Cucalorus!

This weekend has been one of the most exciting weekend, and one of the most exhausting weekends of my life! I loved every second of this crazy weekend but boy am I starting out the week tired. The Cucalorus event started for me on Tuesday when Norwood Cheek spoke in our class. It was very awesome meeting such a cool filmmaker and I really enjoyed seeing his music videos, especially since we had just turned in our film for the music video shot on Super 8mm. Norwood was a super nice guy whom I became pretty good friends with during the festival! I really liked this part of his presentation where he said, “when in doubt, dissolve” what he means by this is yeah a dissolve is an easy way out, but if you “have to” dissolve, something just isn’t working for ya!

I started the festival off with a work-in-progress documentary, which was very interesting since I had never been to a work-in-progress. The filmmakers, whom were two beautiful women, would show a 15-minute or so clip that we would then discuss as a group after. I was very interested in this documentary because it was discussing the need for industrial hemp to be legalized and the issues that surround that topic. Afterwards, I spoke more with the filmmakers one on one and they offered me an internship with them! I quickly whipped out my card and made plans to meet up with them after Thanksgiving to talk more, the festival was off to a great start!

I went to numerous screenings, most were feature length documentaries and narratives but a few shorts blocks as well. Some of my favorite films that I saw were; Tyrannosaur, King of Devils Island, Happy Happy, Kumare, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Boy and Fresh Swkeezed. This years line up was quit dark. Pretty much every film was violent or depressing (or both) and I believe that is because of where the world is right now. Times are hard for everyone and that is absolutely coming out in the films that are being made.

The shorts in this year’s festival were defiantly on the longer side! Most were 20-30 minutes. The two shorts that really stood out to me where Boy and Fresh Skweezed. Boy was a cinematically beautiful film about a young boy in the transformation into a young adult. I did really like Fresh Skweezed but I felt like it was a little too long. If they had shaved five minutes off of it, it would have made it a stronger film. Overall, I really enjoyed the film Fresh Skweezed, the main actress was absolutely amazing, I met the directors that night and they were so nice and very cool people!

The final screening of the festival was Norwood Cheek's 10x10, which was 10 bands and 10 filmmakers who raced to make a video over the weekend. They turned out great! Kruel's video however, was by far the best. Describing it will not at all do the film justice but in a nut shell it was Kruel dancing and playing the game instruments (guitar from guitar hero, ect) in the most amazing costumes. This block was a lot of fun, everyone was in a great mood, cheering and laughing a lot, having one last hoorah of the weekend. So, I started off Cucalorus with Norwood, and finished up with Norwood!

I met some of the most amazing people this weekend. There were filmmakers from all over the world, from all different backgrounds and ages, but EVERYONE was so kind. We all had a wonderful time with one another and experiencing the festival in general. Cucalorus was extremely special for me not only because I was so honored to get a pass and see all the wonderful films, but also it was so refreshing to be reminded of how rewarding filmmaking is. I have been so wrapped up in school lately that sometimes I forget what I am striving for, and Cucalorus defiantly brought that back to me. Overall, I had an absolutely amazing weekend. I am very sad that it is over but I sure am tired!