Ann Arbor Film Festival
This past weekend my dad and I made it out to the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
We went on Friday (it had been going on all week), and made it out to two of the attractions. First up, we went to a screening of the arthouse experimental piece 'A Darkness Swallowed'. The film was 78 minutes long, and after about the first ten minutes there was no dialog or detectable linear storytelling. Rather it was over an hour of closeups on various organic matter shot with a time lapse while atmospheric music droned over the images. I greatly enjoy independent cinema and obscure film, but this was a little much for me. The writer/directer Betzy Bromberg was there and gave us some insight into her work with a Q and A session after the screening. I admire the passion she has for her vision, but it was definitely not for me.
Later that evening, we went to 'An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt'. I ran into Rachel while we were there, so we all sat together. They showed the majority of Hertzfeldt's work at the event, including his cult hit 'Rejected'. They ended the screening with his most recent and coherent works 'Everything Will Be Okay' and the sequel 'I am so proud of you'. Afterward, Hertzfeldt made an appearance and took questions from the audience. He seemed like a pretty respectable guy, and I agreed with a lot of his views. I was very much taken with 'Everything Will Be Okay' and 'I am so proud of you'. I was so accustomed to seeing his work as stripped down dark off-beat humorous animations, but these two works (the first and second of a trilogy), were much more of a serious commentary on life, death, and redundancy of man. These works were so powerful on a personal level, that when I left the theater I felt as though I had been punched in the gut and I just wanted to be alone. I feel that all too often films are simply seen as good or bad in quality; in my eyes, a good film maker is capable of making films that cause his audience to emote and have a new perspective on life, if only for a moment. With the case of Mr. Hertfeldt; mission accomplished. I am still reeling.