True/False Fest Day Four

March 4, 2012 3 Comments

Well folks, it has come time for me to close out my first ever True/False Film Fest.  It has been an amazing time, but I will do an overview to the whole festival with pictures and videos and a bunch of praise.  For now I want to keep this recap strictly to the films and experiences I had during the festival and get you excited for upcoming, full length reviews.

Like every morning, I get up, change and head out to grab some grub courtesy of Lakota and their Chai and pastries.  One the agenda for the final day of the festival were 4 films and a closing party to end the fest.  What I didn’t realize once I started the day as to how sad I was that this was all ending and the fact that my first film was a powerful and touching documentary on the struggles of AID’s activists in the mid 80s and early 90s.  As a straight male, I don’t have a frame of reference to connect with them on a lifestyle level, but the film pulled you in at an emotional level that leaves you with a hopeful outlook. 

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True/False Fest Day Two

March 2, 2012 3 Comments

After a rousing first day of the festival and a little bit of sleep, I awoke to find my calendar beeping with this mornings host of items to take part in. While the first day was filled with only two films, I had 4 in total to see today, all of which covered a wide variety of issues, with two of them being secret screenings. I will get into what that means once I get to the repsective films.

Overall the day started out fantastic with a lunch/brunch at Main Squeeze for local/organic meals and I headed to the Globe Theater for the first of 4 films that I managed to reserve tickets to. Along the way, the festival had set up some amazing day of activities, mainly the march through downtown I expressed my affection on twitter to the woman who was dressed up as the female Shephard from the Mass Effect video game series. If only I wasn’t going to the latest film would I have ran out and got a picture. Oh well. Some good food was had and enjoyable conversation from a few of the patrons at each film, helped cap an otherwise stellar day 2. But enough about that, lets get on to the micro-reviews which will be a bit difficult to talk about once you read more after the jump.

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True/False Fest Day One

March 1, 2012 1 Comment

So I finally made it into Columbia, MO which I will call home for about four days while I attend their 9th annual True/False Film Fest.  For me this is a welcome vacation from work and necessary since I have an abundance of time off built up at work and what better way to indulge in my hobby than attend a film festival.  In my preivous post about what to expect film wise from the festival, I have been able to, in the span of a day, see what makes this festival so unique and vibrant.  Everything about the city (downtown to be precise) seems to come alive from the atmosphere of other film lovers.  Street performers belting out ballads and percussive sounds, to the oppulently dressed volunteers who have made the festival experience enjoyable for me during my first night here.  While I am excited and elated to see what the next several days have in store for me, I am more interested in what the organizers have in store for me when it comes to their fine selection of documentary and non-fiction films.

For my first night as a Lux Passholder (yeah badass I know), I was able to get two films scheduled for the first evening. The first film of my night, not the first of the festival mind you, was being held at The Blue Note, a venue that seems to be no stranger to being at capacity as the documentary that night drew out a heavy crowd which filled the balcony seating and floor seating as well. The documentary that evening is a compelling film that follows the artistic expression and suppression in Mainland China. A nation that seems to be going through the pangs of economic and social expansion, but finds a means to supress expression through limiting and imprisoning the artistic freedoms of the “intellectuals”.

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True/False Fest Preview

February 29, 2012 11 Comments

Well, I finally did it.  I managed to post for a month long about nothing but documentaries.  I enjoyed this little exercise in focusing on one genre of fillmmaking for a month and it was all for my lead up to the True/False Film Fest in Columbia, MO.  The fest takes place on March 1st through March 4th and the focus is on the art of documentary films.  While there are a few that toe the line to non-fiction genre, the aim of the fest is to open a dialogue channel between audiences and filmmakers.  I have been excited about this fest as it will be my first, heavy film festival to take part in.

So with my pass purchased, the hotel booked and my time off from work put in, I am poised to experience around 17 films within the span of 4 days.  It might seem daunting and not much of a vacation for most people, but I am going for the experience and enjoyment of film.  Also this will give me a ton of content to write about and also gain experience on festival writing.  So if any potential film sites want to send me to, oh, Sundance or anything, please let me know.  Just throwing that out there.

My aim is to do micro-updates, highlighting short blurbs on the films and experience each day and then taking a bit of time later in the month to fully review each film.  If you aren’t following me on twitter, do so to get tweets from me while I am there and my attempt to get a photo with Morgan Spurlock and other filmmakers there.  Follow me at @PlotDevices on twitter!

So to get you pumped or somewhat interested in my little venture, I am posting some trailers and synopsis about some of the films that I am seeing at the True/False Fest.  Just a taste before you dive into what I have to say.  Enjoy!

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Kansas International Film Festival – Day 2

October 3, 2011 Leave a comment

On Saturday I attended day 2 of the film festival with three movies that I wanted to see.  Overall the experience was enjoyable except for 2nd movie of the day, due more in part with a woman that was sitting in our row that was rude and another woman who decided to take a phone call during the documentary.  So fuck them both.  Overall the festival was great and the three movies I choose to watch were fantastic and disturbing, which I will explain below.  So let’s get started on the three movies I saw yesterday.

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Kansas International Film Festival – Day 1

October 1, 2011 2 Comments

So this is going to be a different type of post for me, one of the main reasons is that I am attending our local 11th annual Kansas International Film Festival.  This is taking place at the Glenwood Arts Theater which is 5 minutes from my house.  So yay for convenience and yay for movies.  I purchased the festival pass this year and decided to give the festival more than a casual showing like I did last year.  I have a list of films I want to see and frankly, there are far too many good films making a showing at the festival to be able to see them all.  So I am being a bit choosey which is fine.  I am hoping to give a more truncated review of some of the movie I have seen, possibly breaking out the bigger movies into more full fledged reviews but we will have to see how this goes.  I am taking a break from the 2nd day of the festival for the afternoon and will hit up the remaining two shows of the evening tonight and then send out a recap of the 2nd day of the festival.

So this post covers the opening night of the KIFF, which I had two movies on the agenda.  I had to skip the first one which was entitled Project Happiness (click here for info), mainly because a work friend of mine was having his final going away happy hour before he took his new position working in San Francisco.  So beer and friends won over seeing a movie which dealt with happiness and I would rather experience it first hand.  The second movie is one that I didn’t want to miss which was called Take Shelter.  I posted about this movie on my weekly Trailers of the Week post, and was excited to see that this was going to get an evening showing at the Glenwood.  I have heard nothing but amazing reviews and praise for a movie that seemed like a slow burn with a powerful ending.  So with my nifty lanyard in hand, I flashed the pass, walked in and grabbed a seat for Take Shelter.

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