My Festival

And since I woke up this morning feeling like watching videos online, I'm going to call it an alt-festival, counter to the Austin Film Festival.

Skhizein, by Jérémy Clapin who, from what I can gather in french, is an animator that has worked on commercials and finally made his move to short films for cinema festivals with Skhizein. He has done well. I like the idea of small, impractical changes to reality as we understand it. I can see this movie taking its inspiration from incongruent coordinate points in animation software. I would have liked the movie to explore more of that adjusted reality, rather than concentrating on lamenting it. The overall effect is nice. Reality is funny, even when it is a lonely and dangerous place.

Speaking of festivals, I read this really awesome article in the Chronicle a while ago that considered the meaning of film in the digital age. One of the problems they brought up was the democratization of film via cheap digital equipment. Since the advent, submissions into film festivals have become nearly unmanageable. Which means they have to look at low budget submissions the same way that fictions readers at literary magazines have to look at submissions.

For my alt-festival, the entire Internet is my slush pile.

There are resources out there. Delicious is kind of like an active digital memory. It is a bookmarking tool, but online, so it isn't limited to a single computer. Plus it allows you to tag and note the bookmark, as well as share your bookmarks on a social web. But learning this website and incorporating it like a reflex into my browsing habits isn't quite as alluring to my scarce attention as, say, what the UN thinks about cell phone chargers. Or what happens when you stick a Polaroid in the microwave. Or what other videos there are out there.

I've watched music videos, movie trailers, short animated film, and a remake of star wars. Not quite as ambitious as I had hoped, but I also kept my horizons in check by deciding not to change out of my pajamas. Oh, also, rather, I got distracted and my alt-festival veered into other mediums. It just can't be contained.

I'm going to keep thinking of myself when on the Internet as a festival. I have prizes. Like self justification. When I spend 4 hours on facebook it means that I have been doing the good work of judging in a people watching festival. That's a good idea for a thing in real life. Sometimes I get the Internet and reality confused.