| ResFest 2000 | |
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I had the pleasure of attending this year's New York festival, which featured the hip-hop space oddity Wave Twisters, Gary Winick's DV feature Sam the Man, and an assortment of wild and wonderful shorts in the categories Cinema Electronica and Net Cinema Shorts. Many of the films are exclusively produced with Macromedia Flash, or are shot in DV and edited in Adobe After Effects, or are drawn in Illustrator or Photoshop. The power of these software packages makes a revolution possible similar to the liberation of electronic music we've witnessed over the last decades. Low-budget filmmakers toting high-tech tools and strange ideas and good stories can make for a very satisfying cinematic experience.
Wave Twisters is also proof that ResFest is a powerful inspirational force. The filmmakers, Syd Garon and Eric Henry, met at a previous ResFest event and decided to work on a visual track to DJ Qbert's album of the same title. The result is a hilarious space spoof that pits an intergalactic dental commander and his hardy crew against an evil baby pirate by the name of Red Worm who is trying to win back a secret scratch weapon. Or something to that effect. Animation and video have always gone along together well, and the filmmakers have made excellent use of Qbert's grooves so that every new noise becomes identifiable on screen.
The film is produced as a wild collage of digital animation styles and features some great geek jokes, such as the Captain flying his spaceship with an old-time Atari joystick and a Napster Vs Metallica gag that paid off big. OK, sure, Wave Twisters is probably infected by what I like to call poles-in-your-face syndrome, after the propensity of 3-D movies to forsake all plot just to show off what they can do with the technology. Some of the footage of flying space motorcycle gangs ("chinheads"), got a bit dull, and there were a few walkouts, maybe because folks got the idea, and a whole hour's worth of ear-deafening scratching is more than some could take. Nonetheless, animation set to music has come a long way since Yellow Submarine, and Wave Twisters is hip, funky, and surprisingly savvy eye-candy.
Upcoming ResFests in your corner of the globe:
- Los Angeles: Nov 1-5
- Seoul: Nov 16-19
- Tokyo: Nov 24- 26
- Osaka: Dec 2-3
Other cities on the annual touring schedule include San Francisco, Seattle, London, Chicago, and Montreal. Watch out for next year's fest!
