I fell behind in reviews from the Independent Film Festival of Boston almost immediately but I'll try to catch up. The first one I want to write about is a mockumentary called Filmic Achievement. In the style of great Christopher Guest films such as This is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind, this is a fake documentary following freshman film students through their first semester of the directing program at fictional UNY as each tries to win the coveted Filmic Achievement Award.
Delvo Christian is the egocentric one of the bunch. To him French things are better because they're French, he feels his life needs subtitles, to smoke is to live, and the "no light method" is the pinacle of film techinique. When one of the teachers begins the semester by passing around the ego bowl, he's the only one who doesn't deposit his in it. Mike Pack is another student, his goal is to be almost as good as Quentin Tarantino because you don't want to be better than him (I was hearing "This one goes to eleven in my mind during this scene). Constance Van Horn is the feminist in the group, she knows what she wants to say, she just needs a way to say it. She did interpretive dance to the Bee Gees when she was five. We're introduced to more students and to some professors, all play their stereotype parts perfectly.
This film is at times very funny, and at other times riotously hysterical. In the first part we get to know the characters through interviews and filming of classes, in the second part we see them on set making their short films for the contest and then we see the four finalist films. This structure keeps the film from getting boring and works very well. If you want to see a fascinating looking at what making a film is really like, watch Project Greenlight on Bravo. If you want to laugh out loud watch Filmic Achievement.
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