Note: These films are intended for mature audiences. Leave young kids, particularly those younger than 15, at home.

The Films
Your Complete Guide to the 12 short films of the 2004 UWM Student Film and Video Festival:

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

#12 – “Pangea,” directed by Diego Costa, is a cerebral trip through the inner thoughts and torments of a young man who has been used and abused by a lover he thought he could trust. Grade: C –

#11 – “Scene Missing,” directed by Chris Bierden, takes material from old movies, and distorts it to create an engaging spectacle. Bierden slows the film down, speeds it up, chops it up, and causes rather normal scenes to take on a transcendent quality. Grade: C

#10 – “Polkadiddles,” directed by Lilly Czarnecki, is one of the most visually inventive and successful works of the festival, using little more than an excited musical score and black-and-white dots on a polka-dot skirt to create a music video of sorts that never really grows old. Who would have thought that watching dots twirl around could be so entertaining? Grade: C+.

#9 – “Porcelain Dreams,” directed by a UWM collaborative filmmaking class, is the second-funniest film of the festival, beginning as a “Stomp-” inspired musical number with the elements of a public bathroom and then morphing into the hilarious daydreams of the restroom’s custodian. Grade: B-.

THE BEST OF THE BEST:

#8 “A Fossil From A Satellite,” directed by Chris Delisle, was one of the more hotly-debated films in judging. Showing a bomb dropping from a plane, a child burying a box of possessions, and an astronaut-like figure discovering the buried treasure, it serves as either an other-worldly fantasy, an inspirational dream, or an apocalyptic vision of a world destroyed by war. Grade: B.

#7 “Circumstantial,” directed by Chris Staats, is the most controversial and adult-oriented piece of the festival, upgrading the event’s rating from PG-13 to a full R. About a couple proposing a threesome to the man’s co-worker, the humor of this gut-wrenching comedy comes from the seriousness of their discussions, the drama that follows the request and a most bizarre conclusion, linking the humiliation of sex to the rage of murder and the guilt of impotence. Grade: B+.

#6 “Valentine’s Day”, directed by Michael T. Vollmann, is a deceptive jewel of a film, about an ordinary, feuding couple on one level and a loving, comfortable marriage on another. In the documentary-like work, a wife talks about a bracelet that is on sale at Boston Store, and the husband talks to his wife about spending too much money and his having to work on the weekend. It seems like just another day at the house, but looking closer it really shows the stable, comfortable and genuine qualities of love: when you love someone so much that you needn’t put on a show. Grade: B+.

#5 “Trial By Error,” again directed by Bierden, is the one creative clay-motion film of the festival, about a cute little figure who serves as the guinea pig for a most hilarious experiment. Shown a very useful and reliable image on the left and a most unneeded and frivolous object on the right, he is eventually given electrical shocks until he accepts the shallow alternative. It is a technical achievement above all else, although we learn a little bit more about ourselves through this experiment than we would like to admit. Grade: B+.

#4 “Louis and Me,” directed by Mariko Ujihisa, is a comedic short that could compete with any of those at the Milwaukee or Wisconsin film festival, focusing on a couple torn apart by Louis Vuitton handbags. The woman is obsessed with the objects, so much so that she seems to replace her partner with the handbag on her shoulder, and the man becomes increasingly annoyed and outright angry about her compulsive buying of the expensive baubles. Expertly made by BLAH, who carefully straddles the borders between comedy, drama and black humor, “Louis and Me” is a film that just seems to click. Grade: B+.

#3 “What Remains,” directed by Eric Gerber, is a film we watch unfold and evolve intellectually. Centering around a mysterious man who wanders through his home collecting dead insects and then examines them under microscopes and bathes them in a bizarre, creamy liquid, “What Remains” shifts from the bizarre to the brilliant in a single instant, as the main character then uses a movie camera to make a profound statement about the relevance of movies and the role of us, as the audience. Jean-Luc Godard would have been proud. Grade: A-.

#2 “Bloom,” directed by Anne Barber, is the most interesting of the abstract entries of this year’s festival: a visual experience that will fly over the heads of some but profoundly move others. Opening with a detailed depiction of a flower in full bloom, it then cuts to the image of a woman in bed, and shows bruises forming and expanding on her skin. Undeniably a link between flower and person, the bruises are images of mixed meaning, both signs of trauma and beauty as well as the inescapable act of aging. In some regard the theme of the work seems to be that to bloom is to come into being, but it is also one step closer to one’s own demise. Grade: A.

MY PERSONAL FAVORITE:

#1 “Mind Plasma,” directed by Drew Rosas, is the clear front-runner of the festival as far as I am concerned. In a time when so many documentaries are becoming the most innovative works showing at area theaters, it should not be surprising that “Plasma,” a documentary, is securing my highest recommendation. Then again, I never expected a student documentary to captivate me to such a degree.

“Mind Plasma” is about a most bizarre performer, T.J. Richter, who dresses in strange costumes, tells bizarre stories and incorporates a fascinating array of visual and sound effects to create a show unlike anything you have ever scene. Richter tells personal stories, makes comments on current events and tweaks reality to suit his own needs. The magic of “Plasma” is its natural flow from one step to the next, helping us to learn about this man while also walking in his shoes.

The film opens with a monologue, as Richter tells us what “mind plasma” really stands for. We start laughing at him, as he delivers a preposterous definition with unmitigated conviction. But then, just as the documentary appears to be a comedy, we learn more about his craft, his careful preparation and his work ethic, only then to witness one of his performances and realize the outright addictiveness of his absurd sense of humor.

Beautifully made by Rosas, shifting between interview footage, stock footage, comedy, drama and philosophy, “Mind Plasma” saves its biggest surprise for its closing credits. While any other filmmaker would have told the story from point A to B to C, Rosas creates a path all his own, incorporating everything that helps us to understand this man but doing it with the style, assuredness and creativity of an extremely gifted storyteller.