SXSW didn't have a festival. But they do have winners.

Shithouse (2020) was the big winner at the phantom SXSW festivalA not so secret secret about film festivals: many juries are watching their category on screeners before the festival due to tight schedules, scads of programming, and the general chaos of actual festivals. So, though SXSW didn't actually happen this year, their juries DID give out prizes. Yes, it feels like new movies are but figments of our imagination but that's always the case to some extent with festivals, isn't it? Like Saint Frances which won big at SXSW a year ago only to finally emerge just in time for the Coronavirus to strike it down in theaters, a couple of weeks ago. So maybe in a year's time we'll see these movies!

Their winners and what the juries said about them....

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Cinema as the theatre of memory

by Cláudio Alves

Cinema is the ephemeral crystalized. The camera transforms the now into a remembrance like the petrified bodies of Pompeii, those monuments of frozen life that frightened Ingrid Bergman in Rossellini's Journey to Italy. I still recall when I first watched that classic and felt as if I was witnessing a film reacting to its own limited existence. When Bergman cries we see a star realizing she's no more than a shadow of yester, like those burnt cadavers her image is an unwitting memento mori. Since then, cinema's relationship to time has fascinated me, especially when it comes to the portrayal of memory. Rossellini showed me cinema remembering itself and Resnais shattered the recollection of personal history, Chris Marker paralyzed the days long gone and Varda made them abstract.

While these are names of the European vanguards, cinema as theatre of memory isn't a phenomenon exclusive to the art house. We need only look at this year's Oscar contenders to find ways of picturing memory on the big screen…

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Best Live Action Short Film Category Reviewed

by Eric Blume

The Live Action Short category offers a much more diverse slate for this category than last year, when almost every short film centered around young boys in danger.  There’s some fine filmmaking here, all witness to the talent of their directors who should all have bright futures ahead of them.

Brotherhood comes to us from production companies across four countries (Canada, Tunisia, Qatar, and Sweden…quite a combo!) and deals with a Tunisian family.  The son returns from fighting in Syria with a young new wife, much to the consternation of his father.  Director Meryam Joobeur delivers a nice twist on the “sins of the father” genre here, and she has an excellent sense of how to use the camera.  The actors are often taking up 80% of the frame, and she creates an ambiguous sense of location and wonderful sense of dislocation with this smart framing...

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Weekend Box Office

It was a quiet weekend at the box office with both new wide releases (horror film Gretel and Hansel and revenge thriller The Rhythm Section) opening softly, apart from a few noteworthy monetary marks for indie films...

Weekend Box Office January 31st through February 2nd (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = recommended
WIDE RELEASE (800+ screens)	PLATFORM TITLES
"Gretel and Hansel"	Oscar Nominated Short Film "Hair Love"
1 BAD BOYS FOR LIFE  $17.6 (cum. $148)	1 🔺 OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS $1.0 on 460  screens *NEW* THE CHARTS ★
2 1917  $9.6 (cum. $119.2) THE ACTING,  CONTINUOUS SHOT ★	2 THE LAST FULL MEASURE $519k on 617 screens (cum. $2.0)
3 DOLITTLE $7.7 (cum. $55.2) THIS ODD FRANCHISE	3 WEATHERING WITH YOU $405k on 224 screens (cum. $7.2) REVIEW  ★

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Doc Corner: Ranking the Documentary Short Nominees from Least to Most Depressing

By Glenn Dunks

We have done this very particular ranking twice before now. Does that make it a tradition? We have only had to skip one year (2017) of Best Documentary (Short Subject) nominees because that year’s batch were a happy lot for a change.

This year’s nominees for what is often the most dour of categories could have certainly been darker – trust me, I’ve seen the other films that were shortlisted. They didn't nominate the one about murderous street gangs or the one about the humanitarian crisis following Hurricane Maria! Still, there are big themes among this year’s strong selection of titles (although it must be said, the feature category is far superior): we are taken from a warzone in Afghanistan to a man-made tragedy in South Korea, refugee stories from Vietnam to Sweden, and back to the streets of Missouri.

The nominees are:

In the Absence
Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl)
Life Overtakes Me
St. Louis Superman
Walk Run Cha-Cha

Let’s take a deeper look…

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