LAFF

Despite it being the week of Sonrise Island and Allie having to open the next morning, we decided to hit the road for a jaunt up the 5 to the LA Film Festival. I see myself as quite the connoisseur of Film Festivals, seeing that this is my second of the year. Just kidding- I just really like independent films.

I had done quite a bit of research on the LAFF, picking out a perfect afternoon of movies and finding out exactly where we needed to go. There was a little bit of a traffic on the freeway, but we arrived in plenty of time to get our six-ticket pass as well as explore the area. While in line for our tickets and discussing our movie choices with the lady giving us our passes, we were told by the guy standing behind us that he was one of the actors in "The Dynamiter" (our first movie of the day) and they'd love to have us in the audience. Very sweet guy with a very thick accent and it was nice to see him up onscreen later. I've never really been to LA other than UCLA, USC/Exposition Row, the Getty, Santa Monica and Hollywood and Highland area, so this was a brand new area. We wandered around the Staples Center, LA Live Center, Nokia Theater and then decided, since we had plenty of time, to figure out a good place to have dinner. We walked down Figueroa and found ourselves a CPK, getting the number so we could order something later to pick up in between movies. On our way back, we found this sweet little courtyard and sat down to chat for a bit since it was hot as Hades!

Our first movie was called "The Dynamiter". It was the story of a 15-year-old boy growing up in Mississippi named Robbie who was struggling to keep his family together. His mother was in California getting treatment and his older brother Lucas had a dangerous streak that Robbie sometimes found himself emulating. He also took care of his grandmother, a toothless woman who never spoke but made the greatest facial expressions, and his younger half-brother Fess who is really his whole world. Robbie is not well-liked by his class-mates and struggles to fit in. Things are complicated when Lucas comes home and puts a wrench into the well-oiled life that Robbie and Fess have built. Robbie is forced to get a job that starts at the crack of dawn and Lucas's clear dislike, even hatred, for Fess drives a wedge between the brothers. Robbie eventually needs to decide is keeping the family together is best or if letting his brothers go their own way would give them a better life.

The movie had some really awesome cinematography and the scenery in Mississippi was gorgeous. All of the actors were brand-new, having never really acted before, and that was kind of obvious, but you could tell that they really supported the project and were interested in learning more about the acting/filmmaking world.

After the movie, there was a Q&A with the two cast-members who were at the film: the older brother- the guy we had run into earlier- and the younger brother. Both were incredibly sweet and I just wanted to squeeze the little boy. How adorable is he in that suit of his!?

Unfortunately we didn't get to stay long because we had to head downstairs to get our rush tickets for the next movie. We were given numbered tickets (10 and 11) and instructed to be back about half an hour before the movie, so we took the opportunity to go and get some CPK. We still had time so we got to sit in "our" courtyard and eat our pizza and bread. Gourmet dining on picnic budgets. Just how we like it.

We were lucky enough to get into the second movie that we wanted which was called "Somewhere Between". This movie was incredible. The filmmaker had just adopted a baby girl from China and was realizing that there was no way that she would be able to answer all of her daughter's questions or fill in all of the pieces of the puzzle. So she decided to follow four girls who had been adopted from China themselves.

There was Fang (pronounced Fong) from Berkeley who had a white mother (who spoke Mandarin), a Chinese father (who only spoke English), and two other sisters both adopted from China. Her story took her frequently back to China where she would spend time in markets and villagers, trying to see if people could help her identify even what her Chinese cultural group was. She also spent a lot of times in orphanages and really connected with a little orphan with cerebral palsy who she began to support monetarily and eventually helped transition into an adoptive family in the United States.

Jenna was from the East Coast and was affected by her adoption in a totally different way. She was highly intelligent and spoke very candidly about the feelings of loss she had from being abandoned, which is unfortunately what happens to most of the Chinese orphans because of the One Child law. She discussed how she felt like she has to overcompensate and strive for perfection to combat those feelings and how that's affected her life. As a result, she was going to Phillips Exeter Academy twelve hours a day, participating in crew and skating. She also spent a lot of time traveling and talking to parents internationally who were ready to adopt Chinese children. It was clear that this impacted her very strongly as well. And luckily, this experience has helped her cope with these feelings and she stopped a lot of her competitive sports and has begun to work on her individuality with personal skating levels and taking up yoga instead of crew. I really liked her a lot.

Ann and Haley were the last two girls who also did a little bit of international traveling. They didn't really talk too much about Ann but Haley was the only girl who was lucky enough to find her biological family. She went to China and put up posters in the area around the orphanage she was sent to and a woman recognized her as looking kind of like someone that she new. As unlikely as it may be, it turned out that this was her biological family. She met with her bio dad and the expression on his face the entire time was one of shell-shock. Eventually, after several months of waiting for DNA test results, it was confirmed that this family really was Haley's biological family. So, along with her adoptive parents and older blonde sister in Nashville and younger adoptive sister also from China, Haley had two biological parents, four older biological sisters and a younger biological brother. The two families were able to meet and Haley was able to spent time in the family's home village. Haley was incredibly lucky because it is incredibly rare and difficult to find biological families in China.

Overall, it was a fantastic film. There were some light moments, which was great because the majority of it was incredibly emotional. I know that all of us in the first three rows (yes, we were sitting in the SECOND row of the theatre) were all crying at some point. We certainly needed to decompress after that experience. We also saw a few of the girls from the film in the lobby afterwards.

Our last film of the night was actually seven different short films. We wanted to see a film called "L!fe Happens" with Emma Bosworth, Krysten Ritter and Rachel Bilson, but we were petty sure we weren't going to get rush tickets (the movie was already sold out and we were number 35 and 37) so we decided to go for a short film package instead. Some of the films were great, some were a little over our heads (it was also pretty late).

The first one was called "Bukowski". A janitor cleaning the bar on a hotel after hours finds a twelve-year-old boy sitting at the bar, nursing what looks like a whiskey and ice (don't worry... it's really apple juice). When asked who he is, the boy replies "Charles Bukowski". It turns out that this boy calls himself a different writer in each hotel and spends his nights laughing, sharing stories and drinking apple juice with the staff and chefs. And then when he leaves the hotel, it's time for a new identity. Maybe this time he'll be Hemmingway. Or Steinbeck. We'll just have to wait for the next film to see. It was very cute and I greatly enjoyed this one.

Next was "Everybody's Nuts". This was a very different film, lots of long shots of Kern County agriculture life with narrative voice-overs. The narrator talked about his family and how his seventy-year old father has been exploited by his company that forces him to farm and rent a house near orchard and fields that are right next to oil fields that contaminate water. Each time he spoke about the contaminated oil, the picture of the screen would be of gorgeous bright, clean water, either from a shower or from an aqueduct or flowing from a pipe. The problem with this film, even though I absolutely loved the gorgeous cinematography and photography, was that it was in Spanish with subtitles so if I was so enamoured by the visuals, I would sometimes miss the subtitles and get a little lost. But really enjoyed this one too.

Wapawekka was about a budding rapper forced to go off to a cabin in the Canadian wilderness with his father, a Cree Indian. What I loved about this one was that when they spoke in English, there would be Cree subtitles. I thought that was very unique. It was interesting to see the juxtaposition of the two cultures and how eventually the rapper son was able to integrate his rapper present with his Cree past.

"Grandpa Looked Like William Powell" was Allie's favorite. The narration went over shots of the narrator's grandfather's autograph book with some fun animation to go along with the words. The narrator discussed how he didn't really know or had spent any time with his grandfather but with his autograph book, he now had a little bit of his grandfather's life. It was very clever and reminded me a lot of David Sedaris.

"Sunny" was about a little girl in a very rural community in Brazil who is spending one last day with her family. She doesn't really like the outdoors, the sunshine, the river, the experiences of living in this rural community so her family has decided to send her off to school where she can learn and grow and be challenged. Even as a six-year old, she understands what's going on and deals with an inner battle of not wanting to leave her family but also knowing that she is destined for something better in the future. Lucky for her, a pair of sunglasses in the car that takes her away, helps to make things a little better.

"The Death of an Insect" was indescribable. It was basically that- stylized, very bizarre and random shots of dead insects. There's really no other way to describe it. I seriously wish that I had a video to show you what was going on. Honestly no words.

The last one was called "For You I Will Fight". A girl discovers that she's had a near scare with HIV and decides to go and join the French army to experience a complete change in her life. She and three other women recruits are isolated together as they go through the training sessions with all the other men. You barely saw the rest of the soldiers except for one commander and it was interesting to see how the four of them bonded together and how their lives changed through their training.

There was a slight snafu on the way home- the entrance that we needed to the freeway was closed and the signs for the 10 quickly disappeared as soon as we crossed over into the ghetto (an incredibly EMPTY ghetto though....). Despite lots of U-turns and out loud frustrations at the overabundance of freeways there are in Los Angeles, we made it to the 110 South. However, we had no idea, not being from the crazy world of LA, if the 110 would hit a freeway we wanted. Eventually we saw signs for the 105 West which would take us to LAX. Awesome, we know how to go from there. After almost getting hit by a semi and then being followed by a car with very dim headlights (not at all suspicious) we saw signs for the 405. Even better than expected! From then, it was an easy drive down to Jamboree to take Allie home but for awhile there, we were worried for our safety and well-being (especially driving through Inglewood). The next morning, it was a miracle that I was still standing by noon and Allie was lucky enough to get to go home early from work so all worked out for the best. I would definitely recommend the LA Film Fest- it was a total blast.