Friday afternoon, I went to the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA to catch a few selections of the 10th annual Boston Underground Film Festival. In the program book, the organizers make the following introduction: "This year's lineup is loaded with the type of appropriately demented cinematic goodies that you've come to expect from us: homicidal teddy bears, zombies, acid-casualty eyecandy, and so much blood. SO MUCH BLOOD."
And it was true. There was a lot of blood. A LOT OF BLOOD.
Enter Joy with like-minded partner in crime: the target audience. I figured we'd have a Real Good Time. And I was right. We caught two shows, and this is a review for the first of them: Hyperreel, a program of assorted short films with no particular unifying theme but for a film-buff passion for tricksy, cinematic fireworks and an exceptional darkness.
THE REVIEWS:
Dach - Timo Langer & Robert Glassford, 9 min.
This short film struck me with some great interior shots and lovely grim sounds. Editing was marvelous and the story was gruesomely funny, with an old woman sitting in her apartment listening to music on headphones while 50 young people throw themselves from the roof of her building one by one, dependent on the rolling of dice. I see lots of David Lynch here, but what the heck. Worth watching again.
Some of an Equation - Burke Robert, 8 min.
This film was done in a single shot set to relentless music as a distracted driver fiddling with his car stereo hits and kills a child, then experiences a total mental breakdown, all in eight minutes. The repetitive, disturbing music is what keeps the ending resonating despite the obviousness of the conclusion.
Poland Nights - Martin Gauvreau, 18 min.
Though I am a true fan of art films, and parts of this short feature were beautiful, I confess I found this film an unpleasant muddle overall. The blurb in the festival guide says, "Deconstructed storyline, mutants, alternate realities," which sounds fascinating, until you get there and the film feels half slapstick comedy, half incomprehensible monster movie. Wouldn't watch this one again.
The Seed - Joe Hahn, 13 min.
My second favorite film in this selection, The Seed is about an anonymous, martial-arts-capable, possibly undercover military dude fighting for his life in an anonymous modern cityscape. A mysterious stranger shows up with a fractured story about some sort of cloaking technology that can conceal people and buildings and what-have-you from common view. The camera work was great, the editing was great, the music was great (I think we saw Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park in the credits) and story was interesting and coherent despite the creative cutting and shifting going on. I'll be looking for more films from Joe Hahn in the future.
Red Princess Blues - Alex Ferrar & Dan Cregan, 14 min.
Not my favorite film in this collection, Red Princess Blues is a short animated preview of a longer anime feature. I found the animation uninspired (the animation style was minimalist and rather dull to my uneducated eye) and there just wasn't enough time to develop a story. A girl finds a bunch of library books full of knives and guns and becomes some sort of super hero. It could be cool, that premise, but not much is done with it, and I don't think I'll be eagerly looking for the feature film.
Light & Darkness: The Rogue - Zach Lebeau, 16 min.
My least favorite of the bunch: The decent camera work, nice lighting, and interesting premise is slaughtered by the Vampire-the-Masquerade role-playing-game dialog, as two agents of some secret clan of something or other invade a house to slaughter an entire family sitting down to dinner. Through mind-control, they send the rich family's body guard through the house to kill everyone, except one of the children, who apparently is some sort of "chosen one" (good lord, not the chosen child thing, please no!) The worst dialog occurs between the two agents as they debate whether or not to kill the child, who is washed with a light bath straight out of a soap-opera dream sequence. "But if we do it, we won't Ascend!" (dun-dun-dun!) I'm going to give the full-length feature a miss.
Akai - Carlos G. Gananian, 23 min.
I'm so happy the organizer of the collection saved this one for last. Yep, it's an angsty vampire film. Nope, it doesn't really have anything to add to the existing literature on the subject. But it's pretty and the actor is spookily compelling with large, liquid eyes, and sculpted lips, and the photography is poetry with light. I would plunk down some serious cash for a still of the naked vampire lying on his side in the empty, claw-foot bathtub. The atmosphere was so very oppressive, I found myself bent double with longing for a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels so I could clean the 50 years of dried blood from the entire set, but it was just gorgeous in its sticky, dusty, lonely, overwhelming grime. I came out of the Boston Underground Film Festival a fan of Carlos G. Gananian.
Stayed tuned for my review of the feature film: La Belle Bete
