The Nickel Independent Film Festival is celebrating its 16th year this week, and there’s plenty to see. Here’s just six examples from nights 1 and 2:
Vehicular Romanticide: Screening Tuesday the 14th
This dark comedy centres on a lonely young woman’s frustrating search for romance. As you might have guessed from the title, her gameplan is to nearly runover men she finds attractive, as a way of forcing them to talk with her.
Written by local Andrew Rowe, this 15-minute film has been screened at festivals like Cannes, Whistler Film Festival, Vancouver Short Film Festival (where it won the Underdog award), and Oklahoma’s Twisted Alley Film Festival (where it won 3 awards).
Rowe says this film was inspired by Scorsese’s classic, Taxi Driver, because, as he told the New Current Network, he’d “never seen that type of filmmaking applied to a female-centric film, so I wanted to explore that.”
Canoes for Peru: Screening Tuesday the 14
This short doc is a classic “you can do anything you put your heart to, and you should” tale. But it’s one you’ve never quite heard before:
Cancergirl: Screening Tuesday the 14th
Few local filmmakers have been making headlines as much as Allison White these last few years. She’s perhaps best known for her successful recent feature film Cast No Shadow (which won nearly 10 awards).
Cancergirl, a 12.5 minute short, will close out night one of the Nickel. It’s a comedic drama about a girl who is diagnosed with cancer just a few months before graduating high school.
Katatjanik Utippalianinga (The Return of Throat Singing): Screening Wed the 15th
This 7-minute documentary about one of the most amazing forms of musical expression to have ever evolved in any culture, was created through the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival’s FRAMED series. It explores throat singing in Nain.
“The community of Nain is rich with breathtaking landscapes and people with a strong storytelling history. In partnership with the Nunatsiavut Government, FRAMED worked with local participants to create a short documentary on throat singing — a special talent and traditional game between women for both fun and public entertainment, which was nearly destroyed but has since been revived.”
Oblivion Season: Screening Wednesday the 15th
The first of 4 features to screen at this year’s Nickel is about an ex-prostitute in Tehran, who marries the love of her life and tries to start a new life. “But leaving the shadow of her dark past is not as easy as she’d hoped. Now she must fight for her freedom, with an oppressive husband, in a society that denies her very existence.”
Moo: Screening Wednesday the 15th
This 10-minute Australian short is a “heartfelt comedy-drama” about an aspiring artist, who is forced to decide between the acceptance of her peers and what truly makes her happy. Which is painting cows. Its filmmaker, Samuel Galloway, has a background in standup comedy, so this one should be a laugh.
Tickets can be purchased at RCA (LSPU Hall Box Office) 753-4531 or online rca.nf.ca Single evening tickets $12, Full Festival Pass $47. Visit http://nickelfestival.com for more info.
in 2004, local filmmaker -self-taught with no grant money or help, in back ass east Europe -Gerard Neil, was rejected for the second time from this small town festival. He made a film where he sampled himself in other films (Blade 2, Shanghai Knights – he was working as a stunt man and had a fight with the grand Master Jackie Chan – does anybody even know that? or realize they don’t let just any idiot in a one-on-one fight scene with Jackie? you’d think that alone would make a story…) – anyway, he sampled himself and made a short comedy called “Inside the Extra’s Studio” wherein he mocks the long running tv show Inside the Actors Studio. Well, even though it was all local, except the clips sampled, it was denied access to the Nickel. Their argument: ‘he didn’t have the rights’. His argument: it’s a joke, b’ys, and this isn’t TIFF. He took the piss out of himself and his two bit career as a stunt man, turned that into a piece of ‘art/comedy’ (several have said there’s a couple of laughs in there), by screwing with his own image – anyway, no entry into the festival, no chance to expose his kick at the can, no new ‘community’ acquaintances to be made. link below.
In May of 2016, 12 years later, some outfit in LA is running a webisodic series called (and looking just like), Inside the Extra’s Studio. link below.
The first time he was rejected was the year before – he had just returned here (‘come home’) and it was ‘too late’ to enter his film, as he missed the deadline. But he was here in time, it could have been stuck in somewhere “out of competition” (as though it matters a spit if anyone ‘wins’ a small town festival – you can get more viewers online than at a festival) – I mean there’s some awful shite gets played in small fests (in those days) and he made a conceptually clever film, also deconstructivist/activist, wherein he acted in Blade 2, sampled himself in a scene from a pre-cinema release online pirated copy that was making the rounds (they usually come out 2-3 weeks before the cinematic Premiere release) – then he edited those ‘stolen clips’ of himself into a near-ready film that was awaiting those clips, and released his film, online, on the same day Blade 2 came out in Cinemas world wide. It was a statement about the then debated DMCA. But it was also funny. It also has never been done anywhere ever by anyone.
That also got rejected. link below
The filmmaker? He’s not making films anymore, he wasn’t allowed into the local “community” and got tired of asking the mediocre to allow him to be creative.
It doesn’t matter if it’s provincial politics or the arts or healthcare – it’s who you know – Newfoundland is a small-minded small town.
local 2004 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vspPDM20wLk
L.A. 2016 – http://1620media.com/content/inside-the-extras-studio/
Prague 2002 –