Nashville film festival continues solid growth
By Lance Conzett
Staff Writer

ISSUE: 05/01/07 > A&E > Nashville film festival continues solid growth

The protagonist of Don Hertzfeldt's "Everything Will Be Ok" dreams that his head is being taken over by a giant fish.

The 36th annual Nashville Film Festival wrapped up on Thursday, April 26, leaving the city with yet another tremendously successful tribute to film. The festival played host to over 240 films with settings ranging from the streets of downtown Nashville to deep in the tragic squalor of Darfur refugee camps and drew the most supporters since the festival’s inception. But the perspective of a student and self-described movie nerd apparently runs contrary to the popular opinion of the rest of the moviegoers.

Best Feature

The festival was dominated by documentary features. Out of the 10 films I saw, only one was a narrative feature film. Of those documentaries, the best of the fest was easily “Lake of Fire,” Tony Kaye’s nightmarish black-and-white documentary about the abortion debate in America. “Lake of Fire” felt like a long “Twilight Zone” episode that became uncomfortably real. All that was missing was Rod Serling stepping out from off camera, smoking a cigarette and explaining to us that we have stumbled into “a land of both shadow and substance.” Kaye has been working on this film since 1990 when he first immigrated to America from Britain and valiantly strived to create an impartial look at all sides of the debate. Shockingly, Kaye succeeds from a certain standpoint. Even though he shows footage of sociopath extremists who boast about killing doctors and suffer from the severest sort of delusions of grandeur, he also shows three very graphic abortion procedures and the psychological fallout which one patient faced following her abortion. The irony of it all, of course, is that even though Kaye worked diligently to capture all aspects, the film will likely never get a wide theatrical screening due to the issue’s inherent controversial nature.

What The Hell Did I Just Watch?

The one narrative feature that I saw at the festival was a real-time psychological thriller called “Adrenaline.” Oh, and did I mention that it’s set in downtown Nashville and that it was shot with a single 88-minute take? “Adrenaline” plays out like “Phone Booth” on wheels, except former “Homicide” actor Reed Diamond is no Kiefer Sutherland. A devoted husband and father is pulled into a robbery plot when a man calling himself “Harvey” hacks into his new SUV’s satellite assistance and claims to have kidnapped his daughter. As a weird film experiment, “Adrenaline” succeeded without a doubt. But, there’s a reason why they don’t shoot action movies set in downtown Nashville. It’s just not an exciting place, especially when the shooting took place on a Sunday when the city is practically a ghost town. Similarly, there’s a reason why editing exists; the action lags and sputters when the hero of the film is stuck at a red light or is forced to cross a street. Considerng that much of the action takes place from behind the wheel, there were times when it was obvious that the actors were stalling because of unavoidable circumstances like traffic lights. But, even with the problems of the content, I have to give them credit for trying something unique and following through with the outcome. Although, technically, the one-shot movie gimmick was already pulled off by Russian Ark in 2002.

Best Short Film

Getting There

Some of the short films from the festival can be found on YouTube. Carmichael & Shane in particular can be found on the video website.

Out of nearly 20 short films that I saw screened, two absolutely triumphed as the victors of a packed battleground. Among a series of intensely boring shorts about sex and chaos in Animated Expressions II was Don Hertzfeldt’s Everything Will Be Ok. Hertzfeldt’s 17-minute short put every other animated entry to shame with its incredibly funny look at a man with a degenerative brain disease which causes him to hallucinate. Hertzfeldt manages to pull the best parts of his cult favorite filmography, which includes the Academy Award-nominated short Rejected, and throws them on screen for a combination of hysterical twisted comedy and intense dramatic moments. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Rejected, it’s still a nice step towards brilliance.

On the live-action side of things, Carmichael & Shane is an intensely funny short film from Australia about a single father with twin boys who decides that the best parenting philosophy is to choose a favorite. One quote from the father perfectly sums up the heart of the film: “One of these boys will always know Daddy loves him… That’s stating it too harsh, I think. There will always be enough love to go around. But there may not always be enough bicycles.”

To Learn More...

More than 20,000 people took advantage of the cinematic art on display at this year’s Nashville Film Festival. Each year, the festival receives over 1,700 submissions ranging from feature films and documentaries to shorter works and animated fare. When competition is narrowed down to the best 200 entrants, they are screened in the Regal Green Hills Cinema. Membership in the Nashville Film Circle, the parent organization of the Nashville Film Festival, comes with benefits and perks including free festival admission. The organization also creates programs for senior citizens, at-risk youth, and high school and college-aged filmmakers who seek to embrace diversity in their home communties. To learn more about the Nashville Film Festival or their Young Filmmaker’s Program, visit them online at www.nashvillefilmfestival.org.

Biggest Disappointment

Throughout the festival, the film with the most buzz around it was easily The Clinton 12, a documentary about the first 12 black students in Tennessee to become enrolled in the process of court-ordered desegregation. It was the film which won the Nashville Public Television Human Spirit Award and was eventually declared best documentary by audiences of the festival. While the story was a fascinating piece of Tennessee history and deserves to be told, the execution of that story suffered from overbearing documentary stereotypes. The first mistake made was the constant presence of music throughout the feature. If there is one thing to learn from a film festival that is musically inclined, it’s that music is both a tricky and powerful element of filmmaking. For every chance that it can enhance the overall message, it has twice the chance of feeling manipulative or overbearing. The music in The Clinton 12 suffered from both of these qualities. At points, the score for the film sounded like it was pulled from The Wizard of Oz, especially when the white supremacist leaders spoke and the background music made you wonder if noted racist ringleader John Kasper was going to send out the flying monkeys after his speech. Secondly, the film suffered from its use of James Earl Jones as the narrator. Despite Jones having quite possibly the greatest voice in recorded history, he was an outsider to the situation. Morgan Freeman was necessary to tell the story in March of the Penguins because penguins can’t talk. The students from Clinton may be getting on in age, but they’re still fully capable of telling their own story. Jones’ neutral tone clashed against the dramatic and occasionally violent images on screen, leaving me wishing that the interviews spoke for themselves instead of having a benevolent narrator spooning information to the audience. Stripped down to its core, The Clinton 12 is a great documentary. The film made a point to show that it wasn’t the Clinton citizens who staged violent, unruly mob scenes but outsiders who invaded their town following the Supreme Court ruling, which is an interesting event that is contrary to conventional wisdom about desegregation. Re-edited, the film could have reached the point of acclaim that it garnered, but at this point the awards seem undeserved when presented alongside more impressive films like Lake of Fire.

Honorable Mentions

A number of the films screened at the festival are getting impending theatrical releases, including a brilliant documentary on gypsy musicians going on a cross-country tour called Gypsy Caravan and a film that I tried to see but couldn’t schedule it in called Eagle vs. Shark, which promises to be this year’s Napoleon Dynamite-style breakout independent hit.