I attended tonight's (Friday's) showings and am glad for it! Tonight's films were - for the most part - celebrating the importance of roots and cultural heritage, in particular, those of the Adirondack Community.
'The Michigan' took the interesting approach of examining Adk heritage via one of its relics: the Michigan hot dog. This film, in tracing the winding path by which the North Country inherited and made this not-quite-a-chili-dog its own shows the faculty of a community to combine ingredients from several and disparate backgrounds into something more bizarre, beautiful - and delicious - than any one of its sources individually.
'Harvest' was a less straightforward piece, showing the making of a mural in downtown Plattsburgh, but also scenes from a festival(?) farmers market (?) I really enjoyed this one because I personally identified with it a lot more than 'The Michigan'. 'Harvest' highlighted the Downtown Rising movement, which celebrates the quirkiness of Plattsburgh, the wilderness meets agriculture meets academia. All of these different backgrounds have been slowly combining and germinating for roughly two centuries in Plattsburgh. So now, we get to harvest and enjoy the fruits thereof: the Strand Theatre and Center for the Arts, Downtown Rising, the LCI Film Fest. This film really highlighted what I've come to love about living in the North Country: the pursuit of mental progression and social thinking at the University, the family I gained working at the Fledging Crow farm in Keeseville (where, among others, I worked with Jeff Cochran the turtle guy in the film), the stunning beauty of the natural setting of lakes, peaks, chasms, and woods.
I admittedly had mixed feelings about the 72-hour cellphone contest films. I thought 'XO' was amazing. It succeeded where - to me at least - the other entries weren't quite able, namely, in working the mug prop, 'the Hammer', and the required line in well with the plot. Additionally, I thought it used the short time limit to its advantage, gaining power by its brevity, and still saying everything it wanted and needed to. 'Memoriae' I think was a bit less successful, but I still appreciated what it was exploring; anxiety, uncertainty in life, and the uncertainty of life. I really disliked 'The Phone Call'. It felt kind of cheap and out of place among the other films of the night. It came off largely as using horror movie tropes as an attempt at dark comedy - a not particularly successful attempt at that.
I thought it was a very interesting organizational decision to sandwich the 72-hour cellphone contest entries between the AdironDoc films. I don't know whether this was the intended effect, but for me it made the bridge between the retrospective study of roots in 'The Michgan', and the forward looking meditation on fruits in 'Harvest'. The cellphone films are themselves shaped by the filmmakers roots, but also are fruits of the upcoming generation, whose power and vitality is in a large part driving movements like Downtown Rising.
'Inez Milholland: Forward Into the Light' I thought accomplished much of the same: it looked retrospectively at a movement that is in some ways in the past, but also that we still identify with today as voter disenfranchisement, and women's rights continue to be issues. I hadn't heard of Milholland before and was very moved by her story. Also, in connection to Irish lit, I liked the song at the end "I'll dig for you", very Heaney.
'It's an Adirondack Thing' was interesting, fairly lighthearted and jocular, relative to some of the other films of the night. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition with the other ADK focused films. It celebrated the North Country, but a very different facet of it. The AdironDocs, and the 72-hour cellphone films, were made by people who are active in the Plattsburgh/North Country community and culture, people who live here, study here, work here, and thus the films celebrate, or reflect, the richness of that culture and community, In contrast, 'It's an Adirondack Thing' is more from the view point of an outsider, who appreciates the solitude of the mountains and lakes, the escape they afford from him from NYC. This put me in mind of the sort of idealization and motivations we saw in Yeats' Innisfree. This of course got me wondering if the idyllic image of 'Adirondack Thing' is as dangerous for the North Country as we concluded that Yeats' was for Ireland.
I was really captivated by 'And So...', I thought it was a great inclusion - and conclusion - for the night, setting a story of personal drama against the backdrop of the North Country setting, culminating in a scene on the shore of Lake Champlain. To me it seemed as almost a corrective to the idealism in 'Adirondack Thing', showing a more real, perhaps darker, side of the people here. It's definitely worth noting that 'The Michigan' does the same, in particular with the portion of interview with the grown daughter in the hay-loft, detailing how life has been hard for locally-based businesses in the North Country.
'The Sky Over Berlin of My Childhood' was brilliant. I thought the juxtaposition of the trio of young boys first with the ruined warehouse, then the clean angelic young woman, the Crimean rights guy, the unceasing train, the dead bodies in the train yard, and finally the burning box were all extremely powerful images. To me the piece was commenting on the nearly apocalyptic experience of adolescence; self rapidly changes, and knowledge about the world crumbles and has to be rebuilt. I admittedly have trouble locating this one among the other films of the night, but it does kind of remind me of 'Girl is a Half-formed Thing' showing the power of youth, and the jolting experience of coming of age.
The trailer for 'Lama La' was very intriguing, hopefully I'll be able to come back on Sunday to watch it!
