Emma’s Film Festival

Last night, Lydia and I drove up into Westchester County to see my cousin Emma’s film, which was in a film festival. My cousin Emma is 17 (I raved about her here), and she takes a film class in high school, so this festival showed off the work of all the students over the year.

First of all, and this sounds kind of lame: it’s always exciting to leave the city. Lydia and I, when we got in her car, felt like we were going on a massive road trip. The drive was 30 minutes long, mkay? But still: WE WERE LEAVING THE ISLAND. Big deal. We drove by the massive wall-collapse on 9A … woah. To actually see it … you can’t even believe it. A landslide of tremendous proportions, an entire wall collapse – and the wall is HIGH, man … so there’s a hell of a lot of “wall” to collapse. At that point in the wall, it has become a huge rampart, like a medieval castle. I cannot believe, having actually seen it with my own eyes, that nobody was killed. Unbelievable.

The festival was at Emma’s high school, in the cavernous school theatre. (Damn. I didn’t have a theatre like that in MY high school. We had a piddly little rickety space called “The Music Room”. Emma’s theatre was like an old Broadway house.) It was so fun – the place was packed, with students, parents … You could feel the excitement, it was so cool.

Emma is a big star, and it was neat to see her in her element. Her brother Ian was there, too, and it was great to see him. We all just laughed when we saw each other … because everything felt so random, and so funny. Like: what? Where are we right now? We’re seeing each other where???

I think the students had to each do a music video, and a short film. So we saw all of that work. Some of it was hilarious. Some of it was touching. You could see all of the concerns as themes in the work – the main thing was grades, getting into college, stressing over tests … A really funny short film called “The Valedictorian” was about a girl who decided to knock off her main competition for valedictorian. It was hysterical. There were kung fu matches involved. And some slo-mo action, as she chased down each student she felt threatened by.

Emma’s film was a mockumentary about high school called “Welcome to the Jungle”. heh heh heh Emma directed it, wrote it, and played a part in it as well. There were multiple characters, all who had interviews with the camera – in true mockumentary style. FUNNY. Emma played a girl who was so obsessed with Harry Potter that she actually bordered on insane. She sat crouched in the library, hunched over herself, murmuring up to the camera about Harry Potter and quidditch … She said, in one of the faux interviews in the movie, that her #1 choice for college was Hogwarts. This character was 19 years old, but she was still in high school. She was obviously a WEIRDO. Her boyfriend, in her mind, was “Harry”, a great man, and FAR superior to the stupid high school boys around her. She mentioned that she had to speak to her Chemistry teacher about getting some chemicals for her sorcery potions. And the last shot of the movie is of this character, already in line outside of Borders, saving her spot for when the next book comes out … uhm … months from now??? It was so damn funny. People were cheering, laughing … I was so proud of her.

Her music video was for “The World You Love”, by Jimmy Eat World. I thought it was fantastic. It had minimal plot: a girl is getting ready to leave her parents house to go to college, and she starts flashing back on all the good times she had in high school. The memory parts were in black and white, the present-day was in color. The memory scenes were beautifully filmed: really good camera work. We see a group of friends at a party, and we get images, flashes: of girls laughing together, people dancing, random shots of laughing faces, we see them jumping on a trampoline in the back yard … it was a collage. Brief flashes of people talking, laughing … they acknowledged the camera, so the whole thing ended up having a very documentary feel to it. Like: this was a real group of friends. And now high school is over. The music video ends back in the present day, with the girl getting into her car, obviously leaving for school (we see a Tulane sticker on the back window) … and as she drives away, you can tell that she’s thinking over all her memories, saying good-bye to them … It was just terrific. Terrific. One of the high school girls sitting behind us said, when it was over, “Oh my God … that was so sad.” Then, a second later, to her group of friends around her, “You guys … you guys … it’s almost over!” Meaning: her time in high school, their experience as high school friends …

So the video worked its magic, Emma! Great job.

Lydia and I were really glad we made the trek (the long long long long 30 minute trek) up to Westchester to see Emma’s movies. It was awesome.

Emma has her prom this Saturday, and her group of friends were looking to rent a limo. Emma said, “They wanted to get one of those Humvee limos, but I nixed that.” Good job, Emma. I hate those things.