My first visit to Columbia, Missouri and the True/False Film Festival. Wow…

I saw nine movies in four days and still missed two dozen more. Where else could you say that but at a film festival? I had every intention of blogging during the fest itself. But with the films, the parties, the people, the town, the barbecue…

True/False swept me up in the greatest sort of rollercoaster, and there was time for no writing any more extravagant than a scribbled note. But here’s some thoughts on what was a fantastic success. Great programming, funky theaters, even They Might Be Giants on a Sunday night in Columbia. C’mon now! My only complaint is that it was too short.

First and foremost, as they should be, the films:

Shake The Devil Off - Director Peter Entell introduces us to Father Jerome LeDoux, and the shocked, passionate, and musical parishoners of St. Augustine Church in New Orleans. A beautiful but troubling film about a neighborhood forgotten by it’s country and by the Catholic Church. I won’t give away the ending, except to say that it stuck with me the rest of the weekend, setting the standard and the trend all the way through. Except for the closing night film. But I’ll get to that later.

Stranded - The story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed into the mythos of humanity when it crashed into the Andes mountains in 1972. Forty-five people went down in a Fairchild FH-227 twin turboprop airplane and endured an unfathomable stretch of time in the most gruesome elements. The sixteen survivors in the film go back to the mountain to tell their story. It’s as difficult to watch as you could imagine, but also sparkling and pure, like the unending expanse, surrounding them in whiteout.

Secret Screening Red - I can’t tell you a damn thing about this film, and probably don’t have to explain why. But I will say that this was one of my personal favorites of the festival. It screened in the Forest Theater, in the tallest building in town (proclaimed The Tiger by the locals), and it greeted me with a morning sun fresh with the warmth of spring. Waaaay too early in the morning, that sun, and seen without the benefit of coffee.

The screening room itself was painted to resemble the deep dark of some Tolkien forest, waiting to drag you away. And singing in front of the blank screen was a pixie with a uke and a voice teetering on the upper edge of a person’s capacity to hear it. She covered Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses and Dylan, and I don’t know what else, but I was transported. I might have hallucinated the whole thing.

As for the movie, gaze on this picture and seek it out. It won’t be that hard to find. Perhaps on IndiePix next time…

True Life Fund:Very Young Girls - I am not a crier. A very few movies have made me cry, and most of them are war movies. We’re talkin’ Glory, Schindler’s List, Bravehart (I know, I know, Mel Gibson. But hey, on any given sunday…) But I was barely keeping it together during this film. A character-driven piece about teenage prostitutes, horribly abused and brainwashed at an age far too young to be capable of finding any way out. The stories of the handful of girls brave enough to share them, painted a full and far worse picture of the life than anything I’ve ever seen.

But these girls found an ally in GEMS, a New York-based organization run on a shoestring that looks to rescue them from their circumstances with generosity and hope. The most heartbreaking moments of bravery occur. But this ain’t Hollywood, and many of the endings aren’t happy. Yet I did witness something amazing, a faith beyond my understanding and capacity. The founder of GEMS, herself a former sex worker, always left the final choice to the girls. She refused to force them to see it her way, even when she knew how terrible the end result.

The best part of the screening was it’s connection to the festival’s True Life Fund, with which the theater-goers could contribute directly to GEMS. This great idea banished the annoying delay between inspiration and action, and you can bet I gave at the door. I have it on record that the Fund raised over $8,000 in only two screenings, and I think that’s pretty swell. I’m tellin’ ya, give it up for the people of Columbia, Missouri. It wasn’t all us drunken out-of towners at this thing. The locals got behind the festival in a big way, filling room after room. The line for the overflow queue, marked by an enormous rainbow Q perched on the tip of a stick like goliath’s lollipop, was always long and gleeful.

Gonzo - This was the film I was most looking forward to, and I was not disappointed. Director Alex Gibney’s work focused on Hunter S. Thompson’s salad days, from the mid-’60’s to the mid-’70’s, when most of his books were written and his bold but doomed campaign for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado was run. The visuals were stunning and the pacing breakneck, much like the author’s life, which came to an end on the wrong side of a hand gun at the family’s Woody Creek ranch in Colorado.

Not much for new information in play here, especially for a devout follower of gonzo journalism, but a ton of insight and fantastic stories from people who knew him best. Yet my favorite moments were the pieces of Hunter. Always Hunter. Alex unearthed some fantastic footage and video recordings of the man-beast himself, from the depraved insanity of the Fear and Loathing trip, to the later days under a sort of self-imposed house arrest filled with strange faces and stories but bereft of his early manic drive. Gonzo only further cemented Hunter S. Thompson’s status as a mad, monstrous genius, barbaric and intolerable yet missed with a tear-streaked longing, the recollection of glee, as if our own trickster spirits hit the floor with him. Still missed, always missed.

Song Sung Blue - This was a tricky one. First film of the day on Sunday, though I was in significantly better shape than at the Forest Theater. Fresh off two big wins at Slamdance, Song Sung Blue followed Mike Sardina, the Neil Diamond impersonator known inside his tiny circle of fame as Lightning, and his songbird wife Clair, who joins him on the Midwest Bar Circuit as Thunder. Together, Lightning and Thunder fought for fame (and struggled against people’s habit of calling them Thunder and Lightning) through bad health and marital struggles, always with dreamers’ hearts. Their story is a tragic and joyful one, though I couldn’t help but wonder at the access I was given to the ugliness of their day-to-day lives. Some moments (like a repetitive close-up of Clair, with no makeup and stark lighting, as she tokes furiously on cigarette after cigarette) seemed designed for laughter but left me cringing. I recognized the feeling from any one of dozens of reality tv shows I’ve caught, all designed to exploit the stars while sizzling away my necessary brain cells with mind-numbing speed. Now I know that this was not director Greg Kohs’ intention. During the Q&A we met a straight-shooter with nothing but love and compassion for his subjects. But sometimes you’ve got to call them as they lie, and though the film was impressively done and evoked strong emotion, I left the theater feeling abused and dirty.

I admit a partial fault for that. I had gone to bed only a couple hours earlier. But there were more movies to see, and one must keep that flag in the air.

The Order of Myths - Bravo. When do you ever leave a movie feeling like you just experienced an audio/visual thesis paper, and yet can’t get it out of your mind? Director Margaret Brown gives us an insider’s look at Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, where celebrations have been held since years before New Orleans was even founded, and the white folk and the black folk spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on segregated parades and parties. They elect their own king, queen, and royal court, have their own mixers, and toss strings of beads, candy, and boxes of moonpies to their own people in the parade crowds.

The film makes it’s point subtly, allowing the moments to reveal themselves without a running commentary. No one needed a narrator to point out the class distinctions still very much alive in Mobile, probably because we’re all familiar with them in some form in the many places we’ve traveled. But watching the black clothing designer keep her composure in the company of her old money, granddaughter-of-a-slave-owner client when the topic of our history comes up…watching the little kids passed over for beads and treats by the masked white parade organizations…eesh. In the end there’s some traditions, beautiful and cherished, that embody everything great about the spirit of the south, the family and community atmosphere and the embrace of formality and leisure, and then other traditions that remain just ’cause that’s how it’s always been done, prodding a bony finger at hurts that still flare up. After all, the last recorded lynching in this country was right there in Mobile, only twenty-five years ago. To me, The Order of Myths was a great example of balanced documentary filmmaking.

The Mosquito Problem - This was another problematic screening for me. I had yet to remedy that feeling dirty problem from earlier with a proper shower, and the screening was smack in the middle of the afternoon, that synaptical dead zone when mind and body coordinate their efforts to force a nap. This issue was compounded by the fact that this slow-paced, Altman-esque peek at the people of Belene, a tiny rough-luck town on the wrong side of the Danube, was entirely subtitled and kept intentionally free of razzle-dazzle. It played it straight, a tourism video of a place akin to hell for a New-Yorker, where boredom, poverty, joblessness, a looming nuclear threat, the ghost of communism and a crumbling prison live together amongst an unending deluge of mosquitos. As you can imagine, dealing with said lil’ beasties is the biggest topic of conversation.

Director Andrey Paounov takes us there so we never have to go ourselves, and for that I am eternally grateful. But I want to stress, this is a fantastic movie. There are shots that haunt my dreams, like one of a dank cloud of mosquito poison clogging the streets. This film unravels over time, drawing you in without an active point, giving these people a proper stage. In some ways this felt like the polar opposite of Song Sung Blue, and a nice counter to some of the more active commentaries I’d seen. A palate cleanser after a strong, garlic-addled first course. In some ways the perfect film to lead me in to the closing night.

Yes, we’re there. The closing night film.

Man on Wire - Director James Marsh described his film as a “Caper Picture”, an endearingly Old Hollywood description, yet utterly on point. The story of Philippe Petit’s incredible tightrope walk between the twin towers in 1974 and the planning that went into getting away with it was pure joy on celluloid. With extra marks for danger and lawlessness, the film was embodied by the energy of the protagonist, who spoke with such passion and drive that Marsh actually had to fade him to black in mid-sentence at one point just to keep the story rolling along.

But as incredible as the event was, as astounding the footage and stills, the most moving aspect was Petit’s approach to life — filled with a willingness to look impossibility in the face, to die if necessary, in order to always follow your dreams. He’s the greatest and the worst friend and ally, pushing all those beyond themselves and what they thought capable. It’s the way I strive to live my life, and fall short on often enough to be completely inspired and taken in by a man who refuses to, thereby achieving grace and immortality.

This amazing film raged against the darkness of most of the other docs I saw at True/False, summing up the fest and blazing a trail for the future. I was shaken to my core, yet left more whole and complete than I’ve felt in a good long time. Cheers to Man on Wire.

I could go on and on about the rest of the festival, but I’ll leave it to your imagination (I’m sure you’ve got one), and to the tons of photos you’ll find through myself, Danielle, the dope-ass Brian Liu of ToolboxDC (He took that pic of me, BTW), and everyone else too blown away by the festival to keep quiet. I’ll simply let it be said that SXSW coming up this weekend has quite a lot to live up to.

T/F rocked the docs!