Resfest: Days 3 and 4

Although I’m late with the posting — I’m just now catching up with all the blogging I should have been doing over the past few days — I did enjoy a few more programs on the final two days of the festival.

On Monday, I was there for RESMIX Shorts, which is the Japanese-only program, and a first for me. I was pleasantly surprised by quite a few of the works that were showcased. I’d seen a few of them before (three were from the Panasonic “Capture the Motion” project), and THE LOST SAMURAI was a good laugh — a piss take on LOST IN TRANSLATION. My favorite was a crudely animated spoof of dictators Kim Jung Il and Saddam Hussein. I can’t remember the title, but it absolutely cracked me up. I also really liked the theme song written for the PERAKO TV short, done by Kicell.

The final day saw Shorts #03, featuring documentary type works, and the Jonathan Glazer retrospective. Of the shorts, it was Cheryl Dunn’s BICYCLE GANGS OF NEW YORK that was the standout for me. A documentary is only as good as its subject matter, and the featured players in this one were scene stealers the whole bunch. The highlights of the Glazer retrospective were the TV commercials, which I’d never seen. I’d seen pretty much all of his music videos (“Virtual Insanity” was especially nice on a big screen), except for the Richard Ashcroft one (for “Song for Lovers”), which has a really neat concept — the song acts as BGM.

So all in all, I had a great time, and pretty much enjoyed everything I had a chance to see. Someone was telling me that this year’s output was a bit weaker than in past years, but I can’t agree.

Also, a huge thanks goes out to Haruna, one of the volunteers there, for helping me out during the festival. You were a life-saver!