When I went to the Black Maria Film Festival here at Albright Klein Theater, I was expecting to be amazed by the stories the younger amateur film makers would produce. The crowd was dense almost all the seats were filled in the theater full of people who were also ready to see what new directors were able to come up with.
Before any of the films were shown the Director of the festival came before the crowd to give a brief history. The Black Maria was built in 1892 by Thomas Edison, it was nicknamed after the paddy wagons of that time, and it was the world's first motion picture. The Black Maria was a milestone in film production today which is why the festival was named after it.
There were 600 submissions in this festival and the jurors and director narrowed it down to 45, and only showed the Albright campus bits and pieces of 12. John Columbus warned us that all the films were known as experimental work. "Film is a very young art work," he said, "but not all of it has to be storytelling."
With that he left us to enjoy the films.
The first film was Ice Bears of the Beauport, made by Arthur C. Smit and Jennifer Van Den Berg from Kaktovik, AK. The film portrayed polar bears in a silent manner, there were no voices, only words music and images. The bears were shown in what Alaska used to be, full of snow and ice where the bears thrived, even their bodies reflected the snow with blue fringes in their fur, and what it is now, bleak, melted, a shadow of what it use to be. The video won the grand prize selection, the best of festival documentary.
This film was what I expected to see, a movie that I was use to seeing. A documentary where the purpose is seen right away, polar bears.
The next films caught me by surprise.
Ichthyopolis, was created by the "creative wizard" Andre Silva. This film was, described by Jerry Ore, "a techno-animation wonderfully populated with a singing gold fish, an opera diva, claymation characters and water color".
For me, personally, it was my first experience of getting intoxicated. This world of singing goldfish flying in and out of people stomachs, getting caught, and crinkling paper surrounded by vast abstracts of an uncomprehendable world was a bit too much for me.
The next film, Les Chaises and Cubicle Revisited were also abstract films. Both movies consisted of abstract images with no music. The diverse sounds of nature, flurry of typing on keyboards, and other aimless noises were the music.
Yours Truly, Juror's Choice. came next. This was a tribute to antique Film Noir's with a twist, by Osbert Parker from London, Engliand. The film made of cut-outs and clips from the past, of two lovers from older cinemas. This, "frenzied tribute to celluloid history," took a turn when the woman killed the man, chopped him up and began to cook him before the police arrived. But she was eventually caught when the officer took a man-burger and found a hundred dollar bill in the patty.
After viewing these Columbus came back to address the audience, "The narrative feature length film (Hollywood model) has dominated our media. This festival gives independant directors a way to explore new ways, and possibilities."
Now fully prepared with both warnings and examples the audience was fully prepared to handle films such as Stigmata (a minute film with a man crucified in the air on a busy street with lava pouring out his hands and feet), "0" (a full 10 minutes of cars wizzing by and numbers racing across the screen), The Idiot Stinks (two minutes of "an utterly insane, inventive and riotous scratch board animation"), 1859 (an 11 minute film of light bounding off the screen over and over again), and Speechless (a 13 minute film of hairy vaginas and nature).
"I thought the film festival was very enlightening, actually," said Sarah Bruno, Albright student, "I won't lie, certain clips I enjoyed more than others (the lights-focused one was hard for me to watch), but I definitely saw film clips that I wouldn't have otherwise normally been exposed to."
Overall, the festival left me appreciative of both abstract films and the Hollywood model.
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