The Scottdale International Film Festival(SIFF) is this weekend, October 5th -9th, and we here at Dark of the Matinee couldn't be more excited. This year is full of films that sound interesting and unique. The festival runs takes place at Harkins Shea 14. The festival seems to have a nice mix of mainstream features, unique and daring stories and some smaller films that have gained buzz in the festival circuit. Check out a full list of the films here. You can also get passes through their website. To help you figure out which films to see we have put together a list of five films we are excited about that are playing at the Scottsdale International Film Festival.
Dead Man's Burden - The year is 1870, and a fragmented America still strains to pick up the pieces after a savage Civil War. Martha (exciting newcomer Clare Bowen) and her husband Heck (David Call, Tiny Furniture) are living on a homestead that Martha’s father purchased on the rural New Mexico frontier, and they’re struggling to make ends meet. When a mining company expresses interest in buying their land, Martha and Heck see their ticket to a better life. Their hopeful plans are soon complicated when Martha’s oldest brother Wade (Barlow Jacobs, Shotgun Stories)—whom she believed was killed during the war—returns to the family homestead after learning of their father’s death. A defector to the Union Army, Wade soon discovers that Martha is hiding secrets of her own. As the two siblings become reacquainted, torn between a desire to reconcile with the only family they have left and their clashing convictions, tension and suspicion continue to mount. Filmed on location in the rugged high desert of northern New Mexico, DEAD MAN’S BURDEN, shot in the style of a classic western, marks Jared Moshé’s directorial debut.
Filly Brown - Maria Jose "Majo" Tonorio is a tough-as-nails LA street poet who spits from the heart. When she’s not refining her skills on the mike at “Pocos Pero Locos,” a local Latin Rap web show, Majo is at home trying to be the good daughter to Jose, a devoted single parent who does an admirable job of being both father and mother to Majo and her younger, more reckless sister, Lupe. While Jose, hardened by his past, struggles to build his contracting business in order to forge a future for his family and leave his past behind, Majo routinely tries to reconnect with that past by visiting her mother, an addict doing time on a drug conviction. One of those surreptitious visits to the state pen ultimately serves as the catalyst for Majo to begin exploring a new direction in her music and, after meeting a talented collaborator in DJ Santa, she cuts her first demo under the guidance of a small time hustler/manager who’s more interested in promoting Majo’s sexuality than her lyrics. Soon a major label and its strong-arm executive, Big Cee, come calling for Majo but not her crew. Convinced that a record deal will deliver much needed money for the family, Majo is suddenly faced with some stark choices. Does she accept the deal and turn her back on the friends who got her to the precipice of success, or does she let a golden opportunity slip away? Likewise, Jose is forced to confront his own charged dilemma when he’s informed by his boss that he has to fire his tattooed “homies” from the construction crew if he wants to land a major new project. As hopes of having a career and saving her family come to odds, FILLY BROWN must risk it all in one last effort to find not only the truth of her own voice as an artist, but also the truth behind her family’s dark secrets.
Teddy Bear - The 38-year-old bodybuilder Dennis would really like to find true love. He has never had a girlfriend and lives alone with his mother in a suburb of Copenhagen. When his uncle marries a girl from Thailand, Dennis decides to try his own luck on a trip to Pattaya, as it seems that love is easier to find in Thailand. He knows that his mother would never accept another woman in his life, so he lies and tells her that he is going to Germany. Dennis has never been out traveling before and the hectic Pattaya is a huge cultural shock for him. The intrusive Thai girls give big bruises to Dennis' naive picture of what love should be like, and he is about to lose hope when he unexpectedly meets the Thai woman of his dreams.
Pegasus - Zineb is an emotionally exhausted psychiatrist assigned to Rihana, a traumatized and pregnant young woman found in the street muttering unintelligibly about “The Lord of the Horse.” A flashback sequence returns us to Rihana’s childhood, where her dictatorial father, horseman chief of his tribe, raises her as the son his legacy demands. Trapped in parental delusions, Rihana falls in love with a young man with whom she carves out the beginnings of her own life. Soon, Rihana’s story awakens repressed thoughts in Zineb’s own troubled mind, and reality merges into a haunted fever-dream of fear and denial in this visually striking, psychological thriller.
PEGASUS (Pegase) from The Global Film Initiative on Vimeo.
Woman in the Septic Tank - WOMAN IN THE SEPTIC TANK comically chronicles a day in the life of three ambitious, passionate, but misguided filmmakers as they set out to do a quick pre-production at Starbucks, a courtesy call to their lead actress, Eugene Domingo, and a visual inspection of their film’s major location, the Payatas dumpsite. Director Rainier, Producer Bingbong, and Production Assistant Jocelyn are well-to-do, well-educated film school graduates who are dead set on making an Oscar-worthy film. They believe they have a winning script, the energy, and the drive to make their dreams come true. Like most filmmakers they know, they have devised a screenplay that will show the real essence of their culture: poverty. In the course of one day, they brainstorm and exhaust all possible treatment of their project: the story of Mila (Eugene Domingo), a mother from the slums, who out of desperation to survive, has sold her child to a pedophile. As they discuss the possible executions of the story, the movie-within-a-movie is reborn in Jocelyn’s imagination several times. This is a gritty, no frills, neo-realist film – a glossy musical, an over-the-top melodrama, and a docu-drama using non-actors. For their last task of the day, they visit the dumpsite for the first time. As filmmakers gunning for authenticity, they get excited with the”beauty” of the squalor around them. Soon enough, they are faced with reality, as they come face to face with the real effects of their chosen subject. WOMAN IN THE SEPTIC TANK is a comedy about misguided ambitions, the art of making art, and the romanticization of poverty.
Ang Babae Sa Septic Tank (Full Trailer) from Nico Nicomedes on Vimeo.
written by Matthew G. Robinson
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