Turf Nation (2020) Cinequest Film Festival

Scheduled to play the Cinequest Film Festival TURF NATION is a short and sweet little film about a group of young men who travel the BART system and earn money by dancing on the trains. The guys actually have worked outside of the trains (working with H.E.R, G-Eazy, Kehlani, Jack Harlow, E-40 and others) however this is how they make steady money.

If you've ever been on a subway in any city and seen buskers or dancers some into perform between stops this film will give you a better idea of what life is like for the performers. I was intrigued from start to finish because this as the first time I had any idea what it takes to hustle like this.

I really liked this film a great deal. I liked it so much in fact that the only real complaint I have is that the film should have been a feature so we can really get to know the dancers better.

The film played the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and will play the Cinequest Film Festival  August 16 to 30.

Seven Short Films About (Our) Marriage (2020) Cinequest 2020

A feature film in seven parts (aka short films) concerning the arc of relationship from wedding to… that would be telling

Wildly uneven film never really generates much heat. While the cast is game the script never manages to work. Part of the problem is that the script has way too many characters. There are so many characters floating around that too much of the film involves either Drez Ryan or Chynna Walker talking to people of the than each other. This is supposed to be a film about their marriage but we don’t have enough sequences where they actually talk to each other. To me the best sequence is the pre-wedding one where Ryan and Walker talk to each other through a window. It’s a stunning sequence where we sense the love between the couple- something that is missing in the fights and side discussions that fill the rest of the film.

Another huge problem with the script is that outside of the couple everyone seems totally alien to each other. The film lost me early when the friends and family gathered for the wedding didn’t seem to know each other at all. Ryan's groomsmen seem to belong in a different wedding. And Walker didn't seem to have any clue who her betrothed's mother was. Really? It seemed out of place Later sequences had the characters acting as mouth pieces for writer director Chris Hansen who doesn’t seem to want to have small moments in a life but rather have key discussions. Hansen wants to show us the ups and downs and insists on kind of manipulating things to get to the point he wants to make.

And yet Ryan and Walker are game. There is a spark between them that makes me wish they had a better script to work with.

A miss.

SEVEN SHORT FILMS... plays Cinequest again March 9 and 11. For more information and tickets go here