Mindbenders has proven to be one of the most widely successful and popular programs with festival audiences over the past 10 years. It is a Cinequest staple sought after by dedicated fans, hungry for…
2000
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Mindbenders has proven to be one of the most widely successful and popular programs with festival audiences over the past 10 years. It is a Cinequest staple sought after by dedicated fans, hungry for challenging subjects and/or the outright odd. This year's program will, no doubt, continue the string as it swings wildly from twisted humor to shocking reality (and unreality) and into the visually hallucinogenic. The year 2000 edition of Mindbenders ranges across the map. Highlighting the series is J.J.
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They adroitly vaporize reality to immerse viewers in fascinating, hazy, and ephemeral worlds--each story a vacation through transient experiences that are both beautiful and haunting. Like the characters and experiences highlighted in this series, the films are transient, but the imagination that they spark is profound. Beautiful World explores an old man's perception of the world when mistakenly caught up in a sadistic game. Hole in the Road rides through beautiful corn field landscapes as a man transitions between surreal existences after being involved in a brutal car accident.
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The moving image is, obviously, the raison d'tre for both the existence and success of the film arts and industry. Sound movies, and later television, expanded popular story telling beyond the scope of early radio broadcasting and its sole reliance on sound. The audio and visual elements of a movie combined to create some measure of a reality in which artistic expression could take place, be it a story, a documentary, or an abstract work. This series of short films concentrates on works that consistently rely on their visuals to advance the story and set the mood.
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Compact Stories returns to the festival lineup with four excellent, thought-provoking, and entertaining films. The subjects are naturally broad from film to film, to say the least, but each story stands on its own, apart from the whole. Compact Stories spans a mixed bag of subjects but can be boiled down to that all-encompassing connection between people, the temporal and permanent, the shameless and the humble. Estrangement between a hard working Jamaican immigrant and his adult son festers in Canadian David Sutherland's story.
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Comedy Favorites 2000 is host to myriad curiosities and a surefire cacophony of laughter. Whether the topic be media mega-mergers, women and men coming from separate planets, society's acceptance of homosexuality, or Humphrey Bogart's flatulence, humor is at the forefront of each inventive, edgy comedy in this shorts series. And what's a comedy program without parodies of fat Frenchmen and bagpipers who play AC/DC?
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A remote part of the country, an isolated farm, a woman with an unrequited passion, and a man on the verge of insanity Torben Skjodt Jensen's debut black & white feature is a rare visual experience. One breathtakingly beautiful suite of images succeeds another in a hypnotic rhythm reminiscent of Terence Malick's Days of Heaven. The man of the title, Adrian Palmberg, lives to be a hundred, and the film follows him to his miraculous end.
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It is a day almost like any other day for the young girl and Buddhist monk who have yet to meet. For her, there is the water to be carried from down the road, for cooking and bathing. For him, there is a long walk through the dusty roads, through the everyday people who may or may not toss some crumbs his way while reciting his many prayers. It is at the bridge that they meet, and it is there that he rescues her from the abyss. He is her hope. He is her light. It is here, the connection between two restless souls, that the "passage of life" again shapes destiny. --Al Owens
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If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 20 persons will serve time in a prison during his/her lifetime. -- U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. In the near future, where many have no hope, two people have a chance at love. He is an inmate in a privately run prison, where his incarceration costs come out of his "paycheck." She is in a virtual prison herself, living with an uncaring husband and anticipating a life of low paying waitressing jobs.
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"East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." But in Hanuman, they do meet in the form of a friendship between a small wild monkey, Hanou, and a young Scottish archeologist who is in India to investigate the smuggling of sacred works of art. In the tradition of Kipling, action and adventure blend in this story of wild monkeys, lovers, and a shady villain. This Indian-French production used hundreds of wild monkeys on location in the ancient Indian city of Hampi. Although the action is placed in the present, the background is the legend of the Hindu god, Hanuman.
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When you order a pizza at home, do you take a close look at the delivery person? Sometimes that person might have a really unusual story to tell. Bel Air is one of them, and a Hollywood story, at that. Curson Beeley (Marc Coppola) gets paid to deliver pizza in Hollywood and its environs, but his "calling" is being a star. And a child actor he once was--the operative word being "was." Eventually, however, children grow up, stop being cute, and start delivering pizza.