The Santa Fe Independent Film Festival kicked off with screenings of six local shorts, one of which stood above the rest.
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Dominic Garcia's "L'Americano" is the humorous story of Turner Douglas, a congressman plotting a run for Senate. An anonymous Italian narrator, whose detachment from the story resembles an anthropologist from another planet, highlights the amenities in Douglas' life that are supposed to make him happy: a beautiful wife, a nice car, a successful career.
Douglas also has a mistress: his intern. Soon a sex tape scandal involving them surfaces into public, ruining his career. In the meantime, Douglas' wife falls for her gardener, a middle-aged, slightly overweight man who lures her by saying, "I like creating life" when expressing his passion for his job. It all makes for an absurd morality tale that questions American complacency.
"Good Luck Mr. Gorsky" brings a 16-year-old internet legend to life involving words supposedly uttered by Neil Armstrong when he first landed on the moon. In the film, set in 1969, Armstrong's childhood neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky, are watching Neil land on the moon. After he utters the infamous phrase, an embarrassed Mrs. Gorsky recalls a time when Neil was little and playing baseball with his friends next door. Neil recovers a fly ball after it sails into the Gorskys backyard, only to overhear Mrs. Gorsky angrily tell her husband, "You'll get oral sex the day the kid next door walks on the moon!"
A few of the shorts felt half-baked. At 12 minutes, " The New Neighbor ," a documentary about the impact of Dennis Hopper's residence in Taos through the eyes of his neighbors, shouldn't feel overlong. It does. It succeeds at bringing interesting tidbits about how a celebrity can change a small town's culture but suffers from poorly-edited jump cuts and a wandering, unfocused narrative.
" Parallel ," a 5-minute short about the consequences of drunk driving, jumps back and forth from two events: a man's pending suicide and his flashback of accidentally killing his girlfriend while driving drunk. Nearly everything in both scenes, from the time on the clock to the results of an unfortunate death, parallel each other, hence the film's title. The result is overbearing. While some of the editing techniques are impressive, most of them feel film schooly, from close-up images of faces to shots of dripping faucets. Its result feels too forced and melodramatic.
The same goes for " Lines in the Sand: Ties ," a science fiction film about Earth's war with Mars. Like "Avatar," we're presented with a human occupation of aliens where the aliens are the sympathetic ones. The plot features a Martian and an Earth soldier both torn from love tragedies. The Martian loses her husband in a battle while the Earth soldier suffers from being at war and away from his wife. The film, shot entirely on green screen, uses a plethora of special effects and shaky cinematography that don't always work. One sequence of the Martian's tragedy is confusing; it takes a few minutes for viewers to realize she's having a flashback.
" Lowriders " is billed as "four occupants of an awesome low rider cruise the hood to a thundering soundtrack." Seven classic Cadillacs complete with hydraulics star in the film, which successfully leads its viewers onto what seems to be a promising climax. Unfortunately, when the climax finally comes, it feels better suited as a joke in a TV ad.
