IFFB: Filmic Achievement Reviewed

by Peter Sciretta

Again I hop the red line to Davis Square to catch Filmic Achievement at the Somerville Theater. Imagine if Christopher Guest was to do a mockumentary about a film school, and that's what you have. The film follows a handful of students attending UNY, an intensive NYC film program. Imagine what the New York Film Academy must be like.

The movie starts with a filmmaker explaining what the magic hour is. He was conceived and born during the magic hour, and he feels the magic hour is a part of him, his touchstone, something he must share with the world.

The Dean describes the kids as risk takers with a big gaping hole. He says that UNY will help them fill the hole. All the performances are done in a serious tone, think Will Farrell but not as obvious.

One filmmaker says his hobby is smoking; he has a cigarette in his mouth at all times. A knit cap and a love of foreign films ... you may know a guy like this. "To smoke is the breathe fire to breathe fire is to defy mortality, to defy mortality is to shoot film, to shoot film is to smoke" he observes.

Mike explains that he is trying to chase Quentin Tarantino and follow in his footsteps. This is the type of guy you'd call a "QT copycat." His vision is other peopleís visions. Instead of stealing or copying they like to say they are giving homage. Another student we meet is this girl who has been a performance artist ever since she did a dance to "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" as a kid. She says that was her first piece of entertainment that was also political.

The school awards the filmic achievement award to one student film at the UNY film school at the end of the program. "I have something to say and they're going to teach me how to say it," says Kris. "So many directors are not looking within...they're looking without. Within they'll find something worth saying," says a teacher. She passes an imagined ego bowl around the class for the students to put their ego in while she sits in a yoga position on top of the table.

One of the teachers, Buck, lectures on a formula he founded called the 13 steps of the Heros Jaunt. Here is where filmmakers will get the inside jokes better than the average viewer. This is a parody on Chris Vogler's rewritten version of Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey".

One student questions "it seems like there's enough vagary here that anything could be anything." The teacher responds that its not vagary, its elasticity. Opov teaches an experimental acting class and says to the camera "How teaching them acting is going to help them as directors, I don't know." One girl comments how film students are unattractive and self centered. One student references an obscure filmmaker, one of which founded the no light movement. We see footage from his movies, crane shots, dolly shots, but just a black screen. He says he hopes to do a no light movement film someday.

The students pitch their short film ideas. One female student says "many of my ideas are met with silence, which I think is positive." One student won't pitch his ideas because someone once stole his idea so he says "I don't explain my ideas I show them" when they're finished in the completed film. So his pitch is a bunch of small one words like "Ocean, sun, boy, man."

One girl pitches Little Red Riding Hood as a coming of age flick where red gets raped by the wolf and saved by the woodsman. The acting teacher introduces the director's toolbox which is a physical box of tools. "It's like giving an award to a race car driver for starting the engine" says one teacher of the finals where all the shorts are shown at the festival and one is chosen for the 10 thousand dollar prize. The Dean says that "past winners are working from here. To uh.... Kentucky."

A student that doesn't win says disappointedly, "I feel like my life needs subtitles." Sadly I relate. This movie is a hilarious look at film school subculture. If you're a fan or a student, this a definite recommend. I hope it gets at least a limited distribution so that more people can see it.