Sidewalk Film Festival

This was my first time to attend Sidewalk and I am officially a lifelong fan! I had such a great time! I saw 12 showings total: 7 documentaries, 4 narrative features, and a block of 9 short films. I love movies and it was the perfect day, just running from one venue to another seeing lots of different viewpoints on the world. I did a lot of walking and a fair amount of stair climbing and didn't eat any crap. I stuffed my purse full both days with an apple, a banana, almonds, cheese, and crackers. Lots of water fountains for my water bottle. It was the best weekend I've had in quite some time!

Pretty crappy to come home to a freon-leaking a/c unit and a damp spot on the ceiling. Repairmen are inbound bright and ugly tomorrow morning and I may be shopping around for a loan.

Has anyone else seen any of these films?

Documentary Films

Teenage Paparazzo

The Entourage's Adrian Grenier decides to turn the tables on a 14 year-old member of the paparazzi by following him around.

Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film

"The incredible true story of how the greatest graffiti film of all time was never made..."

NY Export: Opus Jazz
Shot on location in New York City and starring an ensemble cast of New York City Ballet dancers, NY Export: Opus Jazz takes Jerome Robbins‘ 1958 “ballet in sneakers” and reimagines it for a new generation in this scripted adaptation.

Until the Light Takes Us

Until the Light Takes Us is a 2009 feature documentary about Norwegian black metal, from directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell. The film features interviews with the originators of black metal, includingVarg Vikernes who is interviewed in prison, where he was incarcerated for killing a bandmate. The film attempts to unravel the truth behind the church burnings and murders committed by a group of young musicians the media called "Satanists", but who, in reality, had far different motives. The film focuses mainly on the events surrounding the genesis, rise, and continuation of the genre and the people that created it. Before the documentary, we saw a short 2 minute film, Delmer Builds a Machine, about a little boy who builds a God-killing machine.

Ready, Set, Bag!

Follows a group of hopefuls to the National Grocer's Association Best Baggers Competition in Las Vegas. Before R, S, B!, we saw an 11 minute short feature, In Brilliant, about two high school seniors in Brilliant, Alabama with different world views and ambitions.

Barbershop Punk

Keeping the independent/punk spirit alive, barbershop quartet fan Robb Topolski takes on the nation’s largest cable company, only to find himself at the center of a federal investigation, inspiring a larger story of censorship, individual voice and access.

and Cleanflix

Dozens of Utah DVD retailers attracted unwanted attention from Hollywood heavyweights when, in the name of conservative family values, they began sanitizing films of sex, nudity, profanity, and violence. Outraged over the unauthorized editing of their work, prominent filmmakers began to speak out, thrusting the two groups into an intense legal, theoretical,
and moral battle that would last six years before coming to a shocking conclusion.

Narrative Features

Dogtooth

A hyper-stylized mixture of physical violence and verbal comedy, Dogtooth is a darkly funny look at three teenagers confined to their parents’s isolated country estate and kept under strict rule and regimen — an inscrutable scenario that suggests a warped experiment in social conditioning and control. Terrorized into submission by their father, the children spend their days devising their own games and learning an invented vocabulary (a salt shaker is a “telephone,” an armchair is “the sea”) — until a trusted outsider, brought in to satisfy the son’s libidinal urges, starts offering forbidden VHS tapes in return for sexual favors.

Human Centipede

During a stopover in Germany in the middle of a carefree roadtrip through Europe, two American girls find themselves alone at night when their car breaks down in the woods. Searching for help at a nearby villa, they are wooed into the clutches of a deranged retired surgeon who explains his mad scientific vision to his captives’ utter horror. They are to be the subjects of his sick lifetime fantasy: to be the first to connect people, one to the next, via their gastric system, and in doing so bring to life 'the human centipede'.

Mars

A new space race is born between NASA and the ESA when Charlie Brownsville, Hank Morrison, and Dr. Casey Cook compete against an artificially intelligent robot to find out what's up there on the red planet. 'Mars' follows these three astronauts on the first manned mission to our galactic neighbor. On the way they experience life threatening accidents, self doubts, obnoxious reporters, and the boredom of extended space travel.

This romantic comedy is told in the playful style of a graphic novel- using a unique animation process that director Geoff Marslett developed specifically for the film. Underneath the silliness Mars is also an exploration of exploration. Why do we want to know what is out there? How do we react to what we find? Is it really that important? And where does love fit into the whole thing?

Evil Things
On January 9th 2009, 5 college students left New York City for a weekend in the country. 48 hours later, all 5 students simply vanished without a trace. There were no leads and no evidence...until now. Before Evil Things, we saw The Tub, a 12 minute short film. A man accidentally impregnates his tub. Morbidly funny.

Short Films

The Thing About Being an Assassin
An intimate and impressionistic look at a super-sly assassin working in the realm of the ultra-business class.

Detour
Jason and Christine were a couple in love. But things begin to turn one-sided when communication breaks down.

A Dread of Red
In order to spend eternity with her vampire fiance, Trina must first deal with his blood phobia.

Fertile
An infertile breast pump salesperson deals with having to choose a sperm donor.

Girl in the Box
A creepy box, an evil man and a girl in a scary situation. We love the silly, scary, gory slasher flicks of the 1980's. Our inspiration came from the horror films that we rented as kids based solely on the video box art (such as 'Happy Birthday To Me.' 'April Fool's Day' and 'Sleepaway Camp') that always had trailers for equally campy movies that revealed the entire plot - ending and all - that we were too lazy to fast forward through.

Lucy in Lala
Lucy lives in her own world. She likes to jog on Saturdays. She has an awful imagination. She has a warped sense of humor. She just can’t seem to make it work. Lucy will do whatever she can to relieve herself of a crappy life.
The Lost Interviews
a series of job interviews highlighting the poor state of the corporate job market.

Overreacting
Brian (Clifton Lewis) is dumped by his girlfriend Claire (Jennifer Leonard). After the breakup, Brian is talking to his friends John (Marc Patterson) and Derrick (Clark Andrews) about why he loves Claire. Brian retraces the steps of his relationship, struggling to remember the day he and Claire first met. When confronted with the question 'Why do you love her?', Brian doesn't have an answer. That is, until his memories help him rediscover the small things in life and 'Claire-ify' what's worth fighting for.

A Face in the Woods
A young man runs out of gas on his way to his mother’s funeral in this haunting yet spiritual look at the grieving process.