Fly Films
dirs. Thom Harp, T. J. Martin, Sue Corcoran
Fri June 10, 2 pm, Egyptian
This year’s Fly Filmmaking Challenge focused, thankfully, on local artists and, again thankfully, on narrative film. The shorts had to meet four requirements: one, they could run no longer or shorter than 10 minutes; two, they had to contain one role for the same union actor (Abby Dylan); three, they had to show the Central Library; and four, The Stranger needed to appear. The only requirement that mattered was the time limit, as the other three were easily absorbed into each film’s plot. The directors selected for the program were Thom Harp, T. J. Martin, and Sue Corcoran. Thom Harp’s short film, Driver’s Ed, concerns a young woman who is making yet another attempt to pass her driver’s test. She fails miserably, and without a driver’s license she remains stuck in her bland suburban world. T. J. Martin’s …Loves Martha stars a copy machine. The machine is made in Taiwan and it seduces a bored office employee. They have a passionate love affair, but like all relationships, in the end things just don’t work out. Sue Corcoran’s movie Circus of Infinity, which stars Wendy Ashford, is a wonderful existential examination of a life that is brief and, ultimately, meaningless. All three films show that local filmmaking deserves more support. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Circus
dir. Charlie Chaplin
Sat June 11, 11 am, Egyptian
You won’t catch me trying to make the case against the eternal genius of Charlie Chaplin, or against this less-appreciated treasure from his canon. The Circus took a very long time to make, and its production seemed plagued by bad luck. But despite his studio and his marriage burning down while filming, the end result is a typically sweet tramp comedy about anti-authoritarianism, the art of performance, and above all, the love of a good waif. But while Chaplin’s visual inventiveness and heroic physical gifts are on full display here (the tightrope bit with the monkeys is one of the greatest things you’ll ever see), The Circus is more notable for the object lesson it offers in Chaplin’s other major cinematic legacy: sentimentality.
From the noxious theme song (written and sung by the man himself, 40 years after the film was made) to the megamelodrama of the plot-comely circus tumbler suffers constant abuse at the hands of her father, the whip-wielding circus master-The Circus is a study in Chaplin’s deep-seated facility with bathos. We remember him for his miraculous agility, but it’s the juxtaposition of comedy and (often overstated) tragedy that remains his more indelible influence on modern filmmaking. It’s all well and good to have a chaotic Pierrot figure as comic relief, but Chaplin understood very early on that for people to get invested in the tramp, he had to be in the service of someone even more hopeless. And, hey, if that someone happens to be a pretty girl, so much the better… SEAN NELSON
