B.I.F.F. The Independents thrive in Bakersfield
Last weekend I attended two of the three-hour-blocks of
B.I.F.F. The Bakersfield Independent Film Festival. In 6 hours I saw 10 shorts and feature length independent films featuring either local actors or filmmakers. Here's a list of the films I got to see.
At 11:00-- a trailer for the upcoming feature film due out Summer 2006 that portrayed local artist/actor A.S. Ashley as a very bad man. I didn’t recognize him at first.
Tear-- a short psycho thriller about a lonely car ride through the night.
Moondance-- a wonderful fairy tale gone bad featuring Little Red Riding Hood Kill Bill style.
Days N Nights-- you’ve got that stalker looking over your shoulder feeling and it just won’t go away.
Damaged TV-- a local Brighthouse cable production featuring the cast of KRAB radio’s morning show, Meathead, Desi and Rocky Nash.
Shakespeare’s Plan 12 from Outer Space-- a very artistic, stylistic and futuristic version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
Fresh Fish-- a stop motion animation wonder featuring a fishing pole, fishing net and ice chest that go fishing without the fisherman.
Stoopid Heroes-- a sweet youthful film featuring 3 super-hero kids with ‘different’ super powers.
The War Days-- a Vietnam era film featuring local junior high and high schools kids and music from local bands made by local youthful filmmaker Landen Belardes-- the big death and flash back scene brings tears to my eyes every time I see this film.
Bubba & Sissy Git Hitched?-- a humorous view of one kind of Bakersfield/Oildale culture that was an all too familiar family affair.
Roger Mathey did a great job of bringing together some truly talented people and putting on a great film festival. This is the kind of thing the Bakersfield art scene has been missing. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to attend the other 2 blocks of films, I understand I missed some great films as well as all the naked ones. Next time for sure...
Of the 10 films I saw,
Fresh Fish and
Moondance are two films whose originality I would love to add to my DVD collection. I already own a copy of
The War Days, do you have your copy yet? It comes with a great soundtrack featuring some great local bands so what are you waiting for?
The stop-motion animation genius in
Fresh Fish is amazing. The amount of time and effort it must have taken to set each frame, moving things an inch at a time is unimaginable. One must have patience for something like that. I would love to see Rod Lester, the director of Fresh Fish make a stop-motion animation film about my laundry called:
The Saga of the Clothes. Perhaps then my laundry would wash itself without me having to do it. Laundry is an ongoing saga! I mean you can never finish the laundry because everyday you are dirtying more laundry. It's never ending. In a stop-motion animation film maybe I would finally find out what happens in Club Dryer between the socks. Do they all party and dance and couple off except one? Why is there always a lone sock without a mate once you take them out of the dryer? They went in the dryer as pairs but somehow one sock always ends up alone. It’s a mystery that could only be solved through a stop-motion animation movie I’m convinced.
Moondance was a visual and satirical masterpiece.
Moondance is Quentin Tarantino meets Disney. As a single 37-year-old woman whose own fairy tale marriage had a very unhappy ending, I totally related to the idea of killing fairy tales. In fact, I relished in the sarcasm, the untimely deaths of: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretal, The Three Pigs, and the Big Bad Wolf. And Mother Goose delivered in pure warped nursery rhyme style the moral of the story of Little Red Riding Hood gone bad. All I can say is where can I get a cape like Little Red Riding Hood had? If I had a cape like hers with blades sewn in the lining and hatchets hidden underneath it, I could annihilate all bimbo Barbie dolls that crossed my path and evil ex-husbands of the world like mine, would be just a distant memory long forgotten. If I had a cape like Little Red Riding Hood’s, my novel’s title:
Killing Cinderella would have an entirely different meaning.
If you missed
B.I.F.F., you missed a truly unique experience in Bakersfield. I can’t wait for B.I.F.F. 2.
My Photos...