CIMMfest: It's a Wrap

The jury's votes are in, and they're all good films (otherwise I wouldn't have programmed them), but here are my favorites from the inaugural CIMMfest.

Best Documentary Feature: Todd P Goes to Austin (USA), directed by Jay Buim. The underground bands in this road movie-cum-concert film are getting to where they aren't so underground anymore, so I wonder where Todd Patrick, DIY impresario, tirelessly driven patron saint of loud music played in unorthodox places, and sometimes pretentious blowhard, will turn next. I hope Jay Buim will be there to document it, because his debut feature is a perfectly blended examination of the backbreaking work that goes into putting on a show outside the tottering, gasping behemoth of the music industry, and the contagious charge of energy that results when the work pays off.

Runner-Up: Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year with Andre Williams (USA), directed by Tricia Todd and Eric Matthies.

Best Narrative Feature: The Life and Death of Gotel Botel (Israel), directed by Daniel Sivan. The somewhat messy debut feature of Daniel Sivan shows the rise and fall of musician who trades his friends and artistic legitimacy for fame as a glam-rock messiah. It's not a new topic, but Sivan and company attack it with such gusto, throwing elements of a half-dozen genres at the screen, that it's easy to forgive its occasional incoherence. The sequence where rock star Gotel Botel is reborn—in a mish-mash of reality TV confessional, musical theater, animation, and flames—was the visual highlight of the festival.

Runner-up: Punching the Clown (USA), directed by Gregori Viens.

Best Documentary Short: Hooray for Anything (Australia), directed by Nicholas Godfrey. The South Australian underground bands featured in this doc could show Todd P a thing or two about DIY—they eschew roofs and walls, plugging in and holding impromptu concerts wherever they find electrical outlets on the street. The film is shot like it's undercover, full of grainy, pitch-black, and night-vision footage of teens rocking out until the cops chase them away.

Runner-up: Jaffawiye (Israel), directed by Dan Deutsch.

Best Narrative Short: Pavane (Canada), directed by Paul Quarrington. When I accepted this film to the festival, I told its creators, producer Judith Keenan and writer/director Paul Quarrington, that it was "a great demonstration of how much life and backstory one can fit in a short running time. I think it has more to say than most feature-length films." I forgot to mention how much it gains from repeated viewings: peerless camera work and shot framing by Quarrington and cinematographer Gregor Hagey, fascinatingly opaque performances by Geraint Wyn-Davies and Ted Dysktra, and a bravura animated sequence by Chris Minos.

Runner-up: Botnik! (USA), directed by Jackie Smessaert Brennan.

Best Music Video: The Heist and the Accomplice - "More Control" (USA), directed by Steve Daniels. Driven primarily by a love of actual celluloid film, director Steve Daniels created a super-8 masterpiece that quotes liberally from such revival house staples as The Blob and The Tingler. Pitting the band members against the very film they're being shot on, Daniels creates an eloquent and funny look at how media consumes us as we consume media.

Runner-up: Il Tandre Neu - "Exit Wound" (USA), directed by Lucy Munger.

Special Jury Award for Best Long-Form Short Film (longer than 20 minutes, shorter than 45): Yard Work Is Hard Work (USA), directed by Jodie Mack. Gorgeously, obsessively animated using stop-motion and thousands of magazine cutouts, Mack's epic about reality bitch-slapping youthful dreams into submission is eerily prescient, featuring a Sondheim-style song about adjustable rate mortgages.

Special Jury Award for Best Film That Wasn't Eligible for Competition: Tampico (USA), directed by Suree Towfighnia. She finished a month before our cutoff date, which is too bad, because her intimate portrait of a Chicago busker is by far the best short doc, and one of the best films period, that we screened.