"Shorts ranging from narrative to animation to insanity" - SF Weekly
"Astutely curated with an eye toward diversity...quirky hilarity" - SF Bay Guardian
"On the avant-quirky side of the cutting edge" - East Bay Express
"This film festival has ideas you won't find anywhere else. Origami cows, anyone?"
- San Francisco Chronicle
SF WEEKLY:
Night and Day Pick: Spare Change?
By Michael Leaverton
Because young filmmakers often locate financing by peering under the couch cushions, the hi/lo film festival champions great ideas over slick execution.
The yearly event, started by the Killing My Lobster improv troupe in 1997, features 40 high-concept, low-budget shorts ranging from narrative to
animation to insanity. Tonight's lineup includes a cartoon by local champ Lev, a Joanna Newsom music video, and Mi Burrito Escondido, a film so
weird even the fest's organizers are at a loss for words.
SF BAY GUARDIAN
Critic's Pick
Cheryl Eddy
Hi/Lo Film Festival: Now in its ninth year, the Killing My Lobster - backed short film festival returns with three programs dedicated to
'high-concept/low budget cinema.' The selections tend to be technically accomplished (despite that whole low-budge thing) and echo the sketch comedy
group's offbeat, intelligent sensibilities. Let's Start Again follows a deadpan, Animal Planet - style environmentalist as he explains how woodland
creatures have been replaced by robots as part of a government conspiracy. Bartholomew's Song is a brief look at what happens when opera infiltrates the
life of a worker bee toiling under THX-1138-style conditions. Backseat Bingo matches cheeky real-life interviews with sexually active seniors ('I don't think
you ever get past your sexual desires') with computer animation, while The V Party (from a Lobster skit) extols the virtues of a political
party guaranteed to excite young male voters. Each program boasts at least a dozen films, astutely curated with an eye toward diversity:
music videos, found-footage opuses, animated selections, docs, and - more often than not - quirky hilarity.
EAST BAY EXPRESS
Quirky but Poignant
By Eric Arnold
High concept, low budget. That's the idea behind the hi/lo film festival. Now in its ninth year, the festival spans a wide range of almost every conceivable
type of short film: mockumentaries, documentaries, music videos, mash-ups, animation, spoofy satire, found footage, and, of course, weird experimental stuff.
Mediums run the gamut from 35mm film to mini-DV to Flash to Super 16, and the films come from as near as Berkeley and as far away as Australia. The festival,
screening Thursday through Saturday at SF's Brava Theatre before arriving at Oakland's Parkway for two Sunday showings, is a side project of acclaimed Frisco
sketch comedians Killing My Lobster, who have a strange sense of humor but also an unerring knack for knowing what's funny, ironic, or side-splittingly
hilarious, and also what's not.
The fest's fast pace (the shortest short clocks in at fifty seconds and the longest is sixteen minutes) should sit well with people with ADD and TV junkies who don't usually go to film festivals, while the eclectic range of subject matter will likely appeal to those who like their pop culture on the avant-quirky side of the cutting edge.
But hi/lo doesn't offer quirk just for quirkiness' sake, says KML's Marc Vogl, who notes, 'Filmmakers still gotta have something to say.' This year, forty films were chosen from over 600 submissions from fifteen countries. As Vogl explains, 'We look for films that show how ingenious, inventive, and creative a filmmaker can be, working with a small budget ... we don't care about slickness.'
Here's what to expect from this year's festival: an animated interview with various octogenarians saying things like 'I truly believe you stay young because of sex' in Backseat Bingo; a bleak vision of the future that becomes a rumination on individuality, freedom, and the role of music in society, in Bartholomew's Song; a love story involving origami cows in Pink Bullets; a battle of follicles between father and son in Bad Hair Day; a remembrance of a now-closed Times Square diner and a forgotten era in Grand Luncheonette; an instructional video for gay guys who need brush-up tips in acting hetero in Straight for a Minute; and much, much more.
San Francisco Chronicle
OUTSIDE THE BOX
This film festival has ideas you won't find anywhere else. Origami cows, anyone?
By Reyhan Harmanci
The Hi/Lo Film Festival -- that's "High Concept/Low Budget" -- came from an extremely high-concept, low-budget film made by improv group Killing My Lobster founders Marc Vogl, Paul Charny and Brian Perkins.
Here's the pitch: A piece of chocolate flies through space and lands in a pizza box.
"It took us 19 hours to make the 16-millimeter film," recalls Vogl. "It was so beyond the pale that we didn't even think about submitting it to a film festival. It seemed simpler to start a festival for movies like this, that wouldn't get shown anywhere else."
And so "Space Chocolate" found a home. (Vogl says that the "Star Wars" parody's journey across space and time has ended but it was shown in Croatia and screened for a high school astronomy class in Oklahoma.)
Now in its ninth year, the Hi/Lo got more than 600 submissions from all over the world. Vogl says there are a few things that distinguish Hi/Lo from the growing number of film festivals -- namely, the jurors are former contributors, there are no prizes and while there is a 30-minute cap on length, there are no restrictions on the content or format.
"We do get submissions from Southern California film schools that are clearly going to be someone's highlight reel, and we get some black-and-white, avant-garde, 'let me roar,' " says Vogl, "but most of the films we get prove the point that people with some degree of ingenuity and dedication can pick up a camera, point it at something and come up with art."
The range of films in this year's selection speaks to the success of Hi/Lo's wide-net approach. Some of Vogl's favorites include a documentary made by a woman who lived under a roller coaster, a short about a father berating his son for his hairstyle, a music video made by Berkeley collective Terry Timely for Joanna Newsom and an Israeli film involving a herd of origami cows.
But that's not all: There is also a montage of Kirsten Dunst kissing scenes that, well, makes her look a little slutty, and an "anti-Animal Planet" wildlife documentary.
"It's an Australian dude who met some guy who keeps pet snakes -- he has, like, 75 of them -- and what becomes apparent is that the filmmaker is petrified of snakes," Vogl says, laughing. "He'll be moving in for a close-up when the guy takes the snake out of the cage, and the snake's head moves and the filmmaker jerks his camera and starts screaming." Vogl makes some convincing shrieking noises. "And it's so clear that this is the least suited guy to be filming a documentary about snakes. But he does, and it's great."
The Hi/Lo Film Festival shows its three programs today-Sun., with an opening-night party at the Brava Theater tonight. See Web site for details. Brava Theater, 2789 24th St., S.F., (415) 647-2822, and the Parkway Theater, 1824 Park Blvd., Oakla
© 1998-2006, Killing My Lobster. All rights reserved.
