The Chagrin Documentary Film Festival Tells It Like It Is, Oct. 3-8

The overused label (especially in movie hype) “labor of love” really applies to the The Chagrin Documentary Film Festival. The CDFF premiered eight years ago, as organizer Mary Ann Quinn Ponce’s way to honor her son, filmmaker and Chagrin Falls native David Ponce who died at 20 of leukemia in 2006 during post-production of one of his nonfiction films.

Now the CDFF is a widely anticipated event that unreels in the fall

throughout the village of Chagrin Falls when the place is in full autumn foliage. Screening sites - most of which are all within nice walking distances from one another - range from the Chagrin Valley Little Theater to the old Township Hall on Main Street to the United Methodist Church.

How big is the festival? Serious names in the film industry arriving this year include Colin Hanks, actor-filmmaker son of Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival alumnus Tom Hanks. Two features directed by Hanks the younger will screen, both music-oriented. ALL THINGS MUST PASS is an oral history of the roller-coaster rise and fall of Tower Records, a music-vending chain that helped shape the pop scene as we know it. EAGLES OF DEATH METAL (NOS AMIS) profiles the American hardcore-sound band caught in a notorious Islamic terror attack at a French concert in 2015 and their return to France a year later.

True-crime Documentary Double-Feature Really Slays 'Em in Gordon Square, August 13.

Used to be every Friday the 13th, Paramount would have ready another cheapjack Jason Vorhees slasher-horror movie to open. Well, on Sunday the 13th a very different couple of murder stories will appear at the Capitol Theatre in Cleveland's Gordon Square arts district on the west side.

Mark Wade Stone and his Storyworks production company have been making local-interest documentaries for years, some in association with charismatic true-crime author/lecturer James Badal. Both will be in attendance at special 4 p.m. matinee of malice, spotlighting historic Cleveland crime (besides the records of the sports teams) on the big screen.

Hometown movie Lux in Tenebris premieres in Euclid April 21

A local film production has its debut this week, and no,
it's not THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS.

Branislov Tatalovic, an instructor at the recently
instituted digital-filmmaking courses at Cuyahoga Community
College, premieres his feature LUX IN TENEBRIS at the Atlas
Cinemas Lakeshore multiplex in Euclid.

The drama (with a title translating as "light in darkness"),
was shot in the Cleveland-Akron area and in Belgrade with an
international, multicultural cast, including Oscar-nominated
thespian Eric Roberts. LUX IN TENEBRIS centers on two
sisters calling upon spiritual strength in trying to overcome childhood traumas and dark shadows in their past.The screening will be followed by Q&A with the filmmakers and an after-party.

The cinema address is 22624 Lakeshore Blvd., and the phone
number is (216) 731-1700. Tickets are $10 and the material
carries an R-rating.

A More Civil War (April 6th and 8th at the 41st Cleveland International Film Festival)

[A MORE CIVIL WAR screens Thursday April 6th at 6:00 pm at the Capitol Theatre and Saturday April 8th at 6:40 pm at Tower City Cinemas as part of the 41st Cleveland International Film Festival.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

It was less than a year ago that the Republican National Convention was here in Cleveland. At the time, many still thought that Donald Trump was a joke, and the Republican party had doomed themselves to losing the White House by making him their nominee. Some people were so giddy they even entertained notions that a huge wave of anti-Trump sentiment would propel the Democrats into control of the Senate. Yeah, not so much.

At the time, there were very real fears that the RNC would break out into violence and chaos. Remember those, "Cleveland – it's gonna' be a riot!" T-shirts? It wasn't just the usual liberal protesters people were worried about. There was considerable infighting among Republicans, not all of whom were happy with the party's nominee, Donald Trump. The convention also took place in the context of multiple police shootings of unarmed black men as well as an attack on Dallas police officer. These wounds were fresh and raw at the time. 

The Ohio Independent Film Festival comes bop-bop-boppin' along, November 10-11

Okay, so Trump won the presidency, and we are likely doomed. It’s okay; we would be doomed under President Hillary Clinton as well, just not quite so entertainingly. Chin up, troops, Cleveland has come back from worse disasters, catastrophes and setbacks than this. There was the time…. (open calendar to any date at random in last 200 years).

Or take as inspiration the Ohio Independent Film Festival, AKA the film festival That Will Not Die. The go-to venue for local filmmaking, workshops, staged readings and, of course, screenings, it started in a Tremont gallery-storefront as the Off-Hollywood Flick Fest in 1993. At one point it happened four times per year!

Love Finds You in Valentine (now on video)

 There is lots of excitement right now about the prospect of NE Ohio shooting for the movie version of My Friend Dahmer, the excellent graphic memoir by local cartoonist John `Derf' Backderf about his real-life high-school comradeship in the 1970s with Bath Township resident and future Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Ohio badly needs a new economic base; serial killer nostalgia in movies may as well be it. Or does anyone doubt for a minute we’ll someday get a flick about the early years of “Buffalo Bill” from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (a Columbus resident, as readers of the novel will remember)?

But is there a more genteel alternative? Quietly, without much hype (or mass-murderer trading cards), there’s another wave of film production taking place here, for the TV marketplace. And also adaptations of top-selling books. And no, not Thomas Harris ones.

LOVE FINDS YOU IN VALENTINE is the first one, based on novelist Irene Brand’s hit Love Finds You in Valentine, Nebraska, which became a frontrunner in a whole subgenre of regional romances promoted in association with the religious digest Guideposts. I doubt there are a lot of subscribers to Guideposts who have also read My Friend Dahmer, but trust me, the marketplace out there for faith-based romantic fiction is enormous.

And somehow the Cleveland Film Commission nabbed the Irene Brand property away from shooting in Nebraska (or that old fallback, Canada) to lens in Ohio after all. Maybe they promised the whole Guideposts staff would meet LeBron (or Machine Gun Kelly).

GCFC Welcomes "My Friend Dahmer" to Cleveland

[Press release from the Greater Cleveland Film Commission.]

CLEVELAND, OH - (August 23, 2016) - The Greater Cleveland Film Commission (GCFC) is excited to announce that the feature film "My Friend Dahmer" has been shooting at locations throughout Northeast Ohio.

Based on the book by Derf Backderf, "My Friend Dahmer" tells the story of the Ohio high school years of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The film stars Vincent Kartheiser ("Mad Men", "Casual"), Anne Heche ("Donnie Brasco", "Six Days Seven Nights") and as young Jeffrey Dahmer, Ross Lynch ("Austin & Ally", "Muppets Most Wanted"). Marc Meyers ("How He Fell In Love", "Harvest") is directing from his own screenplay. Aperture Entertainment and Ibid Filmworks are producing the film.

"More and more films are shooting in greater Cleveland," said GCFC President Ivan Schwarz, "and we attribute that not only to our amazing variety of locations and our local production professionals, but to the community spirit that productions experience when they arrive."

GCFC is the only nonprofit dedicated to bringing jobs and economic impact to Northeast Ohio by supporting a thriving and adaptive local media industry. Since 2009, the State of Ohio has seen over $400 million in economic impact and created more than 1,700 full-time equivalent jobs thanks to media production. With the news last spring of state funding for a standalone film school at Cleveland State University, and a bill in the Ohio House of Representatives that increased the Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit to $40 million annually (up from $20 million), 2016 has been an exciting year for Northeast Ohio's burgeoning media industry.

 

Indie Gathering Bringing Aloha to Film Festival with 'Get a Job'

[Press release.]

GET A JOB is coming to Cleveland. The raucous, slapstick comedy from Hawaii with the killer soundtrack was awarded Best Comedy at the Indie Gathering Film Festival in Hudson, Ohio. The Indie Gathering has something for everyone, especially comedy & horror and runs August 8th thru August 14th at the Clarion Inn and Conference Center. http://www.theindiegathering.com/location.php

GET A JOB features 24 original songs. Director Brian Kohne built the movie around the soundtrack. The full feature stars Willie K and Eric Gilliom. They are two friends attempting to find the dignity of employment while bumbling through life and sharing the Aloha Spirit in Hawaii. Funny experiences enhance their journey while they share their special musicality and hilarious charms. They are backed up by world-class entertainers such as Mick Fleetwood, Willie Nelson, Pat Simmons of the Doobie Brothers, Henry Kapono, Carolyn Omine, Kathy Collins and Augie T. Jake Shimabukuro plays a mean ukulele in the tourist scene. Kohne, who has Ohio roots, shows why he is such a creative force by blending the music seamlessly.
https://vimeo.com/71337167

Award-winning Doc about an Ohio artist Stages World Premiere at Indie Gathering Film Fest

[Press release]

Sometimes a crisis helps you create something extraordinary.

"Lines of Sight" is the inspiring story of noted painter Jim “JC” Hall from Henry
County, Kentucky. It traces Jim’s journey through incredible hardships and his
development of a new artform he calls Lineillism. Jim created the style after a stroke
and shingles marred his vision so that he saw the world in vertical lines. At first, Jim
panicked. Then, he painted. Filmmakers capture every one of the more than 500,000
vertical brushstrokes that go into these paintings with dramatic timelapse
footage. Jim continues to be an innovator at the age of 83. The documentary was made for under
$10,000.

Documentary film Wigger Please to participate in The Indie Gathering Film Festival

[Press release]

The documentary film Wigger Please has been selected to participate in the Indie Gathering film festival. Wigger Please film will play on Friday, August 12^th at 9:45 p.m. in Screening Room B at the Clarion Inn & Conference Center in Hudson, Ohio—located at 6625 Dean Memorial Parkway.

Wigger Please features interviews with a dozen artists and activists who share their thoughts and opinions on the American cultural stereotype of “wiggers”—white youth who “act black”—while illustrating how their lives and consciousness were forever changed by their involvement in hip hop culture.

The Land (opens August 5th at the Cedar Lee Theatre. Also on VOD)

[THE LAND opens in Cleveland on Friday August 5th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre. It is also available on VOD.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

I admit it. I love seeing Cleveland in movies. And Cleveland is very much on display in THE LAND, an urban crime/coming of age genre film written and directed by Steven Caple, Jr.

In terms of basic plot, there's not much new here. 4 young inner-city friends – Cisco (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), Junior (Moises Arias), Patty Cake (Rafi Gavron), and Boobie (Ezri Walker) – dream of being pro skaters. Until those dreams come true, though, they use their skateboards to commit car jackings, selling the stolen vehicles for chump change.

"Goodbye, Ohio" (April 6th at the Cleveland International Film Festival)

[“Goodbye, Ohio” screens Wednesday April 6th at 9:40 pm as part of the Ohio Shorts 2 program at the Cleveland International Film Festival.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

A young woman (Jessy Leigh) is leaving behind her small Ohio town (Chagrin Falls) to chase her dream of being a writer in the big Apple. Before she goes, though, there’s a loose end that needs to be tied up in the form of her ex-boyfriend (Jesse DeFranco). The two meet for lunch at a diner, and it isn’t long before trite small talk gives way to the guy trying to convince his ex-girlfriend not to go.

Co-producer/director Mike Wendt has crafted a solid, professional looking piece. Co-producer/writer/editor/co-star Jessy Leigh gives herself a nice spotlight for her acting talents, and her editing is tight and professional. Her screenplay is a bit too cutesy and on the nose at times, but it also has the ring of authenticity. Co-star Jesse DeFranco acquits himself well, too, although his role doesn’t allow him to stand out quite as much. The end result isn’t exactly what I’d call a “must see”, but it’s a pleasant enough diversion for its fifteen-minute running time that makes a nice little calling card for its participants. 2 ½ out of 4 stars.

Unseen (April 2nd, 3rd, and 4th at the Cleveland International Film Festival)

[UNSEEN screens Saturday April 2nd at 11:15 a.m., Sunday April 3rd at 6:20 pm, and Monday April 4th at 12:10 pm at the Cleveland International Film Festival.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

UNSEEN is not your typical true crime documentary. It doesn’t wallow in the morbid details of the murders committed by Clevelander Anthony Sowell, nor does it waste much time or effort in trying to suss out what might have motivated his acts of violence. Rather, it focuses on the victims, in particular those who survived their encounters with Sowell, and the ways in which an environment rife with drugs and poverty made it easy for police to dismiss both the women who went missing never to be seen alive again, and those who escaped and tried to seek help from the system to no avail. It adds a further dimension of horror to a story that was pretty horrible to begin with.

'Banger', a Skip Thomas Production, premiers May 14 at Solon Digiplex Cinemas

[Press release from Skip Thomas Productions.]

Cleveland based film company Skip Thomas Productions is set to premiere its latest feature film Banger on Sat. May 14, 2016 at Solon Cinemas.

Banger’s story follows two street crews fighting for control of the city’s lucrative methamphetamine trade. When a turf dispute leads to the death of a Haitian immigrant named Ishmel Babet, his mother conjures up a spell to bring him back from the grave to exact revenge on those responsible. The code of the street is simple... stay focused, stay loyal and stay alive.

Rotor DR1 (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Here’s one Ohio-made movie that flew under the radar of the Cleveland International Film Festival, quite literally. Shot largely in the Canton, Ohio, director Chad Kapper's low-budget SF adventure jumps on two hot audience-draw bandwagons at once. ROTOR DR1 addresses both the appetite for YA dystopian futures along the lines of THE HUNGER GAMES and DIVERGENT (you really won’t believe how many of these are out now in the self-published book market) and fascination with remote-controlled "drone" camera craft.

The premise is that in the future, a virus has wiped out 90 per cent of humanity, leaving survivors subsisting in an anarchic wasteland (which pretty much looks like the Buckeye State, or did you guess that already?). Here, the only signs of functioning civilization are airborne drones delivering largely unused medicine from...somewhere.

Visit the Nonfiction section, as The Chagrin Documentary Film Festival returns, Oct. 7-11.

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Now in its sixth year, the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival is northeast Ohio's contribution to a boom in recent film festivals (like the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and Canada's HotDocs) uniquely devoted to nonfiction features and shorts.

The CDFF takes place from Wednesday, Oct. 7, through Sunday, Oct. 11, at venues throughout the famously postcard-pretty village of Chagrin Falls on the eastern side of Cuyahoga County. Screening sites - most of which are all within nice walking distances from one another - range from the big school auditorium on Philomethian Street to the more salon-like environment of the Valley Art Center.

Akron's "living dead" arise October 10th at the Nightlight Cinema

[Press release from the Nightlight Cinema.]

 

From 1985 to 1989, a local director named J.R. Bookwalter made one of the largest scale Zombie movies ever produced: THE DEAD NEXT DOOR. More than 1500 extras roamed these very streets in tattered outfits and Karo syrup-soaked prostheses in search of flesh. Now that Bookwalter has successfully completed his crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, the Akron-native has been able to restore the original Super-8 materials to glorious HD and surround sound.

"From the beginning, this project snowballed into something much bigger than I ever dreamed, thanks to financing from a mysterious executive producer in Detroit, a large cast and crew with no prior film experience, … and like-minded horror fans who discovered the film after seeing a (somewhat premature) four-page spread in FANGORIA magazine," Bookwalter said on his Indiegogo campaign page.

Canopy Collective raises the awning on a local film-night event, August 28

[Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.]

The Canopy Collective is a group of local artists in various disciplines, from photography to poetry to sculpting to embroidery, who maintain a gallery and performance space at 3910 Lorain Avenue. On August 28 the site will host the first-ever Canopy Movie Night, in which a collection of locally wrought shorts, music-videos and clips from features-in-progress will be screened.

Among those taking part are Turnstyle Films, a production company best known for DRAW HARD, a portrait of maverick Cleveland cartoonist and comic-strip supporter John G. Sickening Pictures is Zach Shildwatchter’s outfit specializing in grindhouse-horror style shorts riffing on serial killers and other unspeakable topics. University of Akron graduate (oh, is the University of Akron still in business? We thought it had sold on Craigslist) Mike Wendt, when not working as a location manager on visiting film shoots, has embarked on projects of his own, such as the documentary short feature about Cleveland rock radio THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.

Expect a few local premieres, refreshments, raffle prizes and Q&A sessions. Admission is $5, and the show lasts from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. For more information, go online to www.canopy-collective.com.

Local college student uncovers global conspiracy in 'Billie Bob Joe' screening August 16th at the Cedar Lee Theatre

[Press release from the filmmakers.]

Do you remember reading about the Joeolution and Bobolution back in elementary school? Surely you remember the centuries-old battle between the people named Joe and the people named Bob; both fighting to decide who is in control of world culture and history?

Don’t remember that? That’s because it’s a fictional conflict 20-year-old movie director Joe Kowalski (One Day: A Musical) invented for his new film Billie Bob Joe. Although the premise is undeniably silly, (Did you know the terms ‘sloppy Joe’ and ‘average Joe’ were invented by the Bobs to slander the Joes? Or that ‘bobbing for apples’ derives from when Joes used to drown Bobs underwater?) Kowalski says that the topic is actually utilized as a family-friendly satire of prejudice, intending to humorously show the ridiculousness of warring groups of people, not unlike the Dr. Seuss 1984 classic The Butter Battle Book.

Ranger (short web series now on youtube)

Review by Bob Ignizio

The web series “Ranger” offers five short vignettes, each concerning American servicemen in the European theater during World War II. Given that the series was shot in Ottowa County, Ohio on a micro budget, one can’t help but be impressed at how well writer/director Justin Buckner manages to sell his period setting. It also helps that the cast is unusually strong for a production of this level. I don’t know if this is the usual micro budget film deal where the cast is all drawn from the filmmaker’s circle of friends, but if it is, Buckner has some talented friends. As a proof of concept or demo reel, “Ranger” is an unqualified success.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work as entertainment.

Each vignette, while taking place in the same milieu, is a standalone piece. The formula is a few minutes of characters talking in by-the-numbers war movie clichés leading up to a dramatic moment that remains unresolved. Cut to end credits. Watching all five installments, short as they are, is an exercise in frustration. As mentioned, it’s impressive what Buckner manages to pull off; I’m just not sure why anyone other than another microbudget filmmaker looking for inspiration would watch it. 2 out of 4 stars.

You can see all five episodes of “Ranger” for free on youtube. Click here to watch.