Interkosmos_hires2
From Jim Finn's Interkosmos
The St. Louis Film Festival kicks off tomorrow night, and because I'll be elsewhere, I will miss the opening night film, Humboldt County, a movie made by two expat St. Louisans. It looks marvelous, and I'm hoping that it will have a proper run a the Tivoli so that I can see it on a screen. (I know, I know - but NetFlix just doesn't do it for me, compared to the whole theater experience, plus or minus the popcorn.) There are a lot of films I'd like to see that I'll miss, including L'Inferno, which dates back to 1911 and is "the first full-length Italian film ever made ... a wild re-imagining of Dante’s epic, an extremely loose adaptation that takes inspiration from the illustrations of Gustav Doré to conjure its visions of hell." I'm also a huge fan of Jim Finn's movies, and they're showing a double-feature, The Juche Idea and InterKosmos Friday night at Webster. That's an almost-possibility. The other feature that I'm jonesing to see is John Bergin's From Inside, based on his graphic novel of the same name. It's an epic, apocalyptic animated feature that looks to be sorta like McCarthy's The Road, but from a woman's point of view. The documentary I am most excited to see, HomeGrown, should be a definite possibility. The film "documents the remarkable Dervaes family – father, son and two daughters – who run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, Calif., creating a tiny rural island in a vast sea of city. Living off the grid, they harvest more than 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter-acre of land, make their own biodiesel, power their computers with the help of solar panels, and maintain a Web site that gets 4,000 hits a day. The film offers an intimate portrait of urban pioneers living a 'Little House on the Prairie' existence in the 21st century." (I got so excited about this one, I joined up with Freedom Gardeners, the Dervaes' social networking site for the vermicomposting-and-seed-saving set.) Finally, I'd also love to catch Mike Steinberg's portrait of his dad, How it is with Phooie, next Tuesday. If I looked more closely at the schedule I know I'd want to see everything, which is impossible, so to avoid hearbreak I skimmed and picked one or two that I'm hopeful I can make some time to see.
Random digression: if you are not familiar with ArtZipper, you're missing out. The Regional Arts Commission's incredibly rich online arts calendar will torpedo the notion, once and for all that "there's nothing going on in St. Louis." I like to mine it to find under-the-radar events, like "Visual Poetry," a photography exhibit opening up at the Vaughn Cultural Center tomorrow night. The tiny jpg that's posted on the ArtsZipper entry is compelling, but quite tiny, and I can't find any further information on the artist, Lee Lewis. That is a pretty clever campaign, actually, in that it will pique my curiousity enough to actually get me down to the gallery ... —Stefene Russell
