It is officially a wrap on the 2024 Refocus Film Festival, which means it is time to unpack all I was able to see and experience following opening night.
Day two: Friday, Oct. 18
Musicians Sam Ross and Joe Shanks played in the FilmScene Ped Mall theater preceding the Monograph Shorts Program of the Refocus fest. Consisting of four films ranging from 11 to 41 minutes, it was a great opportunity to ease into the festivalโs feature offerings. Programming Director Ben Delgado introduced the block.
We Are Not Alone dir. Adebukola Bodunrin, written by Ezra Claytan Daniels
Adapted from Daniels’ comic panel, this science fiction film sees the married artists come together to explore the disillusionment of the American Dream, but with a hopeful call for connection. The surreal ambiance is perfectly captured by the filmโs use of Kodak Ektachrome film, haunting every interaction with a magenta cast.
Director Bodunrinโs use of experimental scratching on the film, to mimic an alien language transmitted to the characters, is stunning. One particular choice, very early in the film, to have the movement of scratches parallel the movement of the main characterโs (Tobi Omodehinde) desperation is memorable.
In the Q&A with the creators after the screening, Bodunrin said she was interested in using abstract images to seduce her audience, to have a conversation with them, and she achieves this with dreamlike skill.
Dona Beatriz รsรฎmba Vita dir. Catapreta
The immaculate detailing of this animated short is a marvel, with thin red and blue lines over a white screen, its blood and structures strike you. Meticulous illustration shows the interior of a car with the same intensity as the exterior of a house on the verge of collapse. The use of swirls to create natural curly hair, and then also to create clouds and the sun, speaks to the beauty of Black Brazilian identity. Catapreta honors the legacy of the Kongolese prophet often referred to by the colonizing Portuguese name โKimpa Vita.โ While its narrative subtlety may not create the strongest ancestral tether, its commitment to showing creation and devastation is distinct.
Amma Ki Katha dir. Nehal Vyas
Mythology, in all its glory, is passed on through family. In this rumination of a relationship between grandmother and her granddaughter, Vyas uncovers that interpretation and significance can morph in the passage through time.
The film beckons to animals, most prominently the elephant, but also deer and birds, as symbolic witnesses to how imagination can be co-opted. Opening on the familiar and intimate image of the old braiding the young, the ties that bind may find themselves woven into political and social regimes that threaten the magic we were taught to believe in.
C’est Pas Moi dir. Leos Carax
This experimental short following the frenzy of a director looking back on his career leads to a colliding of images, humorous anecdotes and reflections in constant flux. Caraxโs words sometimes slap you even more than the collection of shots and photos. Some are not even said, only appearing as screen text. Lines spoken by the man himself, such as โTime goes by,โ and โYouโre on earth, alive,โ and โWe need to blink,โ are resonant yet fleeting, as he finds a way to make you laugh again. He also brilliantly reminds you that post-credit scenes are not only for Marvel!
Day three: Saturday, Oct. 19
An Evening Song (for three voices) dir. Graham Swon
Displayed as Refocusโs first โreverse-adaptation,โ as Swon is currently writing a novel based on the film, this was one of the films I was most excited for. Shot primarily in Bentonsport and Fairfield, Iowa, it was sure to be a visual treat for locals. Every scene beautifully glides into the next, the cross dissolves so slow and steady, they are a testament to not letting what has come before us be forgotten.
With near constant narration, each of the characters speak at the tail end of the other, almost interjecting, but not doing so until later in the film when they finally overlap, becoming a choir of longing and feverish mysticism. The visual circularity of each scene achieved through in-camera vignettes filmed through the glass of a 4×5 large format photography camera, leave you encased in the tension between these three mysterious dwellers.
During the Q&A with Swon, he explained that he was interested in exploring how desire could โexist in opaque ways” by trying to follow the rules of 1930s Hollywood melodramas. This was likely my favorite film of the fest, soothing and disquieting all at once.
A Fidal Film dir. Kamal Aljafari
How cruel do conditions have to be that simply walking along the street, passing in and out of storefronts, becomes a lost, denied luxury for those in Palestine and Lebanon? These are some of the first images of humanity shown in this experimental documentary. A Fidai Film is masterful in how it chooses to fragment the chronological, emphasizing a conflict that has gone on so long, it has buried itself into the fiber of being, and time ceases to exist in the way that we know it.
Brief shots of flowers, flowing water, the greenery of the land, starkly contrast the rubble left in the wake of Israelโs occupation. The first voice heard is a childโs; this is a world on fire. Itโs one of several films in the program where the audience was left immobile, moved, disgusted and unsure of how to hold this vision of what Palestinians have labored to endure for decades.
Lรกzaro at Night dir. Nicolรกs Pereda
My last film of the night, it was likely the most I laughed during a Refocus screening. It was particularly nostalgic for me to hear a Spanish film โ I haven’t had many chances to hear or have full conversations in Spanish since I moved here from South Florida. The familiar quotidian actions of a Hispanic mother insisting you eat more and taking it personally if you donโt, or a moka pot on the stove, feels oddly intimate in a film that seems more interested in being aloof.
Itโs this affinity for food, ordinarily knitted throughout the film, that enhances in the filmโs final stretch, offering a story within a story over the dinner table. I can say I preferred its more recognizable realism to its more mythical end, but I think once youโve seen the full meal, its likely to go down a little easier on a revisit.
Day four: Sunday, Oct. 20
The Storm dir. Zhigang Yang
A 10:45 a.m. screening, I enjoyed this one with a cup of coffee from fix! at the Chauncey. Iโve always found animation so attuned to not only the wonder of childhood, but the loneliness and fear of that age. Yang devotes himself to devotion, whether that be to love or to greed. The tale of a young boy named Bun exemplifies what it means to be raised by someone so lovingly, in this case his caretaker Grain, and the childโs attempt to show that same amount of unimaginable love in return.
In doing this, it really speaks to the immigrant experience. At one point Bun cries to Grain something along the lines of, โI’ll do the work so you wonโt have to.โ When a storm of interconnected relationships finally occurs, its wondrous, the false camera weaving its topsy-turvy way through the halls of a grandiose battle.
The Storm, in its tear-inducing final sequence, asks, when should we say goodbye to the ones we love, and when should we fight until the end to make sure they stay with us?
Nickel Boys dir. RaMell Ross
As I mentioned, I was born and raised in Florida. When I learned about this film, that it would spotlight the ugly history of my home, I knew something powerful was at work. This account of a 1960s reform school challenges itself narratively and formally, relying predominantly on a first-person point of view to unravel its story.
Close-ups of oranges and shoes are pushed to the brim; vision is intensified. The same technique that leads you to form an even deeper bond with the brutal truth then renders you vulnerable to the film’s other cinematic manipulations. Nickel Boys is a devastating, imposing and staggeringly distinctive must-see.
Plastic dir. Daisuke Miyazaki
This is the one I canโt get out of my head, the one I think may become a favorite. Plastic is an arresting recognition of those who came of age during a global lockdown, of a generation bred on nostalgia but bereft of current-day connection.
A gorgeous film, it follows the romance and break-up of couple Ibuki and Jun from 2018 to 2022. Diners, theaters, amusement parks glow with a youthful hope, before flattening to the reality of growing up and growing apart.
One night, Jun sees a collection of donated trash on the sidewalk. He grabs the red Razor scooter (I used to have a pink one) atop the pile and swings it down onto the ground, smashing everything up, before using his whole body to wreck the rest. Itโs a more heartbreaking scene than the actual break-up, because Plastic wounds you much more with the charactersโ own, independent lives, than the disintegration of the affair itself.
โHas COVID changed your life?โ Plastic is a film in conversation with the past, while brilliantly dating itself as a response to a confounding present for young people.
I did my best to see a little bit of everything: animation, documentary, foreign-language, shorts. But, I do regret not having seen one of Refocusโ retrospective screenings. I was slated for one but got the times mixed up and realized too late. There were so many other incredible films featured in the program this year, and I am so grateful to have gotten even just a taste. Hereโs to Refocus 2024!
