COVID-19 pulled the rug out from under South by Southwest, the major Austin, Texas film, music and tech festival, a mere week before the fest was set to begin in mid-March. So Amazon proposed a plan to streamâfor free and for a limited timeâevery feature and short in the festival. It was an innovative partial solution that promoted SXSW, paid the filmmakers an undisclosed fee and, at the same time, self-evidently was neither the financial deal nor the platform that the vast majority of the 135 feature filmmakers in the SXSW program deemed the best distribution strategy for their films.
Consequently, only a handful of feature narratives and documentaries, a few episodes of new TV series and more than 30 short films accepted the offer. Dubbed âPrime Video Presents the SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection,â the series launched this past Monday and streams through May 6. (An Amazon Prime membership isnât required, but an Amazon account is.)
Itâs important to recognize, as a viewer, that this collection resides at the intersection of film festival and the streaming experiences. The guiding principle of the former is accepting that you wonât love everything, but youâll enter worlds and see visions you otherwise wouldnât in the normal course of everyday commercial and/or arthouse movie-going.
While people very, very rarely walk out of a movie theyâve paid for, even if they donât like it, streaming subscriptions are a de facto, 24/7 encouragement to start watching something/anything and, if it doesnât grab you, bail. (I do this most frequently with stand-up comedy specials and long-form TV series.)
My gentle encouragement is to give everything in the SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection a fair shot. That especially applies to the feature filmsâthe short films will likely be over before you can even decide youâve had enough. For your sampling consideration:
Still from ‘Figurant.’ (Origine Films)
Figurant Czech director Jan Vejnarâs riveting short film is a certified highlight of the series. Weather-beaten French actor Denis Lavant (Beau Travail, Holy Motors) trades his clothes for a few bucks and a day job as a film extra, or so it seems. Itâs a parable, I think, of the film industryâs ruthless production ethos, as well as an indictment of governments who view soldiers as disposable parts.
Still Wylde Writer-director-star Ingrid Haas opens her vibrant piece with the not-unfamiliar scene of a young woman buying a bottle of booze at a corner store and, oh yeah, a pregnancy test. A lot of shorts are showcases for filmmakers with style and ambition, but Still Wyldeâwhich dashes through a longer period of time than most short films and mixes chuckle-worthy one-liners with piercingly dramatic momentsâintroduces a filmmaker with an off-center perspective and something to say.
Dieorama The program includes several fascinating nonfiction portraits of artists. Abigail Goldman is an investigator in the public defenderâs office who lives a normal suburban life outside Bellingham, Washington and makes crimson-dappled dioramas of domestic carnage. Although weâre in Twin Peaks country, and David Lynch (not to mention John Waters) would embrace Goldmanâs artistic pursuit, filmmaker Kevin Staake smartly depicts Goldman head-on without surreal embellishments or postmodern condescension.
Still from ‘Betye Saar: Taking Care of Business.’ (SXSW)
Betye Saar: Taking Care of Business Now in her 90s, Betye Saar is a remarkable artist and a genially provocative interviewee. Filmmaker Christine Turner packs an unbelievable number of her artworks, along with a telescoped biography, into a mere handful of minutes. The film makes you want to run out and visit a sprawling exhibition of Saarâs work, which is part of the goal of this piece produced for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Itâs a delicious appetizer, but Saar deserves a full-length film.
The Broken Orchestra The Philadelphia public school system, like all too many big city education departments, hacked its music budget to almost nothing. Charlie Tyrell reimagines the talking-head docâcutting among interviews emanating from TVs on stands, i.e., catnip for high school A/V geeks in the houseâto recount an inspiring grass-roots rehabilitation project for damaged instruments. Inspiring and infuriating, let me say, to anyone whoâs fed up with the general lack of respect given to the arts in this country.
Le Choc du Futur Not surprisingly, perhaps, none of the four narrative films in the SXSW lineup were made by U.S. filmmakers. Marc Collinâs enjoyably indulgent time-travel trip to late-â70s Paris focuses on an aspiring artist, Ana, who composes ahead-of-the-curve electronic music. This is kind of the perfect movie for sheltering in place, as it unfolds almost entirely in the flat where sheâs housesitting with a wall of synthesizers, tape decks and, eventually, a beatbox. Alma Jodorowsky carries the unhurried film with a stylish naturalism that occasionally puts one in mind of Anna Karina. The misogyny she encounters isnât unexpected, but the grooves of Throbbing Gristle and Aksak Maboul are.
Still from ‘Modern Whore.’ (Courtesy of filmmakers)
Modern Whore Andrea Warhun describes herself as a performer, which is a kind of artist. The Toronto escortâs well-reviewed book of the same title, with photographer and filmmaker Nicole Bazuin, is full of provocative views on power, sex and money. The duo extends their collaboration with this highly art-directed, color-saturated, reenactment-laced slice of Warhunâs life that explores the thorny issue of vulnerability. Modern Whore leaves you wanting more.
Iâm Gonna Make You Love Me For long stretches, Brian Belovitch lived a life of noisy desperation. Bullied as a boy in New England, Belovitch transitioned as a teenager and (after a short-lived marriage) fled to Manhattan to thrive as Tish, a performer in LGBTQ clubs in the â80s. Then Belovitch came out againâas a gay man. Filmmakers Karen Bernstein and Nevie Owens get integrity points for opting not to structure and sell their documentary feature (which highlights Michael Musto as a voice of reason) as the latest (commercial) entry in the Warhol/Downtown subgenre. Instead they let Belovitch carry the ball most of the way through his wildly colorful life. Alas, I did not find their main subject the most riveting raconteur. I have to believe that Iâm Gonna Make You Love Me, which premiered last September at DocNYC, would have been a shoo-in for the (now-canceled) Frameline festival. The audience that would have filled the Castro for this doc is the audience that will most appreciate it on Amazon Prime Video today.
Still from ‘Cat in the Wall.’ (Courtesy of filmmakers)
Cat in the Wall Bulgarian filmmakers Vesela Kazakova and Mina Mileva parlay their documentary background into this lived-in narrative feature in which the camera is never more than a few feet from the characters. A Bulgarian mother, brother and young son live in close quarters in a London council estate, trying to forge careers and a future. They arenât typical refugeesâIrinaâs an architect and Vladimir has a masterâs degreeâyet they face similar slings and frustrations. Cat in the Wall is billed as a comedy-drama, and I expect the humor would pop more with a theater audience. To put it another way, this is the film for people who wish Ken Loachâs movies were 80% less grim.
Broken Bird Last but hardly least, this fiction shortâwhich was slated to screen locally in the SFFIM Festival a few weeks agoâintroduces us to a Jersey girl preparing for her bat mitzvah and (symbolic) adulthood. There arenât a lot of black Jews in the United States, so we suspect from the opening shot that thereâs a unique story here. Writer-director Rachel Harrison Gordon wants us to read between the lines rather than tell us outright, though itâs clear that Birdie lives with her white mom and is meeting her African-American dad for lunch. Adulthood is complicated, and comes with all kinds of responsibilities, but Birdie is ready. Some shorts are the perfect length, while others make us want to follow the story a while longer. Broken Bird is in that second group.
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