While I was only able to make it up for the Friday night opening, judging solely by that the film festival was a huge success. The venue they were using seats ~80 people and it was a standing room only crowd. Several filmmakers were in attendance and Anna struck up a mutual admiration society for rats with Pericles Lewnes, the director of LOOP and a Troma alumni. It was quite the sight.

I also recieved word from Bill Elverman (director of The Wintress) that Saturday was well attended as well and by the time he left on Sunday afternoon it looked like a similar sized crowd was seeing films that day too. Congratulations to Rick Vaicius for putting together such a great film festival. Everything ran smoothly, and film fans had the pleasure of watching a lot of great films they would otherwise struggle to even know about. Hopefully this is the first of many such events, as I know Anna and I are both excited at the thought of making another trip down to Pepin, WI next fall. Hopefully even more people will make that trip in the future.

Due to the overwhelming response by filmmakers wanting me to review their films I am running a bit behind on posting them. I have three more to post and I still have a few more interviews to post as well over the next few weeks. I’m going to do my best to spread them out so I don’t fall even further behind. While the constant feeling of being behind schedule is frustrating, it is absurdly fun as well.

Hopefully veryone has enjoyed the reviews so far and I look forward to doing it again next year.

Note to self: If ever I decide to write a movie that is based in Wisconsin, evidently it is a requirement to include some sort of wood cutting scene with a ginormous axe.

Having just recently watched The Wintress, I found it a bit amusing that another film starring Bill Elverman would focus so much on splitting wood with an ax. Knowing Elverman wrote both The Wintress and TREE I secretly wondered if Elverman had an unhealthy obsession with axes. My guess is he watched The Shining one too many times as a child. I know I did. But evidently, their was a far more innocuous reason for including so many axes in both films, TREE was made first, and Elverman likes to plagiarize himself because this idea works quite well in the context of these two films.

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Growing up in Iowa and later in Wisconsin, it was difficult to find films that weren’t decidedly mainstream. As such, the idea of making a film seemed even more out of reach. Thus I eventually moved to Minneapolis, content to watch and critique films at my leisure. Thankfully Bill Elverman, writer and director of The Wintress, took a different path then I did.

While there are numerous films about small Midwestern life, very few ever seem to truly reflect the unique cultural and environmental dichotomy that makes up Wisconsin. But unlike other fare, The Wintress manages to capture the look and feel of Wisconsin. The noticeable film grain adds not only atmosphere to the picture, but gives the air surrounding the characters a thick humidity eerily familiar to anyone who has lived through a Wisconsin winter.

But the look of the film isn’t the only great quality of The Wintress. Like the best short stories, The Wintress creates a lived in world that can be easily entered by the viewer. Clocking in at 26 minutes, The Wintress deftly manages to create fully fleshed out characters that are easily to identify with, and then manages to end just when the rug has been pulled out from under you. The ending, not so much a cliffhanger but a punch to the gut, is bound to linger in audience’s minds long after the credits have rolled.

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