Triple Feature 2013 Archives - BIFF - Beloit International Film Festival

Triple Feature 1

in Triple Feature 2013, BIFF @ Rockford 2013

Thursday: 10:00 pm – Cheese People/ Nikki’s Café
Friday: 6:30 pm – Katie’s Cup
Sunday: 5:00 pm – Bagels & More

Sudden Nature

Category: Short Film
Country: Singapore
Language:
Rating: PG-17
Runtime: 20
Director: Isaac Kerlow
Producer: Isaac Kerlow
Website: Sudden Nature

The storyline alternates between the real world of a young couple and the allegorical abstract world of Man and Nature. The narrative starts as the young couple prepares to meet at a picnic in the park later that day. Through a series of flashback we are transported to an imaginary world where the young characters personify Man and Nature. They are happy and playful, but Nature occasionally tricks Man. Man tries to understand Nature by measuring her but his approach is not always successful. The harmony between them disappears when Man is unkind to Nature. Nature strikes back and destruction unravels. The young man and woman drift apart.

Txiki

Category: Short Film
Country: Spain
Language:
Rating: G
Runtime: 27
Director: Sergio SanMartin
Producer: Paranoix Entertainment

TXIKI is a documentary piece structured around artist Txiki Medina (1958) and focused on the creative process of an oil painting. In order to put together his peculiar geometry, the artist takes inspiration from urban spaces and spoilt aspects of Nature, places filled with elements which, rather than sought, have been encountered. There is also a drive towards introspection, towards revealing the human interior where silence plays a key role. The trace that the passing of time leaves on each image. Painting as a metaphor of the velocity of time.

PAULINE, ETIENNE

Category: Short Film
Country: France
Language:
Rating: PG
Runtime: 37
Co-Director: Anne Gilles
Producer: Francoise Bouillon-Pommerolle

Friendship is an art of loving.
Pauline and her best friend Etienne don’t fit anywhere, and are regularly lost. But they go good together and always can find a way. Today they are going to paint a large canvas for Cedric and cannot find the studio. Etienne has got no sense of direction. Pauline cannot admit that she has fallen deeply in love with Cedric.

Triple Feature 2

in Triple Feature 2013

Friday: 11:00 am – Domenico’s
Saturday: 9:00 pm – Rotary Center
Sunday: 2:30 pm – Cheese People/ Nikki’s Café

In Our Hands

Category: Short Film
Country: Austria,U S A
Language: English
Rating: PG-17
Runtime: 28
Director: Peter Bruenner
Producer: Peter Bruenner
Website: LuLand

The stories of Ethan, an architect, Hannah, a young actress, and a pastor intersect on a train headed for a horrifying crash. A conversation between the initially stand-offish Hannah and Ethan reveals that Hannah is on her way to her estranged father’s funeral. She sees a younger, untainted version of herself in the five-year old daughter of the pastor. But as the train gets closer and closer to its final destination another encounter forces her to face the painful consequences of some of the decisions she made in her life.

Lovesuck

Category: Short Film
Country: USA
Language: English
Rating: R
Runtime: 28
Director: Tomah Mackie
Producer: Eric Strelitzer
Facebook Page: Lovesuck

The drug trade is filled with paranoia – trusting those within your circle is paramount and invitation to outsiders is never worth the risk. This is the reason Blitts (Jonah B Taylor), a reformed dealer now enjoying a middle-class job, got out. However, Blitts needs to make some easy change so on this winter night, he’s the outsider. When he meets up with his contact, Blitts learns that the leader of the deal house is a fringe Vietnam veteran (John Hoylman), someone generally known in the area to be ‘unstable.’

What Blitts doesn’t know though is that this veteran is employing someone who used to be very close to him – his ex-girlfriend, Manda (Melissa Freson). When he sees his ex working the trade in this dilapidated environment, an empathy overcomes him. Blitts knows what it’s like to suffer in this business and he begins to feel pity towards Manda. Ultimately, Blitts must make a choice – he must weigh whether to intervene in her job or risk the reward that comes with easy money. The combination of a drug story told in the romance genre brings an excitement and sensuality that allows Lovesuck to sprint through its thirty-minute runtime and with a diverse cast and fresh dialogue, Lovesuck seeks to stand apart in the urban film genre.

Shoot the Moon

Category: Short Film
Country: USA
Language: English
Rating: PG-17
Runtime: 27
Director: Alexander Gaeta
Producer: Missy Laney
Website: Shoot The Moon

Marcy Meyers is down on her luck. Faced with piling bills, the remnants of a failed marriage, and now an imminent home foreclosure, she has nowhere to turn but to the hope of a miracle. That miracle she find in Shoot the Moon, a national game show that promises a once-in-a-lifetime chance to win it all. But Marcy’s faith in the show comes with a price as her relationship with her daughter, Alice, is put to the test as the clock ticks towards a seemingly inescapable fate. Shoot the Moon tells the story of miracles and the extraordinary places they’re found.

Triple Feature 3

in BIFF @ Janesville 2013, Triple Feature 2013

Friday: 1:30 pm – La Casa Grande
Friday: 4:30 pm – Speakeasy 2
Saturday: 6:30 pm – Hendricks Art Center
Sunday: 2:30 pm – Bushel & Peck’s

Lifeless

Category: Short Film
Country: U S A
Language: English
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 29
Director: VP Boyle
Producer: VP Boyle
Facebook: Lifeless

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg-mk_HV3D8

A movie musical with a completely original score, LIFELESS #BeingKindaDeadSortaSucks weaves it’s quirky path around eight high school grads who accidentally spill Extra-Strength-Blue-Plummer-Gel into their party punch and wake up undead. Luxe Montgomery is out of rehab again and hosting the final bash of the season before some accidental spillage, Wiccan herbs and more-than-a-few tabs of Ecstasy make it into their boozy punch bowl.

The crew starts dropping like flies after they pound the first shot. However, morning brings a wicked little surprise. When they begin to revive themselves, it’s very clear that things have changed and that their body parts are a bit more fragile than when they were fully alive. Things start to fall apart (literally) as they navigate Mormon boys, a hot delivery man, some GLEE wannabees selling candy door-to-door and some bizarre advice from a Tarot Reader.

When the reality that being sorta dead kinda sucks really hits home, the gang-arene must make a difficult choice while working out their non-future through some gritty song and dance. Yes, it’s a dark comedy with blue goo.

Umpire

Category: Short Film
Country: U S A
Language: English
Rating: R
Runtime: 23
Director: Libby Wells
Producer: Libby Wells
Website: Umpire

When professional baseball’s only female umpire, Billie Satriano, is asked to investigate the disappearance of a senior umpire suspected of corrupt activities, she finds herself torn between her family of officials and the game she so loves. In navigating through this dilemma, Billie’s focused gaze–a gaze solely occupied by the events between the baselines–is not only called into question and her career placed in jeopardy, but her own life will hang in the balance.

Miracles on Honey Bee Hill

Category: Short Film
Country: U S A
Language: English
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 23
Director: Bob Pondillo
Producer: Diana Rice
Website: Miracles on Honey Bee Hill

A young female pines for true love, but when she finds her ‘special someone’ her zealously religious church family becomes enraged over it, and attempts to drive her from the congregation. It literally takes a visit from God for the pious group to accept and understand the power of compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, and love.

Triple Feature 4

in Triple Feature 2013

Friday: 11:00 pm – Bushel & Peck’s
Saturday: 6:30 pm – Bushel & Peck’s

Mine is Mine

Category: Short Film
Country: U S A
Language: English
Rating: R
Runtime: 20
Director: Kyle Bowe
Producer: Chris Smair

Phil is his usual contentious self at his best friend’s birthday party. His friends are moving on in their lives, but he is opposed to growing up in any sort of way. Instead, he takes a drastic step. He clones himself. Now, Phil has the perfect friend that will not judge his pessimistic outlook. Together they share an identical self pity. That is until the clone has his own experiences and makes changes for the positive. Phil is now forced to confront an idealized version of himself and question if change is necessary.

Why Do Hyenas Laugh

¿De qué se ríen las hienas?

Category: Short Film
Country: Spain
Language: English subtitles
Rating: R
Runtime: 25
Director: Javier Veiga
Producer: IB Cinema S.L. & Impar Proucciones S.L.
Facebook:

This could be the typical story of Boy meets Girl. But the Boy and the Girl are fast approaching an age at which they are besieged by an existential question: Why Do Hyenas Laugh?

Empty Nest

Category: Short Film
Country: Spain,Venezuela
Language: English
Rating: MA
Runtime: 25
Director: Francisco Lupini-Basagoiti
Producer: Francisco Lupini-Basagoiti
Facebook: Empty Nest

Montse is a single mother and acclaimed sex therapist. The epitome of the modern woman: independent, ambitious, free spirited… and a workaholic. However, since Montse has devoted her life to helping her clients with their sexual and psychological issues, she’s ironically neglected the person who needs her the most, her son Andres.

One day, a patient named Lucia confronts Montse with an issue: Lucia’s life has changed now that her son left to study abroad in college. Lucia claims to have the Empty-Nest Syndrome, meaning her life seems empty now that her son is not home anymore. “Her home is like a nest with no eggs.” Montse is unable to understand this situation and blames Lucia’s depression on lack of sexual intercourse with her husband. For Montse, children are no more than the extra weight a mother must bear in order to become a true and complete woman – nothing more.

When Montse returns home, she has but a moment to herself before Andres suddenly storms out of the house in a fit of anger. According to Ramona, their sharp-tongued gossip of a maid, Andres has been fighting with his girlfriend, and left the house with loud music blasting form the computer. When Montse breaks into Andres’ room to stop the music, she accidentally sees a set of explicit pictures. The images are those of a man exactly like her son, except butt-naked from the neck down. The extra skin doesn’t bother Montse, but what shocks her is the fact that this man has mammoth attributes. Never in her whole life has she seen that big of a member! Could her son possess such features without telling his sex therapist of a mother? “Well of course he has issues with his girlfriend,” she realizes, and becomes determined to help her son as one of her patients and possibly rekindle their faded relationship.

With this new-found objective, and the awkward, tragic revelations it brings in the end, Montse will come to terms with the fact that she too has Empty-Nest Syndrome. However, instead of the son fleeing the nest, Montse realizes the nest is empty because it’s been missing a mother. And from now on she will try to be there as much as possible for her son, if he lets her.

The Empty Nest is a family comedy with dark undertones. The main themes to explore are the relationship between mother and son, social roles in the family, queerness and traditions.