Instead of your normally scheduled review, I am thrilled to bring you a giddy preview.
When The Reader closed up shop back in September, I didn’t anticipate that I’d still be covering the Omaha Film Festival (OFF) six months or so later. And yet, here I am: Not getting paid and posting things for free on a dormant website. Dare to dream, kids. I believe it was Proust who once said “There can be 100 people in a room, and 99 don’t believe in you. But one does…”
What matters isn’t my now-questionable status as a “professional” film critic. What matters is that I still get to tell you that the OFF is gonna be totes dope for the 19th consecutive time. The basics are all available at their site, but a quick rundown: It goes from Feb. 27 through March 3 at Aksarben Cinema. You can check out short films, narrative features, local stuff, and screenplay shenanigans. Look, nobody can guarantee a good time doing anything with the world the way it is these days, but I give my non-legally-binding confirmation that you’ll leave smiling. They tickle you on the way out. They don’t. Unless you want them to.
In specific, a few projects have raised my eyebrows. In a good way, not in a “Do you smell that too?” way. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of what you should see. If something is not on this list, it is almost certainly still whatever young people slang for “cool” is these days. I want to say “narfy?” Is that right? At any rate, here are the narfiest films to pop on my radar thus far.
Divisible (March 1 at 5:45 pm)
One of the true privileges I’ve had was watching the breathtaking Out of Omaha via the OFF a few years back. Director Lizzy Barrett’s Divisible has the potential to floor me in the same way. Consider me pre-floored. The documentary exposes the grotesque and racist practice of redlining, specifically right here in Omaha. It takes a historical approach to explaining housing discrimination but also links everything up to ongoing systemic issues. I love when folks joke “this isn’t a fun ‘date’ movie.” This is a great date movie, if your date isn’t racist. Documentaries rarely get the love they deserve, so throw this truly important educational cinematic experience a bone or at least a few hours of your time.
Life After the NeverEnding Story (Feb. 28 at 8:30 pm)
I am going to assume this documentary is just a few hours of someone apologizing for what they did to us when they killed Atreyu’s horse. The NeverEnding Story allegedly came out 40 years ago, but that simply cannot be true. Forget a flat circle, time is a lying liar. This documentary from UK filmmaker Lisa Downs unpacks the legacy of the beloved-but-traumatizing film. That’s a compound adjective that many of us can also use to describe our family. And just like your family, it’s always a good idea to understand more about the things that fundamentally shaped your childhood. So it’s “go to therapy” or “watch a documentary,” you choose.
Two Lives in Pittsburgh (March 2 at 7:45 pm)
It’s not just docs that have my heart palpating in excess of its normal palpation. Writer/director Brian Silverman’s narrative feature follows a blue-collar fella forced to confront his mother’s terminal illness and his kid’s exploration of gender. Escape the brutal, all-out exhaustion of this presidential election year by watching a movie about healthcare and gender identity! Jokes aside, and this film does have jokes I’m assured, watching fictional folks unpacking real social issues is actually a crucial way to approach such material. It’s certainly a lot better than the way previous generations handled things: Yelling and shame.
Chasing Chasing Amy (March 2 at 8 pm)
There was a period of my life when I would have called Chasing Amy my favorite movie. I may or may not still have a poster of it autographed by writer/director Kevin Smith somewhere in my home. Well, director Sav Rodgers has made a movie about my former favorite movie that I hope helps contextualize what it did well and what it didn’t when it comes to queer identity. No matter how well-intended, Chasing Amy was directed by a jorts-wearing straight dude in the 1990s. It absolutely could not have gotten everything “right.” But this documentary explores how it served a critical role during a time when LGBTQ+ representation wasn’t a thing. Like, those letters existed, but nobody put them in that order often.
Again, this is just the tip of the cinematic iceberg when it comes to OFF. Find what looks most compelling and get thee to Aksarben, as this festival is and should remain a real point of pride for our little city with big britches.