22 October 2009

Chicago International Film Festival recap

Saturday, 10/10
Raging Sun, Raging Sky, Mexico, A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAvW4I6lMFs

Sunday, 10/11
A Frozen Flower, South Korea, A-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvG4rvI8HBw
Mother, South Korea, B+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rDeNM-M8p8

Monday, 10/12
Vincere, Italy, B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69f_Z4i_Vj8
Case Unknown, Poland, C-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6fzvHyq4uY

Tuesday, 10/13
Police, Adjective, Romania, B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpAbFoWwjJY
Eastern Plays, Bulgaria, B-
http://cineuropa.org/ffocustrailer.aspx?lang=en&treeID=2015&documentID=112248

Thursday, 10/15
Hidden Diary, France/Canada, C
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPKNZimsQBc

Friday, 10/16
Who's Afraid of the Wolf?, Czech Republic, A
http://vimeo.com/3005565
Women in Trouble, USA, B+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5-UoltzDBk
The Rapture of Fe, Philippines, B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBh5jYaVmmQ

Saturday, 10/17
Made in Hungaria, Hungary, B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSz3QKQR0Fo
Backyard, Mexico, A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMeBfNAAnvQ
A Woman's Way, Greece, A+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30vAhfZ53F4

Sunday, 10/18
Eyes Wide Open, Israel, B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnKfBvlZAcM
The Thank You Girls, The Phillipines, C
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwyQ6Bjdfgw

Monday, 10/19
Will Not Stop There, Serbia, B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4b168J3SfA
A Single Man, USA, D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tCxRO67gyk

Tuesday, 10/20
Ricky, France, B+
http://www.francois-ozon.com/en/videos
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, B-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jU3AimFaz0

Wednesday, 10/21, Best of the Festival
Fish Tank, UK, A-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg1yMOdjyp0
Hipsters, Russia, A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Geb5zO4co

4 comments:

  1. Fish Tank was probably my favorite film that screened at the Chicago International Film Festival this year. Really, A for Raging Sun, Raging Sky?

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  2. Hmm, I guess I don't get my comments emailed to me. I don't know about Raging Sun, Raging Sky. I know a lot of people hated it. I've seriously never seen so many people walk out of anything in my life. It was kind of distracting and funny because I was so enthralled somehow. Even the people I was with left before the two hour mark. I thought it was mesmerizing. I don't know how many people I'd recommend it to since it's explicitly homoerotic and since I doubt I'd have appreciated it if I hadn't taken that experimental film and video class in college...

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  3. I always get the impression Julián Hernández is trying to alienate his audience, like he gets a kick out of it...

    But I know the feeling you just explained. When I saw Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool, most of the audience ditched it well before it ended (and it's nearly a third the length of Raging Sun). I was as enthralled as you were, and yet, its near absence of dialogue, narrative conventions and explanation really bothered most of the other people at the screening.

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  4. It's funny, I ran into the professor of that experimental film and video class in a bar one day and told him I liked the class but it was funny because the first day we watched these really exciting, fun movies and the rest of the semester it was all kinds of abstract movies about sand or refracted light. He said that their main objective in the course was to teach us to get past the boredom that comes from watching, say, a sixty-two minute film of light refracted through a glass ashtray and think about it instead. I thought it seemed like a dirty track at the time and while I in fact slept through most of Brakhage's Text of Light I kind of appreciate it all these years later because it definitely made me more patient with films. Like, I'm not sure I would have been able to enjoy The Headless Woman, let alone Raging Sun, Raging Sky, if I hadn't been forced to endure Stan Brakhage and so forth.

    ReplyDelete