SFIAAFF preview: Family Portraits
Family Portraits
Sunday, March 15
3:45 p.m.
Sundance Kabuki Cinema
96 minutes
SFIAAFF 2009
It's easy to overlook shorts programs, but they're often the most rewarding experiences you can have at a festival. Shorts are where you'll usually get your first chance to see young, fresh talents showing off their skills and vision before moving on to feature films. Case in point: Windowbreaker, at SFIAAFF 2007, which clued me in to Tze Chun in advance of his Children of Invention, coming this year. And sometimes you catch a fleeting glimpse of a unique perspective that never really reappears. It took me a while to remember the full title of Preservation of the Song, which I saw at Frameline in the mid-1990s, but I've never forgotten its raw honesty and emotional complexity.
You also never know what you're going to get with a shorts program, both in quality and character, but if one thing leads you in, another may send you out of the theater with a lasting memory. What got me interested in Family Portraits was the brief description of Julia Kim Smith's Grand Teton: "The impulse to reconstruct a 35-year-old photograph brings generations together, creating a family portrait before our eyes." That lit up several parts of my brain, all or none of which may end up satisfied with the actual 4-minute video, but it's worth taking a chance. Festivals are the time to do it!
Sunday, March 15
3:45 p.m.
Sundance Kabuki Cinema
96 minutes
SFIAAFF 2009
It's easy to overlook shorts programs, but they're often the most rewarding experiences you can have at a festival. Shorts are where you'll usually get your first chance to see young, fresh talents showing off their skills and vision before moving on to feature films. Case in point: Windowbreaker, at SFIAAFF 2007, which clued me in to Tze Chun in advance of his Children of Invention, coming this year. And sometimes you catch a fleeting glimpse of a unique perspective that never really reappears. It took me a while to remember the full title of Preservation of the Song, which I saw at Frameline in the mid-1990s, but I've never forgotten its raw honesty and emotional complexity.
You also never know what you're going to get with a shorts program, both in quality and character, but if one thing leads you in, another may send you out of the theater with a lasting memory. What got me interested in Family Portraits was the brief description of Julia Kim Smith's Grand Teton: "The impulse to reconstruct a 35-year-old photograph brings generations together, creating a family portrait before our eyes." That lit up several parts of my brain, all or none of which may end up satisfied with the actual 4-minute video, but it's worth taking a chance. Festivals are the time to do it!
Labels: sfiaaff 2009
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