The 35th Starz Denver Film Festival, which is set to proceed from November 1st through 11th, has a major distinction this year that separates it from all previous, namely that it straddles the presidential election, one of the closest and most contentious in recent history. This seems like a balsy move, but one that will likely show where the community stands on film in an age in which the public is bombarded by moving images and an overabundance of availability through screens, televisions and hand-held devices. Purists know, and still thrive on the joy of seeing cinematic achievements presented on a large screen in the company of others, it's never certain how many are out there but the scale of the Film Center, it's excellent location and overall atmosphere should prove to be heavy assets for anyone that is engaged and desires to spend an excessive amount of time watching films. Rare films. Films that are not available, yet, on netflix, hulu or streaming on their own websites online. And as for the election, everyone will be biting their nails come next tuesday night so perhaps the best way to tune out the rhetoric and stop your heart from palpitating just might be an evening out at the movie theater. As the festival has declared this year: Vote Film!
What's similar this year as in previous is the diversity in programming and the selection of several films that are rooted in the visual arts or approaches that are heavily artistic. We like that, it definitely gets our vote.....so much so that the festival has once again given Plus Gallery access to advance screeners of available films. Here's a rundown of what to consider going out of your way for, at least as it relates to the art-genre:
There are certainly a few standouts in this year's selection, including at least two masterpieces. Famed Czech artist, animator and agent provocateur Jan Svankmeyer puts forth one of his best efforts to date with "Surviving Life," a philosophical treatise rooted heavily in the psychology of dreams, sex and winning the lottery. The Svankmeyer spirit is in full bloom here, his trademark sensibilities with both stop-motion and animated living action fuse with the grotesque like never before. Whether intended or not, Svankmeyer makes a generous nod to Monty Python in both the title and overall visual dynamic, in the best of ways including a slightly excessive eating binge that leads to a stream of spew that needs no greater explanation here. But this is still pure Svankmeyer, his tongue firmly in cheek whilst plumbing the realm of dreams, the banality of life and the search for the obvious. There is no doubt that the artist has benefited from the tools and sensibilities of the digital age, the film never looking more than hand-crafted, yet obviously incorporating the change in approach that digital affords every artist and filmmaker now. His surreal fantasy moves at a rousing clip and is filled with many well edited mind-bending visuals and gags, which will undoubtedly look best on a large screen. It is also quite crazy and twisted, ending in a virtual "blood-bath," .......but as with most moments captured on film by the imagination, it's only a dream and pretty darn terrific all the way through.
A film that's somewhat in parallel with Svankmeyer's, and certainly a more challenging and unusual masterpiece, is "Consuming Spirits" by artist and Chicago School of Arts Institute professor Chris Sullivan. Not a name to ring too many bells amongst even a dedicated film-going public, Sullivan is actually a highly regarded experimental artist and animator, the kind whose resume includes a lengthy list of both film festival screenings and major museum showcases, not to mention a Guggenheim fellowship award. The fact that he has been working on this 125 minute animated narrative for over a decade also mandates a work ethic that puts him largely out of the wider spotlight. But after watching this strange hybrid work, one can only respect the dedication and sheer scale of time necessary to complete something that is obviously not going to be a mainstream hit, if it gets a wider release at all. "Consuming Spirits" is the kind of dark narrative that even if it were shot as a live-action piece, would likely be relegated as a sideshow. Sullivan, like Svankmeyer, mixes three distinct visual approaches to bring his narrative to life, the majority of both based on, of all things, puppetry. But puppetry techniques can get a bit tedious in even shorts-length films, let alone 2 hour features, and both artists approach their material through painstaking methods that allow the editing to expand the power of the individual attention span and human brain. Quite well in Sullivan's case, his secondary compositions consisting of stop-motion animation sets with an affecting visual appeal as well as spellbinding, monochromatic, hallucinatory, shape-shifting drawings that call to mind the profound works of South African artist William Kentridge. The combination of three distinct visual styles across 5 chapters to tell a story that deals with dysfunctional family, aging, alcohol and small-town life blend to create one whopper of a visual treatise. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it's certainly one of the most ambitious and genuine films at the festival.
No less ambitious, but in my opinion a much tougher film to champion, is the experimental documentary "A Shape of Error," by Abigail Child. Child's resume is also lengthy and robust, she's been making, exhibiting and personally distributing her experimental artworks for over 40 years, which is probably news to most everyone reading this, if not much of humanity. But that's a huge achievement and one that should be applauded and supported, which is why this depiction of Frankenstein author Marry Shelly's diaries makes an appearance at the festival. The basis of the project almost reads better on paper, however, than in film: "An experimental l6mm feature, A Shape of Error is based on the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - writers whose lives forecast the modern in their concern for women, free love and labor. Child retells their story as an imaginary home movie, using strategies developed in her earlier films.....to shape a new kind of narrative." This new kind of narrative employs split-screen techniques, non-actors and an outstanding soundtrack to attempt to tell a story that, well, frankly might be best read instead of interpreted visually.
Outside of composer Zeena Parkins rather brilliant soundtrack, I felt this to be one of the more tedious exercises in experimental documentary, though by no means a failed effort.....merely a remote one, and one that frankly it felt very hard to connect with, perhaps because it depicts an author, someone who at one point in the diaries claims that she would like to spend all her time reading. It's a bit tough getting into such a person's melodrama, even if it involves historic figures such as Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, atheists and historical agitators of great wealth. The depictions of the main characters simply comes across in a way that is inert and very telling of the need to fashion a more experimental approach to the subject. The visual interpretation succeeds at times - in particular a carousel scene that, had it continued through the entire film, would have been impressive - and primarily somewhere after the half-way mark, so don't fret if you arrive to this screening late! Whereas the most tested audiences should firmly appreciate the Svankmeyer and Sullivan films, Child's seems distinctly intended for a more narrow and purist following. And that is precisely what the film festival is about.
Canadian director Denis Cote was introduced to Denver audiences last year at the festival with the standout narrative feature "Curling." Anyone who viewed that film with as much appreciation as we did has no idea what's in store in the director's follow-up feature "Bestiare," at least I was caught slightly off-gaurd by the exquisite relationship this film has to film as pure art, something one would expect to find in a museum environment rather than a movie theater screen. That is a good thing, filmmakers and visual artists these days are crossing over or between realms more readily than at any time in history, and unlike Abigail Child's film, Cote's chooses the most pure approach to his subject, one that is largely static, relying on very specific and unusual framing as well as the concept that less is more. In this case, it's almost impossible to determine what the overall context of his film might be, if there is one. What is depicted seems to be somewhat obtuse and often unsettling scenes of animals in unnatural environments. "Bestiare" makes it's declaration with the title, commencing with a studio environment where visual artists attempt to render an animal in two dimensional form on paper, and proceeds from there to give us a depiction of animal life rooted in a reality that is uncommon, almost as if to say "how much can you relate to animals from just a static image" as most popular art does? It becomes a meditation for the individual, a true experience that, while certainly not for everyone, is solid and original.
Cote's sensibilities in "Bestiare" are very much akin to the successful and revered contemporary photographer Gregory Crewdson, who gets his own biographic treatment on film this year in "Gregory Crewdson - Brief Encounters." Crewdson is a photographer that is much happier to have his work based in the mechanics and production aspects of film, and thoroughly happy not have to worry about the other stuff, at one point in the film stating that "Its a privilege to not have to think about plot or storyline, but just be focused on the moment." This Crewdson does well, his success as an artist is not as massive as other artists to mandate their own, absorbing documents this year such as Richter and Abramovic. But it absolutely makes sense to deliver a documentary on Crewdson, as well as to show his cinematic prints on a large screen. His artist persona is a bit odd, he's very serious and professional, he swims long distance in murky lakes but just doesn't really look the part of a renowned photographer, at least today, which is great! Anyone involved in photography will appreciate this look into his history and technique, and as for others, well its a good human interest story and in conjunction with Surviving Life and Consuming Spirits has a lot to say about the psychologic motivations behind most art. At times it seems to wander a bit, but it's at it's most compelling when Crewdson starts to talk about his career development, revealing thoughts like "anything was possible, we barely knew what we were doing" in relation to his daring early works, and telling stories like how on one early transformative shoot he decided to call the police and tell them that someone was "sodding" the street closed because nobody seemed to care that he was shooting in such a grand manner in a remote residential neighborhood without permits. These are revelations of thought and what it takes to alter the course of art history as an individual. Crewdson is very pure as an artist, even though he discovered photography as the result of a "girlfriend" originally. His human aspects are engaging both in his work as well as himself, the documentary giving ample time to cover both. He concludes the film with perhaps one of the strongest, most genuine statements an artist can make when he says "I feel very strongly that every artist has one central story to tell. The struggle is to tell and retell that story over and over again in visual form, and try to challenge that story. At the core the story is the same. It is the defining story of who you are."
Also of note to the community interested in visual arts is that Colorado's own Stacy Steers, whose most recent film Night Hunter was last shown at the Denver Art Museum in the DAM Contemporaries sponsored Fusebox space, will receive the Stan Brakhage Vision Award at this year's festival, and another opportunity for the public to engage with the back-catalog of her work. There's also a rather robust program focused on works by local filmmakers this year, including a new feature by the hard-working and talented Alexander Phillipe a well as last year's academy award winning short documentary from Daniel Junge. Most of the art-related films are sponsored by the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, we should all thank them for supporting this type of programming......and as we all know, the best way to show that support is by attending these films and all of the amazing work the Denver Film Society does year round.
Look for more coverage on the festival in next week's news. And to find out more on all of the films for this year's festival, visit the Denver Film Society website at
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