BeFilm is Ass-Kickery!! - part 2

Sorry I'm so late with this. I'm not that late am I? well...
I love the BeFilm Underground Film Festival, and yes, I would marry it if it were possible:) This is how a film festival should be done in my book. Wish I thought of it first. doh! Seriously, the festival curators: Laurence Asseraf & and Dimitris Anthos have been so incredible this entire week. They should get an all expenses paid vacation to someplace good when this is all said and done with.

That Hand Film (my little opus which is in every post of this blog) is premiered Saturday 5/2 among the ranks of some amazing films. It is truly an honor to be a part of the venue of the final night which if last year was any indication, is the most populated night of all of the nights! This was all followed by an open bar for 2 hours at a place called Little Nikki's which wraps up the year of celebration. Most of the filmmakers were there, and I got to shake the hands of some of them that I didn't have a chance to meet on other nights.

Top pick highlights for Friday 5/1:
RED RABBIT(animation)DIR: Egmont Mayer
VANDALEN(narrative)DIR: Simon Steuri
CU@ED's(narrative)DIR: Casey Stangl

Top pick highlights for Saturday 5/2:
DESCENDANTS(animation)DIR: Helko Van Der Scher
GERMANS IN THE WOODS(animation)DIR: The Rauch Brothers
DOWNLOVE 3D(narrative/experimental)DIR: Euripides Laskarides


There was one film that played Friday that deserves a big honorable mention for production:

ANIMATED AMERICAN(animation/narrative)DIR: Joe Haidar

As a production, this film was top notch combining a "roger-rabbit-esque" technique with live action and animation. Very seamlesss and very very well done. This film was a short story about how 2d traditional animated characters are affected by the economic standards of animation today. A very deliberate approach implying that 2d pencil paper animation is gone the way of the dodo in favor of faster and cheaper and theroreticaly better mediums like CG. What I didn't like about this film is that as much as I support the theroy of keeping 2d alive....this film felt like a cry for help. I cannot think of a faster way to make 2d animation look stupid than to joke about how low to the ground it may be. I still believe in pencil and paper animation as do a lot of animators including Bill Plympton, Pat Smith, and Signe Baumane to name a few...and they do pretty well last time I checked for good reason.

Good storytelling will save ANYTHING. Since I'm discussing ANIMATED AMERICAN, I want it said that this film was uber uber well done as a production. Great acting. Great Animation! It's an interesting concept surely, but the approach I feel punches 2d in the stomach and I wish they didn't tell this story. One cannot bully their way into the hearts of an audience through force.....literally, and that's what this film tried to do with it's 2d characters. I love 2d and so do a lot of other people I know who work very hard to make it possible....myself included. What makes it sell is a hybrid of both good craft and acting which was top drawer. Admittedly, 2d animators have to work a little harder and upgrade the tricks that they know so they can be applied to get an audience interested as an art...but if you have a kick-ass story, in my experiences, it doesn't matter if your film is crude animation like a South Park episode. People will love it if it's well conceived, and that is what will get people into things.

That about wraps it up for BeFilm this year. I look forward to the next year and I hope that more of my friends join then. Well done BeFilm! Thanks for everything and I'll see you next year!