Where: Brava Theater Center - 2789 24th St. - San Francisco
Parkway Theater - 1824 Park Blvd. - Oakland
When: April 12-15, 2007
Showtimes:
Shorts Program 1 - Thurs 7:15; Sat 5:00 - Brava, SF
Shorts Program 2 - Fri 7:15pm; Sat 7:15 - Brava, SF
Shorts Program 3 - Fri 9:15pm - Brava, SF & Sun 2pm - Parkway, Oakland
Retrospective Program - Sat 9:15p - Brava, SF & Sun 5pm - Parkway, Oakland
TIX:Available Now!
$9/screening - Brava
$8/screening - Parkway
$20 - Festival Pass for Brava screenings only!
Info & Questions:
or 415.558.7721
What is the hilo film festival? Or Why $40 million can kill a good idea.
Originally organized in 1997 by the San Francisco production company and comedy collective Killing My Lobster the hi/lo film festival has evolved
into a major West Coast showcase for independent low-budget film makers. The fest runs in the Mission District's Brava Theater Center and Oakland's
pizza & pub Parkway Theater for four nights of shorts, docs, narratives, experimentals and animations.
Now in its tenth year, the hi/lo film festival continues to prove that big imaginations are more important than
fat wallets. Films featured range from animations, short narratives and abstract imagistic explorations to micro-features,
documentaries, and uncategorizable creations. Though in most cases they are as different and distinct as night and day, the
films all belong in the same festival. They are high concept works made on minimal budgets that place ideas and creativity over
imitation and slickness and each, in its own way, proves that talented, dedicated people can bring their visions to the big screen.
Media Contact:
Daniel Cavey, hilo film festival organizer * 415.558.7721
* www.hilofilmfestival.com
The 2007 hi/lo Film Festival in the Press:
SF WEEKLY: Penny Films
By Michael Leaverton
How do you make a low-budget film about apocalyptic post-Katrina New Orleans? You set it in apocalyptic post-Katrina New Orleans. That obvious but eminently smart move captures the spirit of the Hi/Lo Film Festival, which has celebrated the hustle of low-budget filmmaking for 10 years. As usual, the fest is a grab bag of wildly different movies, from the New Orleans short (which features a presidential delegation in cut-out masks) to Calling Occupants, in which Flaming Lips–like spacemen negotiate the hula hoop. Although "low budget" often means extremely talented people doing high-quality work on the cheap, all of the short films embody the fest's trustworthy mantra: "$40 million can kill a good idea."
EXAMINER: High-concept, low-budget movies
By Christina Troup
The origins of the Hi/Lo Film Festival — where big ideas outweigh big budgets — can be traced back 10 years to the seminal space voyage of a piece of chocolate and a pizza box.
The voyage, better known as the short film “Space Chocolate,” chronicles the flight of a confection through an outer-space star field — that is, a kitchen in the Mission District adorned with some black fabric and white Christmas lights — as it navigates its way into a pizza box embellished with Sharpie markings to look like an intergalactic space cruiser.
The five-and-a-half-minute short, created by Marc Vogl, Paul Charny and Brian Perkins of the sketch comedy troupe Killing My Lobster, essentially became the first selection of Hi/Lo in 1997 when the creators figured it best to start their own festival rather than submit the film to a fest that would likely not have a place for — let alone know what to do with — such an entry.
And so, the Hi/Lo Film Festival was born.
“It’s a timeless piece, really. ‘Space Chocolate’ will live on forever,” jokes Hi/Lo juror Daniel Cavey, of the 10th anniversary of the quirky short that started it all.
For the last decade, films lofty in creative spirit but meek in finances have found a home at Hi/Lo, which celebrates its longevity this week with three new short film programs and a retrospective of highlights from the last decade.
With the exception of the 30-minute cap on length, there are relatively no restrictions for filmmakers, which makes for quite an eclectic bunch of submissions to sift through.
This year, Cavey and a handful of other Hi/Lo jurors who were previously contributors themselves screened more than400 submissions from around the world and settled on 40-plus shorts for the festival.
“To quote Marc Vogl, the film has to have gumption. When you see it, you just know it was meant for Hi/Lo,” Cavey says of the selection process.
The 10th installment of Hi/Lo features such new shorts as “Help is Coming,” a post-Katrina look at New Orleans and the sexy Spanish film “Amar,” which explores what it means to give and receive in a relationship.
The “Best of Hi/Lo” program revisits such selections as “Fast Forward,” a Michael Bay-inspired stop-motion short made with LEGOs; “Three Legged,” a three-minute short about two guys bound together at the leg in front of a tennis ball launcher; and, of course, the classic “Space Chocolate.”
“A film like ‘Fast Forward’ captures the action genre perfectly. It has all the thrill and excitement of a Michael Bay film, but on a minimal budget. The soundtrack, after all, is someone beatboxing,” says Cavey. “And that’s just great. That’s what Hi/Lo is all about. It shows that all you really need is a big imagination. And, I guess in this case, a really big desk.”
Reviews of the 2006 hi/lo Film Festival:
"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.
Raves for the 2005 hi/lo Film Festival:
"The Hi/Lo Film Festival has its great ideas in place. It provides a sampling of works from all around the country [and]
there is an eclectic selection here that personifies what being different is.
And it's worth it."
- Filmthreat.com Festival Preview
"Back for its eighth year of presenting "high concept/low budget" cinema, the Hi/Lo Film Festival packs three shorts programs and two documentary features into four days of free-thinking creative combustion."
- San Francisco Bay Guardian Review
"Piece by Piece gets this graffiti culture completely right, in all its ways and arguments about crews,
attitudes, and whatever else is on these artists' minds."
-Filmthreat.com Review of "Piece by Piece" (hi/lo 2005
documentary feature)
Thanks to 7x7 magazine who put us in their top 5 "must-do" festivals. We're mentioned alongside the Film Arts Festival, the SF International,
the Asian-American Festival and the SF Gay and Lesbian Festival.
hi/lo film festival is the SF Bay Guardian's Critic's Pick:
Proving that it doesn't take $100 million to make a decent movie, the seventh annual Hi/Lo Film Festival features
three days of "high-concept, low-budget" shorts and features. There just aren't enough films out there like Roger Beebe's
kitschy "Famous Irish Americans," a graphic lecture insisting that black celebrities with Irish last names really are Irish,
or Judy Fiskin's "50 Ways to Set the Table," which highlights competitive "tablescaping." If you're into parodies, director
Hanelle Culpepper replaces HBO's estrogen-powered coterie with curious toddlers in "Six and the City." Not surprisingly, quirky
humor is a top priority in this event presented by San Francisco comedy collective Killing My Lobster, but expect smatterings of
seriousness as well. Sonja Shah's "Something Between Her Hands" documents Cambodian sex-workers, and filmmaker Tom Putnam takes us on
a mind trip with "Tom Hits His Head," in which a genteel office worker suffers from a nervous breakdown. Though a few works on the bill
comply only with the "low-budget" part of the deal, most are good for at least a hearty laugh."
-Kimberly Chun, SF Bay Guardian, March 31, 2004
Monster Road is the SF Weekly's Pick For This Saturday Night:
"Sweatshops have nothing on stop-motion animation studios. Every second of a stop-motion film contains
24 individual shots, each of which must be painstakingly staged and lit. Consider the infinite patience it takes to produce, say,
just one freaking Gumby episode, and it's easy to understand why master Claymation technician Bruce Bickford is such an eccentric.
In his desolate Seattle-area home, his only friends his Alzheimer's-patient dad and those clay "little guys," Bickford has been making
underground flicks in his basement for nearly 50 years. Even his best-known creation, the 1979 Frank Zappa vehicle Baby Snakes, is utterly
obscure, and Bickford himself is practically a nonentity. But as Monster Road- a funny, moving cinematic biography of him -- proves,
he lives an inner life so rich and bizarre that he hardly needs adulation."
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-Joyce Slaton, SF Weekly, March 31, 2004
and the SF Bay Guardian recommends Monster Roadtoo:
"*Monster Road Clay animator Bruce Bickford doesn't claim to be God, but considering he's been
bringing clay figures to life for more than 40 years, the guy might as well be. Director Brett
Ingram's feature-length documentary explores the intriguing, often macabre world of Bickford's art,
while also delving into the artist's childhood and family background. The other major character is
Bruce's father, George, a retired rocket scientist living with his son in a home studio outside
Seattle. Intertwining a war-hungry U.S. culture, the Bickfords' philosophies, and the intricate
beauty of claymation, Monster Road is at once a private and public history, told in a somewhat minor
key. But gentle humor offsets the nostalgia and the younger Bickford's childlike inclinations prove
to be just as charming to watch as his livelihood."
-Kimberly Chun, SF Bay Guardian, March 31, 2004
"If you've forgotten that big imaginations are more important to the creative filmmaking process than, say, Miramax's big fat wallets, you might want to take note of the Hi/Lo Film Festival."
-- www.sfgate.com
"Films that you won't find at the multiplex."
-- www.sfstation.com
"Animation, claymation, documentary and 'uncategorizable' creations grace the screen in a communal effort to spit in the face of the increasing standardization of the movie business."
-- San Francisco Metropolitan
"Hûen a filmek kötségvetéséhez a jegyeket a festiválra csak 7 dollárért mérik, ami alatta van a szokásos belépõk árainak."
-- Index.Kalifornia
