Marfa Film Festival, Thursday
I couldn’t believe I’d been pulled over again, twice on one trip, and so close to my destination. I had only been going 5 miles over the speed limit when that limit was 75; surely he wouldn’t be giving me a ticket. As the officer approached my car from the right side I glanced over into the passenger seat, my previous ticket partially bent and obscured from complete viewing by my camera bag. I quickly dropped the bag onto the floor, hoping that the sight of my previous offense would fill this officer with pity. “I see you’ve been stopped by us before,” the officer said. “Well this will only be a warning.” My ploy had worked, or at least, he wasn’t going to give me a ticket to begin with. But this time I’d learned my lesson. I didn’t go even one mile over the speed limit for the rest of the trip.
It was sunny that day when I finally pulled into Marfa, and I didn’t really know where I was supposed to go so I just parked in front of the town hall which was an exquisite barely-orange building of some size. I got out of my car and looked around, brushing the sun out of my eyes with my hand. It was very quiet. A few people were milling about in the distance, and some closer. A guy wearing boots and a cowboy hat and a girl wearing not very much were the two closest. I intercepted the girl and asked if she could tell me where the film festival was going on. She told me that everything was basically within a few blocks of where I was standing, and that Hotel Paisano (which she pointed out to me) was basically the HQ for the film festival so I should go there. She was off to do some yoga.
I walked over to the Hotel Paisano slowly and deliberately, like a cowboy idling across a vacant street, eyes aware of everything. I gazed around at the buildings and the few people around me. The town was beautiful, a seeming cross between a small Italian village and the set of an old Western movie. I’d never seen anything like it. I walked through the heavy arched doors of the hotel, and proceeded to pick up my film pass. Then I moved on over to the theater. The theatre itself was quite impressive. Some kind of converted railway storage house retrofitted with wooden beams and old movie theatre seating. Sometimes during a film a train would pass, causing the entire building to quake.
“Picasso & Braque Go To the Movies”
This was the first film I saw, and I was still riding on the high of having just gotten to Marfa, so this review may not be the most objective. But I liked this film. I’m not completely sure that I liked it because it was a great film, or rather for what the film caused me to think about. The film basically charts the transition from an older age into the modern era through the invention of several revolutionary breakthroughs: the airplane, cinema, and modern art, and documents how the modern artists were affected by or representative of these changes.
One thing that I enjoyed about the film was that it did a very good job of transporting the viewer into the world of Picasso and the audience of that era. It was a diverse world where suddenly everything became important, and was filled with meaning. Clothes, buildings, and religion were more ornate. People communicated with one another in code by maneuvering their fans in certain ways at dinner parties. New styles of art competed with old styles of art. And cinema competed with everything, art, dancers, and other performers, to capture the attention of the public.
Watching this movie I was filled with wonder, for cinema, for technology, for old styles of social practice and the way people lived. Growing up in a modern world, we often fail to recognize just how recent all of this stuff is, and just how bizarre this incessant stream of new gadgetry is. We’re obsessed with technology, but we fail to treat it with the awe it should inspire. We’re numb to it’s meaning. It’s become an extension of ourselves and we don’t question or wonder at the consequences of such use and heavy consumption of all of this stuff.
When cinema first began amidst this world of growing innovation people did wonder at this kind of stuff. The early films in the movie make use of a ton of visual trickery to inspire awe: People disappearing, two-dimensional objects becoming three-dimensional objects, disembodied heads moving about as if they were alive, color and movement projected in intriguing new ways, time reversed and space traversed in a second. It was a kind of new sight on our world changing the conception of time and space and art and meaning.
It was interesting to compare this world to ours. The value of Art and Culture and Aesthetics seems to have highly diminished. As a society we care more for the trickery of technology now, what new things technology can do for us, without giving a thought to the aesthetics and import of it all. While we are inspired by what accomplishments we can achieve with this technology, we certainly are no longer impressed by the bounds of time and space. We can do anything. Of course the use of this technology does have consequences, and several of the other films at the festival highlight this. But I think we ought to have a good deal more respect both for the power of our actions, and also for the limit of this power. We can affect the world in a great number of ways, but it can also affect us as well.
Another film I really enjoyed was “Roll Out, Cowboy.” This was a documentary about Chris “Sandman” Sand who is a music artist who combines country music and rap, an intriguing mix. This film was a lot of fun to watch as Chris is a very funny guy, and his music often conveys this sensibility. The film charted some of his travels across the country and the reactions his music got from the people he encountered.
Chris’ stated mission is to bring the U.S. and the world together through his persona and music, whose disparate styles are themselves brought together in interesting ways. The film touched a bit on Chris’ political philosophy which he describes as radically center, a philosophy he believes he shares with Obama. One of the delights of the film was watching different people’s reactions to Chris’ lyrics and music much of which are is irreverent or politicized. A lot of these people were rural listeners, and their reactions were not all of one sort, and were mostly positive. I liked the message of the film and the complex reality it displayed, that political opinions and personal opinions very rarely follow the red/blue dichotomy that has been thrust upon us by the media who love controversy, and the political parties who love to demonize their opponents.
Being from Texas I am particularly irritated by these kinds of generalizations, largely because in Texas’ case they are negative. It was nice to see the nuanced portrayal of people and their lives in this film. In fact the film festival itself demonstrated this kind of nuanced reality, since Marfa is at once modern and rural, sophisticated and simple. The kinds of people at the festival ranged from the hippest of hipsters to the most rugged of ranchers. I even found myself surprised by how many people from Marfa or other small Texas towns seemed to come and enjoy the film festival as much as a city-boy like myself. All in all I loved the blurring of the distinctions between people both here in Marfa, and in this film in particular.
“Obselida”
This film was absolutely beautiful. Taking place in L.A. and Death Valley, which is strikingly similar to the landscape around here, the film tracks the interactions of two characters whose different reactions to the world around them gradually move together towards a balanced center. These two characters, George, a librarian attempting to construct an encyclopedia of obsolete things, which is becoming increasingly difficult in our world of accelerating planned obsolescence, and Sophie, a cinema projectionist with a penchant for life, appear to have conflicting views on a number of things.
George seemingly lives in the past or at least desires to. His mentality pits him oddly out of place in L.A. where he refuses to drive a car, and where he cares more about the authentic and old than the flashy and new. George’s reflections are often about things that have in a sense already passed, and he believes the world too will soon be destroyed by the activity of humans. Sophie on the other hand just enjoys life as it comes to her, and refuses to believe the world will soon end.
The two become friends because of Sophie’s insistence, and their apparently disparate views wear against each other until the end of the film. I enjoyed the balance in this film of somber reflection and hopeful conclusion, and the film was very realistic in this way. It was also an incredibly emotional film without being cloyingly sweet. I never felt the film was attempting to manipulate my emotional heart strings. In fact there was somewhat of a distance between the viewer and the film, as if the viewer is a third disconnected person to these two disconnected characters. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I felt very connected to the film and the characters, but it was an act of willing this connection. The movie made no attempt to force you to connect.
The ruminations on things gone and things to-be-gone in the film was somewhat depressing, but there was also an uplifting urgency apparent in the film as if the film was saying “do what you can now to love and preserve those things you care about”. Despite the fact that Sophie and George’s mutual if uncertain romantic interest is only brief, their relationship and the importance that they both ascribe to it is incredibly meaningful and will obviously remain with both of them as they continue their lives. This film effected a similar feeling in me directed at the film and these characters, and this is certainly a film that will stick with me.
Overall I enjoyed Marfa and the festival very much and will be continuing to post throughout the week about my day-to-day reactions to the films and the festival.
