Cinequest

How could these films be missed?????

Superheros was really a good film and deserved the top prize, but The Village Barbershop the audience award? Come on. I heard more people talking about the following three films than the Barbershop. Kinda entertaining I guess if you have nothing else to watch, BUT how could... Amal - shot in India on location with a first time director using very well known Indian actors. He shot this in INDIA on location!!!! Not somewhere easy like Napa. Half Empty - Shot in Germany on NO BUDGET! Most of the films dialogue was made up on the fly. The songs were clever and the story was fun and very original! The Art of Travel- They shot in four different countries with hardly any budget and they used known actors! It's hard enough to get known actors to be in an independent film in the United States, but to be in a film that shoots in four 3rd world countries? I take my hat off to them. And not to mention the film was entertaining and I didn't see the ending coming. These three films should be the Mavericks in their own right but a film that was shot in Reno, but actually Napa, come on. The filmmaker is from the Bay Area so he knew somebody at the festival to pull him a favor. Since the only other festival listed on the Barbershop website is the Sonoma Film Festival I guess they can count on another award there.

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Dear Zachary: a letter to a son about his father

Kurt Kuenne's “Dear Zachary: a letter to a son about his father” starts with a montage of one word statements from friends of Zachary’s father describing him, so that Zachary would know the kind of man his father was. It is very important for to a child to know the kind of person his parent was, when the parent has died while the child is very young. I was so mesmerized by the content of the documentary, that I could not take notes. It was compelling, thought provoking and leaves you speechless.

I think that Andrew Bagby, Zachary’s father, did not know that he was dancing with the devil and that he had on his hands, a real live example of a "fatal attraction" when he met and started dating Shirley Turner. She was a person who wanted to have all that the world could offer. Once he finished medical school, she was not concerned with what her lifestyle would cost him emotionally, nor do I think that she cared. No one was able to stop her from grabbing his heart and crushing it. She was emotionally unavailable to anyone who came into her life, almost as if she had to have what she wanted and needed at all cost. Her thinking was so convoluted that she thought that she was the only one who could care for Zachary. It did not matter what it cost anyone else, as long as it did not cost her. I think that she spent time meticulously devising a plan to make sure that if she could not have what she wanted, then she would leave behind only havoc. Nothing would be left, if anyone wanted to pick up the physical and emotional pieces. She had already thrown her other children away. She did not want Zachary’s grandparents to have the opportunity to raise him.

My hope is that the laws in Canada can be changed soon, so that no one else will have to go through such agony. The production values of this film were very good. They gave the audience a progression of the events that surrounded the sights and sounds of the past, present and the future of a family. The family and friends may have never dreamed of such a diabolical person wrapped in flesh. Because he was naive, Andrew was not aware that his romance was emotional quicksand.

franc-i nicholson

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