Boston Films at the Boston Independent Film Festival
Twelve is an anthology with a film for each month set in and around Boston. June, Noah Lydiard's summer vacation adventure is above, and with the 11 others will be shown on Sunday.
"This eclectic but unified collection of short stories forms both a love
letter both to Boston and an impressive showcase for the area's
burgeoning indie filmmaking scene. Executive producer Scott Masterson
conceived an experimental collaborative project in which each film is
written and directed by a different filmmaker, while all of the artists
were required to contribute in some way to every other short in the
project. Knowing cohesion would allow the project to shine, he devised
a simple but inspired theme: each of the twelve films represents a
month of the year and was shot entirely in that month. The directors
simply had to capture the spirit of their month however they wished.
The
result is a smorgasbord of different genres: comedy, drama, ghost
story, crime melodrama, documentary, and even-quite
unexpectedly-musical. Together we meet a robot-sport inventor, a young
woman obsessed with following a stranger, several beekeepers, and a man
who hasn't slept in two years. What holds these variety of visions
together is its local flavor: TWELVE guides us from famous sightseeing
spots to familiar neighborhoods, beckoning us into Boston's bookstores,
bars, and candlepin bowling alleys, leading us along the Charles and
down Mass Ave. Part of the fun lies in spotting the different ways each
filmmaker incorporates a particular Public Garden tree and in
recognizing characters from one film when they pop up in another. It is
this combination of individual creation and collaborative inventiveness
that makes this film both unique in itself and distinctively Bostonian."
Sun, Apr 27, 07:00 PM at the Somerville Theatre.
The Greening of Southie documents the construction of the Macallen Building, the first sustainable condominiums in South Boston and shows over the weekend.
"The film covers everything from the pouring of the first concrete to
the arrival of the first tenant, acquainting us with each specially
chosen material and conscientiously designed energy system.
Accompanying the journey are a lively soundtrack by Force Theory, the
jovial banter of the construction crew, and a frequently updated tally
of points—toward the coveted Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) gold rating.
Cheney's is a photographic
sensibility; he pinpoints and captures the latent beauty in a pile of
scrap metal, a smear of glue, a dusty steel girder. The result is a
kinetic and detailed exploration of this exciting experiment: the
values Macallen is intended to promote, the sometimes dubious attitudes
of workers and neighbors, even the unexpected and occasionally
embarrassing setbacks."
Sat, Apr 26, 01:00 PM at the Somerville Theatre
