The theme of Oak Cliff Film Festival (OCFF) 2024 – movies are all around us – fit with my experience of the fest. The opening night celebration launched with an endearing short film, shot by the OCFF crew, in which an escaped Wes Anderson character extols the virtues of seeing movies everywhere we look. (Full disclosure: Chris Gardner, the actor who portrays the quirky “filmthropoligist” in the short, is my across-the-street neighbor and runs PR for the fest.)
During the short, which you can see here, Dr. Ovie McClintock makes the classic director’s frame by putting his two thumbs and forefingers together to form a widescreen rectangle. In his world, inanimate objects on the street around the Texas Theatre create the "wild, undomesticated, feral cinema" all around us. He drolly asks a parking meter about its motivation, encourages a few newspaper vending machines on their outstanding performances, and tells us that even the giant cow sitting atop the local Charco Broiler Steak House is in on the magic. “That’s not a cow,” McClintock breathlessly intones, “that’s a character!”
People-watching is one of my favorite pastimes – especially during a film festival – and, taking the advice of the esteemed filmthropoligist, I dipped into and out of the conversations of the characters in the movie all around me.
Day One: Thursday
The folks sitting directly behind me as I waited for the opening-night screening to start provided me with a comedy. I got an unvarnished opinion of the sponsored beer of OCFF 2024:
“What are you drinking?”
“I don’t know. A beer; the sponsored beer. It’s…uh…pretty crappy.”
I feel you, sir. I am of the opinion that all beer tastes like horse piss. Or, rather, I should amend that to what I imagine horse piss must taste like, as (thankfully) I’ve never sampled the real thing.
A half-overheard conversation minutes before the screening started had me laughing to myself: “Wait, you’re saying that he lost his hands, and his last name is Arms?!? That’s a movie!”
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The opening night film was a documentary compiled from 1000 hours of what is essentially home-movie footage from one of the principal subjects. Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird tells the story, in a novel and fresh way, of Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the cofounders of the bands At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta.
The real heroes of the picture are its editors, David Atkinson and Gary Forrester – the latter was in attendance for a Q&A after the screening. The opening minutes of Omar and Cedric tell us that Omar has been documenting his life since he was seven years old. Rodríguez-López turned over all that footage, spanning nearly forty years, to director Nicolas Jack Davies and the editors for them to cull through and shape into what became the documentary.
During the Q&A, Forrester informed us that Omar actually had an additional 1000 hours of video, but that it was lost in a fire. Both Omar and Cedric also provided extensive audio-only interviews to go along with the home-movie footage as a narration of their life-long friendship and creative partnership.
I must disclose that I knew virtually nothing about the post-punk/post-hardcore At the Drive-In or The Mars Volta, aside from being familiar with the names. After experiencing the story of those involved in such an intimate, you-are-there way, I may have become a convert.
We hear and see Omar’s struggles with racism as a Puerto Rican whose family moved to the Deep South early in his childhood. The bigotry against him is compounded by his queerness. Scientology takes a prominent place in the story when Cedric’s wife convinces him to join the cult, creating a seemingly irreparable rift between the two musicians. The horrific Danny Masterson rape cases even engulf the documentary for an extended sequence, as Cedric’s wife was one of the famous Scientologist’s victims.
As the title discloses, Omar and Cedric had a deal that if things ever got weird – if their music careers ever jeopardized their love for one another – they would walk away from it all. The pair did that, several times, in fact, over the four decades of their creative journey. Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird gives us a completely unvarnished look into the ups and downs – and the triumphant reconciliation – of these two sui generis artists.
Day Two: Friday
I began day two of the fest with a delightfully off-kilter block of animation shorts at the Bishop Arts Theatre Center, one of the satellite venues for this year’s OCFF. Chris Gardner, Dr. Ovie McClintock himself, returned to introduce the first-ever OCFF collection of animated shorts. (Gardner is the brains behind the Texas Theatre’s monthly Suspended Animation series.)
The one and only Chris Gardner introducing the OCFF Animated Shorts block and plugging his brain-child, Suspended Animation. (photo by the author)
The first offering was from screenwriter Jeffrey Delano Davis, who invented what he calls Digital Automatic Writing to put together six+ minutes of brief vignettes exploring his inner psyche and deepest emotions.
According to Davis, who was in attendance for the screening, Digital Automatic Writing is akin to stream-of-consciousness diary writing, but he employed the Procreate digital painting app to record his inner-most thoughts and feelings.
Boom, instant short film.
One of his pieces is a lament for a friend struggling with anorexia, in which he writes over and over again on the screen, “I want you to eat.” Davis’s capturing of his raw and candid emotions is a startling example of positive masculinity and moving art.
In addition to that, the audience was treated to the Israeli short Deadline, about two old ladies on a mission to cause as much death and destruction as possible in an attempt to elude the grim reaper. The final short was Mr. Rabbit, a bonkers movie with an animation style (and sensibility) that brought to mind Duckman, the mid-‘90s USA network animated sitcom starring Jason Alexander.
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The final screening for Friday night was a repertory exhibition of the 1922 silent Swedish masterpiece Häxan, by director Benjamin Christensen. This was a must for me, as Häxan enjoys a sterling reputation and has been on my to-do list for decades. The film was accompanied by a live, moody synth organ and heavy metal-inflected guitar score by Texas musician David Didonato. The original Swedish intertitles were included, with a live reading of English translations from artist Kelli Bland, who was in full Salem Witch Trials garb.
Kelli Bland in full witch mode. (photo by the author)
Christensen’s picture tells the story of the superstitions and religious beliefs surrounding the purported practice of witchcraft in Middle Ages Europe. Made four years before the term “documentary” was invented to describe a new cinematic genre, Häxan is an intoxicating brew of explanatory sequences educating the audience on Middle Ages religious and supernatural beliefs and florid passages dramatizing the persecution of supposed witches of the time. Incorporating then-groundbreaking work in the fields of psychoanalysis and our understanding of mental illness, Christensen posits that women accused in the late-1400s of witchcraft were actually suffering from hysteria. Torture by the pious clergymen of the day to ferret out suspected witches contributed to people turning on each other, causing massive outbreaks of accusations of witchcraft.
Hysteria is a dated (and misogynistic) term, as our understanding of mental illness has progressed exponentially since 1922, but Christensen’s point stands. In a world where most people believed that the earth was a fixed object at the center of the universe and that a Heavenly Father kept all the spheres above our heads rotating, it was easy to see why so many in the Middle Ages attributed misfortune and evil to demons and magic.
The most frightening thing to confront while watching Häxan is being aware that millions of people – more than a few of whom are in powerful leadership roles in US government – still believe in this Magic Invisible Sky Wizard/angels-and-demons explanation of reality. The most fervent of these – US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito quoted a 16th century witch-burner in the decision overturning Roe v Wade – actively desire to impose their insane religious beliefs on the rest of us.
Artistically, Häxan is a wonder to behold. Christensen’s innovation is matched only by his imagination. The director, who was also an actor, plays the role of Satan himself with a creepy, sinister energy, informed by medieval artworks depicting the Father of Lies. Christensen’s at-the-time cutting-edge use of poetic dissolves, demonic makeup, and boundary-pushing content make Häxan a classic of silent cinema.
I was perplexed by how some in the audience engaged with this century-old film, which felt to me as fresh as the year it was made. A not-insignificant portion of the audience laughed at the movie, like it was being mocked on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I’m an atheist, so I’m loath to afford much of anything with sacred status (including movies!), but the general feeling I got was that these members of the audience had no interest in engaging with the themes or artistry on the screen; they simply wanted to laugh at something they felt was old and outdated.
One guy (the worst offender) inexplicably laughed at an intertitle subheading which simply read “Part 7.” I am Jack’s irritated confusion. The Swedish word for “end” or “finished” is slut (pronounced with a long “u,” as in “sloot”) which got a big laugh. A guy behind me thought it was the height of wit to remark loudly to his friend, “Every time it ends with “slut,” and every time it’s hilarious.” But, like, it’s not the word slut. It’s the Swedish language word for “end,” you fucking moron.
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I’ll be back after the Fourth of July holiday with the last part of my OCFF 2024 coverage. Enjoy the burgers, dogs, and fireworks!