After seven hours in the St. Louis airport, I have returned from my long, wonderful weekend at the True/False Film Festival. Below, you’ll find a recap of the films I covered whilst in Columbia, MO. But first, I want to give a shout-out to Satin and Chenille.
Before each screening at True/False, “buskers” culled from all over the country take the stage to perform while the audience is filing in. At some of the larger True/False venues, the buskers sort of fade into the background, but at an intimate space like the new Little Ragtag, the performers really get a chance to take over the room. That’s where I saw Satin and Chenille, a girl and boy (I came late, so I’m not sure which one is Satin and which one is Chenille) who did a tongue-in-cheek set of standards and love songs before the Friday night screening of Carny.
“I hope you guys love each other as much as we love love songs,” said the boy, before they launched into an acoustic guitar-fueled version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” They followed that up with an epic, partially-accapella version on “I’ve Had The Time of My Life,” which turned into a mass sing-a-long. It was a great moment, and maybe an audience of 50 or so moviegoers united by a Dirty Dancing reference is a little thing compared to the achievement of such a well-curated program of films, but it’s also one of the many things that sets True/False apart from larger, more impersonal festivals, and it’s definitely a reason to go back next year.
Anyway. Check out a guide to my True/False reviews after the jump.
True/False officially begins tonight, but as is tradition, the festival hosted a special preview screening last night for students at the University of Missouri. The film was …an Alternative to Slitting Your Wrist, and it was a perfect pick for the young crowd. 25 year-old Owen Lowery, who directed, edited and appears in nearly every frame of the autobiographical doc, doesn’t exactly break new thematic ground or wow with his filmmaking prowess, but that’s part of the point: super-accessible and unencumbered by the constraints of traditional cinematic language, Wrist is pure peer-to-peer catharsis.
The film follows Lowery from 24th birthday to 25th, as he attempts to conquer a list of 52 things that he’s always wanted to do, one for each week of the year. We learn early on that Lowery made the list whilst in a psych ward, where he was recovering from a suicide attempt. At first, Lowery milks some of the less-noble list items for comic relief: he gets shot with a taser, he gets but by a scorpion and, thankfully, we’re spared the footage of him “taking a dump on Mount Rushmore.” But the list eventually settles into a structuring gimmick that gives Lowery license to confront his real demons. It becomes apparent that the project isn’t really about the list at all, but about the personal traumas––childhood sexual abuse, his father’s drinking problem as well as his own––that led Lowery to his personal rock bottom.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
