Li Cheng’s drama JOSÈ featured with Oxford Film Festival teases Drive In plans along with 6th Weekly Fest roll out including Artist Vodka $15K film prize competition films

Li Cheng’s drama JOSÈ featured with Oxford Film Festival teases Drive In plans along with 6th Weekly Fest

As the Oxford Film Festival looks to future innovations including teasing their plans to bring the drive in movie experience to town with OFF to the Drive In, Oxford FF’s 6th Weekly Virtual Film Fest continues the film festival’s string of strong LGBTQIA+ programming with Li Cheng’s drama JOSÈ, a winner of multiple awards including the Queer Lion from the Venice Film Festival, and an encore of Angela Pinaglia’s film LIFE IN SYNCHRO, which follows athletes immersed in the unique world of synchronized skating.

Li Cheng’s drama JOSÈ featured with Oxford Film Festival teases Drive In plans

JOSE

JOSÈ

LIFE-IN-SYNCHRO-3LIFE IN SYNCHRO

Friday, May 29 also kicks off the presentation of Oxford Film Festival’s Artist Vodka short film programs. Audience members that tune in to see the three film programs will be able to cast votes and decide which filmmaker will get a check for $15,000. While the rest of the filmmakers will get a split of the ticket sales (continuing the film festival’s pledge to share the proceeds from the weekly film fests this year) one filmmaker will become a big winner with the audience’s help this year.

“Artist Vodka continues to be such an important part of our film festival by lending a big financial hand to one of our filmmakers as they have in years past,” Oxford Film Festival Executive Director Melanie Addington said. “And now our audience members can take a real active part in deciding whose name will go on that big check. It adds a rooting interest to the entertainment each one of these three programs delivers in a major way. I can’t wait to see who is going to win that prize.”

THE COMEDIANTHE COMEDIAN

THE BEAR AND THE BEEKEEPERTHE BEAR AND THE BEEKEEPER

 

Li Cheng’s drama JOSÈ featured with Oxford Film Festival teases Drive In plans

TICKETS:

Oxford FF Fimmaker Panel: Media Installation as a Platform for Storytelling

https://watch.eventive.org/2020oxff/play/5ebd6de4ab776f0c9ceb0d33/5ebd6e9a13f8a807c4c74e41

Panel discussion set for May 28 at 4:00PM

 

Artist Vodka Block #1

https://watch.eventive.org/2020oxff/play/5e951e1dd74a840031075a53

Live Q&A set for May 29 at 8:00PM

 

Artist Vodka Block #2

https://watch.eventive.org/2020oxff/play/5e952054492785002a9f70e1

Live Q&A set for May 29 at 9:15PM

 

Artist Vodka Block #3

https://watch.eventive.org/2020oxff/play/5e954460a44899002e98afed

Live Q&A set for May 29 at 6:30PM

 

LIFE IN SYNCHRO Encore Q&A

https://watch.eventive.org/2020oxff/play/5e9df629a3694e0029d39a7f/5ece5f1cdc397322ddf99f81

Live Q&A set for May 30 at 1:00PM

 

JOSE Art House Cinema Screening

https://oxfordac.eventive.org/schedule/5ebed6121de7dd0481b06ace

Live Q&A set for May 30 at 8:00PM

IN THE BLOODIN THE BLOOD 

IN THE PINKIN THE PINK

 

 

OXFORD FILM FESTIVAL 2020 6th WEEKLY VIRTUAL FILM FEST

Films, events and descriptions

 

Oxford Art House Cinema Screening

JOSÈ

Director: Li Cheng

Countries: Guatemala/USA, Running Time: 85 min

Winner of multiple awards, including the Queer Lion from the 75th Annual Venice Film Festival, JOSÈ is a gripping, layered and beautifully honest story about one working-class young man’s struggle to find himself. Made in the neorealist filmmaking tradition, the film is a nuanced and vivid look at being gay in Central America.

 

Oxford FF Encore Screening

LIFE IN SYNCHRO

Director: Angela Pinaglia

Country: USA, Running Time: 55 min

LIFE IN SYNCHRO follows a skating season alongside the stars of today, the newcomers, the passionate amateurs and the founders of the sport as they push their teams and themselves to be too good to ignore. But will it be enough to get their sport off the fringes and into the Olympic spotlight? From a young Team USA skater with big dreams, a 65-year-old amateur skater embracing this next chapter of life with her team, to a woman who was on the first synchro team back in 1956, who is now trying to get the founder of synchro, the credit he deserves for creating the sport that gave her so much, LIFE IN SYNCHRO interweaves each woman’s vastly different journeys, from all around the U.S., as they and these determined teams are out to prove the staying power of synchro.

 

Oxford FF Filmmaker Panel

Media Installation as a Platform for Storytelling

Media installations, especially when displayed in public spaces, are an effective way of communicating with audiences. This panel will include artists and filmmakers who utilize media installations in order to engage with their viewers, Topics such as methods, practices, and the importance of being able to communicate in this format will be discussed.

 

SHORT FILM PROGRAMS

Artist Vodka Block #1 – Global

TRT: 110:19 min

AS ADVISED

Director: Quinn Halleck

Country: USA, Running Time: 18:59 min

In an 80s dystopia world where technology knows you better than you know yourself, a teen, uncomfortable in his own skin, is willing to disguise his personality to be the person he has always wanted to become.

 

THE COMEDIAN

Director: Katyayan Shivpuri

Country: India, Running Time: 24:16 min

The comedian is a film about an ageing comedic actor in the Indian film industry (Bollywood) who has no laughter left in his life.

 

MARK MULEMAN MASSEY

Director: Michael Ford

Country: USA, Running Time: 11:36 min

A profile of Bluesman Mark “”Muleman”” Massey of Senetobia Miss. After a hard start in life music lead him a new futrue. He raises mules, sings, plays, and writes music in the North Mississippi Hill Country. Also in competition in Music Documentary Shorts. 

 

MOTHER’S DAY

Director: Elizabeth Tabish

Country: USA, Running Time: 22:13 min

California, 1968. Jane has the perfect life. A loving husband, a darling daughter and -hands down- the grooviest home in the neighborhood. But all that is no match for the painful memories of Jane’s childhood as they emerge on the eve of Mother’s Day.

 

THE ROUGAROU

Director: Lorraine Caffery

Country: USA, Running Time: 14:30 min

A father tells his daughter a cautionary tale to keep her out of trouble.

 

…SO IT GOES

Director: Jim Hall

Country: USA, Running Time: 1:25 min

A dictator with an orange for a face becomes the new symbol of fascism in this experimental FilmPoem. The color orange morphs into the ultimate hue of hate and destruction, the flame that ignites the world in a nuclear fireball….so it goes.

 

WONDER

Director: Javier Molina

Country: USA, Running Time: 16:20 min

An 11-year-old biracial kid growing up in “the hood” secretly dreams of trick-or-treating as Wonder Woman for Halloween.

 

Artist Vodka Block #2 – Global

TRT:  85:54 min

ANIMAL                                                                                 

Director: Russell Sharman

Country: USA, Running Time: 14 min

A young boy begins to suspect something happens to him at night. That he might turn into something wild and untamed. Until he meets a girl who might become something even more fearsome.

 

THE BEAR & THE BEEKEEPER                             

Director: Kristina Mileska

Country: Canada, Running Time: 13:24 min

An aging beekeeper tries to keep a pesky predator away from his beehives in order to keep the memory of his loved one alive.

 

BLOCKS

Director: Bridget Moloney

Country: USA, Running Time: 11:05

An existential comedy about the mother of two young children who begins to spontaneously vomit plastic toy blocks.

 

IN THE FALL

Director: Tom Gentle

Country: Scotland, Running Time: 15:52 min

A remote coastal peninsula. A boy watches his parents as they decide whether to send their loyal working horse to the knacker’s yard; he now costs much more to keep than he earns for a family who tread the tightrope between survival and ruin.

 

LIFE AFTER DEATH                                                                        

Directors: Noah Glenn

Countries: USA, Running Time: 13:37 min

In this light-hearted dark comedy, a man discovers an unconventional family when he is invited to a support group for the legally dead. When Vincent is caught digging up his own grave, two security guards are surprised to learn he has been declared dead. Soon he is invited to a “Living Dead Support Group” where the existing members share the funny stories of how they wound up legally dead, and ask Vincent to join them.

 

A LINE BIRDS CANNOT SEE

Director: Amy Bench

Country: USA, Running Time: 9:05 min

Separated from her mother by smugglers at the border, a determined 12-year-old sets out across a desert with only a plastic sack for protection from the cold, survives starvation on the streets of Ciudad Juarez, and escapes kidnappers to find her mother and a place where they can be safe again.

 

WE GO BACK

Director: Glenn Payne

Country: USA, Running Time: 7:51 min

Two well-meaning individuals risk everything to correct the very negative impact of their positive intentions.

 

Artist Vodka Block #3 – Global

TRT:  76:53 min

EL ASTRONAUTA

Director: Manuel Trotta

Country: Venezuela/Mexico/US, Running Time: 18:40 min

Beto returns to his remote hometown committed to taking his senile father to a care home in the city. But his father doesn’t want to leave without fulfilling his one last wish: to reach the moon to say goodbye to his beloved late wife.

 

IN THE BLOOD

Director: Regina Banali

Country: USA, Running Time: 6 min

In the old west, Sartana rides into town to score some cash, form a gang and settle a score. His ex Dolores has been hiding out with an unwitting suitor. She has secrets, they are catching up with her and she means to skip town but doesn’t make it out in time before having a shootout with Sartana and his gang.

 

IN THE PINK

Director: Katharine Stocker

Country: USA, Running Time: 13 min

One woman, one bathroom, one big diagnosis. When Marie discovers she has polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) she begins to question her sense of self as a woman.

 

THE INDIGNATION OF MICHAEL BUSBY

Director: Nathan Ross Murphy

Country: USA, Running Time: 19 min

A daydreaming cubicle worker contemplates another lousy day at the office.

 

OF MEMORIES AND MADNESS

Director: Maria Isabel de la Ossa

Country: Australia, Running Time: 6:13 min

The inner voice when navigating a broken heart while memories take you into the brink of madness.

 

SHORT CALF MUSCLE

Director: Victoria Warmerdam

Country: Netherlands, Running Time: 13 min

Short Calf Muscle is an absurdist black comedy about Anders. And Anders is different. But he doesn’t know that. Yes, he’s also gay, but that’s not the point here. There is also this thing that others see but he doesn’t.

Li Cheng’s drama JOSÈ featured with Oxford Film Festival teases Drive In plans along with 6th Weekly Fest roll out including Artist Vodka $15K film prize competition films