Tuesday

It is Tuesday and it is almost a midpoint in Cinequest, what happens from now on will occur with tremendous speed. The old filmmakers are leaving and the new ones are coming into town. In reality, the festival is split fairly evenly down to first weekend and the second weekend. Unlike most festivals, Cinequest is second week heavy. Well, really depends on what you want. In the first Saturday, you can see all the "Mavericks." I love, Cinequest, really and I've been an active festival goer in different capacities over the last 4 years, but if I ever hear anybody say the word "Maverick" I will shoot them. You have been fairly warned.
The second weekend is focused on the making process of filmmaking. You can attend three remaining Digital by Digital (DxD) presentations about different formats, presentations of Panasonic and Palm and Sony under different enlightening causes.
Two films on the agenda today are Warsaw w/Threshold and Movie viewers choice award "Guy in Row Five" produced by a hilarious bunch of guys from Los Angeles.

Tales of Intransgience

Tales of Intransgience is a film from Turkey that is collection of stories told by the minstrels and bards in the winter landscape of the country. The framework is two villages separted by a frozen lake and they compete in whether the minibus or the sleigh comes first. I walked in after the start of the film so at first I thought it was a documentary. It gives a genuine feeling of ethnographic film and its no wonder as there is only one professional actor in the film and the rest are all people from the area.

Cinequest Opening Night Film and Party

March 2nd aka yesterday was the opening night for Cinequest Film Festival based out of San Jose, California, the closest festival to my house. The opening night film was United States premiere of 'Manual for Love Stories', by Brazilian director José Roberto Torero.

Manual of Love is a satirical rip on film love stories, together with an all-powerful narrator voice and sunsets. It makes fun of romatic stereotypes and the audience is allowed to participate in the flow of the film. It was watchable and at times entertaining but it felt a bit overdone which is common to the style of 'films about films'. The drawbacks of the 'film about film' genre are that they make the audience aware that they are watching a film, not a story and because there are no real events that happen, the acting style is very kookie. It separates you from realism by a kind of whimsical approach to the story and it brings over aware that there is never real danger to any characters and thus the acting suffers because there is nothing real. I am not condeming the genre, per se, there are films that overcome this difficulty, "Adaptation" is one of the more successful films of the genre.
This is the second opening night film of Cinequest that follows this film about film genre. Its not a bad start of the festival. It was an entertaining film for an opening night film, and the party that followed at the Mongomery Hotel was full of delicious appetizers the highlight of which were a
the chocolate fountain with strawberries ****** (6 stars out of 5)
mushroom toast **** (4 stars)
meat skewers(meat unknown) **** (4 stars)
roast beef sandwich **** (4 stars)
tuna salad in a celery stick *** (3 stars)
cheeseake ** (2 stars)