Rambling: Festival All Gone (AIFF) And Marwencol.

Yesterday was the last day of the Ashland Independent film Festival. We wimped out and staggered home rather than go to the last two films, but the ones that we did see were great.

I'm being un-systematic again, and just talking about one of them: Marwencol, about Mark Hogancamp's miniature town.

Mark Hogancamp was beaten into a coma by five men outside a bar, receiving severe brain damage that destroyed most of his memories and necessitated re-learning how to walk, eat, and perform other basic functions.

That's the backstory. The film is about Mark's "homemade therapy" - a miniature one-sixth scale World War II Belgian town, Marwencol, populated by dolls and action figures.  He created Marwencol to help himself recover his hand-eye coordination and to regain touch with his imagination - and perhaps to work through the trauma of his situation, though I'm not sure if that was a goal, or a result.

Mark's town is the site of an ongoing storyline that includes alter egos for himself and many of his friends, set in a place where combatants in the war have made a temporary, local peace with one another, defending their friends and their town from outside invaders, building relationships, and spending plenty of time at Mark's alter ego's "cat fight bar".

Mark creates and photographs scenes from his world. And it's an amazing world. Highly colored. Deeply layered. Love. Loyalty. Betrayal. Revenge. Violence. Suffering. Comfort. All that.

He worked on this world and on his photographs for a good long time before being discovered by the filmmaker, and getting a gallery show, and I'm guessing that the website came out of that. He didn't work on it with the idea of a show or recognition - this is art created purely for the artist.

The photos aren't sweet little "awww, isn't it cute?" doll pictures. For example, the website banner is a wedding photo with the couple posed in front of the hanging bodies of SS invaders. There's plenty of violence, death, and revenge, which seems entirely appropriate given Mark's experience.

But there's a lot of human contact going on too. One of my favorite photos from the website is this one of Deja Thoris. (Scroll a bit past the wedding photo.) Is it just me, or are you, like me, leaning forward to read the facial expressions and body language of these mass-produced dolls? Do you, also, marvel at the eye contact between the two characters in the foreground, and wonder what Deja Thoris is thinking, and glance behind them to try to read the expression of the member of the tank crew who's watching them?

Or maybe my favorite photo is this one, with Mark's alter ego receiving support from his friends. Or there's this one, with the women of Marwencol taking matters into their own hands, when Mark's alter ego has been captured. Or the photo of him discovering Marwencol. Or... well, OK, I'll stop. There's nothing to stop you from paging through the whole site if you like it as much as I do.

I find everything about Marwencol - the film, the town, the photos, and Mark himself - fascinating. I'm going to be turning it all over in my head for a good long time.

Image: By Mattia Luigi Nappi. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: More about the Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF)

I posted about Day One of the film festival. I chose to get enough sleep, instead, on days Two, Three, and to some extent today on Day Four.

So wanted to point you to Himself's posts on Friday and on Saturday, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he's posted today by the time you read this. So you can go read further film goodness there.

Meanwhile, some (unorganized) rambling of my own:

The awards came out tonight, which is all very well, but I'm choosing to declare my favorites:

Four Faced Liar remains my very favorite film of the festival in any category. It was the very first movie we saw, in the very first slot of the festival. It was so good that I was reminded of a Calvin Trillin quote from Alice, Let's Eat:

"... that anxious feeling I get sometimes in parts of the American South when, after finishing a fine Southern breakfast of eggs and grits and little country-sausage patties made into sandwiches with biscuits, I realize that the high point of the day may have passed before nine in the morning."

And, yep, that showing was the high point of the festival for me. But there were plenty of other good moments.

Salt comes second in my list, somewhat to my surprise, because I'm not usually the documentary type. But as I burbled before, the mix of beauty and quirkiness and otherworldliness has me sold.

As of today, The Mouse That Soared is my third favorite, though I did just see it today, so it's difficult to be absolutely sure that I'll remember it as clearly and fondly as I do now. But I think I will. It was wonderfully funny, and sweet, and clever, and packed with funny details, and it accomplished all of that without going overboard in any of the ways that it could have. I don't do sweet, and I loved it.

It was accompanied by a big batch of other extraordinarily good animated shorts, many of them created with a drastically smaller cast and crew. If Himself doesn't talk about them, I'll return another day to do so.

Image: By loonboy2. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF), Day One

So, we went to the first day of the Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF) and had a grand time. However, my brain is full and I feel an unprecedented urge to go hide without even a television screen in front of me. And that was with only four film slots; we're doing five a day through Monday. We'll see how I'm doing by then.

But the films were great!

We started with Four Faced Liar. If I had paid attention to the description, I might have skipped this one, expecting it to be another arty movie about whining twentysomethings that fails to engage. Nope. Twenty something yes, whining or unengaging no. I'll be waiting for the chance to see this again.

Then there were tacos and chips at Agave. Which is, I believe, a supporter of the film festival. So I encourage you to go eat there. If, y'know, you're in Ashland.

The next slot was three shorts: Born Sweet, The Solitary Life Of Cranes, and Salt.

Born Sweet is about a boy (and a village) in Cambodia dealing with arsenic poisoning - for once, not arsenic caused by uncaring industry, but by wells dug by "well-meaning aid organizations" that tapped into natural arsenic deposit. Boy, village, a new aid organization, and education-by-karaoke all combined to make a good film, though one that was a little more heartwarming than is usually my preference.

Then, The Solitary Life Of Cranes, about the giant load-lifting things in the sky, and, really, about the men that work in them and what the experience is like.

I thought it was going to be about birds. I really should read the descriptions more slowly at ticket ordering time - though in this case they would have made me more likely to go see this one, because I don't much care for nature films.

I liked it very much - the contrast between the solitary job and the birds-eye view of society and individuals that's an inevitable part of it was very interesting. It got just a fraction too peaceful and meditative at times, but I'm not a peaceful person, so it may hit the average person just right.

Then, Salt, about the photographer Murray Fredericks and his photography of the salty expanse of Lake Eyre, where he camps for weeks at a time, taking photographs. I assume that the poster is copyright protected, but here's a link, including one of the photographs of the photographer's tent in the midst of the lake. I liked this one, too - an entertaining constant shift between the quirky situation of the photographer, the magnificent setting, and the surreal and alien aspects of the magnificent setting.

Then there were cookies and iced tea.

Next, we saw Sister Wife, a short, and Passengers.

Sister Wife was about DoriAnn, a woman who is a wife in a polygamous marriage, the second wife after her younger biological sister. This one bothered me, which I'm quite sure is at least part of the function of the film.

DoriAnn entered this situation as an adult, and chooses to remain within it. She has a convincing argument for why she feels that the parts that make her miserable, have value. Convincing not in the sense that I would dream of ever doing the same, but in the sense that I can't tell this strong, intelligent woman, who clearly knows her own mind, that her philosophy is wrong and I know what's best for her.

Passengers was a feature-length film about a marriage and what happens to it during an evening drive through Southern California traffic. It was very good, but for me exhausting and depressing. Himself didn't seem to have the exhausted reaction.

Then there was pizza and Sprite.

And in the last slot, Easier With Practice, about a writer, a road trip, a phone sex relationship, and that's all I'll tell you for fear I'll give too much away. Very good. Very absorbing.

The consistently good films all day give me confidence that it'll be a good Festival all around. And now I'm going to cheat and backdate this to pretend I posted this last night, when we came home from the last film.

Image: By Holger Ellgaard. Wikimedia Commons.

Food: Chocolate: Sel de Mer Caramels by Sweet

I spent some of my growing-up years in Tennessee. So to some extent, I eat like a Southerner. That means, in addition to fried chicken and pickled okra, salted watermelon. I love salt on sweet.

I also, of course, love chocolate, and candy, especially the squishy buttery kind. So Sweet's Sel de Mer caramels - caramel, and sea salt, and white or dark chocolate if you want them - are great on paper. And they're even better in person. They're fabulous in person. They're "eat them all in ten minutes and dream about more", in person.

So thank you very much, Joe, for bringing them to the Fat of the Land party. And everybody else? You want these. You really do. If you're in Ashland, just go get some. If not, well, they do ship.

Link: Sweet

Photo: by Christian Mertes. Wikimedia Commons

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Illustration: Wikimedia Commons.