[caption id="attachment_11777" align="aligncenter" width="1000"]
Honey Buddies[/caption]
The 2016 Ashland Independent Film Festival will be celebrating its 15th anniversary this April by paying tribute to the roots of independent film.
AIFF will give special emphasis to the intersection of live performance and film, beginning with the opening night screening, and Pacific Northwest premiere of Honey Buddies. Filmed in Oregon, the Slamdance award-winning comedy stars Flula Borg as the relentlessly upbeat best man who convinces David Giuntoli (Grimm), after his fiancée dumps him at the altar, to take him on his Columbia River Gorge honeymoon, instead. Borg, an online musical sensation thanks to his YouTube music videos and his striking performance in the recent Pitch Perfect 2, will perform a live DJ set in the Ashland Armory following the screening.
The mainstay of the festival continues to be a rich assortment of documentary and narrative feature films and shorts, including many regional and several national premieres. Magali Noel’s Addicted to Sheep, Nick Hartanto and Sam Roden’s Traveler (which will be accompanied to the festival by its subject, photographer Nicholas Syracuse) and AIFF 2015 Audience Choice award winner Alexandria Bombach’s short film How We Choose are U.S. premieres. Ten feature films that opened at Sundance in January are receiving their regional premieres at AIFF, including Werner Herzog’s essay film on the Internet’s effect on society, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World; Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, Uncle Howard, Cameraperson, NUTS!, Hooligan Sparrow, Trapped, and The Fits, along with Sonita and Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You.
There are a number of films with regional connections, including two by rising Portland filmmaker Christopher LaMarca, whose films Boone and The Pearl (co-directed by Jessica Dimmock) just premiered at the South by Southwest (SXSW)and True/False Film Festivals. Boone is a sensory and unsentimental meditation on the lives of three young goat farmers living off the land in the Little Applegate Valley near Jacksonville, Ore. The Pearl delves into the experiences of older transgender women in the Pacific Northwest. The film will be accompanied by the filmmakers and two of their most striking subjects from Oregon, Krystal and Jodi, two sisters who were formerly brothers, and unaware of each other’s gender fluidity. Bastards y Diablos, about two half-brothers who go on a journey of self-discovery to Colombia, involved a crew based mostly out of Medford, Ore., including producer and co-star Dillon Porter.
For lovers of the “other” Ashland festival, there are two films that highlight Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death. Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, a theater performance inventively filmed by Rodrigo Prieto, is being touted as a visually spectacular adaptation, and will be accompanied by a Skype conversation with Taymor. Bill is a Monty Pythonesque tale of William Shakespeare’s “lost years”. In addition, a program of short films will feature current and former Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors, including Anthony Heald in The Stairs; and David DeSantos and Stephanie Beatriz in Closure.
“It’s going to be an exciting and stimulating five days and nights,’ said Cathy Dombi, the festival’s executive director. “More than 50 visiting filmmakers and artists will attend the festival to engage in dialogues after screenings, with several artists accompanying their films with live music, art exhibits, and even virtual reality headgear for audiences to sample.”
In his Ashland debut, Richard Herskowitz, the new director of programming, will honor two key indie film institutions by paying tribute to Kartemquin Films and Women Make Movies, organizations that have built an infrastructure for indie filmmakers working outside the mainstream. Kartemquin co-founder and artistic director Gordon Quinn will be joined by filmmakers Joanna Rudnick and Maria Finitzo for three screenings honoring Karteqmquin on its 50th anniversary. Accomplished documentarians Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar of New Day Films will screen three of their latest short films and join Quinn for a TalkBack panel on Activist Film Collectives.
“Independent film’s social and cultural importance has been reaffirmed lately as Hollywood’s neglect of women’s and other minority voices has become painfully apparent,” said Herskowitz.
This year, 24 of the 39 independent feature films are directed or co-directed by women, and the subject of one of the festival’s three “TalkBack” panel discussions will be Women Make Indie Movies, moderated by Women Make Movies’ executive director Debra Zimmerman. Zimmerman will also introduce her company’s acclaimed new release Sonita, winner of the Grand Jury and Audience Prize for international documentaries at Sundance. Sonita is about an Iranian teenager who creates an underground rap song to protest her family’s plan to sell her as a bride.
This year’s Rogue Award will go to the esteemed directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Detropia, Jesus Camp, The Boys of Baraka), who will screen their latest documentary, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, an homage to the 93-year-old American social activist and creator of the TV shows All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Maude. Barbara Hammer, the pioneering director of queer cinema, will receive the festival’s Pride Award, supported by the Equity Foundation, and will present her latest film, Welcome to this House, on the life and poetry of Elizabeth Bishop.
Herskowitz is introducing a new section titled Beyond, devoted to films that challenge and reinvent storytelling conventions. A highlight of this section will be MA, the debut feature by dance world sensation Celia Rowlson-Hall, a transfixing, artfully wordless narrative in which Rowlson-Hall stars as a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary. Rowlson-Hall was featured on the cover of Dance Magazine in 2014 and named one of 25 “new faces of independent film” in 2015 by Filmmaker Magazine. She is the winner of the festival’s first-ever Juice Award, given to an emerging female film director, with support from Tangerine Entertainment and the Faerie Godmother Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation. Other Beyond titles include The Fits, collective:unconscious, and He Hated Pigeons.
At the TalkBack panel titled Transmedia & Virtual Reality Platforms for New Documentaries, filmmaker Helen de Michiel will present her latest transmedia projects, Lunch Love Community and Berkeley vs. Big Soda. Brad Lichtenstein will demo his virtual reality project, Across the Line, on the effect of anti-abortion protests on health centers and patients. Google VR headsets will be available for sampling after the panel. Vicki Callahan, a USC professor and an authority on digital culture and media strategies for social change, will moderate the discussion.
2016 AIFF FEATURE FILM SELECTIONS
FILM; DIRECTOR
Addicted to Sheep; Magali Pettier
Bastards y Diablos; A.D. Freese
Bill; Richard Bracewell
Birth of Saké, The; Erik Shirai
Boone; Christopher LaMarca
Cameraperson; Kirsten Johnson
Chicago Maternity Center Story, The; Jerry Blumenthal, Suzanne Davenport, Sharon Karp, Gordon Quinn, Jennifer Rohrer
collective:unconscious; Lily Baldwin, Frances Bodomo, Daniel Patrick Carbone, Josephine Decker, Lauren Wolkstein
Embers; Claire Carré
Fits, The; Anna Rose Holmer
Five Nights in Maine; Maris Curran
Gesture and a Word; Dave Davidson
He Hated Pigeons; Ingrid Veninger
Honey Buddies; Alex Simmons
Hooligan Sparrow; Nanfu Wang
Hunky Dory; Michael Curtis Johnson
In Pursuit of Silence; Patrick Shen
In the Game; Maria Finitzo
In Transit; Albert Maysles, Lynn True, Nelson Walker, Ben Wu, David Usui
Light Beneath Their Feet; Valerie Weiss
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World; Werner Herzog
Louder than Bombs; Joachim Trier
MA; Celia Rowlson Hall
Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise; Bob Hercules & Rita Coburn Whack
Midsummer Night’s Dream; Julie Taymor
Neptune; Derek Kimball
Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You; Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
NUTS!; Penny Lane
Pearl, The; Jessica Dimmock and Christopher LaMarca
Secret Screening from Kartemquin Films; TBA
Seventh Fire, The; Jack Pettibone Riccobono
Sonita; Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami
Three Hikers, The; Natalie Avital
Trapped; Dawn Porter
Traveler; Nick Hartanto and Sam Roden
Uncle Howard; Aaron Brookner
Voyagers Without Trace; Ian McCluskey
Welcome to This House; Barbara Hammer
Women He’s Undressed; Gillian Armstrong
Short Film Programs
After Hours Shorts
Animated Worlds with Mark Shapiro
Art Docs
Ashland Actors On Screen
CineSpace
Family Shorts: Kid Pix
Family Shorts: TweenScreen
Locals Only 1: Family Friendly
Locals Only 2: Woman to Man
Short Stories
Short Docs
TalkBack Panel Discussions
Activist Film Collectives: Kartemquin and New Day Films
Women Make Indie Movies
Transmedia and Virtual Reality Platforms for New Documentaries
Read more
MR. PIG[/caption]
Diego Luna’s MR. PIG and Jessica Dimmock and Christopher LaMarca’s THE PEARL took home the top prizes at the 2016 Dallas International Film Festival awards ceremony.
MR. PIG starring Danny Glover and Maya Rudolph took home the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize and Jessica Dimmock and Christopher LaMarca’s THE PEARL was awarded the Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize at the festival.
The Arthur E. Benjamin Foundation Audience Awards were presented to: Greg Kwedar’s TRANSPECOS for Best Narrative Feature, Jenna Jackson and Anthony Jackson’s UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT for Best Documentary Feature, and Duke Merriman’s SO GOOD TO SEE YOU for Best Short Film.
In addition to the presentation of the filmmaking awards, the evening also featured the presentation of the Dallas Star Award to two-time Academy Award nominated cinematographer Ed Lachman, and the inaugural presentation of the L.M. Kit Carson Maverick Filmmaker Award to filmmaking legend Monte Hellman.
Keith Maitland‘s TOWER won the Texas Competition Grand Jury Prize and Berndt Mader’s BOOGER RED received a Texas Competition Special Jury Prize. Nanfu Wang’s HOOLIGAN SPARROW won the Silver Heart Award and the $10,000 cash prize bestowed on an individual or film for their dedication to fighting injustices and/or creating social change for the improvement of humanity.
2016 Dallas International Film Festival Awards – Jury Awards
NARRATIVE FEATURE GRAND JURY PRIZE: MR. PIG
DIR: Diego Luna
Eubanks (Danny Glover), an old-school pig farmer from Georgia on the brink of losing his family farm, sets off on a road trip with Howard, his beloved and very large pig.
As they make their way across the border to Mexico to find “Howie” a new home, Eubanks’s drinking and deteriorating health begin to take a toll, derailing their plans. His estranged daughter, Eunice (Maya Rudolph), is forced to join them on their adventure. Driven by strong convictions and stubbornness in his old ways, Eubanks attempts to make peace through his devotion to Howie and desire to mend his broken relationships.
NARRATIVE FEATURE SPECIAL JURY PRIZE (PERFORMANCE): ARIANNA
DIR: Carlo Lavagna
CAST: Ondina Quadri
Carlo Lavagna’s debut feature, ARIANNA, unfolds like a classic film mystery set in the the gorgeous Italian countryside.
Arianna is nineteen years old and still hasn’t had her first period. She’s starting to notice that she hasn’t physically matured like other girls. Her parents are feeding her hormones prescribed by a gynecologist. Now her breasts have become slightly enlarged and this is causing her some discomfort. The hormones aren’t helping with her maturation.
Her parents decide to take her back to the lake house in Bolsena where they used to vacation. While staying in the house, old memories start to come back to Arianna like pieces of a puzzle slowly begin to fall into place. When her parents tell her it’s time to return to the city for a few days, Arianna wants to stay behind to study for her exams. Her father accepts despite her mother’s objections, as Arianna becomes more suspicious of her condition and her parents.
Arianna’s investigation into her past includes seeing a new gynecologist without her parents’ knowledge, and a new exploration of her body and her sexuality. All of this leads up to surprise conclusion that will shock audiences as much as it shocks Arianna herself.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE GRAND JURY PRIZE: THE PEARL
DIR: Jessica Dimmock and Christopher LaMarca’s
[caption id="attachment_12862" align="aligncenter" width="1199"]
THE PEARL[/caption]
Far from the celebrity and magazine covers of Laverne Cox and Caitlin Jenner, THE PEARL witnesses the loss and extraordinary risk of four middle-aged and senior war vets, steel foremen, and fathers and grandfathers coming out for the first time as transgender women in the hyper-masculine culture of the Pacific Northwest.
Each year, their lives intersect at the annual Esprit Conference for T-girls, a weeklong event enlivening a community broken by closeted isolation and loss due to suicide. Filmmakers Jessica Dimmock and Christopher LaMarca create a language for the film that is built on their subject’s honesty; an honesty that therapeutically hides nothing from the camera.
Over the course of the film, these four transgender women emerge with beauty, conviction, strength, and a newfound personal integrity.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE SPECIAL JURY PRIZE: IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE
DIR: Patrick Shen
In this beautiful, meditative documentary, filmmaker Patrick Shen crafts exquisite footage with a delicate soundtrack, creating a comprehensive and thought-provoking discussion of how noise impacts our daily life. From the early religious aspects of solitude to John Cage’s seminal silent composition 4’33”, silence has always fascinated society and played an important role in our humanity. As our lives become modernized with technology, noise has taken a larger toll on our wellness and behavior.
TEXAS COMPETITION GRAND JURY PRIZE (PRESENTED BY PANAVSION): TOWER
DIR: Keith Maitland
On August 1st, 1966, a sniper rode the elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower and opened fire, holding the campus hostage for 96 minutes. When the gunshots were finally silenced, the toll included 16 dead, three dozen wounded, and a shaken nation left trying to understand.
Combining archival footage with rotoscopic animation in a dynamic, never-before-seen way, TOWER reveals the action-packed untold stories of the witnesses, heroes and survivors of America’s first mass school shooting, when the worst in one man brought out the best in so many others.
TEXAS COMPETITION SPECIAL JURY PRIZE: BOOGER RED
DIR: Berndt Mader
Booger Red is a hybrid narrative/documentary film where fictional journalist, Onur Tukel, investigates the true case of the ‘Mineola Swingers Club’ trials. In 2006, seven people were sentenced to life for purportedly running the largest child sex ring in Texas history–inside of a swingers club in Mineola, Tx. Onur, portraying a veteran reporter, interviews the actual defendants and lawyers involved in the trials. On his journey through the seedy underbelly of east Texas, Onur is forced to confront his own history with abuse while he discovers that the allegations at the root of his investigation might have never happened.
SILVER HEART AWARD (PRESENTED BY THE EMBREY FAMILY FOUNDATION): HOOLIGAN SPARROW
DIR: Nanfu Wang
The danger is palpable as intrepid young filmmaker Nanfu Wang follows maverick activist Ye Haiyan (a.k.a Hooligan Sparrow) and her band of colleagues to Hainan Province in southern China to protest the case of six elementary school girls who were sexually abused by their principal.
Marked as enemies of the state, the activists are under constant government surveillance and face interrogation, harassment, and imprisonment. Sparrow, who gained notoriety with her advocacy work for sex workers’ rights, continues to champion girls’ and women’s rights and arms herself with the power and reach of social media.
Filmmaker Wang becomes a target along with Sparrow, as she faces destroyed cameras and intimidation. Yet she bravely and tenaciously keeps shooting, guerrilla-style, with secret recording devices and hidden-camera glasses, and in the process, she exposes a startling number of undercover security agents on the streets.
Eventually, through smuggling footage out of the country, Wang is able tell the story of her journey with the extraordinary revolutionary Sparrow, her fellow activists, and their seemingly impossible battle for human rights.
SHORT FILM GRAND JURY PRIZE: THE BLACK BELT
DIR: Margaret Brown
SHORT FILM SPECIAL JURY PRIZE: MINOR SETBACK
DIR: Augustine Frizzell
STUDENT SHORT FILM GRAND JURY PRIZE: FATA MORGANA
DIR: Amelie Wen
STUDENT SHORT SPECIAL JURY PRIZE: THE MINK CATCHER
DIR: Samantha Buck
ANIMATED SHORT FILM GRAND JURY PRIZE (PRESENTED BY REEL FX): SNOWFALL
DIR: Conor Whelan
2016 Dallas International Film Festival Awards – Audience Awards (PRESENTED BY THE ARTHUR E. BENJAMIN FOUNDATION)
NARRATIVE FEATURE: TRANSPECOS
DIR: Greg Kwedar
[caption id="attachment_12861" align="aligncenter" width="960"]
TRANSPECOS[/caption]
On a remote desert highway a makeshift Border Patrol checkpoint is manned by three agents: Flores (Gabriel Luna): with an uncanny ability to track; Davis (Johnny Simmons): joined the Border Patrol with dreams of romancing señoritas and riding on horseback; Hobbs (Clifton Collins, Jr.): one of the old guards who believes a college degree can’t stop a bullet.
It starts out like most boring days, but soon the contents of one car will change everything. What follows is a journey to uncover the surreal, frightening secrets hidden behind the facade of this lonely outpost. The end of the path may cost them their lives along a border where the line between right and wrong shifts like the desert itself.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT
DIR: Jenna Jackson and Anthony Jackson
UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT is every parent’s worst nightmare come to life.
In 2006, Corpus Christi homemaker Hannah Overton and her husband were in the process of adopting 4-year-old Andrew Burd. In October of that year, Andrew died. His death was determined to be the result of deliberate salt poisoning, and Hannah was charged with capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. Maintaining her innocence the entire time, Hannah spent almost eight years incarcerated before a hard-won battle resulted in her conviction being overturned. All of the inconsistencies, flawed arguments and erroneous conclusions from her original trial—along with her being ruthlessly portrayed in the media as a cold-hearted killer—were finally brought to light.
Directors Jenna and Anthony Jackson have extensively detailed Hannah’s story to show how it took a team of lawyers that fervently believed in justice to finally gain her freedom.
SHORT FILM: SO GOOD TO SEE YOU
DIR: Duke Merriman