2000
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Each year Cinequest has the privilege of watching many of the most exciting films from directors right in our own backyard. This year proved to have a record number of short films, with over forty, submitted from Bay Area artists, making it difficult but always rewarding to pick our favorites. This year's Bay Area Shorts series offers an eclectic mix of genres and stories from documentary to narrative and even the experimental--each using a particular style of its own while always maintaining a high level of artistic achievement.
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It is Earth in the year of our Lord 2007. Yogi and Boo-Boo, a father and daughter who are telepathically connected, work from different parts of a devastated landscape in order to stop a scheme by the corporate-governmental New Magnetic Order to bulk erase the brain content of every human being. To do this, they must travel back in time and trace the television broadcasts of a 1950's show entitled Science in Action. Therein lies the secret to prevent the fall of electronic telecommunications technology into the hands of the military-industrial complex. Science fiction...or science fact??
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A modern day vampire, played by Mia Kershner (Exotica, Mad City), lives a very ordinary life in L.A.,...despite her obsession with Gary Coleman. --Ken Karn
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Filmmakers, Iana Porter and Sasha Waters, bring the world of bondage and discipline out of the dungeon and into the light in this revealing and intimate portrait of three women involved in the business of providing pain for pay. Ava, Carrie, and Sonja are three completely different women who hold the same job title: dominatrix. Their clients pay them for acting out various role-playing fantasies involving physical and emotional pain, humiliation, and bondage. Whipped explores their world--from the business to the personal, from their clients to their lovers.
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Thomas Kromer has writing in his blood. His father was once a promising writer...until he went mad and could no longer tell reality from his nightmares. Now, just when his career may be taking off, Thomas is haunted by a series of murders...apparently being carried out by a wolf. His immersion in the mythology of lycanthropy deepens his fear that the animal bite he received one dark night...under a full moon...may have infected his blood and turned him into a completely different sort of creature--a werewolf.
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Cinequest is proud to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey's most famous production of the early 70's, Trash, the sordid comedic tale of an impotent junkie, played by Warhol superstar, Joe Dallesandro, who wanders around New York while various women try to arouse him. A female impersonator, Holly Woodlawn, plays his ersatz wife. Her intense performance amidst the prevailing deadpan tone is entertainingly incongruous. Her goal in life is to get on welfare, and, to accomplish this, she pretends to be pregnant.
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Diego sells cars, sleeps on a mattress on the floor, and still wears his wedding ring, although his wife left him three years ago. He has pressed "pause" on life. Simon works with their father making shoes. He lives for the night, always for the moment, never slowing down. Gabriel vanished into thin air when he left for a trip and never returned. Every time the phone rings, his mother thinks it's he. Three brothers...every which way but here...until tonight...when somewhere in the night, on route 5, there might be a light, or at least the possibility of a new day.
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For years, Linda's ideal man has been one who respects her career and independence and considers everything equal in the relationship. Convenience over love has been her motto. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she has spent her life denying her Latin heritage. Refusing to salsa dance and date Latin men, she collects American folk art, eats frozen meals, and has just moved in with her gringo boyfriend, Steve. Linda has her life all planned out, that is, until the day a freak accident at work introduces a dashing young Cuban firefighter, Jose, into her life.
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Juan, I Forgot I Don't Remember is the kind of inspirational film that composes a delicious poem of identity and memory, as a son journeys to reconstruct the life of his father. The result is a montage of hauntingly beautiful images and stories that are merged to form one of this year's most mesmerizing gems. Director Juan Carlos Rulfo is the son of renowned Mexican writer and poet, Juan Rulfo. Returning to the town of Jalisco, Mexico, Rulfo interviews all of the elders who remember his late father.
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Director Gregory Nava is one of the most prolific and fascinating Latino artists working in film today. His films, El Norte, Mi Familia, Selena, and Why Do Fools Fall In Love, have received critical acclaim from around the world and have entranced audiences with stories of warmth and spirit. Gregory Nava's The American Tapestry is an uplifting and challenging journey through the memoirs of five immigrant families, each one culturally diverse and on a quest for its own American Dream.