I Spilled Beer On My Professor At The ACTC Film Festival

The ACTC Film Festival is a yearly event that takes films made by students from Minnesota schools such as Hamline University, St. Katherine University, Augsburg College, Macalester College, and University of St. Thomas, and gives them exposure. The event  takes place at the St. Anthony Main theater.

The entrance of the St. Anthony Main Theater

This year was a mixed bag of films. While Augsburg put out some really good narrative films (my favorite submissions all came from Augsburg... yes I am biased), other colleges made some really good documentaries, and some other schools made really horrible films that should not have made the cut.

Film Festival pamphlet and schedule

Of the few films that were legitimately good, my favorite has to be Augsburg student Nial Nelson-Hopkins' CHESSDOGS (which you can check out here). It was also one of the audience's favorite films as well; the reaction and applause was immense.  I made my cinema debut in another Augsburg student's film. I play a 90's gangster that uses laundry detergent as a dumbell in Casey Bargsten's Puppet Passion (the link is not the version that Bargsten showed, but it's close enough). This was a fantastic film. The audience really received it well; they laughed at the right moments and died down during the drama. Another Augsburg student, JC Calubayan, submitted his film Black Sun, Red Sky to a wonderful reaction. This director has a knack for composition. His work reminds me of Terrence Malick (especially this specific film). Black Sun, Red Sky was definitely the most beautiful film at the festival. 

Filmmaker Casey Bargsten at the reception.

I had a huge problem with two films specifically. One of these films won a very undeserved award for a really problematic and almost offensive documentary. Chia Lor's "A Hmong" Scar: Translated Bodies of the Hmong Diaspora was promising at first (except for the comical opening that I felt bad about laughing at), but it quickly devolves into something the filmmaker did not handle with sensitivity. The film starts out with an interview with a Hmong soldier that now lives in America. He shows the audience his scars from war and does begin to cry while talking about the atrocious things he saw during the war. This is, unfortunately, immediately discredited by the next two people the director talks to. There is a woman in traditional Hmong dress and a man who is dressed in a button up and slacks. The filmmaker asks them what it means to be Hmong. They reply with "you have a rice cooker and drive a Toyota." I could not believe that it ended on that note. I feel that to sum up a culture with those two factors is disgusting. If the film was about the Americanization of Hmong people it would fit, but that's not what the film deals with.

Hamline University student James Zimmerman also submitted a comedy film called Quest for Youth. This film is about a scientist that has found the formula for everlasting youth. The jokes are mostly about what ingredients are put into the youth serum. The humor of this film is that of a middle school boy; it's crude and dumb. Eventually the scientist drinks the youthful concoction and turns into a child. The next five minutes of the film is the child running around the house and screaming. The laughs from the audience did not last long. 

Overall the festival was very enjoyable. I got to meet with filmmakers at the reception and tech-talk as well as converse with professors about projects I am working on at the moment. I also spilled beer on Augsburg professor Stephen Clark, so I don't think I can hang out with him anymore.


The reception of the ACTC Film Festival. Filmmaker Alex Behrns, on the left, ruining my picture.

Blue Is The Warmest Color (2013): Everyone Loves Spaghetti

Adellatif Kechiche's latest film Blue Is The Warmest Color has been polarizing audiences with its exhausting and generous tale of sexual awakening, youth, and romantic dependency. 

I was very nervous to see this movie. With all that I have read about the three hour tragic love story with very graphic sex, I was expecting this film to be two and a half hours of full on nudity and maybe a half hour of actual narrative. I was completely wrong.

The film stars a very sensitive Adele Exarchopoulos  as a high school girl doing high school girl stuff; she dates a boy, they have sex, she gossips, and she deals with a break up. She later meets Emma (played by Lea Seydoux) who is a college senior working on her art major. They lock eyes earlier in the film as Adele is off on her date with a boy, but she comes in much later in the film. The first conversation had by Emma and Adele is at a gay bar. This scene has one of the most simple and beautiful reveals of Emma coming out of another room just barely out of focus. From there the love story takes flight and later comes crashing down. 

Adele and Emma at a pride parade in Blue Is The Warmest Color
Blue Is The Warmest Color is one of the most raw and emotionally honest films I have seen. Ms. Exarchoupoulos is definitely a shining star in this film. When she cries, she really cries. There's snot that runs through her tears; there is simply no ego. It's brilliantly done and it's even more impressive that the actress is only 19. Lea Seydoux also comes through with a role of modesty and personal security. She plays a role that is rooted in masculine values. Her emotions play out much heavier than Adele's do in the way that they are bursts of anger and sexuality rather than extreme sadness. There is no fault in the acting in this film. To me, it is absolutely spot on. 

If you are not interested with Adele's face, this is going to be a very long movie for you.The cinematographer, Sofian El Fani, is my biggest gripe with the film. He seems to struggle when the image is not an extreme close up of someone's face. There are a handful of shots where he pulls the camera back, but there is no substance to them. This film, to me, is very boring stylistically. Don't get me wrong, though, the images fit perfectly well with the film. It is intimate and, at times, intrusive. It feels almost voyeuristic; an outsider looking in, if you may. There is just a strange amount of close-ups of people eating spaghetti in this film. It sounds like I am lying, but I'm not. Everyone in this film loves to eat, and they show it. These shots really pulled me out of the film just because it was so gross. There's no music; it's just people biting away at spaghetti. Kechiche definitely has a weird sense of humor... if it even is humor. 

OK, the sex scenes. Well, the author of the source material (Julie Maroh) has said "the heteronormative laughed because they don't understand it and find the scene ridiculous. The gay and queer people laughed because it's not convincing, and found it ridiculous."

I felt that the scenes worked. Throughout the film there is this build up of sexual tension between Adele and Emma that it was not surprising to see a very hard cut to graphic sex. The one thing I absolutely hated about it was how raw it really was. There was no music, so everyone in the theater had to hear me take sips of my drink between the passionate moans and groans on the screen. It's volcanic in the way that the sex progresses. It serves the film well. It is an important and integral scene that addresses the sexual dependency that Adele has for Emma. 

Overall, this film is amazing. It really is glorious in its method of tackling ideas of love and sexuality. It really is too bad that there is so much controversy surrounding the film. It is far too powerful of a film.

First time watch: 9/10

Could Hollywood Be Changing?

Gravity (2013) has taken the box office by storm and has received universal acclaim. I asked Augsburg film and literature professors Robert Cowgill and Doug Green about the waves that Gravity has been making, and whether or not a shift in Hollywood is happening.