past years' reports: 2003, 2002, 2001
I went to see movies at the Vermont International Film Festival over the weekend of October 13-15, 2006. Here is a write-up of the movies I saw with a few screenshot-type images. If a movie has no link it's because I couldn't easily find one, please send me one if you have one.

Vermont Films

On The Edge (16 min)

A great short film about the problems faced by Vermonters with no or inadequate health care. Small interviews with people in different circumstances trying to stay healthy while uninsured or underinsured. [On The Edge]

In Good Hands (11 min)

This was a nice slice of life movie that the filmmaker started when she was diagnosed with Lyme disease. It's a quickie look at two older women who are twins and each partially disabled in different ways. They talk about their unusual childhood and their lives now. The women are clearly enjoying life and their outlook and wacky sense of humor made this short fun to watch. [Gail Marlene Schwartz professional site]

A Price for Freedom (14 min)

A short student-type film about what local families face when they send a family member off to Iraq. Well-filmed and the student was around to answer questions which was great. His whole family, who were also in the film, were in the audience.

Don't Hate, Appreciate (30 min)

A very polished made-for-tv video about helping students in Vermont deal with and learn to benefit from the increasing diversity in Vermont's schools. A little too slick for my tastes but it showed many of the approaches teachers take for dealing with bullying. Lots of good interviews with students.

Acts of Faith: The Making of Disappearances (31 min)

Disappearances has been making the rounds of Vermont theaters. It's a low budget (only 1 mil) film by Jay Craven featuring Kris Kristofferson. This is the "making of" reel that I'm sure will appear on the DVD. It's a fun look at the ups and downs of making a small budget production in the middle of a Vermont winter. [Disappearances film home page]

I Was A Dancer (6 min)

This may have been my favorite short film of the show. A very lush piece with lovely music that looks at the exotic attractiveness of dancers contrasted with the invisiblity of older women. [Jason Whiton filmmaker homepage]

Returnable (10 min)

A great short film about being away and coming back to a scene that you no longer belong in. I wasn't sure exactly what the contwex was -- I'm not sure if it mattered -- but the short film seemed to tell a long story. [Returnable preview clip]

Picture Perfect (8 min)

An interesting and fun picture collage talking about the shift in Vermont from agricultural to more suburban culture. [Meredith Holch profile on VT Arts Council website]

Short Cuts (5 min)

You may have seen this guy's naked butt in Seven Days. He does great political commentary films with high-interest imagery. This filmmaker has pieces in the VTIFF every year and they are often quite fun. [John Douglas personal website]

The Secret Life of Shells (9 min)

An odd mishmash of beach and shell photography, sometimes juxtaposed over naked bodies, with information about pollutants in the local waters. Lacked cohesiveness but had some stunning imagery.

The Singers (18 min)

Maybe my least favorite of the shorts. This story was clearly based on a more classic piece of writing that I didn't recognize and so the whole piece -- a story about a singing competition in a Vermont town -- felt forced and didn't stand on its own.

Stick Season (5 min)

Lovely black and white movie about what happens when you fall in love with a witch. Really great scenes and a lot of story told in such a short film.

Recycling Day (8 min)

Time lapse photography of a recycling center. Not super interesting for how long it was, but good music. [Vermont Digital Productions filmmaker Tim Wessel's professional site]

Blue Yonder Ranch (18 min)

I missed the beginning of this one, but it seemed to be a somewhat heavy-handed "what happens when you fall for a whore" sort of movie. Great acting, slightly stilted script. [Blue Yonder Ranch on IMDB]

Emily's Addition (26 min)

One of the only movies to have a truly different look and feel in an interesting way as well as a sense of humor, this was a fun look at one man's obsession with the woman of his dreams. [What State is Vermont In another project by Mark Covino]

Shorts

The Reader (27 min)

A very professionally done film by a guy who has a summer place in Vermont, this was a short piece about a blind woman and the younger woman who comes to read her mail to her. Very poignant and subtle with excellent cinematography. [Freshwater Films - Duncan Rogers production company site]

Desert Gold (27 min)

Wildflowers in the desert, what makes them tick and why they are important. This film showed twice at the festival at the same time which was odd. It was a good nature type documentary but a lot of the pretty flowers didn't look so great on the big screen on video. [Desert Gold site]

Lesbian Censorship in School (27 min)

A homemade documentary by a high school lesbian in Korea talking about the troubles she has with teachers and administrators and other students at her school. I wanted to like this film, but the girl making it didn't want to show anyone's faces so there were long shots of people's shoes, or a stuffed animal while there was a voice-over narration. Good content, bad presentation. [Lesbian Censorship in School description]

Features

The Children of Silver Mountain (53 min)

A great film about the odd climate in the mining industry in Bolivia. The mines used to be state-run, then they were privatized. Now there is a really weird mishmash of cooperatives which are really just small outfits that sell what they make to upstream processors and shippers. The whole system creates terrible unsafe jobs that the filmmaker documents in great detail. [Children of the Silver Mountain]

Sex Slaves (88 min)

A very matter of fact story about the system that exists in Eastern Europe that traffics women to Western Europe, Canada and the US for the purposes of prostitution. This movie was amazing in that it actually had an interview with a trafficker who knew he could speak on the record and because of lax laws in the Ukraine, actually get away with it. There is a cloak and dagger intrigue part to this movie where a man whose wife is sold attempts to get her back. The fact that a lot of this movie centers on one man trying to get his property back from another man sort of highlights what a lot of the problem is here. Many women speak on camera about how they wound up being sold into prostitution, and the life situations they are in that make the risk of that sort of option appealing. [Sex Slaves - page on PBS site]

The Last Valley (54 min)

A classic case of Loggers vs. Environmntalists, except in this case the loggers are also somewhat battling themselves. Set in Australia in a small town that has historically made its living off of logging they are finding that forestry mismanagement is severely curtailing the amount of available timber and conservationists are beginning to have valid claims about the legality of the logging that is happening. Very interesting to watch a movie about logging from another country's legal perspective where dealing with protestors is handled differently than in the US. [The Last Valley page from Sydney Film Festival]

America's Lost Landscape (57 min)

A documentary about America's tall grass praries that disappeared when people started using the Midwest primarily for agriculture. A good biopic included about Aldo Leopold and his Sand County Almanac and the move to try to regrow some of the lost praries. As with the Desert Flowers movie, there is a lot of beautiful footage of grasses and flowers that the videotape really doesn't do justice to. [America's Lost Landscape]

Darfur Diaries (57 min)

This was the most popular of all the movies that I went to in this festival. It discusses the lousy situation in Darfur where the Sudanese government is backing and supporting militias who forcibly remove people in minority ethnic groups from their homes and often slaughtering them. Darfur has become a humanitatian nightmare and much of the rest of the world seems to be turning a blind eye to the massacres. This film interviewed many of the displaced people as well as members of the Sudan Liberation Army. [Darfur Diaries, Wikipedia article on the Darfur conflict]

Frankensteer (48 min)

Another look at factory farming of beef and how indistry decisions affect food safety. Unlike other harder hitting documentaries, the matter of fact feel of this one means that there are more honest, less defensive interviews with people who actually work in feedlots and in government food safety programs. This film was clearly made for tv and had actual breaks in it for commercials which was a bit pesky but otherwise it had a lot of good information and not too much in the way of gross-out factory farming shots. [Frankensteer]

A Life Among Whales (57 min)

Amazing photography is the biggest draw of this fun film that is an interview with Dr. Roger Payne. Payne carries the film. He loves whales and his enthusiams for them becomes infectious. At the end of it, this film reveals itself to be a "save the whales" type piece, but by the end of it, you're totally convinced that this is the only right thing to do. [A Life Among Whales - distributor link]

Zero Degrees of Separation (85 min)

A movie that looked like it was going to be discussing being gay in Israel and wound up using the relationships of the two couples profiles to talk about the uneasy relations between Israel and Palestine. It documents two couples in which one member is Israeli and one is Palestinian. The movie talked much more about the political angles between the country and not much at all about the gay couple aspect of their relationships. [link]

Sisters in Law (104 min)

A movie low on background and backstory but heavy in plot and intrigue. This movie follows women through the legal system in Africa where they are trying to get justice in cases that are not historically decided in favor of the women. The movie follows an abused child, a woman wanting a divorce and a woman who is trying to move away from her abusive husband. There are female legal advocates who support and encourage these women and a lot of the movie is told through the camera lens without extra narration or explanation. [Sisters in Law]

The Ships are Full (54 min)

One of a type of documentary films that I believe we'll be seeing less of as suriviors of the Holcaust become fewer and farther between. This movie documents the collaboration of citizens and government officials in Bulgaria to help Jewish children get through the country and on to Palestine. There is some original footage from the 40's as well as interviews with many older adults who recall what the passage was like. [The Ships Are Full - IMDB page]

Pawns of Paradise (54 min)

An on-the-fly documentary shot by a National Geographic writer who had to get a visa from Nepal in order to be able to get into the Kashmir region that is between India and Pakistan and has been the location of a longtime internal conflict. This is one of the most beautiful places on Earth and yet unsafe to visit for most people. The filmmaker was in the audience and answered many questions. He was pleasantly surprised by the interest of the audience saying that he'd shown the film at ten festivals and this was the largest audience he'd had, about 22 people. [Zoltan Istvan - filmmaker website]

The Forest for the Trees (68 min)

An excellent documentary shot by the daughter of one of the lawyers responsible for trying the case of Judi Bari against the FBI. While Bari died of breast cancer before the case was over, she had spent years trying to clear her name after the FBI accused her of terroism after she was nearly killed by a bomb that was placed in her own car. This movie had documentary footage of old Earth First! rallies as well as a lot of legal strategy meetings and the victorious conclusion of the case. [The Forest for the Trees] - film wesbite