Local indie shorts at inFEST
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If you missed the Boston
Underground Film Festival, the Independent Film
Festival of Boston, and are in the process of missing the ongoing
LGBT Film Festival at the MFA, what the
heck are you doing with your life? If a short attention span is the problem,
take the time to drop in on inFEST,
a program of "weird and wonderful" shorts from local filmmakers that screens tomorrow at
ArtsEmerson.
I haven't seen any of the "wonderful" ones, but I can confirm
that the "weird" ones live up to the billing. They include Greg Hanson's no
doubt ironically titled "Good Taste" in which a record collector with the
social skills of Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" by way of Anthony Perkins in
"Psycho" gets upset when he thinks a neighbor has stolen his rare, mint Gun Club record. Archly crude in content, the film is deceptively subtle in style
with its use of black and white, tints, skewed angles, and intertitles that
look like the lettering of a ransom note.
Also weird and a bit wonderful is Benjamin Brewer's "Blue
Hawaii," which suggests that if they switched the gender of the werewolves in
"Twilight" it might actually be a good movie.
And I'm still trying to shake off the chill from Carey Burtt''s "Psychotic
Odyssey of Richard Chase," which tells the story of the notorious serial
killer/vampire/cannibal who butchered six people and numerous animals in
Sacramento in the 70s. It employs dolls and other puppetry effects not unlike
Todd Haynes "The Karen Carpenter Story" or Matt Stone and Trey Parker's "Team America," but
it's more disturbing than both.
InFEST screens in two programs at 12:30 and 2:30 pm. No excuses; it's free.
ArtsEmerson is in the Paramount
Center, 559 Washington St, Boston | 617-824-8000.