AFF Is Done!

AFF was this past week (and a half), and it's finally over. I'm both happy and sad by that. Happy because free beer every day followed by all of us buying each other drinks was a bit much. Also happy because I volunteered for projection and got no sleep for a week.

Sad because I really do love the the environment. It's a time when I can see all of my favorite film people all at once instead of on a project twice a year. I'm not sure how other film festivals are, but AFF is small and pretty intimate. I can imagine some of the bigger ones can be completely overwhelming. I'd rather be at one of those as a filmmaker so I can have something to talk about, instead of "oh, I'm just here."

Film rundown - I saw all of three films at the festival, but they were all pretty good. It was an eclectic mix, but not a lot really appealed to me. There was a big gaping hole where the Horror Short program should have been. Bah! The three I saw were:

• Skills Like This - an awesome comedy out of Colorado. I really would like to see this go a long way because it's smartly written, has some incredible scenes, and is funny (oh hey, a funny comedy... how often do we see that these days?). My favorite film of the festival, just eeking out Son of Rambow.
• Son of Rambow - wow, Garth Jennings is rapidly becoming one of my favorite directors with Hitchhiker's Guide, this gem, and his fabulous Q&A after. Really a classy guy, and a lot of fun. This film is actually heading to theaters pretty soon, so please go out and check it out. I can't really see anybody not liking this film.
• Dance of the Dead - the film that Rome built. Or that took over Rome. I'm not really sure. Without going too much into detail, I was disappointed at a number of things including not being consistent with its own world rules (yeah, some stuff is funny or advanced the story, but at the expense of the integrity of the story) and inconsistency in shooting style - it's like they had 4 different DPs over the course of the project. I will say that this was great success as a community film - people loved it and it involved a lot of local folks. It's nice to see a film that leaves everybody happy instead of sour for the experience.

Some other films to keep an eye on are: Young At Heart, XXY, and Mongol. All should be on DVD at the very least (I think Mongol is going to theaters sometime this summer).
And that's all he wrote! Fun festival, and I look forward to it next year, hopefully with a film in competition.