The Museum of the Moving Images FIRST LOOK Fest starts Thursday at the museum and it's filled will all sorts of off the radar goodies.
The series highlights off the radar films that have a good shot of being the next big thing down the road. The films are a mix of unexpected delights that make you think
As this posts I've seen six of the films and they are all worth a look. As always with this fest my feeling is that I would pick something that tickles your fancy and going with that. This is a fest where so much is good that what I have to say doesn't matter.
For give me for not recommending anything but I haven't seen enough where I can pull one or two out and say "these are the best". They are all worth your time.
For more information on the fest and tickets go here.
---
I'm in the final stretch of NYICFF.
I've seen all but one one of the films I've scheduled. Whatever I don't see I simply couldn't fit into my schedule.
Reviews of HEEBIE JEEBIES, SAVAGES and THE LEGEND OF OCHI will follow shortly.
---
I've gotten the slates of a couple of more serious film festivals recently and I'm left scratching my head about the programmers. The reason is that the festivals are programming not just the same filmmakers but the same sort of stories over and over again.
I noticed this when I was looking over the New Directors New Films slate I realized that we are getting the same types of stories over and over again each year. We need a film about growing up, a film about school, a film about growing old, we need something on the Israel Palestine conflict.... The titles are different but there is sameness to the subjects.
Okay I don't think they are using a check list, but because the fests tend to have the same programmers they tend to lean into the same type of stories over and over again. (Or the same filmmakers). This is would be fine but the films chosen tend to follow the same paths and hit the same points. The most exciting films for me are the ones that seem to be something completely different than anything else. I actually turned down two films at First Look because the films seemed to be too close to several other similar films I've seen connected to other festivals.
Perhaps this is all the result of the writes being done by rote or not wanting to spill the beans, but after a few years of being offered similar films again and again there has to be more too it
I know that the festivals will some time err by leaning into things that will put butts in seats (NYFF has explictly said that) but at the same time fests like New Directors New Films should be showing us a wide variety of stories not just the same ones. I mean they used to run things like THE RAID, ASHKAL GREAT BUDDHA +, and other atypical tales all through the slate and not just a single film or two.
I'm not arguing that the fests are programming bad films, they absolutely are not, but they are programming films with stories that look like they are ones we've heard before. How many times do I need to see a coming of age film set in a French school?
It maybe the up coming fests will shock me, but if so they need to get better people to write up the films, too many of the films seem to be variations on a well worn theme and it's making me gun shy to cover a film once I read it maybe going in to too familiar territory.
No comments:
Post a Comment