Avram Dodson, a new member of the forum, got in touch with me recently thru this forum b/c he's an Austinite recently interested in Super 8. He is also director of guest relations for this year's Cinematexas film festival, which is related to the Univ of TX somehow. He offered me a free pass, which I gratefully accepted. And he bought me a beer, which I also gratefully accepted.
I wish I could have attended more films (and parties), but at least I attended the thing I had my eye on - a showing of 10 Japanese student Super-8 films on Saturday afternoon.
Some were "academic" and some I didn't "get" exactly, but they were all generally technically excellent for 8mm -- much better than what I usually see at the local "Flicker" showings. I'm not sure if they were all D8 or if some shot S8 or Straight-8 or DS8 or whatever... but there was never and jitter or shake, just really good registration.
The thing I liked most about the films was the sense of playfulness that was common to almost all of them. There were 10 films, and I can't think of any that seemed to take themselves too seriously. That's almost always my initial reaction to American film student efforts - no sense of play, and a lot of fakey "depth" or drama.
A few of the films were really great, and there was a kabuki one that I'd like to see again. Most did a lot with stop motion, with people either hovering or moving all around while standing still. One (funny, beautiful) film used choreographed movement, gymnast-types and an intervalometer and just put that whole style to bed -- it never needs doing again.
Anyway, talking about film is like dancing about architecture, or so the saying goes. I mostly wanted to give a shout to avram for the invite and to point out that, for whatever reason, there are still Japanese film students getting a lot of mileage out of 8mm.
