I’ll be posting about the Nashville Film Festival this week — the event got underway this past Thursday afternoon. I saw a number of films before the fest for my annual preview I write for The Contributor. On Thursday I went to pick up my credentials, and was able to score a ticket for the Stars in Shorts program on Friday — the movie had gone to rush status likely because of the “stars” in these short movies.

A highlight in the program included “Break” in which a well-to-do, elderly British couple befriends a struggling, working class couple with a small child. “Break” stars John Hurt who’s fantastic of course. The acting is strong all around, and the relationships between the struggling young adults and their elderly counterparts are quickly established and thoroughly believable. That said, the film’s dramatic ending — which includes a double suicide — was too big of a leap too quickly for me. Short films can be tricky when it comes to pacing, and I wish writer/director Nick Moss might have tried to tell a smaller story with an arc and an ending the audience could’ve more fully invested in.

On Saturday I saw the Experimental Showcase which will screen again on Thursday at 3pm. I’d definitely recommend this showcase for the amazing cinematography in Line Klungseth Johansen’s “Process: Breath” and the visionary assemblage of silent film footage and the aesthetics of alchemical engravings in Stacey Steers’ “Edge of Alchemy” which must be one of the best animated films at the festival. Russell Sheaffer and Aaron Michael Smith’s “Etude 1a: Release (I)” uses found footage of cowboy culture and livestock to tell a poetic history of the American West. The movie is sometimes mesmerizing even if it ended way too early for my taste. “This is Yates” is the best thing I’ve seen at the fest so far. Josh Yates’ montage of home movie footage is a visionary exploration of memory, family, everyday life in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and it reminded me of cinema’s capacity to transform the blunt and the brutal into something beautiful, even incandescent.

Over Saturday and Sunday I also saw two programs of short documentaries. I recommend both programs which will screen again this week. Documentary Showcase I will play again on Wednesday at 5:30 pm. I really liked “Four Quarters of Silence” which told the story of the Texas School for the Deaf’s varsity football team, and “The Moderators” which illuminated the work days of the real life people who are making sure that Facebook isn’t awash in dick pics. My favorite of the program was Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck’s “10 Meter Tower” which pictures a succession of everyday Swede’s attempting to will themselves to jump into a pool from the titular tower. It’s a simple premise that results in high anxiety and hilarity alike and the filmmakers’ commitment to mostly static shots picturing their protagonists trying to will themselves to jump is a masterstroke. Documentary Showcase II screens again on Monday at 3:30 pm. Adam Roffman’s “The Collection” gives a history lesson in movie advertising while also offering gorgeous eye candy for lovers of letterpress printing, and Edvard Karijord and Bendik Mondal’s “I’m Free” is actually a student film that blew away the festival jury who decided it belonged in the main competition instead of in the student category. The movie is a poetic meditation on the life of a mentally ill man whose disappearance continues to haunt the family and friends he left behind.

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In the wake of the NSA/Snowden revelations, and the general sense of paranoia that has taken grip of the news cycle and the internet, a few pundits have assumed the roles of cultural watchdogs, taking the pulse of public taste to measure the effect of the spooky news on the hearts and minds of the people.

A number of journalists and commentators have noted that one possible side-effect of the recently-revealed government snooping on personal communications has been a spike in the sales of the George Orwell classic 1984 on the mega-book-selling-site Amazon.

But how big is the sales spike and how much of it can be attributed to Snowden’s bravery in the face of the NSA’s dubious doings? This article at Slate offers a measured interpretation:

Sales of one particular edition of George Orwell’s dystopian classic are up some 5,000 percent on Amazon.com in the past 24 hours, according to the site’s list of “movers and shakers.” The figure was as high as 7,000 earlier today.

But before you conclude that this sales spike represents some sort of national intellectual awakening, keep in mind that we’re talking percentages here.

Check out the full article at the link above and consider (re)reading the 64-year-old novel to catch up on today’s headlines.

While I’m a big fan of reading and re-reading, I’m offering the following for those of you who’d prefer to watch the movie version that was released in 1984: John Hurt plays Winston Smith – an everyman living in the totalitarian state of Oceana. Working for the Ministry of Truth, Winston literally rewrites history in accordance with the dictates of the Party lead by Big Brother. Winston falls in love with a beautiful revolutionary who offers him a glimpse of true freedom until the Thought Police intervene. 1984 is a spy story and a bitter satire, but it’s also a romance which suggests that the most subversive act of all may be loving another person.

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