There was a welcoming and pre-screening for press and volunteers covering the International Documentary Film Festival a couple nights prior to the official launch of its 25th year running; what an achievement. We were surprised with 2 shorter films.

I would personally define documentaries simply: anyone anywhere doing anything captured on film lasting any length of time, from 30 seconds to 30 days and beyond. Such is the actual complexity of humans too, varied and expansive. This is why 2 weeks of almost 300 screenings, there is something for everyone. This is also why, for the first time in my life, i will go to a movie at 10am. It’s a marathon trying to view all one may find insightful, educational, or just superfluous.

The first 10 minute short was by an UCLA student whom had been given 1k for the project and decided to film his father. The father played the electric guitar the entire time in front of a green screen while the son, narrating over the music, described how his father had once been the Jimi Hendrix of the Fiji islands, before having been forced by the mother to come to states. The ADHD riddled student-son eventually wrapped up by analyzing the possibility that his father was resentful of his birth, as the son most likely derailed his father’s goal. 

Are children the subjects of parents projections? Is our DNA filled with all the unrequited hopes, dreams, and desires that weren’t prior achieved. 

The 2nd short was narrated by the clipped-together interviews of various friends and family members of a young Italian woman. She had set out on a hitch-hiking project across parts of eastern Europe with a video camera. She wore a white wedding dress the entire tour, deliberately provoking intrigue. Her mission was to travel to various mid-wives and wash their feet. (mimicing the cleansing ritual of the bible, specifically in war-torn places of eastern Europe) The interviews also weaves in what footage was retrieved from her camera. Because, along the way she gets murdered. Go figure. The last clip is footage from her own camera that the murderer filmed of a wedding somewhere in the Middle East. The camera was found with her body presumably. Eerie.

Stay tuned for what film draws me to the theater at 10am! But hey, I’ve been running every morning in 35-40 degree weather, so nothing I could do now would surprise me. Brrr…