Indie Memphis Midst

In the middle of Indie Memphis right now and been having a good time, seeing good stuff. Started off yesterday with a block of "departures" shorts (the experimental/animated stuff). Some really good stuff (and some not so good stuff mixed in, but overall it was enjoyable). Infinity Stairs, who I kinda know a little from modular meetups, was doing music before and it was good, very reminiscent of 80s Tangerine Dream stuff. Next was Brazil and I had to trek it over to the other side of the Square. Ran into Zach there so we hung out and watched it and all. Hadn't seen it in a while but it definitely still holds up. Boots Riley picked it for the festival (as it was a big influence on his own movie which they showed afterwards) and did a little intro. I really like listening to him talk. The guy who introduced him listed off a whole slew of things he does/is, one of which was "actor" and he was like "I'm not an actor though"...writing it out loses a lot of the humor of his delivery, like it doesn't even look funny typed out, but it was funny. And charming in an anti-charming sort of way. I don't know, he has this matter-of-fact, almost awkward (but "awkward" isn't really the right word) way of talking, at least as far as public speech goes. The next and last movie (a midnight movie) was his movie, Sorry to Bother You. Mary Beth met up and joined us for that. He spoke before this one too. I had never seen it before, didn't really know anything about it... Holy shit! This is one of the best new (earlier this year) movies I've seen in a while. This is a really good fucking movie. Definitely had cases of "Well, I was not expecting that..." Got out very late and went home and slept and woke up early (relatively) for a movie this morning. I started with August at Akiko's, which is kinda hard to describe. It's about Alex Zhang Hungtai returning to Hawaii after not having been for a decade. Where "documentary" and scripted "narrative" begin and end is hard to say. It feels kind of like a combination of both. It was very beautifully shot. It's very reflective/meditative. It kind of seems like there's "plot points" but they mostly don't go anywhere (as far as "plot" goes). It was really good. Here I had enough of a break to quickly run to the store and get some grocery shopping done. Next I saw The Day After. It's by Hong Sangsoo, a Korean director they're showing a bunch of movies of this year. I'll be seeing another one or two of 'em tomorrow. It was very good. It's about a book publisher/critic and his messy affair and some other stuff. It doesn't flow completely chronologically. It's very simple and well acted and good. Hard to get the feel of it just by describing the plot though. Next was Life Is Fare, about Eritrean diaspora living in San Francisco. It was good too. Now I have a little bit of a break, almost two hours, so I've walked home for a little bit. Mary Beth had a break too and she arrived here a little after me. Woo! Then I'm back out for more and another late night!