Indie filmmakers shine at the 15th annual Tallahassee Film Festival
Filmmakers from across the country came to the Tallahassee Film Festival to share their artistic visions Sept. 2-3. With over 70 feature-length and short films screened, this year marked the 15th annual showcase of independent cinema.
Every filmmaker starts somewhere, and before they can achieve high–roller status in LA, they have to start with a humble camera and an interesting topic in mind. With each film being completely different from the last, these talented artists lay it all on the line to show their personalized truth on the big screen with films like “Natalia," “Pomp & Circumstance" and “The Last Movie Ever Made” being notable highlights just from the first day of the festival.
“For me, I have to feel very strongly about whatever it is I’m filming, I feel drawn to it regardless to what seems popular at the movie," said Director Elizabeth Mizraei. "It’s obviously not like a very commercial film in that sense, but I just had this calling to make this film in a way,”
"Natalia" is a documentary about a woman joining a monastery as a nun. It is a solemn, quiet and spiritual film that shows the audience the dedication to faith and the obstacles that would present themselves in moments of hardship. Shot in black and white, the sparseness of colors makes the audience really focus more on the inner parts of Natalia herself and her journey to find who she truly is. Quiet meditation.
“I feel like there's very little films about this choice today, this choice to live a monastic life, and give up the good things. The world has a lot of bad things also have a lot of beautiful things, and I see that Natalia doesn’t reject those things, like she doesn’t reject the beauty of the world but she also chose to walk away from it and it’s really against the current in today’s society,” said Mizraei.
“Pomp and Circumstance” is a comedy shot on 16mm film about three college friends trying to figure out sincerity, culture, self-awareness and the creation of art in a world where nothing is new anymore. Shot in vignettes that intersect and build to one climatic ending, this experimental film has inspirations from Whilt Stillman’s “Metropolitan” to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise,” with other homages, such as the French New Wave of the '60s and Brian De Palma’s “Greetings.”
“I think a lot of the film is this fear of being pompous and that interrupting any kind of earnest thing that you could say, like thinking you're about to say something you actually mean, and then questioning yourself and being like, oh, no, ‘I'm just posturing this and I'm posturing that,’” said Co-Director Patrick Gray. “And ultimately, I think that there's no way to know if you are truly being sincere, if you're speaking through words, because that creates the confusion.”
“I mean…a lot of the film was kind of us making fun of ourselves to a degree,” said Co-Director Adrian Anderson. “And I think a lot of what I brought to that was this idea of differentiation, where you almost are doing this as a response. It's not the fact that you think you just have the best taste and all the best ideas, but it's the idea that you have them and others don't. And this makes you special and unique. But I think kind of everyone kind of goes through that, especially young people trying to find a voice, especially in art. It's part of growing up.”
In “The Last Movie Ever Made,” the world is ending and a man spends his final days on Earth making a short film with both childhood and newfound friends. This movie is a rollercoaster, making one laugh and cry, sometimes within the same scenes.
“Nathan sent me the script in late 2018 and I cried twice. And I was like, ‘I think he’s got something here,’” said Alice Baker, co-producer of the film. For a film over an hour and a half long, shooting only took 60 days, with only “three short days” allowed if they wanted to move production, according to Baker.
The films mentioned have been moving and dazzling in their own ways. Each film came from a diverse background and that is what made them so unique and interesting to watch. Cinema would be nothing without the people who take time to come out every year to support the arts.
“I’ve been doing this for 15 years, it grows a little bit more every year, and the last people I really want to thank are you guys for supporting us,” said Tallahassee Film Festival’s President and Creative Director, Chris Faupel to the crowd after the screening of “Natalia.”
Faupel has high hopes for the future, and has plans that go with ideas of expansion and sponsors that will push the Tallahassee Film Festival to new heights, to show more films to a wider audience. “We couldn’t keep doing this every year without the support of the people of Tallahassee. This is not the end vision for this festival. I intend to see it through,” he said.
This article originally appeared on FSU News: Indie filmmakers shine at the 15th annual Tallahassee Film Festival
