Here Come the Judges
The Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund Panel screenings
ByShawn Badgley,Fri., Aug. 8, 2003
Who:Chel White
What They've Done (and Won):
A Portland, Ore., fixture, White has been making experimental shorts for 20 years. Describing himself as an explorer of "obsession, alienation, fetishism, transcendence, death, and childhood memories," his work seems to dispatch itself in some secret, subversive code, flashing messages amid animation, obscure stock footage, and actors with crazy eyes. His "Choreography for Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha-Cha)" pulses with a grinding sort of ghostly sexuality and won first place for animation at the USA and Ann Arbor film festivals, among others. His work has screened at Sundance, Berlin, and Big Muddy.
What's Showing (and When):
"Choreography for Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha-Cha)"
"Passage"
"Dirt"
"Soulmate"
"Eclipse"
Sunday, Aug. 10, 9:45pm
What They Might Like:
Disturbing, daring, political, necessarily pretentious, multimedia art films that alternately creep out and comfort. A distressed finish and surreal sheen couldn't hurt, either.
Who:Rodney Evans
What They've Done (and Won):
Evans, a writer/director based in New York City, was awarded Best Documentary of the Year by the Brooklyn Arts Council for his feature-lengthThe Unveiling, but he's best known for the short doc "Close to Home," which captures in 24 minutes his coming out to his conservative Jamaican family and has been shown at more than 30 festivals. He received the Independent Feature Project's Gordon Parks Award for Screenwriting and the Vito Russo Award from the NY Gay and Lesbian Film Festival forBrother to Brother, which will debut in feature form next year but will be excerpted here. An ambitious fictioner of the Harlem Renaissance, it's narrated by (an actor playing) an elderly Bruce Nugent, founder of the seminal lit journalFire!!
What's Showing (and When):
"Two Encounters"
"Close to Home"
Brother to Brother Sunday, Aug. 10, after White's program
What They Might Like:
Documentaries and dramas and docudramas that document and dramatize and docudramatize in different ways, personal narratives, and gay perspectives. Old-fashioned storytelling with new eyes and new voices.
Who:Marlo Poras
What They've Done (and Won):
Mai's Americapremiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2002 and was soon embraced as one of the best festival films of the year by the likes ofLA WeeklyandIndieWIRE, not to mentionThe Austin Chronicle, who saw it with everyone else here at South by Southwest, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. In August of last year, it aired on PBS'sPOV. It is Poras' first film, and one that follows a Vietnamese high schooler's journey from Hanoi to Meridian, Miss., where her host family lives amid mental, emotional, and financial ruin, and where the resilient and magnetic Mai must navigate her way from hope to hopelessness and back with a support group that numbers approximately no one. Until, that is, she meets Chris/Christina, a small-town transvestite whose outsider status intersects empathically with hers. An amazing movie, and one you should see if you haven't already, which you probably have.
What's Showing (and When):
Mai's America
Monday, Aug. 11, 9:45pm
What They Might Like:
Vérité examinations of displacement, relevant 21st-century subjects, and women on the verge of rocking your world. Substance over style a plus.
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