Cucalorus films and excerpt from paper. Nov 4 and Nov 11

I planned on seeing the Poacher shorts, That Evening Sun, Gorgonzola Shorts, Storm, The Square, The anatomy of VFX Shot workshop, House of the Devil, Precious, Mississippi Damned, The Messenger...

I enjoyed all the films that I saw this year’s festival and I would have to agree that Cucalours is defiantly once of the best film festivals in the world because the variety of film styles that are screened. At Lumina I was able to see some of the festivals finest shorts on 35 mm film, including “Postalolio” and “Danse Macabre”. “Postalolio” was a film that was animated in a stop motion fashion. The director took a picture of a postcard that had a dogface with legs walk around and then surf to a music. It looked very basic but the simplicity was what made it very entertaining to watch. The art of the face dog was very detailed and very skillfully colored. What made this film even more impressing was that each postcard in the film was once mailed off and traveled through the postal service. The other 35mm film that we screened at Lumina was “Danse Mascabre” that was with the feature “House of the Devil”, set the mood for a creepy and morbid movie. The film showed a corpse of a dead woman be dressed and transferred into a coffin and then cremated. They did this with elegant camera movements and intense lighting that emphasized the slowed frame rate of the moving body. One scene that stuck out in my mind the most was a shot that the camera was locked into the top of the coffin and the back of the coffin was the background of the frame as we saw the body slide around in the box as it was being transported. It was a disturbing but beautiful shot. This film was a great choice to open the horror film “House of the Devil”. Some other shorts that I saw included some DVD, and Digibeta movies. The “Conservatory” was a foreign film, which was about a man who was arrested by the British Home Land Security and is interrogated. He divulges all the illegal secrets about his family and friends, and then the light come on the room and everyone is standing there in a room full of presents and birthday decorates shocked. His girlfriend leaves him, as do the rest of his friends. It was a hilarious Twist and another good choice to feature before the main film of the show “The Big Fan” which was a dark comedy. The one experimental show I did attend was City Stage for the Live Cinema Mash UP Smack DOWN and to see Professor Kreul VJ! I went to the screening with Chase Kilber the head of ACE Films, because we were eager to get out of the Lumina and excited to see Kreul VJ. As you know I am a DJ and am very interested in VJ'ing and I did not want to waste this opportunity to see one of my professors in action. Professor Kreul did the VJ'ing for a friend of mine named David Adussi who performs techno locally. He is a very talented DJ, and I think he and Kruel were a very good match of styles. I had a blast and was able to have fun and dance to some great techno music and relive some stress from the festival. When I was there I saw Even, Morgan, and Lauren. I was very excited to see them and I can say that I have become really good friends over this semester. We all let loose and went crazy dancing, and I even got Chase, who normally is reserved to join in too! I was dancing and having a great time like I did this summer in Italy and Spain. Kreul’s graphic style was very similar to the type of VJ’ing I witnessed in the massive discothèques in Europe and am very interested in seeing what techniques he used to create them. Some of the images that Kruel screened included a baby running, dancing shadow man, and a robot walking. I talked to him briefly and complemented him on his work. I was very glad that I was able to see the shorts at Lumina and now very motivated to see what I can create for my personal short films and Vj'ing videos.