The 2004 Desert Reel Film Festival, Odessa, TX

(Note: This was originally written in April 2004)

Independent film is an acquired taste. Most low-budget productions are forced to make sacrifices in order to complete the project and often times those same sacrifices wind up hurting the film. Many directors are forced to hire unknown actors simply because they can only raise enough money to pay for production costs or because they don’t know anybody in the industry. Consequently, indie-films often contain less-than-believable performances. That’s not all. Indie-films frequently suffer from poor lighting, shoddy editing, zero special effects, weak screenplays, and occasionally have just flat-out bad story lines.

The wife and I recently attended our first Indie-film festival right here in Odessa, Texas. Why Odessa, Texas? Why not? In downtown Odessa you will find one of the most beautiful old theatres still in existence—The Ector Theatre, the perfect venue to host a festival designed to showcase the talents of many individuals, including some born and bread in West Texas and surprisingly there is a great deal of talent that has sprung forth from this desolate part of the country. Namely Janet Elaine.

Janet Elaine is a name you should remember. She’s an actress turned director who has put together a most-impressive short film entitled “Signs of Us.” The story is about two sisters, one who happens to be deaf. Only their mother knew sign language and now she has passed away so the sister’s must learn to find ways to communicate and solve the issues that have stood between them since childhood. “Signs of Us” took home three awards—Best Short, Best Screenplay, and Best Acting. She also entered a music video called “These Hands” which won Best Video. She topped off the weekend by taking home The Native Son award, an award reserved for the best filmmaker from Texas.

“Signs of Us” was the highlight of the festival for me. The film actually brought me to tears. About the only thing I could think to say negative about it was that it was too short. There was so much dividing these two sisters that there was no way a little film of this nature was going to find resolution. The best part of attending a festival such as this is the fact that you get to meet all the people involved in making these films and she is currently working on turning “Signs of Us” into a feature-length film. I hope she can because it’s a great story, worthy of telling. As a Christian, I was particularly moved by its story.

We viewed almost every film entered in the festival. As you can imagine, it made for a long, but rewarding weekend. Some of the films were impressively bad, but a few stood out from the rest. “The Comedy Team of Pete and James,” a film by Larry Morgan, which won the award for Best Feature, is a hysterical mockumentary featuring cameos by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla. It also took home the Audience Award as the crowd favorite. “The Comedy Team,” reminiscent of “Spinal Tap,” was simply a whole lot of fun to watch.

Although they failed to capture any awards, three others films are worth mentioning here.

The first of these is “The Haven,” a coming of age movie that is something like “Stand By Me” meets “The Graduate” meets “The Big Chill.” “The Haven” is a very ambitious project replete with mesmerizing performances. (The film has the highest price tag of any entered in the festival at somewhere under $2 million.) The story is perhaps too ambitious because the movie seems to try to be too many different things all at once and winds up a bit convoluted. The shortcoming here is perhaps found in the screenplay because there are just too many protagonists, or in the very it has the wrong central protagonist. Andrew Bowen wrote and directed the film, and while the directing has merit it is Bowen’s turn at acting that makes “The Haven” a film worth watching. His performance as Jacko is so powerful it blew me away. So much so, I do wish the story had centered exclusively on this character. But all the actors in this film are great and deservedly they are beginning get some breaks in mainstream acting. Melissa Crider appeared in last years bomb to end all bombs—“Gigli,” but we’re sure to see more from this ensemble cast, especially Bowen and Michael Cade. Story aside, “The Haven” is a great-looking, well-acted film.

Peter Bowen, Andrew’s father, helped to produce the film and I’ll never forget what he said in the Q&A that followed the showing. “When you have a son this talented,” he said, “you’ll do anything you can to help him succeed.” It was a very emotional moment that nearly brought Andrew to tears right there in front of us. These are types of moments that make film-festivals so special.

Another flick we enjoyed was “Riding the 9,” a deftly handled character-driven ghost story. Some of the footage needs to hit the cutting room floor but otherwise it is a strong effort. It is entirely possible that Matthew Graves’ film was hindered by the worst spot on the schedule; our viewing didn’t conclude until well after 2AM early Saturday morning with an audience of less than thirty still remaining but we didn’t regret staying until the bitter end. I found it to be spiritually uplifting.

“Bird Dog” didn’t take home any awards either, but Kelly Baker’s mystery probably had the most original premise. It concerns the 1948 Vanport, Oregon flood, which destroyed the entire city. It contains solid performances and while the plot might be predictable it holds up just fine.

Beau Gillespie took home the award for Best Director for his film “Pueblo Sin Suerte,” a film so bad even Beau shook his head about what it had become. However, considering the fact that it was shot on a shoestring budget in Imperial, Texas in just seven days, Gillespie deserves the award. Some of his panoramic shots of the region are breathtaking and having grown up in Pecos County myself (where Imperial is located), I can say with some bias that his use of location was outstanding. But lets face it—the story is thin, the dialogue stinks and the performances… well, there are no adjectives to describe just how bad they are.

Finally, capturing the prize for Best Documentary was “The Last Reunion: A Gathering of Heroes,” Brent Wilson’s chronicle of the last reunion of most decorated groups of World War II—The 352nd Fighter Group. I’m sad to report that this is about the only film I didn’t get to see because I attended a workshop on Video Editing that conflicted with this screening.

The wife and I enjoyed the festival so much we decided to volunteer for next year’s event, which we are told should happen some time in July 2005. 2004’s Desert Reel was a festival wrought with glitches, technical difficulties, and moments of mass-confusion, but for a first time-effort it was outstanding. Workshops on filmmaking were also presented over in Midland, which made it difficult for us to attend everything we wanted to and this was perhaps the festival’s greatest flaw, but otherwise we had a great time and can’t wait for 2005!


Click For information about The 2005 Desert Reel Film Festival