A visually stunning short film and a fantasy masterpiece! 
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A look at the brilliant short Echo Torch, what is Science Fantasy, and how this film treads between many genres so beautifully! 

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And now we linger, ever so slightly, on the subject of introductions...

I can't tell you haw many times I've sat down with folks to watch a few art films with friends and about a minute in had them go "Are they serious?" It's a problem, because when you're working within a vein of art that rejects traditional perspective and narraitve, it is easy to lose the thread and misunderstand what the attempt is, and the easiest explanation for most is to think that the filmmaker is being funny. A lot of Avant Garde film is deadly serious, though some humorous filmmakers have dome remarkable works.

While up bright and early with my Twins, I came across a film that had me going back and forth. Art Film - Enter the Mind Museum. Watching it, I was torn between considering it as an art film, all legit and stuff, and looking at it through the lens of a Zucker-Abrams-Zucker film using the art films of the 1960s and 70s as the target. There's a lot of Stan Brakhage in the film, with touches on the works of everyone from Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and even Un Chien Andalou. The comedy comes not with mockery, but with respectful jibing, it seems. There's a lot to play with in the ideals of American Avant Garde filmmaking, and here, there is a joy and strange interplay between the comedy and the source material. If not for a bit of hyper-exaggeration, this could find a place in the collections of Canyon Cinema. 

This brought to mind two CInequest films from early in my term programming. The first was a gentle mocking of French Art Films, or at least the American Film Student idea of what a French Art Film is. The film, Battleship Contempkin by Chris Brown, is two people, alone, in a room, playing the board game Battleship. There is the interaction between the both which is sly and over-the-top. At no point can you take this as a serious art film, it's too ridiculous, and at the same time, there are markers from the art film tradition that make you go "hmmmmmmm..." 

The second, from about the same period, was La Puppe. Taking the legendary film La Jette by Chris Marker, director Timothy Greenberg plays with the concept, the still images and post-apocolyptic setting, and applies it to the story of a dog puppet. You have to know La Jette to get the most out of it, but even for the uninitiated, there's a lot of perfectly timed comedy. 

Though these films run in the field of the Avant Garde as their setting, they are decidedly comedies, even when the line is blurred. 

A wonderfully strange animation from 1975, we look at Quasi at the Quackadero and how it relates to the Underground Comix scene and much more! 

There's no scarier words to read when you pick your genre for the 48 Hour Film Project than MUSICAL. It's sunk many crews over the years, and lead to some truly awful. Awful. I mean, Species 2-level awful films. When they go well, it's a good thing, and when they're 100% awesome, that's flat-out rad! 

​Beyond Forever Studios managed to make the most entertaining and balls-out funny film of San Jose's 2016 48 Hour Film Project with Making Magic, a fairly simple musical that features only 4 actors. The story is a classic: a woman's husband has left her for a younger woman (a Cheerleader!) and her best friend comes up with the idea of summoning a demon to deal with the bastard. Problem - two do not a summoning circle make, and thus they invite a third to complete it. She's not sure, but things go forward, and eventually, they summon a demon. You know, the demons you want, you can't get, and the ones you can get, you don't want. Same as it ever was...

​The songs are great, and delivered with absolute gusto, especially by Casey Semple. She's brilliant, and gives everything she has to just about every frame. She took fantastic material and turned it into something even better. Drew Campbell as our demon is pretty freakin' hilarious. His delivery is wonderful, and though I don't think we ever see Semple and Campbell in the same shot, but when they're 'interacting' it's the peak of the film. 

Overall, this is probably the most entertaining film I've ever seen come out of a 48 Hour Film Project.

I watch a lot of shorts that give one impression, and then turn on you. It's a bit of a cliche at how frequent that is as a theme, but there's a flip side; when it hits you right, it's amazing. Civil War is one that does it right, and keeps doing it right after the twist. 

A man is out hunting, and then he becomes the hunted, with gun shots, grenades, and even cannon fire going off all around him. It's a visceral attack, as if it's coming at his soul, and it's powerful. Carlo Bruno plays the role of the hunter well, and the cinematography is well-placed, the story well-paced, the meaning well-taken. Some of the bullet effects are a bit obvious, but I still managed to lose myself into the story. it's a wonderful little film and one I can't wait to re-watch.