Flyway Film Festival Day #3: "If you can dream it, it can haunt you."

On our first day at the Flyway Film Festival we did this. On Day #2 we did this. Ready for Day #3?

If you screen it, they will come. There were over 12 hours straight of movies scheduled for the 3rd day of Flyway Film Fest (more if you count the concurrent screenings), and we made it through a little over half., reserving the rest of the day for general carousing, hobnobbing, no goodnicking.  Here’s what we saw:

The Shorts:

• Divorcees: This heavily stylized Brunel-esque short by NYC artist Mike Nirenberg pokes fun at convention and faux-civility as a team of dinner guests each plot separately to kill their hostess. This was Julie’s favorite short of the fest. Next time she sits on a cake, she wants Mike to film it.
• Lost in Definition: A short experimental film that involves people eating CGI pizza in a noir-esque landscape. Julie missed this one while meeting their hosts for the evening; Jessica won’t talk about it until Julie sees it.
• Bititsch: In a post-soviet bloc city, people don’t construct sentences, there is only guttural monologue for conversations and one thing on the menu: pizza.  There are a lot of pizza boxes in this movie, but not as many as in the short film Shaking Tokyo by Bong Joon-Ho.

The Features:

• Footsteps: Gavin B. James‘ Footsteps is a visually stunning psychological thriller starring Julie and my favorite character actor, Brenden Sexton III, though he behaves nothing like he did in Pecker or Welcome to the Dollhouse.  Gavin B. James creates a world of dread, uncertainty, desire, and fear with skillful performances, stunning cinematography, and creepy mise-en-scene. One million thumbs up from us. If you get the chance, meet Gavin in person. Really interesting guy + one of the best voices we’ve heard in a long time.

• What’s Up Lovely? Two Gary King movies in one weekend! Lucky us. What’s Up Lovely is a romp through one woman’s lonely wanderings through New York City at night.  At once a journey with references to “Alice in Wonderland” and a meditation on loneliness, the film has resonance.  Perhaps most striking is the way that even in her loneliest moments, Luci keeps herself from keeping herself company, exemplified most poignantly in a scene where Luci plays in an abandoned amphitheater, but soon flees because of an “intruder” – a solitary, slow-clapping audience member.  You know about the slow-clap, don’t you?

• Phasma Ex Machina: This film by Matt Osterman, which won Flyway’s Wisconsin/Minnesota Showcase award, explores death and grief as a young man tries to create a way for the dead to re-engage with the living. Although Matt Osterman wasn’t able to attend, we got to meet several actors and producers from the film. A great group. They definitely fueled our growing desire to figure out this whole “Minneapolis indie movie scene…”

And then what? Then a late night dinner of burgers, beers, and fried cheese curds (thank you, Craig Varian) gave us enough energy to push through to the end of the fest party back down by the lake. Some of us stopped in first at Kathy’s bar. (We don’t need to give the real name of the bar, do we? It’s KATHY’S place!) We were all talking as fast as we could to share and ask for as much movie info as we could, knowing that many of us were leaving early the next morning.

Home Away From Home: We’d stayed at the Pepin Motel for our first two fest nights, but on night three there was no room at the inn. Rick and Diana Vaicius found some friends (Thank you, Egger Family!) with a spare room who generously put us up for the night, and we slept like babies for the following reasons:

Don’t dream it’s over: We enjoyed one final breakfast with the Kings, the Holbrook, the Stetler, the Lewnes, and the Wilker. Many eggs bit the dust in honor of this last meal. And at least one person teared up. A person whose name rhymes with Droolie.

Once the coffee pot was empty, we took off for Chicago, the Kings headed back to NYC, Jake Stetler turned toward Pennsylvania, and the Lewnes crew hopped in a car bound for Maryland. Phil Holbrook stayed behind to support Jeremy Wilker at his test screening for Triumph67. Since we couldn’t stay for the movie, we celebrated with Jeremy by contributing to his kickstarter campaign. Flyway Fact: Phil had dinner with Sheri Candler that night before we headed back to Brainerd. What happened? Um – you think he told us?

In our quest to talk to as many people as possible, we forgot to take pictures of a lot of things. Luckily Jeremy Wilker’s pictures on Flickr to fill in some of the gaps. (Nice pics, Jeremy!)

It’s no secret that we loved our time at Flyway. Loved the fest, loved the people, and love the idea of going back next year. Who’s in for next year?

Hungry for a tiny bit more? How about a peek at secret footage of the Flyway audience watching the TILT teaser trailer?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 29th, 2010 at 6:39 am. It is filed under FILM FESTIVALS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.