Artsfest Film Festival: Film as Personal Art

The Garden

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

In "Film as Personal Art" session, filmmakers use the medium to turn the camera and found footage into a megaphone for larger points about life. The Garden by Ann Steuernagel is a brilliant montage that describes the perils of climate change using found footage and juxtaposition to make her points. The first and most effective part follows news coverage of a glacier falling into the sea set against children running to observe from a hill and a hammer breaking a block of ice. It's not subtle, but it's effective.

Contra el Cine

Contra el Cine is a montage of characters in other films with their back turned to the camera. It's something you don't see much, and at first when you realize what is happening, it's amusing. Then it becomes unsettling. By the end, every time the film cuts away just as someone is about to turn around, you just want the release of a human face. And release comes by the end, though not in the manner you may expect.

The rest of the session cannot be recommended. When My Eyes are Closed by Jon Perez does a good job of evoking a mood, but with the voiceover and soft lighting, it has a feeling of pretentiousness to it. Winter's Veil by Eva Lee is eight minutes of computer-generated spheres and lines that would have looked state of the art a decade ago. And Don't Look Directly into the Sun by Kathleen Rugh... I didn't get. At all. It's about sunlight abstracted, but the images are so processed and obscured, you only get a fleeting glimpse on any one object. And that goes on for nine minutes.