I never thought I'd be reporting a film festival in these times, but people find ways. We Are One: A Global Film festival is a one of a kind event, a free global online festival featuring content from some of the world's best regarded film festivals. Here's what I've watched so far.
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The short films make up a good bulk of the festival, starting out with a trio of films co-produced by Dreamworks Animation. Two of those films, Bilby and Marooned, are potent allusions to parenthood, or at the very least love letters to it. They're also very cute films.
There's also the sensual The Distance Between The Sky and Us, a perfect encapsulation of what happens when something just clicks with a total stranger, finding connections in unlikely places.
A lot of feminine energy comes from films such as Chloe Sevigny's White Echo, a film that tends more towards abstract, artsy horror. It doesn't congeal thematically as I would have liked, but this one warrants a rewatch. On the other hand, Britt Lower's Circus Person feels like its quirkier, more whimsical sister, though the whole circus part feels out of place. (Framing the story as a letter to an ex's new lover is peak film festival material, though.)
Then there are films like Raw, which in the words of an anonymous Youtube commenter is "like Whiplash, but cooking." I'd say that's pretty accurate, and I'd also like to note that I'm lukewarm on that film.
The Tribeca short films have some great entries. Toto made me not want to have kids, but that's not exactly a bad thing. It's a sweet film about a lonely old lady who just wants to connect with someone. (Are there no cloud saves in the near future!?) The Light Side's story of a reformed old Sith Lord is just as uplifting, though it does rely a bit on Star Wars knowledge. But perhaps my favorite Tribeca short from the first few days of the festival is Michael J. Goldberg's Egg, a film that takes the phrase "know how the sausage is made" to a whole new level. It's also a love letter to at least half a dozen classic films and it is absolutely hilarious.
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Trojan Records is a UK label roughly described as "Mowtown, but with Jamaican music." Their story is a story of immigrants making art in the new spaces that they've carved out for themselves. But like most contemporary immigrant stories, there's pushback from a populace wary of the new people moving in. The label's early days were rough, because these immigrants were looked down upon, with the British reluctant to embrace the changing diversity of the times. That said, it only takes one catalyst to make such cultural works enter the bigger social consciousness.
It's always a treat to watch films like these. I would have appreciated if the film gave more details on how the company was sold off and what remains of it today, but as it is, it remains a relatively engaging documentary.
In the world of Prateek Vats' Eeb Allay Ooo!, there's always a bigger fish. Humans dominate other humans. Monkeys harass the human population, and since they are sacred, options to drive them away are limited. Langurs are the monkeys' natural enemy; and thus they dominate the monkeys.
Hired by the government to drive away the monkeys using specific sounds, Anjani (Shardul Bharadwaj) is not very good at his job. He tries to innovate in rather silly fashion, but his attempts do not fare well with his bosses or with certain segments of the population. There are attempts to become something greater, and chances exist in the form of a costume (embodying a figurative transformation) and an unwanted firearm, but power structures exist to keep things as they are and make animals of us all.
No industry in the world has captured the sheer exuberance of filmmaking as well as Uganda's homegrown Wakaliwood. Its latest international release, the 2014 production Crazy World, is every bit as crazy as its title suggests. A pastiche of macho American action films, Chinese Kung-fu films and even Ugandan oral storytelling tradition, the film is best experienced communally. The YouTube live chat served that purpose to an extent, perhaps made even more poignant considering that it's an audience composed of members from all over the world watching together.
And yet, buried within the film somewhere is a message against child kidnapping, a very serious problem in African countries (the film's director apparently made the film in the first place to dissuade people from kidnapping his children!) It's certainly a very relevant message wrapped up in a very unconventional package.
If only for its earnestness it's one of my favorite films of the year.
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