For
the first time ever, this past weekend, Toronto was host to the 2012
Bootleg Film Festival which marks the festival's first official North
American presence. The Tranzac Club, the
official venue for the festival screenings as well as evening
industry events is ideally situated in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood
and got transformed into a cosy candle-lit space for festival
attendees. This year's festival featured a brilliant line-up of the
best in quality Indie Cinema from various countries around the world
including UK, US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Israel,
Bangladesh,Venezuela ,Italy, France, South Africa, Germany,
Netherlands and Belgium.There was a well balanced mix of 58 shorts
as well full length features (runtimes ranging from 3mins -1:30mins),
originating from various genres including thriller, drama, romance,
comedy and animation to just name a few. The festival showcased a
magnificent display of beautiful and real storytelling by
tremendously talented and hardworking filmmakers who have
successfully managed to produce low-medium budget films in order to
bring tasteful cinema to their audiences.
Founded
September 2008 in the basement of a small coffee shop across the pond
in Glasgow, Scotland the festival has been gaining momentum ever
since. Having gone through a similar process of extensive struggle
that most indie filmmakers have to deal with after film completion, a
british filmmaker Tom Wilton, Executive Director, who in this
case was able to achieve success with his film (Icarus
Broken, 2007 ) envisioned starting something called
“project bootleg” to help facilitate filmmakers through this
process. The idea behind Bootleg was to establish a platform “formed
by a filmmaker (Tom Wilton) for other
independent filmmakers worldwide” to give them an opportunity to
showcase their work purely based on talent and quality of their
movies.
Thursday,
the opening day of the festival hosted by Danny Mendlow, screenwriter
and comedian, screened three blocks of films (13 in total) with the
opening film being “Bugbaby” , by Director, Rebecca
Lorenne, a horror-comedy about an eerie couple that have in plain
terms, a bug resembling baby that eats raw flesh which includes that
of the child social services representative – “Who” will they
feed it next? The evening event was a casual fun comedy night
featuring comedic acts by Lashings of Apologies, Punch in the box and
Jape. Darcy Michael was also a major part of this great
evening whose Canadian film “One Skinny Bitch” was the
night's special feature focusing the real life issues the lead
character in a small town in B.C. deals with.
A
very cool perk for attendees of this festival was the special tour of
the “William F.White International Inc.” film studio. The
festival had organized this daytime event mainly for their overseas
filmmakers in attendance which was filmmakers' haven as far as
learning more about the equipment available to them as well as what
it would be like shooting a film in Toronto. It is beneficial for
those new in the industry wanting to gather a better understanding
of the the “nuts and bolts” available to them as well as what
they need to work towards in terms of budget.The night carried on
with a kick-ass Karaoke event hosted by Carson Foster that went on
into the wee hours of the night.
Leading
into the afternoon of day two of the festival was further indie film
galore spread across different blocks of time (18 in total). The
screening of the full length feature “Francis of Brooklyn”,
directed by Josh Wick, picked up an award for “Best
Director-Feature” which is a modernized take on the story of
Francis, a traumatized Iraqi war veteran who gives up everything,
forms a brotherhood to live a life of Gospel poverty on the streets
of Brooklyn seeking to heal themselves through religion. Nowadays,
the take on such a situation would be that the person going through
such an episode has a depressive, troubled-mind that needs help. The
direction is truly commendable as audience you really tend to get are
engaged with the characters and sites.
The
festival was also home to 11 wonderful Canadian films including a
special screening of “The Seder” written
and directed by Justin Kelly and has picked up two nominations at
the Los Angeles Comedy Awards. The Seder is a story about a gay
couple named Leo and Mitchell, where Leo has to bring his partner
home for dinner to meet his jewish family and their guest of honour,
Rabbi Solomon. The short deals with a difficult subject matter in a
humorous way and really lets the audience really take a deeper look
at dealing with certain circumstances in life. The film is well-paced
with perfect comedic timing whereby giving the audience a chance to
understand each characters anticipation leading up to the family
dinner.
Another
Canadian film that really made the audience laugh out loud was
Director Josh Schultz's 2 minute comedy short “Mr.Shultz in
Public” that tells the story of what happens when a teacher
(Mr.Shultz) runs into his students whilst he is hanging out with his
obnoxious friend who makes it a point to embarrass him. Josh Schultz
is a teacher in real life and the short was shot entirely by his
students.
The
festival bid farewell on Saturday, its closing day by showcasing its
final few sets of indie film screenings followed by an evening of
three special screenings and the Awards announcements. One of the
festival favourites of the morning block was an animated short called
“Being Bradford
Dilman”
by Emma Burch, winner of “Best Short” in which little lonely
Molly Flowers is told by her neglectful, alcoholic mother that she
was actually born a boy but they chopped off her“willy”. This led
Molly into seeing an imaginary character called “Bradford Dilman”
and the funny doesn't stop! The animation was sweet, the story was
fresh and dialogues were super funny, though you couldn't help but
feel really sad for little Molly's character.
Being
a thriller/horror genre fan “Dorothy” directed by Eros Romero
really en captured both the good ol' fashioned scary, gory bits with
crazy clowns and a little ghost girl (Who isn't scared of that??) and
adds in the perfect element of surprise towards the end.
“La
Mia Mantia”, directed by Giulio Vita is the story of a girl named
Amanda who returns to her hometown after her father's death. The film
is a beautiful story of finding yourself, taking chances and the
locations shot make you want to travel to Italy.
“38:50”
directed by Chris Capel tells the story of two scientist friends who
hike to an isolated area to “fix” an unfortunate situation that
has resulted from an accident. The film is well written, suspenseful
and almost reminded me of something from The Walking Dead, I take it
this is actually as very possible incident that could be the start of
a zombie apocalypse! Better get your “getaway” bags ready now.
Another thriller “Weaverfish” directed by Harrison Wall was a
full length feature about a group of youngsters who enter the
prohibited Fountainhead Creek not knowing the danger that awaits
them. The script was gripping and kept you guessing as to what was
coming up next, the cast did an awesome job in really making you
believe the story. It also picked up the “Audience Choice Award”.
“Historias
de la Urbe” directed by Carla Forte, winner of “Best Feature”,
“Best Cinematography” follows different stories of immigrants
trying to settle into the Miami lifestyle. The film is a full length
feature and was amazing to watch how its been shot to interconnect
the different stories of the film. It's also a very sharp and
chilling look into the tuff task of settling in the downtown/midtown
area of Miami city.
“Thrown”
directed by Ryd Cook, who well-deservingly picked up the award for
“Best Director- Short” is an extraordinary short about loss of a
family member leading to the disposal of a favourite chair and how
that completely changes. The film is like a little road trip of
hilarity with two guys who have an old chair tied to the top of an
automobile (Ryd's car) and the dialogues don't stop getting funny!
The film is really well shot start to finish the story is complete
and apart from the funny, uplifting feeling that you get from
watching it there is also an emotional element within the movie that
really tends to move you.
“Friday
Night, Saturday Morning” directed by Neil Rolland, winner of “Best
Screenplay” at first glance of the title makes you think that its
pretty self explanatory isn't it? Well think again because this
really bold with an almost disturbing to watch short is almost like a
wake up call to too much fun for those who might not care to foresee
how horribly wrong things could go.
“Undrawn”
directed by Jeffrey Nesker is a really raw, “almost makes you feel
guilty for watching but still feels good in a way?” short/teaser on
six incompetent superheroes and their “unusual” superpowers who
are trying to achieve success by being featured in a movie or a comic
book series. This short witty, funny, so wrong but still want to
watch and is currently in the process of possibly being turned into a
TV series.
“Vision
of Yellow” directed by Christopher Poole is the story about a man
with an implanted user interface that becomes infected with a virus.
The film is almost perturbing in the sense that we live in a world
where technology has pretty much taken over our lives and the effects
of too much use can really effect you to a certain degree.
Personally, yellow stands out as a soft, peaceful and positive energy
but this really makes you question whether the future is really
yellow?
Overall,
having worked and being part of other local film festivals here in
Toronto, I can definitely say that The Bootleg Film Festival 2012
really surpassed expectations and was positive, terrific three day
journey into the world of global indie cinema that is a must see for
filmmakers and cinephiles alike. Now that it has made its first
successful North American debut the festival will go on doing what it
does best by continuing to provide independent filmmakers the outlet
that they need to tell their stories. The hope is that this festival
will return to Toronto in the near future, however the concept of the
festival is not to have a fixed location and to keep it moving from
city to city around the world.
To
get the complete list of the 2012 Award winning films and to learn
more about the Bootleg Film festival visit their website :
https://www.bootlegfilmfestival.com
Alternatively,
Follow
them on Twitter at: @bootlegfilmfest
by
Myra Rehman
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