The Roma Independent Film Festival 2006 Day One:       Ok, the first film I saw was from the US called “A New Wave” and it was absolutely terrible. A waste of perfectly good 35mm film and 97 minutes of my life. Basically the story involves a sensible guy who works in a bank but really wants to be a painter and his wacky friend who is obsessed with movies. The wacky friend comes up with a plan to rob the bank which he writes out in screenplay form giving himself, the sensible guy and some random black guy with a bad british accent aliases from Reservoir Dogs. Before the heist goes down, the sensible guy backs out because he’s been given the chance to show his paintings in New York City. However, the other two decide to go through with the robbery, botch it and wind up getting the sensible guy who was working at the bank shot by the police. The story was predictable, the acting was awful and I’ve seen better films come out of high school. It was a depressing start to the film festival.       After the first film I didn’t have high hopes for the rest of the line up for the evening. Fortunately, the films got much better. I saw 4 Italian short films which were all wonderful, but the highlight of the evening was the Irish film “Short Order”. It was a beautifully shot film combining musical dance numbers, sex, food, murder and Moby Dick. The film was the directorial debut of Anthony Byrne, a 30 year old Irish filmmaker who I wish great success and I hope that I might see more from him in the future. The trailer is up on the film's official site www.shortorderthemovie.com. Day Two:       I arrived at the film festival in time to see a B&W 16mm short film from Russia called “The Door”. I still have no clue what it was about, aside from their being a door in it. After that there were three short Canadian films. One was a very cool computer animated short about a giant robot eating a kid’s homework. Another one was a creepy, almost TOOL like, stop motion animation about the life of half of a man. Apparently, the life of a half man sucks and he should be very careful about taking a shower because his guts will go down the drain. The last of the shorts was about a couple arguing about money at a coffee shop.       After the shorts there were two feature length Canadian films. One was a very well done documentary about a Canadian oil company and its effects in Ecuador called “Between Midnight and the Rooster’s Crow”. Nadja Drost visits the regions in Ecuador where a giant oil pipeline pumping crude waste into the ocean has been built. She talks to the locals about the methods used to take their land and the damages that have been caused due to the pipeline. It was one of those documentaries that, as cliché as it sounds, really makes you think. The second film was a mockumentary called “The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico”. The film was about the life of a country folk singer from Alberta, Canada who spent most of his time drinking, doing drugs and hanging out with midgets. It was a fairly entertaining film, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to rush out to the theaters to see it.       The following piece of cinema was an award winning film from Norway called Vinterkyss (Kissed by Winter). The story was incredibly sad. A mother and father lose their son to Leukemia. The father blames the mother for his death because she was a doctor and should have noticed the symptoms, and she blames herself as well. So, she moves to a small community in Norway and works in the clinic. While there, the body of a young man is found dead. The death is a complete mystery to everyone in the town. The doctor becomes caught up in the strange death while trying to piece together her own life. The film was directed by Sara Johnsen and it’s very beautiful... but definitely sad.       Next was a very cute short animation by Joanna Davidovich from the Savannah College of Art and Design. It was about a lonely girl whose attitude towards life changes after meeting a very angry cat.       The last film of the evening was an American film called “Self Medicated”. It was basically “Good Will Hunting” meets “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” meets after school special. It wasn’t a bad movie, it certainly beat the hell out of “A New Wave”, it was just so sappy. It’s about a 17 year old high school student named Andrew who is incredibly intelligent but just doesn’t care anymore because his father passed away. Instead, he spends his time drinking, driving, doing drugs and yelling at his mother. So, his mother has him shipped off to a special hospital/prison for troubled youths. Andrew, of course, doesn’t take to this too well and uses his intelligence to shake up the system and escape. After returning home and yelling at his mother some more, Andrew meets a random homeless man who talks to him and turns Andrew’s life around. Apparently all Andrew actually needed was just to say that he misses his dad. In the end, Andrew and his mother become a family again and they spread the father’s ashes in the mountains. Day Three:       Sunday’s lineup started off strong with a wonderfully absurd and charming comedy from Belgium called “L’Iceberg”. Fiona, a woman working at a fast-food restaurant, accidentally locks herself in the freezer one night. The next day her employees find her and send her home to her husband and two children who haven’t noticed that she was missing because they were too wrapped up in their daily routines. After the freezer incident, Fiona has these “Close Encounter” style visions of an iceberg that she desperately has to go to. So, she leaves and meets a sailor who is deaf and dumb that will take her to find the iceberg. The rest of the film follows her and the sailor, who are being followed by Fiona’s husband, as they attempt to reach the iceberg. There is very little dialogue in the film. The film relies mostly on physical comedy inspired by the great silent film comedians such as Chaplin and Keaton. In fact, most of the scenes are completely improvised. The film feels very new and different, but also very familiar. I hope that it does well and that more people will have the chance to experience it.       There were four short films following “L’Iceberg”. The first was from Switzerland called “Il Barbiere” which basically played on the idea of what barbers actually do all day since there are never any customers in their shops. The next short was an experimental film from France called “Undo”. It was a montage of clips of historical tragedies played in reverse. Next was an odd film from Lebanon called “Well Played”. I think I would have understood it better if I knew more about their culture, but at the end of the film a Muslim woman, completely covered in the traditional female garments, jump kicks a soccer ball over her head, and that was awesome! The last short was a beautiful animated film from France called “Imago”. It was very sweet. Day Four:       On Monday not only was their a full line up of films showing at the Embassy Cinema, but there was also a small group of films playing at the Hotel Claridge near the theater. I decided to go to the hotel because they were showing animation, a medium that I have great interest in. Unfortunately, the folks at the hotel had the wrong DVD and I sat through the same animation that I had already seen (Giant Robot Ate My Homework, Half Man, and Juxtaposer) along with three other shorts that I will be seeing on Wednesday. Not that the films were bad, I enjoyed being able to see them again, I was just hoping to see the line up that was listed on the web. I feel bad for the filmmakers whose films were not actually shown due to the mixup, not that it mattered that much considering that I was the only one there.       The evening, however, was not a total disappointment. There was also an exhibition from Art Park Productions (www.artpark.fr) showing at the hotel. Art Park is a production company in Paris that produces all sorts of films by young filmmakers all over the world. They were showing a series of films from a project called Film Fabrik (http://artpark.fr/filmfabrik/filmfabrik_main.htm). These 9 films were all shot in a factory over the course of five weeks. They were all really unique. I spent the rest of the evening hanging out with the filmmakers and talking about independent film in Europe and Kansas. Emails and web addresses were exchanged and perhaps some new film relationship was born that night... we'll see. Day Five:       On Tuesday I returned to the Hotel Claridge to hang out with the Art Park people some more. After that I walked over to the theater to start off my full evening of film. First up was a short film from the New York Film Academy in London called "Reverie". It was a very beautiful and symbolic piece about a female painter remembering being abused by her father as a child. This was followed by a much lighter film from Holland called "The Driving Test". This comedic short was about a middle-aged woman taking her driving test for the 26th time and having very little luck with it due to her examiner's increasingly heated argument with his wife.       After the two shorts there was a feature from India called "Dreaming Lhasa". Karma-la is a filmmaker from New York who goes to Dharamsala, India to make a documentary on the former political prisoners who escaped from Tibet. While there she meets Dhondup, an ex-monk who is on a quest to find a man named Loga. Dhondup was given Loga's "gahu", a Tibetan charm box, by his dying mother and he must return it. Karma becomes enrapt in helping Dhondup and learning more about Tibet's past and the people fighting for it's freedom. It was a very well done film.       Next there were two more shorts. The first was from the American Film Institute Directing Workshop for Women called "Laying Down Arms". The film is about Janet, a suicidal young woman who was abandoned by her mother. One evening she receives a phone call from an elderly Jewish woman who mistakes Janet for her estranged daughter. Janet plays along in an attempt to make the old woman happy and winds up hearing a secret from the woman's experiences during the Holocaust. The film is an interesting mix of Janet's childhood memories and newsreel footage from the Holocaust.       The second short was a rather "Tales from the Crypt" style story from Germany called "Der Beste". An animator, who is apparently "the best", is lured to a castle by a mysterious woman who is in need of his services. He ends up becoming trapped by his own craft.       The last film I saw that evening was a feature from the Netherlands called "Off Screen". The film was based on the true events when a 59 year old bus driver took hostages in the Rembrandt Tower in Amsterdam for a day. The man is protesting against Phillip's widescreen televisions because he thinks there are hidden codes in the black bars on the side. The film creates a backstory for the bus driver. His wife, daughter and grandchildren have all left him, he is assaulted by an angry passenger and shortly after that he loses his job working for the bus company. During all of this, John, the bus driver, makes friends with the CEO of Phillips who tells him of secret plans and conspiracies involved in the company. This leads John to hold up the tower. Unfortunately, John's relationship with the CEO is all in his head and his plan is a bust. The film keeps the audience on it's toes even when there is little or no action happening. They get caught up in the John as a human being and then also in his conspiracy theories up until the end. There is a bit of a "Beautiful Mind" feel to the film, but Jan Decleir does a better job of acting than Russell Crowe. Day Six:       Ah, Wednesday started off with a great American short film called “Christ in the City”. Jesus returns to earth to see “The Passion of the Christ” and is appalled by the film’s focus on his brutal death. After seeing the film, Jesus then realizes that he has arrived on earth on the Sabbath and he has to find a synagogue before sunset. The film is fantastically funny but also makes some good points about religion and commercialism.       “Christ in the City” was followed by the Australian feature film “Ra Choi”. The film follows four street kids in Sydney as they do whatever they can to eat, sleep and buy or quit drugs. It’s a very gritty film that is almost hard to watch at some points. The stories and situations that effect the four protagonists are actually based on true events that happened to real street kids in Sydney, which is rather frightening. The film took three years to make and is the first feature film for director Mickael Frank.       Next in the lineup was an Italian documentary film about internet dating called “E L’Amore?” It was very interesting to see the Italian take on online dating. There were some intriguing opinions about dating through the computer and on being single. These weren’t opinions that I would normally associate with Italians, so I found the film to be very enlightening.       There were several Italian short films after the documentary, but I didn’t like them as much as the ones shown on the first night. The first two were rather experimental and did not have subtitles. Experimental films are hard enough to understand when you can speak the language, let alone when it’s foreign. This probably added to my dislike of those two particular films. The other three shorts were much easier to understand. One involved a man in big trouble with a gang and a nun who is praying for money. Both of their problems are solved by a miracle. The next short was about a man attempting to write a love note in the front of a book of poems but keeps making mistakes and having to buy new books. The last Italian short was incredibly creepy. Not Stephen King creepy, but very realistically scary. It’s called “First Rendezvous” and it’s about a woman who goes on a blind date only to wind up being taken back to her date’s house and brutally killed. What’s so eerie about the film, aside from the general concept, is that the audience hears the woman’s thoughts as she is being beaten to death. Thoughts from her first impressions of the man, thoughts about where her car keys are, if he locked the door, if she could crawl to the bathroom, if anyone can hear her scream and wondering what death will feel like. The film was brilliantly done, but, boy, those images and sounds don’t fade.       There were two animated films following the Italian shorts which I had seen at the Hotel Claridge on Monday afternoon. One was a German film called “X” which involved a space traveler being captured by some giant machine that makes clones of the spaceman and his ship. The second film was from Iran called “Zero Degree”. It was a very odd computer animated film where a soldier is caught within the frame of a camera and the camera is not very happy. Day Seven:       The final day of film screenings at the festival did not disappoint. The first film shown was from China entitled “Waiting”. It was a short about a woman who is raped by one of the painters repainting the outside of the apartment building. After a few nights of fear, the woman sets a trap and winds up killing her rapist. Soon after this event, she finds out that she is pregnant with the rapist’s baby. She goes to an abortion clinic, but then decides to keep the child. The film was made by the Chinese director Lu Jun and was based on a true story that he read in a newspaper in Beijing. I had the opportunity to speak with Lu Jun after the screening and we discussed his future projects and my attempts at stop motion animation. In the end, he gave me his card, I gave him my website written on a piece of scrap paper and perhaps yet another film relationship was formed.       After “Waiting” was an American documentary about the innovative musical genious, Bernie Worrel. The film discussed how Worrel’s music and revolutionary synthesizer sounds have been imitated and copied by all genre’s. He is one of the most sampled musicians in hip-hop history. And, yet, no one, outside of the music industry, has ever heard of him.       Several short films followed the documentary. The first was a comedy from Ireland about grave robbing called “Death’s Mailing”. The second was a rather sad animation from South Korea called “Cosmic Tree”. The film was about a small boy working in a factory who hates being alone and wants to fly away, this results in him jumping off the roof of his apartment building. The next short was another animation from South Korea and was one of the shorts that I had seen at the Hotel Claridge called “The Tree”. This film explains that babies are actually grown on a tree from a tiny island guarded by a little old lady. When the baby is nice and ripe, some storks show up on the island and the little old lady turns into a ravenous beast attempting to get rid of the troublesome birds. The storks prove to be more than she can handle and they carry the fresh baby to its new home. The animation for this film is very intriguing. I don’t really know how to describe it. Basically, when the characters turn, they are flat for a moment, but there’s more involved than that. As I say, I can’t really explain it. There may be a clip of it on the web or something that you can see and then you can say “Oh, so that’s what Sammy was talking about, she’s not as crazy as she looks. I should bake her a cake.”       Next there was a feature film from Argentina called “After the Sea”. It was a really odd film, it felt very post-apocalyptic with dialogue almost like a Samuel Beckett play. For some reason, people are evacuating, the audience doesn’t know where from, where to or why. One character is a writer who is obsessed with his piano, he won’t go anywhere without it, which makes evacuating rather difficult considering it’s a full grand piano. Out in the middle of nowhere he meets a prostitute and the two of them join together on a journey to who knows where. The film was very interesting to watch because of the information not given to the audience, the characters don’t even have names. It’s amazing to get so enthralled in a story that seems to have no definite beginning or end and practically no action.       The last film of the evening was an Italian short made through the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. It was called “In Famiglia” and the story was rather familiar, but it was well shot.