A Chick at the Festival 2

Three more films for your consideration.  The Battle For Bunker Hill is drama that focuses on how the small town of Bunker Hill, Kansas devolves into bigoted lawlessness when all the lights go out and cars stop working for some unexplained reasons.  Spooked by the vestiges of 9/11, residents resort to guns, religion, and bigotry in response to an unknown force.  While I appreciated the sentiment, all I could think was there was much too much testosterone in this film.  Favorite line, "We're being treated like Katrina n****s!" or something to that effect. I liked the performance by James McDaniel, but otherwise the film was only so-so.

Next up, The Eyes of Me, a provocative documentary that follows four students at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Austin, Texas.  This film did a good job of showing that teens with visual impairments are like teenagers everywhere--they're awkward, they make bad decisions, some are good students, some are bad students, and some are boy crazy.  The subjects talk extensively about their blindness and how they deal with it.  Interestingly all the subjects had sight at some time in their lives and explained their transitions.  [None of the subjects were completely blind from birth.] The filmmakers used animation in parts of the film to try and explain how they experienced the world.  Also, the film was audio described which is an important accommodation to make films accessible to people with visual impairments.  It is a very thoughtful and important exploration of a segment of our community that is ignored most of the time.

The last film I saw was Cold Weather. I hated it.  I'll be honest, I don't get mumblecore which is what I would classify this film as even though it had a slight semblance of a plot.  Maybe it was mumblecore plus.  I contemplated  walking out, but I stayed through the whole thing hoping for a pay off.  I didn't get it, so I didn't bother to stay for the Q&A.  On the bright side, my peanut M&Ms were good.

Tomorrow night, I'm going to try and see some short films.  I'll let you know how that turns out.