TRUE/FALSE FILM FESTIVAL – Day One Report

by Stephen Tronicek

For one weekend of the year, the party/college town of Columbia is flooded with cinephiles, film critics, and the documentarians. This is the True/False Film Festival or as the service workers call it: “Hell week.” All joking aside, the atmosphere is quite infectious. People young and old buzz around the circle of closely-knit venues to find the best in this year’s crop of documentary cinema. Thankfully, after exploiting the free parking space my friend’s aunt kindly lent me, I witnessed three profound documentaries about the passage of time and the existential ramifications of getting older. 

The first two, Some Kind of Heaven and So Late So Soon, are more closely bonded. They both concern people in the twilight of their lives attempting to make sense of the meaning of their lives and their relationships with others. Some Kind of Heaven, directed by Lance Oppenheim and produced by Darren Aronofsky, centers on “The Villages,” a huge secluded community in Florida built for people to retire to and eventually die. We follow a few of the patrons as they try to find love, deal with great loss, and even run from the law. After the show, Oppenheim stated that the film started out as a piece about a place and then became a piece about people. This is an adept way of describing the film. While it lends its first few minutes to highlight the Verhoeven-Esque, “THIS SHOULD BE SATIRE BUT IT REALLY ISN’T,” levels of insanity that “The Villages” takes to maintain its patron’s comfort, the bulk of the film focuses on the people who live in the place. In taking this empathetic approach, Oppenheim and his editors are able to craft a story that doesn’t detach the audience through satire. Instead, it engages them in the very real, quite disturbing contradiction of emotions that make up “The Villages.” 

So Late So Soon, directed by Daniel Hymanson, explores similar themes albeit on a much smaller scale. It focuses on the everyday lives of Jackie and Don Seidon, two artists slowly growing old. While the Seidon’s are incredibly interesting subjects, what struck me as special about So Late So Soon is how the documentary’s presentation builds on their story. Hymanson wisely throws out the typical documentary structure, opting for a more memory and moment-based approach. The couple could be fighting one moment, only to “trigger” a memory to some older footage, some other time. It’s a beautiful use of the film form and a testament to a relationship that doesn’t always work but is bonded together by art. 

The final film of the night, Bloody Noses, Empty Pockets, directed by Bill Ross IV and Tanner Ross, treads familiar ground but treads it well. About the final business day of a Las Vegas bar named the Roaring ‘20s, the film is a collection of beats as the strung-out patrons attempt to existentially deal with the disappearance of their support system. Some freakout, some come to “healthier” conclusions, but all share a blast of a night that will mark the end of their time together. This type of story is told often and Bloody Noses, Empty Pockets doesn’t add much to the pile beyond its penchant for realism above all else, but it does make for a breezy 93 minutes of watching some messed up people share a mixed up time. Formalistically, the film manages to pull a few interesting tricks, including chapter titles and cuts to imagery of Las Vegas in between each chapter of the film but the real strength lies in the faces of the people that occupy it. 

Closing out my first day at True/False, I remain excited. The biggest films of the festival are yet to come, some curios I wasn’t sure about are seen and the town seems to be only getting started.