I found myself down in Southwestern Missouri (just a short car ride from Columbia) to continue the Branson project that I have been working on (with co-director David Wilson and our co-producer Nathan Truesdell) for the past year-plus.
It was nice to dive into filmmaking so quickly after the previous weekend’s True/False Film Festival, exactly the nonfiction tonic I was craving in this early year. While the announcement of Sundance titles in late November/early December always seems to symbolically kick off the new year in docs (and provides a roadmap as to many of the films that we’ll be talking about in the year to come), Sundance’s place in the calendar year means that we’re still thinking about the year past, even while pondering the year forward: with both Cinema Eye and the Academy announcing their nominees during the festival, we’re as apt to think about TROUBLE THE WATER and MAN ON WIRE as we are WE LIVE IN PUBLIC and ROUGH AUNTIES.
But when we make the trek to Columbia, much of that is past. The Oscars and the Spirit Awards are behind us – and while Cinema Eye still looms a month later, it feels like we can begin to fully appreciate and chew over the films of 2009. Thankfully, most of the best of these will appear on screen at True/False.
Talking to someone the other night who had visited True/False for the first time, I was struck by her earliest reaction to the festival – the yearly March March that officially kicks off the festivities on Friday afternoon.
For those who haven’t witnessed the parade firsthand, imagine a 7-block walk/dance/run across the heart of Columbia’s downtown, featuring drummers, balloons, kids, Snow White in a pedicab, large alien puppets, all manner of signs. It’s also one of the first times that you will see the other guests – some longtime friends.
My friend noted that everyone was so happy, constantly embracing one another, dancing to the beat of the drummers. What, she wondered, was this thing?
That is often the first-timer's ponderings once things get going in Columbia - what is this thing? How can this smallish college town in the middle of nowhere (their words, not mine) have fallen so hard, so fast, so completely for this festival and the films that it screens? This year, more than 23,000 tickets were sold over the course of 4 days - 5,000 more than last year.
And the march is just the beginning. As True/False would continue over the weekend, unfolding many of the year’s best nonfiction films, there would be more to cause feelings of wonder:
John Maringouin’s transcendent BIG RIVER MAN, a visually stunning and frequently hilarious expedition across the heart of the Amazon. Maringouin, who made one of my favorite films of 2006/2007 – RUNNING STUMBLED, has made a film true to its subject, Martin Strel, one that engages in his excesses, his hallucinations, his quirkiness, his courage. Working with frequent collaborator Molly Lynch (here both co-director and co-editor), Maringouin is fearless in allowing the audience to laugh at the absurdity of a rotund, wine-swilling marathon swimmer and in following his subjects into the mental abyss. In a just-begun year of films that have often felt too cautious or even incomplete, finally a film that is unafraid of being messy, passionate, risky, hilarious. Certainly one of the best films of 2009.
Recent Comments