While I'm busy here in Austin with SXSW... well it's only fitting to keep an eye on the festivals in other areas of the world. And this one has quite a bit of interest I think... So without further ado, here we go..
VALLEYFEST - a Film Festival in KNOXVILLE?!?!
Valleyfest? Never heard of it? Well, neither had I before two weeks ago, as it's the first independent film festival thrown in Knoxville, but after the final ceremonies tonight, there better be a second (and on), because they came up with an impressive array of films...
There was a little of everything... documentaries, shorts, animation, and features... many of the films were (I gather) first efforts, but were *very* polished...
I'll go ahead and get the awards out of the way:
Best Documentary - CUTTING THE CORD - Darren Malinoski captured the lives and experiences of five first-year medical students, shot while he himself was a second-year medical student...
Best Animation - THE DIRT ON MOM - Pipecleaner Dad must learn to come to grips with his jealousy over Mom and her backyard archaeological site...
Best Short - PEEP SHOW - A woman enters a peep show, but is surprised when instead of a sexual striptease, the performers are actually well-dressed, well-mannered men who know *just* what to say to a woman...
Best Feature - STOLEN HEART - Terry O'Brien's hard-hitting thriller where kidnapping is a means of settling accounts... but it all goes wrong in unexpected ways... Unfortunately, I didn't get to see this one, as our group had promised a friend of mine's 10 year old son we'd take him to see Wing Commander... I think I got shafted... :)
Audience Award - SNAKE TAILS - An absolutely wonderful, almost surreal, serpentine story about a young woman who is arrested while driving througha small Texas town. In her defense, she tells a story about a character who tells another story, in which another character tells another story.... stories which all intertwine in completely unexpected ways, building to a hilarious and perfect ending... directed by Francesca Talent... This one *really* deserves a wide distribution, as it's one of the funnier films I've seen in some time....
There were other films I feel worth mentioning, because there was some wonderful talent represented in these....
LOWDOWN - My favorite short of the festival, about two Old West outlaws trying to collect the bounty on each other's head... but they can help reminiscing about the old times, and through ineptitude or bad luck never can seem to do the other in... wome wonderful dialogue and location photography... and no, they didn't use Vasquez Rocks... :)
BOOKING KNIGHTS - Second favorite... Alexandre Coscas diected this tale about Steve, the chief booking agent for the Oprah Winfrey Show, and how he must adapt to the demands of the Queen of Talk as her ratings slide in her holy war against her arch enemy, Jerry Springer... Bookended with man-on-the-street interviews with people about Jerry and Oprah... very funny...
SLIDE RULE - William Kruse directed this very Tim Burton-ish short about Ernest Hyde, by day a nebbish little accountant... By night, however, he secretly takes pictures of "aliens" and "Bigfoot" and writes stories for a tabloid magazine... Balance between these two worlds is everything to Ernest until one day, the unthinkable happens... he's promoted.... A wonderful, weird little movie, although the ending was a tad weak... there's a shot of Ernest and a chair, though, that brought the house down....
CAPTIVE AUDIENCE - This film got its World Premiere at the festival. Kurt St. Thomas and Mike Gioscia directed this psychological drama about a DJ and a deranged fan who takes him hostage during his late night radio show... Some great acting Michael Kevin Walker, who plays the DJ on what turns into a very surreal night... It's this group's first feature effort, and it shows a lot of potential...
There were a few stinkers, but I won't name names (unless asked) to protect the guilty parties...
Except for one, only because we had fun anyway... George Demick directed a film called ASYLUM OF TERROR, a promised gore-fest horror movie set inside a haunted prison that turned out to be just plain awful... until one patron cried out:
"Where's Tom Servo and Crow when you need them?!?"
At that point the riffing from the audience began, and the awfulness of the movie made it perfect, as the audience proceeded to good-naturedly rip the film to shreds...
Hopefully most of these will be hitting the festival circuit soon...some of them (Snake Tails expecially) deserve to get wide distribution... I hope they do...
And I hope we do this again next year... it may not have been SXSW, but we had a great time... Valleyfest II, we need you!
Edison Carter
