There’s something about reading the credits or checking that IMDb app on your phone and that something is, often, so very male. Men directors, men cinematographers, men editors, men producers, stories centered on men and written by men, stories centered on women and written by…
You guessed it! Men. So it’s refreshing/revolutionary to see that women, fully half of the population, are mostly well-represented at this year’s Montana Film Festival.
There’s nowhere that’s more true than in “Shorts Program 1: Masks.”
This block of 10 films includes seven directed by women, linked up by metaphorical masks. After watching all of them, I’m vibing with the theme. They all depict truths beyond what people see on the surface. And, let’s be honest, that’s kind of female.
The fun of any shorts block is buckling in for the emotional and visual ride as one disturbing film ends and a laugh-out-loud one fires up (or, sometimes, it’s wishing you skipped one and went to the loo instead). This particular set of shorts screening on Friday night and Saturday afternoon brings some definite high highs (finally telling off that fake writer friend you never liked in No Hands) and some abusively low lows (that director blowing smoke in The Other Girl is as creepy and gross as you thought).
Below are five of my faves from Shorts Block 1, but if these aren’t your thing, there are plenty more that might be at the 11th annual fest that celebrates all that’s creative and great in independent filmmaking. The Montana Film Fest runs at Missoula’s Roxy Theater for four days, Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 23-26. In addition to the “Masks” block, this year’s shorts picks include a first-of-its-kind block that’s all animation, another featuring locals that promises to “Keep Montana Weird” and one free-wheeling block evoking geography in “Places (Sort Of).”
Not into sitting through shorts? Eight feature films are in the mix, including four (fully half!) directed by women (East of Wall, Eastern Western, Dead Lover and Queens of the Dead), along with buzzy films like Train Dreams, based on the novella by Denis Johnson; Rebuilding, starring Josh O’Connor (Challengers) and Kali Reis (so good in True Detective/Night Country); and The Straight Story, directed by David Lynch and shown here in 35mm along with a truly great doc short, Your Opinion, Please, by former Montanan and Roxy guy, Marshall Granger, who recently indulged a Q&A about it for The Pulp.
Onto the women in shorts!
Azi
If Saltburn were a kind of slow and languid film short filled with tension between two beautiful women living in an age gap instead of the lusty chaos of licking Jacob Elordi’s bathwater, it might be Azi. From an initial tight, tight focus on the title character, this 14-minute, beautifully shot film follows Azi, really, Azi’s gaze as it lands on the girlfriend of her bestie’s dad. It all plays out during a weekend jaunt to the lake where they are both outsiders. Dior Goodjohn, who plays Azi, has grown up from her time playing “Little Santana” on TV’s Glee, and she comes across here as an unmistakable talent I’m guessing we’ll see again in something bigger. That could be the feature-length version of this short written and directed by Montana Mann. After getting picked up as an official selection at Sundance this year and winning an award through SAG-Aftra, a longer treatment for AZI is in the works via the Film Independent Fast Track program. And while this works fabulously as a brief and arty movie, I’d for sure come back for Azi’s backstory and to find out how things play out with daddy’s gal.
i want to go to moscow
Mara is having a bad day. She’s an actor who wants to give more than casting gatekeepers have time to take in because they, you know, saw what they needed to see. Cast aside and very ready to wallow, she runs into a friend who teaches a kids’ acting class and desperately needs Mara to fill in, like, right now. So she does and the kids overact some sort of terrible Disney show script. But wait. Is that Chekhov’s Three Sisters it’s ripping to shreds? That’s all Mara needs to fully crash out and enter Weird Aunt mode in front of these thespians who need a juice break. Arielle Goldman (The Knick, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) stars in this 12-minute descent with a hopeful ending written and directed by Sarah Baskin (who, as an actor, also appeared on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel).
Randy as Himself
It’s hard to know what’s true about the crime being re-enacted in the gymnasium-set sets of the fictional TV show, Murder in the Sticks. But we do know there’s a lot of fake blood being splashed about and that Randy, an older gentleman in a pearl-snap shirt, seems like a good guy. As the woman plucked from a church group to play the leading dead lady tells him: “Lord knows you didn’t do anything but find your wife murdered.” In 10 tight minutes, this film — written and directed by Margaret Miller — manages to clear a comic-horror arc that never feels rushed. I kept thinking I knew Randy, and not just because he’s a good guy in a pearl-snaps. Jeff Perry, the actor, was also Meredith’s dad, Thatcher, in Grey’s Anatomy, as well as Cyrus in Scandal and the teacher who ran the drama club in My So-Called Life. Here he plays a new role: It’s Randy. As himself.
The Callback
My comfort watch is an edit of Hugh Grant being interviewed and talking about how much he hates everything like water bottles and people who walk behind him going clip-clop. Dig deeper into this crank sitting on a chat couch and you’ll find he also lives to make up deep biographies about his characters that he then offers to other people’s scripts. It turns out, that’s charming beyond old Hugh, especially in The Callback, where an actor envisions the lives beyond, say, the unnamed “Other Woman” before her largely unsuccessful auditions. For example: Maybe her name is Tabitha and when she was a little girl, she imagined she was a shapeshifter who could turn into a dog or a fox or a squirrel. Molly Densmore plays Maggie, who crafts-up her punch-ups with gel pens and the like, punctuated in the film with playful animation from illustrator and co-writer on the film, Lisa McElroy, who will be at the fest for the Q&A that follows Shorts Block 1. Kara Herold directed this delightful, on-point sendup of boys in the film biz and what it’s really like to be Dead Girl No. 1.
The Pic
The Pic reimagines the gift of the Magi as a photo of a penis and I am here for it. That may or may not be true for the woman who receives such a wondrous gift, played by the writer and director of this clean and slightly dirty comedy, Frances Chewning. Another short of hers, The Glasses, was a fave of mine at the Montana Film Fest a few years ago. This one is less sweet (because it’s not about her dad, thank goodness), but the sweetness still shows up when two friends, one male and one female, parse The Pic and figure out the whole isn’t always worse for being a sum of its parts. Chewning will attend the Q&A, fully clothed, I imagine.
Shorts Block 1: Masks screens at the Montana Film Festival Friday, Oct. 24, at 7:45 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 25, at 2:15 p.m. at the Roxy Theater in Missoula.
