Tribeca film festival day 4. i started the day with experimental films. the first one was called WINDOWS.
Shoja Azari's Windows is a compilation feature film that connects nine shorts, all significantly utilizing some kind of window as a meaningful device. Most of the stories are shot through a window, either into or out of a room, office or prison cell; one simply uses the device as a critical prop. Each is a voyeuristic look at painfully ordinary drama involving stale characters, none of which are aided by the offensively poor actors portraying them.
The film begins with two shorts that, while slow and obvious, have an appreciable irony to them. The first, entitled "The Phoenix," features an old saxophone player attempting suicide by gas stove. I'll let you guess what happens. In the second, "Room With a View," a deep focus shot reveals the rape of a jogger outside while two oblivious persons sit inside watching the film An Affair to Remember. From there the stories get less and less interesting. "The View" involves a prisoner imagining a better view through his barred window. "A Family" and "Traffic Jam" both display common, yet unnaturally initiated arguments among their respective couples. "Exit 31" consists of the old bully-boyfriend/abused-girlfriend routine, its action oddly framed within the pupil of an eyeball (window to the soul?).
I think it is fair to say that short-subject films have the unfortunate reputation of being amateurish, and Windows is guilty of all the sources for such a generalization. It suffers from either pretentious self-assurance or lackadaisical indifference, depending on your perspective towards presumptuously "clever" plotting. The problem with most short films is their confinement of story. Often boxed-in with a punchline or tragic finish, they easily are synonymous with skits, gags and blunt moral tales. In the ending of "Exit 31" Azari goes so far as to employ an irrelevant, unexpected explosion, seemingly because he had no natural direction for the story's marital dispute to go.
As many as there are more bad feature films than good, there is certainly a greater ratio of bad short-subject films to good short-subject films. The reasons are simple. Short films cost less and take less time to produce. They are made in abundance by students either under assignment or independently for additional honing of techniques. And just as the beginning fiction writer may try to break in by publishing short stories before penning a novel, many amateurs make short films as a calling card in order for a later chance at directing a feature-length.
Sometimes the faults of individual shorts, particularly the problem of isolate conceit, are diminished by stringing together a collection of independent stories sharing a similar theme or gimmick. The result is typically more successful with theme (9 Lives; Night on Earth) than device (Four Rooms; Cat's Eye), and as an anthology Windows holds up to the usual weakness of the latter. Though it does have a minor semblance of connecting ideas -- Azari's statement is that the shorts are about borders -- overall the film is overly contrived.
Accompanying the film at the Tribeca Film Festival is a preceding short called 25 Letters, which is more remarkable in hindsight after watching Windows, that gives an example of how shorts tend to extend a one-note concept to multiple minutes of tedious overstatement. Here the idea is to communicate current world issues in the style of Sesame Street, as if they were made more accessible through simplification. It is a perfect bit of planning that the festival has put the short and the feature together; you can now avoid both more easily.
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these were in the realm of what i could understand, Mr Azari clarfied what his view of the film was. I found it interesting but cliche at times when it dealt with social issues of Domestic violence, a rape scene aka Almadovar, and child molesting.
i agree it was overly contrived.
then i screened HCE
it was far far far out there and overstimulated me and made me crazy... but I LOVE THE FILM MAKER. he was the kindess of the all the filmmakers and the most personal and personable.. he was warm and soft and smart and most respectful.
H.C.E.
NY, NY Narrative Feature
[HCEYY] 2006 87 min
Directed By: Richard Sylvarnes
World Premiere
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Richard Sylvarnes
Richard Sylvarnes
Richard Sylvarnes is a filmmaker and photographer whose work has been shown at national and international venues. His first feature-length film The Cloud of Unknowing premiered at the inaugural 2002 TFF, and then continued on in festivals throughout Asia and Europe and was released by Possible Films in 2004. He also made two short films: Landscape After The Battle for the band Interpol and Siberia for designer Miho Miho. Recently he collaborated with artist John Torreano on the video Dancing Man, which will premiere at the 2006 Thessaloniki Film Festival. In 2001, he formed the band Sylvarluxe with the purpose of designing sound and music for films, but the band quickly expanded. With Welsh born Katy Lewis sharing vocals, Sylvarluxe is completing the finishing touches on its first record. Sylvarnes studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Berklee College of Music, New York University, and the School of Visual Arts. He was also a recent guest lecturer at Harvard University. H.C.E. is his second feature.
H.C.E.," directed and written by Richard Sylvarnes (U.S.A.) - World Premiere.
In this rapid-cut, experimental, tragicomedy collage of mythology, history, literature, and comic books, Sylvarnes bounces us through a fragmented, impressionistic history of the world from Napoleon to Jesus, from Socrates to Superman and back again with a 6-year-old girl as our guide.
it was a hard movie to watch and to understand. This man is smart and used literature as the text of the film. Lots of people walked out and as i tried to reassure him, he said he expected it.
One of my colleagues tried to pay me to trade theaters so he could see the world premier of the TV Set. He tried to offer me 20 dollars to see this Sigorney Weaver/David Duchovney movie screening tomorrow in my screening room. I threw him out for being a skank...he is manipulative and has been hustling the entire festival.
i reported him to the Manager as i thought he was gonna talk her into trading my assignment.
