BFM on IFF 2024
In a collaboration between the two organizations, Ivy Film Festival (IFF) has granted Brown Film Magazine (BFM) early access to their official festival lineup. Cameron Le, one of the editors-in-chief for the magazine, covers some of his favorite films showing this weekend at the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts across three screening blocks:
“Limbo” — Saturday, April 13th @ 6:30 P.M.
“Undergrowth” — Sunday, April 14th @ 11:00 A.M.
“Reverb” — Sunday, April 14th @ 6:30 P.M
For a full list of films and ticketing information, visit https://ivyfilmfestival.org/official-selection.
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IFF’s official selection of films for the 2024 festival week has left me in awe. Each year, IFF’s programming committee receives, views, and judges hundreds of submissions from around the world and narrows them down to a chosen few. This year, 20 elite short films have made the cut, and it’s obvious why. Though small in number, these films collectively span a plethora of genres, narratives and mediums—no matter where your cinematic interests lie, there’s something here for you. Below, I cover a few personal highlights.
The cinéastes, formalists, and lovers of drama will immediately praise Philippe Berthelet’s THE FLOWER DARKENS. Undoubtedly a personal favorite from the entire lineup, the film is a haunting coming-of-age that reimagines high-school and the precipice of adulthood as a monochromatic world of grief and aimlessness. It follows Alice, a high school student on the verge of graduation, as she navigates some of life’s biggest questions. What are we meant to do with our lives? What grows in the wake of devastating loss, if anything? Where can we find traces of love in an otherwise barren world? Replete with phenomenal performances, stunning B&W photography, and a story that will echo far beyond the theatre, this film is a must-see entry in IFF 2024.
For animation fans or those who seek levity in their stories, I offer Emmet Zabor’s Sleep Mode. At just over 4 minutes, this charming animation effortlessly enveloped me into its otherworldly setting and narrative. We follow a small robot as it walks its decade-long, Odyssean journey across fields, mountains, beasts, and tundras all to fulfill a simple purpose: the delivery of a package. To whom the package goes, what is inside, and where the robot has embarked from, we cannot know. Yet, it is not a film that demands answers; this is a film about reveling in the journey, about basking in alien landscapes, and following the ironclad determination of a motivated little robot. With little-to-no production budget and a humble crew of two people, Sleep Mode is nothing if not a work of pure, artistic passion, and I’m thrilled to see a spotlight placed on such wholesome talent.
Though easy to get swept up into fictional realms and narrative complexity, it’s also integral to highlight stories of real individuals. Look no further than María Camila Pulgarín & Manuela Giraldo’s documentary Dysphonias, which uses a mixed-media approach to present the relationship between a daughter and a father who has since lost his voice. A sprawling interrogation of love, familial archives, the afterlife, religion, and the miracle of self-expression, Dysphonias is nothing if not ambitious and deeply human. It is a film that does not adhere to the conventional limits of storytelling and cinema, and in that uncharted territory, it finds something beautifully singular.
And finally, what would a film festival be if not an opportunity to showcase the future and boundaries of the artform itself? Opening the festival is Kai Nealis’ experimental short Queen, which captures on 16mm film the gravitational pull of the past and of our human desire to find identity and belonging in the world. Its eclectic “narrative” is one that must be experienced, and I don’t feel I have the literary prowess to commit it to words. I merely offer that Queen is not only a fable of race and gender identity, but also one of space and time. It is an unforgettable way to inaugurate the official selection.
After seeing all of the festival’s selections, I struggle to find any single way to encapsulate or describe them all simultaneously. Regardless, there is one single theme that emerges and presents itself to me in each film: hope. Some are layered with mountains of grief, some cross fantastical and bizarre lands, and some serve as pure cinematic spectacle, but none fail to capture a note of hope and faith that revitalizes my love for life and cinema. And most importantly, these films spark in me a hope for the future of the medium. This is an opportunity to glimpse the early works of what will become our generation’s cinematic pioneers and titans—you won’t want to miss it.