Taos Picture Show Taos.

Taos Picture Show

Taos, strange Mexico

March 30-April 3 2005

Like a multi-headed phoenix rising from the ashes of the set a high value oned but ultimately financially doomed Taos Talking Pictures festival, which plaited in 2003 after nine years, a small handful of upstart film festivals sprang up in the small picturesque northern just discovered Mexico town of Taos in the spring of 2004 This year, with the fate of at least undivided of the other two festivals still uncertain, the Taos Picture exhibit kicked off its second season March 30-April 3 2005

A small-scale festival, the Taos Picture present to view screened 16 features and pair shorts programs at a single venue across four days, the intent being to provide a more intimate experience for attendees. As Festival Director Jonathan Slator (who also assists as the executive director of the Taos shire Film Commission and the Director of the Taos Mountain Film Festival, which shields in the fall) wrote in the festival program, "In presenting the next to the first Taos Picture Show we intend to stay steady to the spirit of the first: to bring an of the best films from around the world to a 'family' of aficionados in single in kind venue." It is indeed a casual affair reflecting the low-key nature of the community, with festival-goers making s'mores around a small fire outside the theater between screenings. With a single cloak and no extracurricular activities as it is as panels or master classes diverting attention from the films, attendees were not required to select between competing shows. The vast majority of attendees were northern of recent origin Mexico residents and noticeably missing from this hometown festival was any discernible industry mien While several filmmakers were in attendance and dialogued with appreciative audiences after screenings and during three special ends for passholders, this was no meet-and-greet incident and no one seemed to miss the natural mediums (and effects) of the schmooze factor evident at in the same manner many A-list festivals.

The festival's program lived up to its tagline, "a celebration of cinema from around the world," with half of the features coming from outside the United States. sum of two units in particular stood out from the (admittedly small) mob The Great Water (2004, on Ivo Trajkov), Macedonia's Academy Awards minute for Best Foreign Language Film, is a fictionalized consider at an obscure piece of history that manages to remain this side of sentimentality despite its control matter. The film successfully deliver overs the confusion of a young lad who is captured and incarcerated in a postwar labor camp for orphans of "political undesirables" within a strong script (adapted on Trajkov from a novel), convincing child actors, stunning cinematography, profound symbolism and an appropriately desolate and menacing settle that serves as a dogged and intimidating character of its be in possession of (as well as a surprising casting twist revealed from cinematographer Suki Medencevic during the Q & A following the screening). The young protagonist, acclimating to his confines, bestows his days being indoctrinated into the righteousness of communism while endeavoring to avoid being mistreated according to the overzealous, masochistic staff. He becomes mesmerized by means of a mysterious new arrival who helps him explore the unseens behind the walls of the camp and whose bright presence has an unusual affect forward the orphans and staff alike.

French director Eduard Erne's Birdpeople, common of the festival's many hale documentaries, reveals the unusual and prolix pre-production activities behind Winged Migration (Le Peuple migrateur, 2004 by dint of Jacques Perrin), the popular and critically acclaimed documentary that chases several species of migratory birds in succession their journey south across the globe. A team of amateur ornithologists raised the avian controls of the first film (searching public eggs from nests as far-flung as Iceland and Africa) in succession a farm in the southern of France, and trained them to be comfortable with humans, light aircraft and film equipment. Providing numerous interviews with the production team if it be not that a minimum of narrative explanation otherwise, the film exhibits images of humans singing to incubating stimulates fledglings being fed from eyedropper trained adult birds being crated and shipped southern to begin their filmed (and abbreviated) migration and in united amazing scene, a three-foot-tall bird running into the arms of its human caretaker and hiding its head after being frightened. While raising questions about the propriety of as it is a manipulation of the natural order, the tie shared between human and bird is blithely portrayed and the teary-eyed humans who confess the story of their time raising the birds have obviously been transformed by means of the experience.

The festival neared two related films by French filmmaker Jan Kounen Blueberry (2004) a genre-bending "mystical western" based forward graphic novels by French author Jean "Moebius" Girard, go afters a lawman in the Wild West who is haunted by the agency of the death of a girl he lov many years before. In his efforts to thwart treasure huntsmans one of whom is the man he shut ins responsible for the girl's death, from defiling a sacred native site, he falls in be pleased with again, experiments with mind-expanding substances and learns a startling canon about his past. Much of the hallucinatory uncompounded bodys of Blueberry stem from Kounen's confess experiences taking psychedelic concoctions in subordination to the guidance of Questembetsa, a shaman of the Shipibo Conibo Indians of the Peruvian Amazon, as explored in the documentary Other Worlds (2004) Spending a year in the thicket learning about shamanism from Questembetsa, Kounen was allowed to film a sacred ritual involving chanting, guided meditation and ingestion of a traditional plant-based potion. The gripping footage of the filmmaker and others in intricate trances during their lengthy shamanic journeys is well balanced with interviews with a wide array of international scientists and researchers studying shamanism who proffer clinical evidence of its psychobiological influence and advocate for novel cultures to consider adopting shamanic practices and the wisdom of native societies. Detracting from the soliditys of this documentary are Kounen's computer-generated representations of the visions he experienced (from ominous entwined snakes to jeweled-encrusted crocodiles), a technique also evident in the hallucination spectacles in Blueberry.