Hey, remember a long time ago, before you came to college? You did stuff then, remember? And had, like, interests? Maybe, like many of us, you've forgotten that before your primary forms of recreation were half-heartedly crap-talking your peers and wistfully reading PDFs of transfer applications at 2 a.m., you actually cared about the bands and books and movies in your thefacebook.com profile. Anyway, take heart. There's a dose of arty fun around the corner. The annual Johns Hopkins Film Fest will be here from April 21-24, and for a few days we can all pretend like we go to a normal college.
Organized completely by Hopkins students, the 2005 Fest is offering one of its strongest schedules yet. Festival Programmer senior Judy Berman encourages both students and other Baltimoreans to take advantage of the Fest. She says, "There's a whole world of interesting independent films out there, and they're really hard to get to if you don't go to a bunch of film festivals. This brings it all here."
Indeed, the variety and quality of the films on this year's schedule promises to have a little something for everyone. Some highlights include the documentary DiG!, a narrative shorts show Tampons, Queer Zombies, Robotripping, and Other Things That Happen When Jesus Visits Baltimore, and Daisies (a Czech new wave classic), and much more. And while normally, "much more" just means the crappy stuff you're trying to get in without drawing attention to it, this time it's for real -- there's lots of fun, smart, scary, weird, and goofy stuff on the Fest schedule for this year, so make sure to pick up one of the programs around campus. Even if you hate movies, the programs (designed to look like a bizarro-world Hullabaloo) are a good read.
The narrative shorts show Tampons, Queer Zombies??? kicks off with Ladies Room, a short by filmmaker Kate Berstein. The film consists of a series of vignettes of young women in -- you guessed it -- the bathroom. Without resorting to clich???, the film accurately and intimately showcases the particular behaviors that girls perform in front of the mirror, on the toilet and otherwise. Don't miss this film, if only for the ad parody for a tampon that looks like a candy bar. Authentic, intimate, and weirdly resonant (at least for the ladies in the audience), Ladies Room will have you wondering why no one thought of making this film before.
Also in the Tampons, Queer Zombies??? vein is The Fashion of the Christ, in which Jesus comes to Baltimore and subsequently realizes he won't get anywhere without a new hairstyle. And if you miss the first narrative shorts show, there's always, You'll Laugh, You'll Cry, You'll See Fire Hydrants Talk: Narrative Shorts 2, which offers a second round of gems for those of us with short attention spans. This shorts show also includes two of the six home-grown Hopkins films in the Fest Our Poets by junior Dave Dittell and Once by junior Anna Prebluda. Chock-full of Hopkins talent, the Fest is also screening the work of senior Mike Muniak (Yellow Socks) and sophomore Michael Wyszomierski (Foolproof).
Animated shorts this year also look intriguing. Hopkins faculty member Karen Yasinsky's Boys (who is also screening her short Who is Your True Love?) depicts a preciously creepy boy-boy tussle. In filmmaker Greg R.S. Kilstrom's Hotel St. Cosmos, a visually sensational and strikingly ominous aesthetic sets the stage for a very important game of chess played in a rent-free hotel. The garbled speech and eerie aspect of the central characters (a King and a Queen) ups the cool factor.
For those who prefer more traditional fare, there are several feature-length films in the schedule, as well. Don't expect the usual Hollywood shtick, though. Donkey Skin is a French musical fairy tale from 1970 in which Catherine Deneuve escapes incest and everyone wears awesome costumes. The aforementioned DiG! is a critically acclaimed documentary that explores the relationship between the bands the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre and their efforts to survive in the recording industry without selling out. In its Maryland premier at the Fest, Elevator Movie guarantees to be an intelligent and unsettling success. And don't forget -- there's also Hot and Bothered: Feminist Pornography, which explores the mission and actions of women who are defying the porn industry to get the films they want made.
And there you have it.
All screenings will be in Shriver and are free for Hopkins students, faculty, and employees. For non-Hopkins viewers, the price is still low ($3 for a show ticket, $5 for a day pass, and $15 for a Festival pass). For complete information, including the Festival schedule and film descriptions, check out the Hopkins Film Fest Web site at http://www.hopkinsfilmfest.com.
