Organization
On Location: MEMPHIS International Film Festival
On Location: Memphis is a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting education, cultural diversity, and economic development through cinema arts. Throughout the year, we produce film related events such as premiere screenings, off-beat films such as The Animation Show and the International Film Festival. ON LOCATION: MEMPHIS (formerly the Memphis International Film Festival) has a reputation for showcasing some of the finest independent films from around the world.
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Member Reviews
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Event Name: 11th Annual On Location: MEMPHIS international film festival
"The Last Happy Day at On Location: Memphis"
Comment
posted by:
Jack Lab
from Memphis, TN,
Apr 23, 2010
Lynne Sachs's “The Last Happy Day” opens with a scene of children stuffing pillows under their shirts to play Winnie the Pooh. We're told that in 1977, Sachs's brother played Pooh in a school play in Memphis. Before showtime, their Hungarian father gave the boy a copy of Winnie the Pooh in Latin, and told them it had been translated by his brother, Sandor. This was the first mention the kids had heard of Uncle Sandor.
As an adult, Sachs decided to piece together what she could of the life story of her mysterious Uncle Sandor. The result is a riveting, 38-minute documentary recounting Sandor's astonishing life through his letters to family, video and audio interviews with those who had known him, archival footage, and present-day video shot for the project.
Sandor was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Hungary. When the Nazis came to power, his family changed their name to avoid being found out as Jews. Sandor studied medicine, and the film claims that he spoke 17 languages; footage of Sachs's children practicing Latin declensions bears out a family knack for language.
Sandor was recruited as a doctor by the Nazis, and forced to perform gruesome experiments on patients. He worked for the Third Reich in Rome for a time, where he hid escaped POWs in his apartment. His brother, the filmmaker's father, had fled to Memphis with his family at the start of the war, and Sandor's letters recount the horrors he witnessed with a casual matter-of-factness at times reminiscent of Vonnegut. Of living through a bombing raid, he says: “There was no point running from bombs. Bombs don't care if you're here or there. Bombs are perfectly neutral. But standing still would look like you're trying to show off your bravery.” So he ran.
After the war, Sandor was clearly demoralized by what he had seen. “In search of a faraway place,” he went to Brazil, where he arrived broke and without his medical license. In short order he somehow managed to appear on “an American-style quiz show,” where his exhaustive knowledge of Bach won him enough money to buy a house deep in the woods.
Here in his “invisible house” with his intellectual pursuits (which later, briefly, brought him worldwide fame), his olive and fruit trees, and his vineyard, Sandor seems to have found as much peace as he would ever know. Late in life, he wrote to his brother: “Almost all my life was a series of headaches, and the rest was longing and homesickness. My headache is better, but the longing and homesickness will be here forever.”
This film holds far more surprises and wonders than are recounted here, and remains utterly engrossing through most of its length. Sections of the present-day footage, while beautifully shot, feel jarringly artificial when juxtaposed with the immediacy of the archival material; this is the film's only flaw worth mention in this space, and should by no means discourage anyone from seeing it. Viewers will never forget the story of Winnie Ille Pu.
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Event Name: 11th Annual On Location: MEMPHIS international film festival
"Amber and Andre at On Location: Memphis"
Comment
posted by:
Chris McCoy
from Memphis, TN,
Apr 23, 2010
Race and class are inextricably intertwined in America, and director Elyce Strong’s short film “Amber and Andre” tackles the hydra-headed issues head-on.
The story begins with an African-American couple, the titular Amber (Marliss Amiea) and Andre (Johnnie Hobbs III), preparing to go to her parent’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Amber is an ambitious up-and-comer, concerned about keeping up middle-class appearances and impressing her parents. Andre, however, doesn’t share those concerns. He is the picture of the proud black man, referring to Thanksgiving as “Christopher Columbus day”, and unafraid to speak his mind.
The conflict in this almost seven-minute film takes place entirely between the two leads before they even leave their apartment, and serves as a proxy for a debate that has been going on in the African-American community since at least the time of the Civil Rights movement. Is it better to conform to white, upper-class norms of opinion and decorum and assimilate into the larger culture or to set up a parallel edifice which preserves the legacy of African-American culture but which is, in some sense, separate but equal? Does that separation mean undesirable inequality by default, or is it necessary to preserve ethnic identity? And is it possible to move up in economic and social class while preserving the black identity that has for so long been associated with poverty and privation?
These are heavy issues to map onto an interpersonal relationship, of course, and the strain shows. Amiea and Hobbs are clearly fine actors who are committed to their roles, but the strain of selling exposition-heavy dialog occasionally shows. Strong’s camerawork and framing are workmanlike, generally well-executed, and occasionally pretty, but the director’s main interest is clearly in the big issues she is wrestling with.
The questions the movie addresses are weighty ones that cannot be answered in less than ten minutes, so the rather pat resolution seems to indicate that the director think she has an obligation to provide a happy ending. But for its faults, the team should be commended for asking the big questions. Ultimately, it is “Amber and Andre’s” short subject length and the commitment of the actors to their roles that saves it from preachy tedium.
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Event Name: 11th Annual On Location: MEMPHIS international film festival
"On Location: Memphis Review: Tales From The Catholic Church"
Comment
posted by:
Elizabeth Cawein
from Memphis, TN,
Apr 23, 2010
Jesus, Elvis and a Catholic school girl hitch a ride on a highway outside Las Vegas. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, and it kind of is— a joke that runs 89 minutes, has multiple punch lines and doesn't exactly work for repeating at dinner parties.
More importantly, though, it's the opening scene of Tales From the Catholic Church of Elvis, and the schoolgirl in question is the film's writer and star Mercy Malick. The “tales” are the true-life traumas and adventures from her childhood growing up in the city of sin as a plaid-skirt-wearing, Hail-Mary-saying Catholic school girl.
It's a quirky little movie that definitely has its moments, but I must admit that most of my engagement with it from beginning to end was centered around not quite understanding what I was watching rather than from being involved in the plot. Mostly because there really wasn't one—at least not in the traditional sense.
You see, Tales from the Catholic Church of Elvis is one-woman-show adapted for the big screen. Imagine you're at Playhouse on the Square, watching a one-woman performance, and every once in a while you're able to drift off into vivid illustrations of the stories, like anecdotal sketch comedy. So there is a loose plot line, mostly in the chronology of the stories that Malick spins, but it's not like anything I've ever seen before.
Malick is a great storyteller. And she has some seriously good material to work with. These stories are so odd and interesting and grotesque and unbelievable; I suppose I can understand why she went for the format she did. The narration is one of the strongest points of the film. But I enjoyed it best as voice-over on top of the sketches—if the entire movie had played that way, though there might've been some confusion from skipping around throughout her life, I think it would've worked better for me.
But don't get me wrong, this stuff is funny. The movies has the "based on a true story" factor going for it, which when you're hearing a tale about someone putting a hot vat of grease and French fries on their bare arm while working in a fast food joint and you realize that this is REAL, this happened, she has this scar, it gets just that much more grotesque and that much funnier.
Ultimately I think I'd rather one or the other —if Malick was coming to Memphis and I had the chance to get tickets to her show, I absolutely would. She's funny and sharp and a skillful writer. But I'd want the film to be an entirely different experience. As it was, it did feel a little like I was watching the home movie of her show that someone had filmed and was showing to me at a party. When I was able to get into the narrative during the sketches, I was captured by the stories. But when the scenes gave way into her interludes of stand-up, though it was funny (have I mentioned she's a funny broad?), it loses momentum, making an already disconnected film even harder to keep together.
I would, however, like to watch an entire movie of Mercy Malick in the role of Mercy Malick's mother. Absolutely hysterical.
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Event Name: 11th Annual On Location: MEMPHIS international film festival
"On Location Memphis Review: Potential"
Comment
posted by:
Markus Seaberry
from Memphis, TN,
Apr 21, 2010
Do you follow your friends or do you follow the path that could get you more money and more fame? That’s the question posed by the film Potential, Gord More’s documentary about Vaughn Stokes, the lead singer/guitarist/primary songwriter, drummer Shawn, and bassist Steven Taddei, otherwise known as The Object War, a garage band from British Columbia with rock star dreams. As the documentary begins, we immediately notice the tension between Vaughn and Shawn over the recording of a song. Shawn has not had formal training on the drums and sometimes has difficulty simply keeping the beat on some songs. The confrontations and exchanges between these two shape the bulk of the film. We also see the band performing at different venues trying to build a following. Vaughn, who calls himself the “founder” of the band, becomes the de facto leader, often putting his needs and aspirations above those of the band. Shawn seems to be the most business-minded of the trio, taking meetings with executives and trying to publicize for the band. Steven just seems to be a very talented musician who goes with the flow. The Object War play ska music, a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the 1950s and eventually influenced the more popular island musical genre reggae.
Despite the tension, initially things seem to be going well for The Object War. They’re getting gigs and they’re talking to booking agencies. However, their dreams for success are constantly derailed by conflicts and disagreements. Steven is unsure if he wants to continue playing music, but is hesitant to say this to Vaughn and Shawn. Vaughn keeps writing songs without the band and begins keeping them for himself because he doesn’t think Shawn has the ability to play the songs correctly. Shawn is frustrated with Vaughn, but keeps trying to promote the band and secure more high-profile gigs. Vaughn’s habit of not wanting to practice escalates as he also begins blowing off recording sessions. It seems as though Shawn is the only one who really wants to keep the band together. The real-life drama in this documentary is constant and you really begin to wonder if the band will stay together long enough to actually achieve stardom.
Gord More has given the audience an inside look at the conflicts and tribulations faced by garage bands. Viewers who have never played in a band will realize that the conflicts that break up established bands and the issues that arise in garage bands are more similar than one would think. More doesn’t attempt to put a lot of flourishes in the film and only uses a few randomly inserted cutaway shots. He wisely lets the subjects of the film tell the story, resulting in a very honest and straightforward look at the struggles to keep a band together. The band members’ conflicts are heightened by the fact that they are all childhood friends. In this situation, the friends are growing apart musically as well as socially, placing the band and their friendships in jeopardy. One doesn’t have to play an instrument to relate to the dilemma of friends moving in different directions. More has taken what seems to be a simple subject and crafted an interesting, dramatic film that leaves you wanting much more than what is shown in 48 minutes. Anyone who’s ever rocked out with your friends in a garage or lost a friend over time can relate to this film. Potential brilliantly captures the battle between idealistic dreams and harsh reality.
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Event Name: 11th Annual On Location: MEMPHIS international film festival
"On Location Memphis review: The Visitors"
Comment
posted by:
Chris McCoy
from Memphis, TN,
Apr 21, 2010
Brooklyn filmmaker Samina Akbari’s biography says she is the child of a of an Indian mother and a Pakistani father. It is no surprise, then, that the core concern in her short film “The Visitors” is cross-cultural discomfort.
An Asian woman (Visra Vachit-Vadakan) and a Caucasian man (Sebastian Beacon) are living together in a post-grad New York apartment. When a subtitled message on the couple’s answering machine tells Vachit-Vadakan and the audience that her parents are coming for a visit, she is faced with the dilemma of what to do about the inevitable meeting of her beux and her clearly disapproving family. At first unwilling to tell her mother she’s dating a white guy, she makes the assumption that Beacon will stay with a friend. The resulting fight illuminates the stress points in the interracial relationship and the bind those caught between cultures often find themselves in.
Akbari tries to illuminate when Vachit-Vadakan faces what photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson famously called “The Decisive Moment” by staging a wordless climax not between the troubled lovers, but between her actress and a black rat against a symbolically significant kitchen floor. A sense of narrative economy is among the greatest virtues a filmmaker can have, and Akbari achieves this by pushing the biggest confrontation off-screen. A less subtle filmmaker would have splashed the emotional and familial blood and guts all over the canvas, but in this case, cinematic discretion is equally rewarding.
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Event Name: 11th Annual On Location: MEMPHIS international film festival
"On Location Memphis Review: Imagining Home"
Comment
posted by:
Adam Remsen
from Memphis, TN,
Apr 21, 2010
The documentary “Imagining Home” recounts the story of Columbia Village, a public housing project in Portland, Oregon. The film opens as a child says to the camera, “Home is like Heaven, or something... just a good feeling when you get there.” Heaven takes a bit of a beating as the film, composed largely of interviews with residents of Columbia Village, depicts people caught in the collision of poverty and bureaucracy.
Columbia Village was built after World War II, and indeed, the neighborhood plan is clearly based on Levittown's wide lawns and neighborly picket fences.
In the 1950s, highway construction began to subdivide the neighborhood (longtime Memphians can surely relate), and by the '80s the area was ripe for the devastation of crack. A resident from that period says: “Everybody was waiting on a check, wake up and get a 40, come home and watch Springer.” The area split into Bloods and Crips, and, as one local says meaningfully, there were a lot of single mothers hosting “unauthorized guests.”
During the '90s, the neighborhood became, by all accounts, a success story of urban revitalization and a happy, diverse community. It still carried the stigma of its former incarnation, however, and by the '00s federal grant money was invested in cleaning it up once again.
As the film was shot, a new plan, the HOPE project, was introduced. The idea this time was to raze Columbia Village and spread the residents out among Portland's general populace; “bad things don't happen in a vacuum,” we are told, and the aim is to mix all elements and strata of society into a New Urbanist community. The project's boosters assert that the program's goal is to house everyone; one resident angrily declares that the real goal is to displace everyone.
Shot on video in a rainy climate, Imagining Home feels stark and grim. The camerawork is workmanlike, at times brutal. A scene of a child shouting “Don't smush the chair!” while watching his home flattened by a bulldozer is haunting. At times the pacing slows a bit with scenes of government committees and bureaucrats, but this fits in well with the film's general slice-of-life tone.
Most of the former residents, interviewed after leaving Columbia Village as part of the HOPE project, speak with surprising fondness of living there. One boy says, “In the Village everyone took care of each other. But now you have to watch out for yourself.” One suspects nostalgia's whitewashing effect; many of the interviewees seem understandably disoriented, caught as they are between the comfort of the familiar and the opportunity of the new. Life in the new neighborhoods is not the idyll that some had expected; one elderly couple's dismay is palpable upon learning that having wind chimes on their front porch will “probably” violate local restrictive covenants.
As one former Columbia Village resident says with fatigue in her voice, “I remember thinking 'Yes! I'm out!' And now it's like, 'I wanna be back.' It's so hard out there.”
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Event Name: On Location: MEMPHIS International Film Festival
"Festival Location- Malco Ridgeway Four"
Comment
posted by:
Lisa Bobal
from Memphis, TN USA,
Feb 16, 2009
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