Chattanooga Film Festival 2020

Chattanooga Film Festival 2020 - Online but right in time!  I was planning to attend the Chattanooga Film Festival this year when the world experience this horribly debilitating pandemic. I was more than thrilled to sign up and participate online when the opportunity arose. I signed up ready to go and was awaiting the day when I could see some of the great films and shorts, as well as live events that would be the online version of the festival. As always you can give your thoughts on the festival through the comments section of the blog or shoot me an email movies@edhovey.com or tweet @Soresport
The start of the festival is a bit of a sad story for me though. I live in Massachusetts and my Mom has been getting fighting a incurable form of cancer in Tampa for the last three years. I don't normally share too much about my life but I have to shed some tears and type here to get it out of my head today as I start talking about the festival. After a really bad bout of chemo on Monday before the fest my Mom had a reaction where she was not lucid or in control of herself. This was a deciding factor for her deciding to stop her treatment and let the disease run its course. My sister Trish who is caring for her called me and my six other sisters to let us know if we wanted to say goodbye we should come down to Florida as soon as possible. We were taught by Mom while growing up that family always comes first so we all got on the phone and computers and started making plans to get to FL by Wednesday which was my Mom's 76th birthday. Fuck the risk of the pandemic some thing just have to happen and making what will be my Mom's last birthday special as possible is all that mattered. So tickets in hand I met my Sister Dawn and her daughter Shawna at Logan on the first flight down on Wednesday.
  Florida while I was there went from pretending to take the pandemic seriously to opening most things by the day I left. Here in the northeast where we have stayed in our homes to try to bend the curve saving thousands of lives they have taken the Federal Govt. approach and do social distancing but let whomever ignore any rules in place in fact celebrating when they do. Still I was impressed by the number of citizens who seemed to be taking the pandemic seriously even with the lack of leadership on the Governor's part. Since I was already taking a chance in travelling I just kept having that horrible early story of the pandemic in my head where the family got together and half of them later died of Covid-19. I have to say though that wasn't going to stop me on this visit, I felt guilty and selfish while already grieving for what will inevitable end for my Mom.
  It's such a strange feeling to know that you will not see someone again when you leave. During the visit even though you are having laughs, supporting each other with the conflicting feelings, having family meals and making my Mom so happy. Wednesday was a great day for her she was sharp as a tack and so happy to see each new person who arrived. She was a shell of herself for sure, not able to walk and with a voice that seemed a quarter of the strength it had last time I saw her. I visited last right before Christmas (in the photo) and she was in such great spirits and feeling positive she would have much more life. Chemo though is a hard treatment and eventually is worse than the cancer poisoning your body to hold the disease at bay. Still not knowing we were coming my Mom got to see all her kids and many of her grandkids as we each showed up at the house her surprised and joy was so evident. The first part of our visits she was concerned with us wanting to make sure we understood her decision to stop treatment. Then we partied together a family sharing stories and hanging out in the pool and hosted wonderfully by my Sister Trish and her husband Chris who have carried a the burden of my Mom's care for these last few years. I am so thankful for them and their loving hearts and strong hands. As we all moved through the week we knew we would have to have that last visit, time alone to say goodbye. It was so hard for each of us but I have to say being able to come from that goodbye and hug my Sisters and my daughter was so important.
  Just a bit on who my Mom is. She is part of a family (Mills) that has been in this country as far back as the 1700's, they fought all the wars from the revolution on and built lives in New England mostly in Maine and Massachusetts. She was born in Boston and grew up on Fort Hill in Roxbury, pregnant at 15 she married my father but he struggled with alcohol and she left him at age 23 taking her five kids and moving into assisted housing on Franklin Hill in Roxbury. My mom taught me about perseverance and hard work, she didn't settle for her lot she worked her whole life taking any job that would have her to work her way off welfare and to reenter the middle class. Even though we had hard years, where we barely stayed in housing, always struggled to have food and clothes to wear. Moving like nomads when we could no longer afford the place we were ( I went to 9 schools before I graduated High school). She persevered and continued to fight. Not always at home for us we children learned hard lessons on the streets but always stood up for each other. She eventually got us all through high school and with her second husband, Father to two of my sisters lived a very nice life. It is my honor to give this information to you to let you know how great a person can be even if they are not leading anything but a family.
  I arrived back on Saturday and am now hunkered down in the bottom half of my split level home. My wife and I are separated for the next two weeks while I quarantine to make sure I did not bring the virus back with me. I have to say although I am sad, it is a wonderful thing to be able to use the Festival as a distraction from all that is going on. Thanks everyone who made this happen. You are in the right place at the right time for me and I appreciate it.
  So on with what I am watching: I think I will a keep this really spoiler free relying on my feeling about the watching and less about any plot twist and the such that may spoil the film. I am a day and a half into my VIP pass but ready to use it. I will also add to this post as I view more films over the next couple days.

Eat Brains Love (2019) - Zombies and Psychics combine in this horror comedy. I have to say I really enjoyed that the first thing I saw was a comedy. A zombie plague that is contracted though sex that but with twists in how it works to allow the characters to fulfill their roles as high school stereotypes. A secret government agency of psychics who can hunt them down, a movement of infected organizing to fight back, and a high school boy lusting after the prettiest girl in school. I enjoyed this mostly because it was light and entertaining with a new and different take on a genre that seems to never stop seeing innovation. Writers Mike Herro and David Strauss come up with some inventive stuff while Director Rodman Flender paces well and catches some of the comedy bit wonderfully. The acting is good starring Jake Cannavale,  Angelique Rivera, Sarah Yarkin, Jim Titus and the always great Patrick Fabian as the villian. Not to mention the gore is pretty well done in the film.

Inferno (2019) - Writer Director Bishal Dutta, with actors Taylor Cloyes and Craig Ng (as Skullface) give us one of those in late out early seven minutes shorts where you are in the climax of a story when it starts. Nothing needs to be explained as in that seven minutes it is shown not told. Well done with Cloyes portraying the intensity of the characters situation from the moment she is on screen.

The Yellow Night (2019) - The incomplete IMDB entry for this film at this point does not do it justice. Sure it is a story about a group of teens going to a Brazilian island to celebrate the end of high school only to face horrors beyond imagining. It is more than that too. I have to watch it again because I was viewing right before bed and really want to get into the themes presented with a clearer head. It bring quantum mechanics, multi dimensions and crossovers in the fabric of time into a story about kids leaving their old lives as students in defiance of social norms. The use of Patti Smith music ( I loved that, one of the most honest fever dream song writers of her time) as a defining force to show these kids are the outliers. They are the ones that don't fit into this world and them end up in a place beyond the world as we know it was a brilliant bit of writing by Ramone Porta Mota (also Directing) and Jhésus Tribuzi. The pacing was a bit off at times with the trying to show the changes happening around the kids, it left the viewer wanting a bit quicker build up and reveal and some really bigger reveal towards the end. Like I said I was a bit tired when I started it so I would like to see it again with fresh eyes. I have a feeling I missed some of the depth of this multi dimensional film. This is a film where in reviewing it hearing the director talk about the ideas would be very interesting. I will try to feature it later in the future for a full review.