Photo caption: Michael James Kelly and Elizabeth Hirsch-Tauber in Clinton Cornwell’s 12 MONTHS, world premiere at Cinequest. Courtesy of Cinequest.
Make your plans now to stream from the 2022 Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival. This year’s fest will again be online as Cinejoy, scheduled for April 1 through April 17. Cinequest is a significant showcase for independent film, documentaries and world cinema., and this year presents 132 Films and Television from 53 countries. The 2022 program includes features from Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Iceland, Serbia, the UK, Canada, Uruguay, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Jordan and Australia.
82 of the movies are world or US premieres – be in the FIRST AUDIENCE to see these films. You can stream the vast majority of the premiering films for the cost of an espresso drink. Here’s where you can peruse the program and buy your pass/tickets.
I’ve already screened almost ten Cinejoy films, and I’ll be posing my recommendations by the end of this week.
This is the twelfth year that I’ve covered Cinequest, and, as usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. Bookmark my CINEQUEST 2022page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Thursday, March 31st). Follow me on Twitter for the latest.
Lidia Vitale in Gabriele Fabbro’s THE GRAND BOLERO at Cinequest.
EVERYTHING IN THE END, available to stream from Cinequest’s CINEJOY.
Cinequest’s online festival CINEJOY begins on November 4 and runs through November 17. Here are my top five recommendations:
Willow: This triptych by Oscar-nominated master Macedonian filmmaker Milcho Manchevski plumbs the heartaches and joys of having children; there’s a scene in the final vignette with a mother and son in a car that is one of the most amazing scenes I’ve ever seen. Manchevski’s Before the Rain was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1994. Most recently, he directed my choice as the best film of the 2017 Cinequest, Bikini Moon. Special live online event: Manchevski will appear at the screening at 10:30 AM PST on November 11.
Everything in the End: The “End” in the title of this powerful think piece means, literally, the end of the world. Set in a future where climate change has made human extinction certain and imminent, the story imagines how people would react as they understand that they have only a few days left. More profound than grim, End of Everything takes the sensationalism out of the apocalypse and leaves the humanity. Set in the stark beauty of Iceland, this is a visual stunner.
Travel Ban: Make America Laugh Again: a serious film about misunderstanding and bigotry with some hilarious comedy by American Muslim stand-up comics.
Demon: On the lam from some aggressive bill collectors, Ralph hides out in an off-the-track motel. It doesn’t take long for things to get odd and then surreal. Ralph’s journey to this most mundane setting becomes nightmarish, but this darkly funny film is not really a horror movie. As the lead actor, Ryan Walker-Edwards is very appealing in his feature film debut. This is also the first feature for director and co-writer George Louis Bartlett.
Mister Candid Camera: This is an affectionate but clear-eyed biodoc of Allen Funt, who originated the iconic television show Candid Camera and, in the process, invented reality television. It’s written, directed and extremely well-sourced by Allen Funt’s son (and Camera Candid performer) Peter Funt. Peter Funt reveals the secret sauce of the show (e.g., calibrating just how mean can you be without becoming cruel). Baby Boomers will especially appreciate the insider’s look at Allen Funt himself and the nostalgic glimpses of sidekick Durwood Kirby, etc. Everyone will enjoy the classic clips, including the talking mailbox, split automobile and the hilarious utterances of little kids.
Ryan Walker-Edwards in DEMON. World premiere at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Zersetzung Films.
Other films at CINEJOY imclude:
12 Days of Christmas: High school friends reunite when they’re home for their first college Christmas break. They all get down to some serious partying, but two of them must deal with a serious issue. I didn’t buy the unrequited love at the core of the story.
Adventures in Success: This broad comedy traces the misadventures of a self-help retreat center led by a self-described energy transformationist who claims to have experienced a 12-hour orgasm. Her movement is centered on the female orgasm, the mantra is Jilling Off, and the sessions are essentially orgies where men are not allowed to ejaculate. Opens with an impressive 28-second performance of urination art.
Agua Rosa: First-time writer-directors Miguel López Valdivia and Ca Silva use the camera brilliantly in this 71-minute Mexican relationship drama.
Closet: This offbeat dramedy is about one of those quirky only-in-Japan things, like capsule hotels and golf in highrise buildings. Reeling from a breakup, Jin gets a job with a non-sexual escort service where insomniac clients pay him to cuddle with them as they try to get to sleep. Given his recent medical and relationship traumas and the weirdness of his new job, Jin (Yosuke Minokawa) often looks bewildered.
Events Transpiring Before, During and After a High School Basketball Game: The humor in this Canadian indie comedy– along the same lines as in The Office and Parks and Recreation – just doesn’t get close to that level. Cast and screenplay were shooting for deadpan, but only reached dead.
Far East Deep South: In this genealogy documentary, a Northern California Chinese-American family is stunned to discover that they have roots in Mississippi.
Fox Hunt Drive: A woman works as a rideshare driver at night to make the rent and subsidize her futile daytime job search. She picks up a ride who may be a serial killer, and we’re all off on one wild ride. There is a gobsmacking plot twist.
Non Western: This aspirational documentary has a lot going for it: an intriguing and underseen setting (the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana) and masterful cinéma vérité filmmaking by Laura Plancarte. But the film is undone by its very subjects – a talented woman with low self-esteem hitches to a guy who poses as traditional – but he’s just a dick.
See You Then: This two-hander, which could have been titled My Dinner with Kris, reunites two close college friends after a decade of estrangement. The dramatic power is undercut by a Big Reveal which is too predictable to be shocking.
Welcome to the Show: This indie comedy plunges the characters and the audience into a puzzle. Four college-age guys, always up for a party, blow off Thanksgiving with their parents to party, but the joke is on them. What is being done to them? By whom? Why? And just where the hell are they? Are they in a elaborate party game or inside a piece of performance art? Or is this a prank or something more sinister? They don’t know and neither does the audience.
Peruse the entire lineup and buy streaming tickets at CINEJOY.
The ever vibrant Summertime is about giving voice, the voice of mostly young Los Angelenos, expressing themselves mostly through poetry. Stretching across LA from Venice Beach to Crenshaw, director Carlos López Estrada takes us to the neighborhoods that we often see and those we don’t; he introduces us to marginalized kids who share dreams and despair in one kinetic poetry slam.
I can’t remember hearing so much poetry in a movie. Some of the poetry is rapped. This really isn’t a musical, but there are a few songs and one very powerful dance, taking over the street outside a Jons for a female manifesto responding to toxic masculinity. And some warmly goofy, multi-generational dancing erupts in the kitchen of a Korean restaurant. We glimpse the visual arts, too, including a brief montage of LA murals.
Summertime is a series of loosely connected vignettes, some better than others, with different art forms, characters and neighborhoods. The most powerful is the poem Shallow, written and performed by Marquesha Babers; it’s about a young woman who finally confronts a cruel remark about her appearance that had emotionally devastated her.
Director Estrada (Blindspotting) and cinematographer John Schmidt clearly love Los Angeles – especially the everyday LA that most of us never see.
You could pair Summertime with In the Heights for an exuberant, youth- oriented double feature. Or you could match Summertime with I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) in a festival of underrepresented LA.
Someone has to manage the fast food store, and someone has to drive the limo. Invisible in their own city, the characters in Summertime demand to be seen and heard. One uses a spray can of paint and another weaponizes Yelp. They all have something to say.
This is a good movie – and it’s sui generis. I missed Summertime at this year’s Cinequest, but you can stream it from Frameline through Sunday night, June 27.
Photo caption: Charlie Tahan and Pineapple Tangaroa in DRUNK BUS. Photo courtesy of Filmrise.
In the light and appealing coming of age comedy Drunk Bus, a young slacker (Charlie Tahan) is paralyzed by the disappointment of a breakup. He’s stuck driving the shuttle between a college town’s bars and the dorms (the “Drunk Bus”). One running gag is that he is fixated upon an ex girlfriend that every other man in America would find insufferably frustrating.
He needs someone to shake him up, which is what he gets in the form of a 300-pound Samoan security guy with facial tattoos (Pineapple Tangaroa). It’s all sweet and predictable.
This is the first feature for co-directors John Carlucci and Brandon LaGanke.
I screened Drunk Bus, which had played at the 2020 SXSW, in March at the 2021 Cinequest. It’s now available to stream from Laemmle.
Filmmaker Jan Senko’s dad Frank in THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD
How the hell did we get here – a moment when millions of Americans believe stuff that demonstrably isn’t true – and have this misconceptions drive them into unrighteous rage? For insight, let’s look at the prescient 2016 documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad, which saw some of this nightmare coming.
In 2016, I wrote, “Ever notice how people who watch a lot of Fox News or listen to talk radio become bitter, angry and, most telling, fact-resistant?” Then I couldn’t imagine an assault on a the US Capitol by propaganda-intoxicated hillbilly barbarians. In The Brainwashing of My Dad, filmmaker Jan Senko explores how right-wing media impacts the mood and personality of its consumers as well as their political outlook. Senko uses her own father Frank as a case study.
We see Frank Senko become continually mad and, well, mean. And we hear testimony about many, many others with the identical experience. Experts explain the existence of a biological addiction to anger.
Senko traces the history of right-wing media from the mid-1960s, with the contributions of Lewis Powell, Richard Nixon, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Senko even gets right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz on camera to explain the power of buzz words. If you don’t know this story (Hillary was right about the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”) , Senko spins the tale very comprehensively. If you do know the material (and my day job is in politics), it is methodical.
This topic is usually explored for its impact on political opinion. Senko’s focus on mood and personality is original and The Brainwashing of My Dad contributes an important addition to the conversation. One last thing about the brainwashing of Senko’s dad – it may not be irreversible…
I first reviewed The Brainwashing of My Dad for its U.S. Premiere at Cinequest 2016. The Brainwashing of My Dad is available streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
My choice as the Must See in this year’s Cinequest was the Canadian indie Lune, an astonishingly authentic exploration of bipolar disorder. In the film, Miriam and her teen daughter Eliza must navigate the impacts of the mom’s illness. I spoke wih writer and co-director Aviva Armour-Ostroff, who also starred as Miriam.
I asked Armour-Ostroff what drew her to the topic of bipolar disorder? She replied “My dad is Miriam. The character of Eliza is based on me.” Wow. There you have it – the key to the authenticity of Lune. “I was so clearly loved by my dad, and we were so close.“
Armour-Ostroff’s parents split when she was a baby, and her dad was her primary care giver during some years in her childhood and youth. He could go an entire year without a bipolar episode. But when she was a teenager, he suffered one or two episodes per year, each lasting two or three months.
“I think there are so many people who, when they are depressed, can’t get off the rug, and, when manic, can’t harness the energy to achieve anything.“
Miriam is the most singular movie character I’ve seen in a while. Her streams of manic speech have the rhythm of poetry like rap or beat poetry. Armour-Ostroff says that her dad was highly intelligent and talked rapidly, like that. “with the tangents and then the change of topics, a lot of wordplay.” She credited her dad, Brian Ostroff, as a co-writer of Lune.
You can see Brian Ostroff himself in a three-minute forty-second documentary, Dr. Bro’s Traveling Medicine Show, that is embedded on Cinequest’s Lune page. Armour-Ostroff describes his state in the clip as “6 on a manic scale.” He had nicknamed himself Dr. Bro.
Armour-Ostroff has made Miriam funny, but not only a subject of comedy, and neither harmless nor a dangerous monster. “He (her father) never had the right concoctions (of medication). My hope is that people can see both the humor and the danger, without stereotypes.“
Despite the rockiness of her upbringing, the character of Eliza seems very well adjusted. Armour-Ostroff notes that the phenomenon of child-as-caregiver is common in such situations. But there was an impact – “In my 20s, I developed anxiety because I needed so much control.”
Miriam’s back story is as a fervent anti-apartheid advocate but, during a psychotic episode, she hurls a South African racial slur at Eliza’s Black boyfriend. Armour-Ostroff said that this is intended to depict Miriam’s underlyingracial attitude. “It’s the product of her background, not her insanity, I think we need to dive deep and explore our own racism.“
Armour-Ostroff’s half brother is a Dutch musician who only met their father five or six times; he contributed the music played during Lune’s end credits.
Lune‘s next stop on the festival tour is RapidLion – the South African International Film Festival. Armour-Ostroff has returned to her Toronto theater company and is continuing to work on projects with her partner (and Lune co-director) Arturo Pérez Torres.
THE BOYS IN RED HATS. Photo courtesy of Shark Dog Films.
Remember the resulting frenzy when the Kentucky prep school boy at the Lincoln Memorial smirked at the indigenous tribal elder? Documentarian Jonathan Schroder is an alum of that very prep school – Covington Catholic or “CovCath”. In The Boys in Red Hats, his point of view shifts as he peels back the onion on what really happened. It comes down to insights into media, social media and, especially, White privilege.
Like most of us, Schroder was initially outraged at the boys; as more facts emerged, he became sympathetic to what seemed like mistreatment of the boys in social media. Don’t give up on this movie as a whitewash – as the story gets more complicated and Schroder becomes more reflective, his needle sways back and forth until the final payoff.
This was a Rorschach event at the Lincoln Memorial. One thing is for sure, these privileged kids and their chaperones, confronted by a crazy hate group (Black Hebrew Israelites), were unequipped to deal with a momentary convergence of disorder and diversity.
To put my own cards on the table, I am not disposed to sympathize with rich kids who were comfortable in being shipped to an anti-choice rally, wearing MAGA hats. In The Boys in Red Hats, the journalist Anne Branigan’s perspective most resonated with me.
Schroder gives plenty of rope to a professional conservative talking head, two CovCath dads and the school’s alumni director, none of whom display a modicum of sensitivity or empathy to those less rich, less white or less male than they.
Schroder sees the significance when one of his CovCath buddies says, “I like my bubble”. I screened The Boys in Red Hats for its world premiere at Cinequest, and it made my Best of Cinequest 2021.
I’M AN ELECTRIC LAMPSHADE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.
In the winning and surprising documentary I’m an Electric Lampshade, we meet the most improbable rock star – a mild-mannered accountant who retires to pursue his dream of performing.
60-year-old Doug McCorkle is fit for his age and has an unusually mellifluous voice, like a late night FM DJ or the announcer in a boxing ring. Other than that he looks like a total square.
There may be no flamboyance about Doug McCorkle, but it thrives inside him. His own artistic taste is trippy, gender-bending and daring. Think Price Waterhouse Cooper on the outside and Janelle Monáe on the inside.
We follow Doug as he goes to a performance school in the Philippines (where most of his classmates are drag queens) and the montage of his training resembles those in Fame and Flashdance. Doug is a good enough sport to wear MC Hammer pants in a bizarre Filipino yogurt commercial. It all culminates in a concert in Mexico.
Doug’s quest would be a vanity project except he has no apparent vanity. He must have some ego to want to get up on stage, but compared to subjects of other showbiz documentaries, he is most humble, emphatically not self-absorbed and low maintenance. We can tell from how his co-workers, friends and wife react to him, that he is just a profoundly decent guy.
Eminently watchable, this is a successful first feature for writer-director John Clayton Doyle. The stage-setting profile of one of the Filipino artists could have been trimmed, but Lampshade is otherwise well-paced.
The final score: Doug 1, Expectations 0. I screened I’m an Electric Lmpshade for its world premiere at Cinequest, and it made my Best of Cinequest 2021.
I’M AN ELECTRIC LAMPSHADE
I screened I’m an Electric Lampshade for its world premiere at Cinequest, and it made my Best of Cinequest 2021. You can stream it during the festival for only $3.99 at Cinequest’s online Cinejoy.
Derrick Pottle in THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THINGS. Photo courtesy of 2020 Magnitude Productions.
The meditative documentary The Magnitude of All Things explores the emotional response to Climate Change. An Inconvenient Truth is now 15 years old and seems almost quaint today; Al Gore was certainly not an alarmist.
We in California, with our catastrophic wildfires, may think that we are Ground Zero for Climate Change ground zero, but for those that live on flat atolls in the ocean or in the formerly frozen ice and tundra, it’s even more of a RIGHT NOW phenomenon. The Magnitude of All Things takes us from the Amazon to Australia to Labrador. We meet folks from the uber earnest child crusader Greta Thulin to an indigenous youth activist in Amazon.
We see bleached coral reefs (who knew we needed to worry about THAT?) and “snowing” wildfire ash. An indigenous poet surveys the less-frozen North and asks if his grandchildren will see what he sees.
THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THINGS. Photo courtesy of 2020 Magnitude Productions.
With especially beautiful photography, a contemplative pace and New Agey piano music, The Magnitude of All Things reminds us that, while we may be ruining it, we still live on a beautiful planet. Even the fires are beautiful in their terrible way.
How do we face extinction – self-caused extinction? Will the grief overwhelm us? Documentarian Jennifer Abbott’s sister recently died, and Abbott brings us inside her own grieving process as a parallel. One subject suggests, “Make peace with the grief but don’t just give up“.
Are grief and hope exclusive? Or, as Abbott posits, can hope be found within grief?
I screened The Magnitude of All Things at Cinequest, it’s fourth stop on the film festival tour, and the first in the US.
Ryan Walker-Edwards in DEMON. World premiere at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Zersetzung Films.
I written about the the very Best of Cinequest and even more Cinequest films. Here’s my take on the rest.
Demon: On the lam from some aggressive bill collectors, Ralph hides out in an off-the-track motel. It doesn’t take long for things to get odd and then surreal. Ralph’s journey to this most mundane setting becomes nightmarish, but this darkly funny film is not a horror movie. As the lead actor, Ryan Walker-Edwards is very appealing in his feature film debut. This is also the first feature for director and co-writer George Louis Bartlett. I screened Demon for its world premiere at Cinequest.
Yutaka Takeuchi in DRIVE ALL NIGHT, world premiere at Cinequest Photo courtesy of Cinequest..
In Drive All Night, a taciturn night shift cabbie (Yutaka Takeuchi) picks up an alluring and mysterious woman (Lexy Hammonds). She has him take her on a bizarre night ride, and he’s guessing what her secret is. Unfortunately, the dialogue is still and hackneyed, and the payoff just isn’t there. Their ride gets trippy at one point, and there’s a parallel thread with another character, but it doesn’t help.
If you’re from Silicon Valley, you’ll recognize lots of San Jose locations like MiniBoss, the Capri Motel, Western Appliance and I-280.
Drive All Night is the first feature for writer-director Peter Hsieh. Hsieh’s nighttime exterior visuals are superb. So far, he’s a far better director than writer. I screened Drive All Night for its world premiere at Cinequest.
In the light and appealing coming of age comedy Drunk Bus, a young slacker (Charlie Tahan) is paralyzed by the disappointment of a breakup. He’s stuck driving the shuttle between a college town’s bars and the dorms (the “Drunk Bus”) until he is mentored by a 300-pound Samoan security guy with facial tattoos (Pineapple Tangaroa). It’s all sweet and predictable. It’s the first feature for co-directors John Carlucci and Brandon LaGanke. I screened Drunk Bus, which had played at the 2020 SXSW, at Cinequest.
Events Transpiring Before, During, and After a High School Basketball Game: This Canadian indie comedy had the best movie title in Cinequest (an even better title than I’m an Electric Lampshade) and an inviting trailer. But the humor – along the same lines as in The Office and Parks and Recreation – just doesn’t get close to that level. Cast and screenplay were shooting for deadpan, but only reached dead. I screened Events Transpiring… for its world premiere at Cinequest.
Hunting Bigfoot: There are very, very few men who believe that they have personally encountered Bigfoot, and this documentary’s interesting premise is that some of them become obsessed with duplicating those events and returning with scientific evidence that Sasquatch exists. We meet a crew of these guys, of varying degrees of eccentriciy, who devote their spare time to this (so far, futile) pursuit. One of them, John Green, has essentially abandoned civilization and his family to live full time out in what he thinks is Sasquatch habitat. Green’s life journey, with his Bigfoot episode coinciding with crises in his business and his family, would be fascinating for 30 minutes, but doesn’t warrant taking up most of this full length feature. I screened Hunting Bigfoot for its world premiere at Cinequest.
Non Western: This aspirational documentary traces the new marriage of Nanci, a White woman with teen and college-age kids, and Thad, a Cheyenne man. Non Western has a lot going for it: an intriguing and underseen setting (the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana) and masterful cinéma vérité filmmaking by Laura Plancarte. But ts very subject lets us all down. It’s impossible to watch this movie without asking what is she doing with this guy?
Nanci’s childhood was so destitute that she was taken in by a Lakota family on the Pine Ridge Reservation, possibly the most socioeconomically deprived community in the US. Somewhere along the line, she had an unsuccessful relationship that produced these kids. Yet she has overcome all this to get her PhD and a job at a college. But Thad just expects her to do all the housework and wait on him, using his embrace of his Cheyenne traditions as an excuse. He’s not traditional – he’s just a dick. It’s painful to watch this dynamic (along with her kids) and observe how low that Nanci’s self esteem seems to have sunk. The Wife HATED this movie.
Ironically, Thad’s mom, who seems close-minded and cruel throughout most of the film, turns out to be the most interesting character when she finally reveals her own view of traditional family culture. I screened Non Western for its US premiere at Cinequest.
Mister Candid Camera: This is an affectionate but clear-eyed biodoc of Allen Funt, who originated the iconic television show Candid Camera and, in the process, invented reality television. It’s written, directed and extremely well-sourced by Allen Funt’s son (and Camera Candid performer) Peter Funt. Peter Funt reveals the secret sauce of the show (e.g., how mean can you be). Baby Boomers will especially appreciate the insider’s look at Allen Funt himself and the nostalgic glimpses of sidekick Durwood Kirby, etc. Everyone will enjoy the classic clips, including the talking mailbox, split automobile and the hilarious utterances of little kids. I screened Mister Candid Camera for its world premiere at Cinequest.
