The Filmcake

It’s nice of the Oklahoma Gazette to give the deadCENTER Film Festival several pages in their latest issue. There’s an overview article, a couple of spotlight reviews, and a slew of mini-reviews. Plus, there’s a festival schedule included as well. Unfortunately, the schedule is incomplete and contains errors in the showtimes. So while you may want to use the Gazette to figure out what movies look interesting, you’ll want to check the deadCENTER website for a full list of films with accurate showtimes.

A couple of photos of last night’s deadCENTER Kick Off Party on Film Row courtesy of the wimgo blog’s tannerherriot (cc-by-2.5):

So we return relatively early from the Wednesday night Kick Off. As planned, Sarah and I first had dinner at Trattorio Il Centro. The bad news was that the arugula pizza had been removed from the menu. The good news was that they still made it for us anyway. After dinner and a couple of drinks, we headed on over to Film Row. We picked up our passes and “swag” and hung out waiting for the Kick Off Party to get underway. Inside the party, they had wine and plenty of Stella Artois. There was food from Gaijin Sushi, Paseo Grill, and the Prairie Gypsies. The food would have been wonderful if we weren’t already stuffed from dinner. We hung out for a bit–had a few drinks, had a few snacks–and then headed on home to let in the dogs and get some rest for the remainder of the weekend (after all, we still have to go into work tomorrow–thankfully, we both took off all day on Friday). Those who stuck around were treated with an outdoor screening of Rainbow Around the Sun (which we’re going to catch later at the Museum).

Thursday looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun as well:

6:00PM | Opening Night Party on the Rooftop at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art

7:30PM | Whimsical Shorts

A Faery’s Tale | Sylvia Apostol
The Vaudevillian | Bryan Nest
Damn The Past! | Juli Kang
Life In Transition | John R. Dilworth
Where Did the Time Go? | Eric Kim & Mary Fecteau
Gustav Braustache and The Auto-Debilitator | Rob Cunningham & Tony Mullen

9:30PM | disFIGURED | Glenn Gers @ Harkins

This is Sarah’s most anticipated film.

The story of an unexpected friendship between two women – one obese, the other anorexic.

Like Sarah, I was initially reserved upon hearing about the film because of the mention of anorexia. We’re conditioned to think of the fat (especially) female friend as the butt of a joke. In this case, I thought maybe it might be the fat girl who gets “cured” through anorexia. Luckily, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Reading the Director’s Statement as well as a comment the director Glenn Gers left on The F-Word blog (where similar reservations were mentioned), it appears that this film will neither be quite so brash nor so simple. Body image, like real life, is complicated. The movie is “full of mixed feelings and unexpected emotional logic” very much like real life. I, too, very much look forward to checking this one out.

11:00PM | Opening Night After Party at Maker’s Cigar Bar

Film Threat’s Don Lewis won’t make it to this year’s deadCENTER, but his documentary short film will when it airs with the Midnight Shorts on Friday night:

“Drag King” is about this group of people in Northern California who get together every summer and hold “The Fiberglass 500.” What these crazy-ass people do is, they get old cars (as well as some souped up ones) and attach old, beat-up boats to them. They then race around the track trying to destroy each others boats. It’s pretty awesome and really appeals to your inner redneck. If you’re outwardly a redneck, then you’ll automatically like it. By the way, nice tooth.

By the way, it looks like Pete Vonder Haar who blogged about last year’s festival on Film Threat will return to OKC. Hopefully, Pete will offer up his opinions on this year’s festival here and/or here.

The 8th Annual deadCENTER Film Festival kicks off tonight at historic Film Row. According to Downtown OKC:

Built in 1930 and set with a keystone engraved with “Film Exchange”, 700-708 West Sheridan was the epicenter of Oklahoma City’s “Film Row” from 1930 through the 1960’s. This area, located at the intersection of West Sheridan and Lee, was one of 30-40 regional distribution centers for Hollywood. Theater owners from around the state would come here to screen new releases, sign contracts, trade movies, and gather lobby cards, posters and other necessities. Columbia Pictures, RKO, Paramount, Universal, MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century-Fox, United Artists and others all had offices located in buildings in this area of Oklahoma City.

The Festival begins at 7:30pm with a Kick Off Party for All-Access Pass holders at this wonderful location. Then at 9:30pm, Rainbow Around the Sun will screen for FREE just outside at N Lee & Sheridan Ave. Matt Brown (The Fellowship Students) stars as Zachary Blasto in:

The musical journey of a hard drinking musician who creates madcap musical fantasies to help him face personal loss and become a better person. Kind of.

Sarah and I are going to grab dinner at Trattoria Il Centro after work and then head over to the party. As for Rainbow Around the Sun, we’re going to hold off and catch that at the OKC Museum of Art on Friday. After all, we still have to make it into work tomorrow morning.

Yesteday, Sarah wrote movingly about her feelings on watching Stanley Kramer’s On The Beach and what it had to say about life and mortality:

I strongly believe that it is death that gives life meaning. Without the gnawing, ever-present knowledge that one day it will all end, I find it a little harder to truly enjoy life, and a lot easier to take it for granted. I think this is why I like the Impending End of the World scenario so much. It puts everything into perspective. It reminds me to feel everything more deeply. I appreciate Dwight more, and savor the little moments. Same thing with my family. My friends. My dogs. The thought of death forces me to focus on what I love, and to avoid getting worked up about the things that in, the end, really don’t matter all that much. I don’t want to waste a single minute. I want to live my life so that when the end finally comes, I have as few regrets as possible. I want to do, and see, and experience, as much as I can.

I feel the exact same way. Precisely because life has such a finality to it is what makes it so precious and wonderful. So with that floating around in my mind, I read this afternoon in The Oklahoman something that seemed to strangely echo that sentiment. Wayne Coyne described the “Flaming Lips philosophy”:

Maybe it’s proclaiming that there is a kind of cosmic mercy that happens when we feel like, despite our best efforts, we really are defeated. … Happiness can await us despite our worst failures. But it’s a happiness we must create. And since everything we believed in is destroyed, we have to create this happiness out of nothing.

I like that. It’s a psychedelic echo of what Sarah had to say, I think. And consider me a follower of Coyne’s philosophy. There’s a decent playlist of FLips songs that plays in my head whenever I need guidance or inspiration or comfort or any of these.

With that, I can’t wait to finally check out Coyne’s labor of love, Christmas on Mars. It screens at deadCENTER 11:55pm Friday night and 2:00am Saturday morning at the Rocktown Gym. This will mark the third Flaming Lips film I’ve seen first at deadCENTER (The Fearless Freaks & U.F.O.’s at the Zoo, previously).

We already know that Oklahoma City University will represent at the deadCENTER Film Festival with the feature Unsolved. It looks like the University of Oklahoma will have representation at the festival as well.

Two films from OU graduate Royce Sharp will be shown, The Breakup of a Happy Marriage and Deus Ex Machina (w/ Walker Robins). In an article in the Norman Transcript, Sharp describes the former as a “funeral for my right testicle. The latter is described as a “comedy about a guy and his moustache.” Okay. Testicles don’t often play a huge role in the films that I like…but if it’s personal and/or honest, then why not. Now, the moustache movie…I don’t know about. Last year there was a funny Okie short that screened called Man With a Moustache. Hopefully, Sharp and Robins’ film brings some originality to the facial hair genre.

OU art professor Robert Dohrmann will show his Rebus Riot! which he describes in the Transcript article as “not really a story like most of the other films at deadCENTER. It’s really more concept-based.” While just about anybody is likely to be confounded by some of the shorts that get screened at deadCENTER, I honestly think that having read Film Art will give me a newfound perspective with which to appreciate what some of the more “experimental” films are trying to do.

The Breakup of a Happy Marriage will be shown as part of the Okie Shorts program at 7:00pm, Friday the 13th, at Kerr Auditorium.

Deus Ex Machina and Rebus Riot! will be shown as part of the Midnight Shorts program at 11:55pm, Friday the 13th, at the IAO Gallery.

The World Premiere for the Oklahoma produced film Unsolved will take place as part of the deadCENTER Film Festival on Friday the 13th (at Kerr Auditorium; it will also screen on the 14th at OKCMOA). It is the first feature film to come out of Oklahoma City University’s Moving Image Arts Program, headed up by Fritz Kiersch (director of Children of the Corn).

Check out the trailer:

This reminds me that I need to get over to deadCENTER’s b-side site and figure out what to watch for the festival. Oooh, I can’t wait. And, now I guess I might have to figure out how to fit in Unsolved.