I. Film Viewing
I compiled all 48 films I watched during the festival into a giant supercut and showcased my personal favourite films.
It has been a year since I did a personal video editing project. Thanks VIFF for keeping me busy with all the year round trailers! I tried to grasp the common elements from the films I watched and put these puzzles together.
Policemen around the world are well-represented on the big screen -- A White, White Day (Reykjavík, Iceland), Les Misérables (Paris, France), Oh Mercy! (Roubaix, France), The Shadow Play (somewhere in southern China), and The Wild Goose Lake (Hubei, China). I'd say the Chinese cop's sneakers in Diao Yinan's Neon Noir definitely steal the scene here.
I saw lots of powerful films about female pregnancy. Pema Tseden's Balloon, Karim Aïnouz's The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, Trey Edward Shults's Waves, and Kantemir Balagov's Beanpole. I also caught up on The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open post festival. Whether it's set against 1950s Rio de Janeiro, post WWII Russia, or the urban communities in East Vancouver and southern Florida, these films about the trauma and abuse that women face are some of the most heart-wrenching cinematic powerhouses of the year.
Many memorable dance sequences. Just throw in some of my favs here: the dazzling traditional Georgian dance in And Then We Danced, the electrifying Croissant dance by Tom Mercier in Synonyms, and a devastatingly beautiful hospital visit accompanied by a M. Ward's "Let's Dance" needle drop in I Was At Home, But.
Asian films often showcase its brilliant food culture: slurping noodles with Hu'ge and Gui Lunmei in Wild Goose Lake, peaches and Ramdon in Parasite, and wagashi, the exquisite Japanese pastries in Everyday A Good Day. Children of the Sea has a sequence of seafood barbecues that is truly mouth-watering. Compared to these Asian films, not a lot of impressive food scenes from the films I watched in the Panorama lineup. Maybe the pasta and canned tomato sauce in Synonyms? The seafood in Mark Jenkin's Bait? Bumped I wasn't able to see The Lighthouse during the fest. Dafoe's "Yer fond of me Lobsters ain't ye?" would be a brilliant fit for my video.
Feature films I watched at VIFF 2019, in alphabetical order.
Behind the scene picture of Canadian Filmmakers Roundtable event.
Q&A is always one of the best parts of the festival going experience. Apart from 3 shifts for my videographer duties, I managed to stick around for another 8 post screening Q&As. Coincidentally, all my Q&As I volunteered for, The Twentieth Century, Tapeworm, and Cranks, are by Winnipeg born/based filmmakers. As Matthew Rankin, director of The Twentieth Century put it, all Winnipeg artists have a friendly competition about who can make Winnipeg look weirder. Definitely weirdness overloaded!
We were also super lucky to have some International filmmakers here in Vancouver. Doris Dörrie brought Cherry Blossoms & Demons, her sequel to Cherry Blossoms to the fest and answered one of the most jaw-dropping questions I have ever heard, "are your parents Nazi?" Well, check out the videos here. PoChu had a fascinating conversation with Arnaud Desplechin, director of Oh Mercy!, who answered a question about the comparison between his film and Les Misérables, two French police procedurals with different flavours. Alan moderated a Q&A with Dan Salitte, director of Fourteen and introduced his color coding film ranking system.
UBC Scuba Diving club was giving away tickets to The Cave (the drama about rescuing Thai boys' soccer team, not the documentary about Syrian undergrad hospital). As a local diver myself, I was thrilled to see one of the heroes from the rescue team, Vancouver diver Erik Brown on stage and a standing ovation before the screening started.
I love to pay extra attention to each film's music choices. During the fest I stayed for almost every credit roll to figure out the needle drops in the film. Waves and Fourteen made a drastically different double bill -- one featuring a booming soundtrack flooded with Frank Ocean and Animal Collective that comes straight out of a Gen-Z Spotify playlist, and the other completely devoid of any use of music. On the lack of music, Dan Salitte explained that oftentimes filmmakers use music to cover the mistake. He wanted his film to be naked, without the cover of music. It was fun to experience these two films back to back.
I made a Spotify list featuring some great tracks from the fest. Check it out!
II. VOLUNTEERING
This year's volunteering started early. Back in February I was fortunate enough to join the International Screening Committee, helping Pochu and Alan go through East Asian submissions. I got to watch forty something Chinese language narrative features and documentaries submitted via FilmFreeWay and Withoutabox. It truly took a village to make this festival happen!
I wrote about creating this sizzle reel I did for the press conference in detail here. Although I'm not responsible for the sizzle reel leading up to the screenings during the fest, I'm still super proud I got to make this big piece and left my fingerprints on the remaining video editing projects.
Three days before the festival started, Tom tasked me with a quick montage for the Michael Apted Masterclass. The purpose is to give audiences a sense of his Hollywood film career, featuring Coal Miners Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist, Thunderheart, Nell, Enigma, Amazing Grace and the Bond movie This World Is Not Enough. I was able to pull it off in one night. Whew!
A montage of Michael Apted's feature films
During the festival I only did four shifts filming Q&As and filmmaker roundtable interviews. Carrying two tripods, three cameras, and multiple lenses rushing from venue to venue was much more demanding than I thought. Shoutout to Vancity theatre, always the best venue to watch films and volunteer for.
Gabriele and I at our shift of Tapeworm screening.
photo credit: Gabriele Gaurilcikaite
Here are the events and Q&As I covered. Props to Cande, our festival video editor for getting these videos online asap!
That's all from me for now. I still need to write down some thoughts on these films, and there are so many films I'm eager to see again. Thanks to all the staff and volunteers for this wonderful festival, and fellow movie-goers for the loveliest memories!