PRINTRockin’ rosebuds
A guide to the weekend festivities
October 9, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
With Citizen Jane approaching, the so-many-films-so-little-time mentality might be creeping in. To help make the decision a bit easier, Vox aims to fill the frame, complete with high angle shots, low-key lighting and extreme close-ups.
Summercamp!
This film comes in as one of the heaviest hitters of the festival. Sarah Price and Bradley Beesley’s documentary hit the festival circuit in 2006, including a sneak preview at True/False and premiere at the SXSW and Toronto film festivals. Price has been making films for 15 years and won the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival for American Movie. Price and Beesley show, as the title would imply, everyone’s favorite childhood rite of passage, with music from the Flaming Lips, using the cinéma vérité style of documentary filmmaking. This particular mode of filmmaking just lets the cameras roll with no direction from the filmmaker to the subject. Price jokingly compares this method to that of reality television. It allows the audience to “sit back and let these experiences and images and sounds wash over you, so that by the end you feel like you’ve experienced a part of these kids’ lives,” Price explains. “There’s no narrative. It’s just a very easy-flowing, experiential piece.”
Related ArticlesThe Phantom of the Operator
Another festival darling, this film from Canadian filmmaker Caroline Martel premiered four years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival and serves as further proof that documentaries will never go out of style. In describing the tone of the film, which Martel calls a science-fiction documentary, she uses adjectives such as dreamy, dark, adventurous and inquisitive. Martel is proud “to have made a film that is totally unique,” she explains. “You’ve got to know that The Phantom of the Operator is a montage film. It’s only made from old telephone company films.” In addition to an already distinctive documentary style and content, the film’s score is played on the ondes Martenot, an obscure French electronic instrument. This instrument’s otherworldly sound can also be heard in such films as Lawrence of Arabia and Amélie.
Examined Life
The final feature film was shown at the most recent Toronto International Film Festival and was met with critical acclaim. Astra Taylor’s work is another documentary, but in a completely different vein from the aforementioned films in that the final product shows interaction between the filmmakers and subjects. Examined Life shows skeptics that philosophers, contrary to popular belief, practice life in addition to theorizing about it. According to the film’s Web site, “Examined Life takes philosophy out of the darkened corners of academia and into the hustle and bustle of the everyday.” This documentary serves as, “a visual reminder that great ideas are born through profound engagement with the world around us.”
Alone in the Wood Till Death Do I Wander
The feature films at Citizen Jane are only part of the attraction; several shorts are screening, including this film by Micaela O’Herlihy. After a four-year filmmaking hiatus, O’Herlihy wanted to prove to herself that she could still film it, cut it and splice it old-school. She has since shown to be more than capable in producing what she calls her best film. O’Herlihy works independently of others, completing the printing and processing herself using 16 mm film. “The structural aspect of it is loud and kinetic and full of movement, but the film itself is pretty quiet and intimate,” O’Herlihy says. She also describes it as pretty psychedelic with a lot of bright colors contrasting a lot of night shots. The film is presented in a four-minute loop and examines the relationship between humans and animals.
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