Who Rules the World? Lady Filmmakers! Pardon my bias, but I am still reeling from this past weekend's WGA-Beverly Hills theater film showcase. Besides the screening of a lot of fabulous films by independent filmmakers coming from all four corners of the world, the premise of this signature event is really about the women working in every facet of film production. In addition to taking on the roles of directors, producers and writers, talented females are making their mark as editors, cinematographers and in other intricate positions in the film industry. Understandably, many of the festival films' story structure and narration were told from the lens of a whoa-man's perspective. Such was the case of Producer/Screenwriter, Shahari Moore's "Swimmin' Lessons"a well-put-together monologue-style flash fiction short film that appeals to our sentiment by surprise. The film synopsis alludes to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while the one-man role actor describes life pre-Katrina. His depth of retrospection breathes life into the other characters whom we only get to draw closer to via the subtle nuances combined with stances of poetic narration. One of the challenges in an experimental film is will the audience get it if the plot is not obviously evident. I get what makes this film work.
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| Pictured (left) Filmmaker/Producer/Screenwriter Shahari Moore Pictured (right) NightWriter357 The festival also showcased male filmmakers who collaborated with women to make their films. Executive Producer, Olivia Wilde and Director/Documentarian, Bryan Mooser's "Baseball in the Time of Cholera" a tug-at-your-heartstrings (reactive) film about Haiti's water contamination problems and the fight for justice (proactive) in getting the United Nations and its governments to own their part of allegedly being the culprits of the Haitian people's demise is just one layer of this film. The other element is although people are dying in numbers of cholera poison, a young boy and a group of his friends find some solace playing baseball and along with the filmmaker and Haitian officials forms a league, a first for Haiti. Film documentaries are more that just telling a story. Documentaries ignite sparks that jump start reactive people to become proactive. One of the questions I posed during the pre-screening Q&A with Mosser was how challenging it can be to shoot documentary films in such a way that the story is not just Q&A talking heads, although we both agreed that sometimes that works for some documentaries. Many documentaries are almost always based on morality. In contrast, the documentarian sometimes will shoot in such a way that the audience will find a correlation with their own circumstances and what they're seeing on screen.  Pictured (right) NightWriter357 |
