Say Hello To The One Take Film Festival

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Well this is a post that warms my cold dead heart - one of my oldest bestest real-world friends who goes by the name of Bri Merkel has co-created a film festival in my hometown of Rochester, New York! It's called the One Take Film Festival, and it's an expansion of a year-round documentary series that she's been running along with film-maker Linda Moroney. The series runs from May 18th to the 21st at the Little Theater there in Rochester (hey I worked there in college) and you can read an interview with them about it right here. You should also follow the Fest on Twitter and Facebook and such!

And you wanna talk knocking it out of the park right out of the gate - they're giving their first Double Take Vanguard Award to no less than Steve James! They're screening both his 1994 masterpiece Hoop Dreams (one of my favorite films of all time) and his terrific latest doc called Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which I reviewed at the NYFF this past fall. You can see the whole schedule right here - Rochester is a terrific town for movies (it is where Film was born in the US, after all) so I'd say this is worth a trip up there. Oh and the fest is also showcasing VR technology, which speaking of...

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The VR Experience #tribeca2017 #vr #virtualreality #film

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Apr 28, 2017 at 8:38am PDT

... last week at Tribeca I took advantage of their VR showcase and went and... well you can't say "watched" because it's more than that, but I went and experienced a "film" called Broken Night, which starred Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer as a couple besieged by an intruder. Depending on which way you turn your head while watching the actors acting in front of you you Choose-Your-Own-Adventure through a story-line (obviously I always followed Alessandro) - it was really quite something.

It's only the second VR I've ever experienced - I also got to see Bjork's 360 degree "Stonemilker" video awhile back - and the tech's so fresh and overwhelming to me I don't quite know how to "review" it, but it's a lot of fun to plunk yourself down in. I'm definitely planning on doing a better job taking advantage of the technology next year.

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