Review of the FANTASPOA 2017 Festival in Porto Alegre (Brazil)

Continuing to run the limited circuit of Fantastic Film Festival in South America, JoRafCinema was present for the second week of the FANTASPOA that took place from May 19th to June 4th 2017 in the coastal city of Porto Alegre, capital of the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

We had a great time there, have seen and reviewed 22 movies, participated to some events and discovered the city and its surroundings. We will share all of that with you in this Article.
We had listed this Festival at the end of our Article celebrating the four years of JoRafCinema and were glad we could already participate this year. We had little time to prepare because the program was released a couple of weeks before the festival started.
Meanwhile we could enjoy the energetic trailer below that is composed of extracts of films presented over the years.

The City 
Porto Alegre is relatively modest in size and can suffer bad weather (rain) in the months of May-June when the Festival takes place. However it offers everything needed to host a good Film Festival: two venues in the City center, many hotels in the area, pedestrian streets and restaurants.
I was staying at the Hotel Everest which had the advantages of being located in the City center (with Almacens, pharmacies and restaurants nearby) on top of the hill between the two venues, less that ten minutes walking for each of them, and offering a large choice of affordable rooms. Be careful however to get a room away from the main street noisy day and night. Breakfast was included in the rate but can become repetitive after a few days.

City Hall (left) and Santuário Nossa Senhora Mãe de Deus located south of the city (right).

Finding places to eat, drink and go out is always part of the Film Festival experience, so here are some recommendations:

• The Cafe de Duque right in front of the hotel was an excellent place for Cappuccino, brownies or other delicacies. Perfect to spend a couple of rainy hours while writing reviews.
• For lunch you can have the choice between the cheap and healthy vegetarian buffet at Nova Vida Restaurante Natural, the delicious Japanese Sayuri at the public market for sushi, make and the best-looking Caipirinha I have ever seen, or the typical Churrascaria (all-you-can-eat buffet and meat on skewers) Estrela do Porto. Bring a large appetite for that one.

 

• For a quick break try the Pao de queijo at the kiosk near the Santander Cultural venue, quiches, empanadas and espresso at the Esquina Famosa cafe near City Hall, or cheap but excellent sweet and salty Italian piadinas (sort of filled crepes) at Divina Piadina (closes at 9 p.m.). The Empanadas at Krusburger near the Capitolio venue are OK when you have no other choice late at night.
• The best places I explored for a good dinner were Atelier de massas with its large choice of pasta dishes (Italian recipes adapted to Brazialian taste) and a good buffet that I didn't have the opportunity to sample, and Boteco Natalicio offering a large choice of excellent small dishes and beer refills: Pork ribs in honey, pastel de camarones... Open until 1 a.m.
• Finally I could discover two evening locations in which the Festival was holding events: Mondo Cane a nice bar with Star Wars and geek deco and REEF.E, an unpretentious place for live music. The street João Alfredo in which they are located contains many other bars and is pretty active at night..

Organization and venues 
As already mentioned, I could criticize that the program is not announced earlier, this makes it difficult to organize one's stay as function of the movie and events. But that's not a big deal.
I was disappointed that movies were usually shown only with Portuguese sub-titles, which made it impossible for me to enjoy movies with an original language I do not understand. But I have to temperate this comment by pointing out that on one occasion when I mentioned it (before the Hungarian Hurok), the Festival team checked with the me available sub-titles before the movie and could leave the English ones on! Very nice of them.
My last minor negative remark would be that the Festival doesn't offer any accreditation and in particular none for the press. A consequence is that you have to queue to buy your tickets everyday but this goes quick and no movie was ever sold out by the time I got my ticket. This surprised me for a 13-year old Festival but once there, I realized that this is because it remained very modest and friendly, mainly targeted at a local audience, that the events are open to the public and that it is very easy to meet and greet the invited film cast and crews.

Upon arriving at the Festival I was warmly welcomed by the Festival director João Fleck whose motivation (together with co-director Nicolas Tonsho) one can only admire: you should see them running around, welcoming guests, translating, introducing movies, posing for photos, hosting discussions... They seem to sleep only three hours a night during the two weeks of the Festival!
The projections take place in two venues (see pictures below):

• The cinema Capitolio, a charming old building with a comfortable projection room inside
• A small cozy room inside the former bank vault of the now Santander Cultural Center, which also hosted Workshops.

The two venues of FANTASPOA: the old Capitolio (top) and the bank vault in the Santander Cultural Center (bottom).

There was a good mood around the Festival, tons of movies to discover, a selection of Workshops on directing, storyboarding, production and animation by the legend Bill Plympton (see more on him later) that I unfortunately missed because of a poor planning on my side. And active cultural days were complemented by relaxing evening/night activities like Karaoke, a triple concert were you could cross guests like the Australian Richard Stanley (director of the 1990 Hardware), and an interesting panel of female directors discussing their place in Cinema (see the dedicated section at the end of this Article).
The movies were scheduled so that you could rush from one cinema to the other between two of them, except if you stayed longer for a discussion with a director, and there were many! Quite a feat for such a modest Festival.
And each movie was introduced by a short version of the Festival trailer and a clip (some of them hilarious) by famous American directors/actors. See the good ones by David Linklater (Boyhood) and Danny Trejo (Machete). 

Best movies 
I managed to watch 22 movies in only six days, their review easily found on JoRafCinema using the search word FANTASPOA2017. Most of them were recent (from 2016/2017) except some presented in homage to invited directors, like:

• Katt Shea's disturbing 1992 Poison Ivy with Drew Barrymore and Tom Skerritt, that I had surprisingly never seen but that I loved. In comparison I didn't like her first movie Stripped to Kill from only five years earlier.
• Richard Stanley's 1990 Hardware which I always wrongly thought to be a Terminator copycat, and that disappointed me.
• The eternally funny 1997 I Married a Strange Person!, of which the famous Bill Plympton drew every single celluloid.

 And among the new releases I can highly recommend:

• Dave made a Maze, extremely original and creative, by the American Bill Watterson with whom I have had the chance to share some discussions
• Revengeance, the delightful new cartoon by Bill Plympton now finding more freedom in drawing stories from others. After the projection the artist took the time to draw an autograph on a postcard for every single person who simply queued and asked for it!

I also liked:

• Camera Obscura in spite of its classic story
• The Hungarian Hurok about a timeloop
• The Master Cleanse, with a fresh role for Johnny Galecky (Leonard from The Big Bang Theory TV-series)
• Beyond the Gates and its 80's spirit
• The sympathetic Don't Kill it with Dolph Lundgren

The Amazing Bill Plympton drew for me a character from his latest movie Revengeance.

Bill Watteron helped us in decrypting his debut movie Dave made a Maze.

During the Closing ceremony the Festival delivered a large amount of awards (original Portuguese / English translation), of which I can comment only on the ones in the International Competition:

• Best Film: Game of Death, by Sebastien Landry and Laurence “Baz” Morais. I skipped it because I was not excited by the topic nor the trailer but then I heard people praise it.
• Best Director: Alice Lowe, for Prevenge. I didn't particularly like it.
• Best Actress: Amanda Fuller, for Fashionista. I found her good but not exceptionally.
• Best Actor: Tim Haars, for Ron Goossens, Low Budget Stuntman. Unfortunately I couldn't see this Dutch comedy shown only with Portuguese sub-titles.
• Best Screenplay: Robert Bolesto, for The Lure. Seen at the NIFFF2016, nice to watch but that's all for me.
• Best Art Direction: Jeff White, for Dave Made a Maze. Definitely.
• Best Special Effects: The Void. The effects were OK, but not as good as the many posters promised. A big disappointment for me (see my review).
• Honorable mention for Best Bloodbath: Tonight She Comes, by Matt Stuertz. Yeah, a bloodbath and nothing else...
• Honorable mention for Best Artistic Contribution: Without Name, by Lorcan Finnegan. I agree that the movie was Arty.
• Honorable mention for Humanist Contribution: Granny's Dancing on the Table, by Hanna Sköld. It was not shown on the second week but after hearing the director (see last section below) I was curious.
• Audience Award of Best Feature Film: Dave Made a Maze, by Bill Watterson. Totally agree.

Panel on women in Cinema
My Festival started in fact not by a movie but by a panel that was organized in the nicely decorated bar Mondo Cane under the topic of Women in Cinema, between the following contributors:

• Katt Shea, American director of Stripped to Kill and Poison Ivy
• Annick Mahnert, Swiss producer of American movies and of the recent Laotian Dearest Sister (not seen at FANTASPOA but at the FEFF2017)
• Laura Casabe, Argentinian director of La Valija de Benavidez
• Hanna Sköld, Swedish director of Granny's Dancing on the Table
• Taísa Ennes Marques, Brazilian director of the short movie The Neon God

The panel discussing women in Cinema.

Here are some remarks I heard being made by the female directors/producers during the discussion:

• To the question "why did you chose Genre" most of them quickly answer that Genre rather chose them. I guess most male directors would say the same, but that's an interesting starting point.
• Some believe they don't do anything different than men. When they write their own screenplays they are just authors that happen to be women
• Others said that an improvement would be to call female directors simply directors
• Tips for becoming a successful female director: 1) project your point of view in the movie, 2) keep on creating opportunities (to combat discrimination), 3) be a strong voice in control (which is what is required for the job), 4) be persistent, keep on re-writing. Again I believe that is true for anybody wishing to succeed at a creative post in Cinema
• There seem to be a greater discrimination against women directing in the USA. Katt Shea's theory is that it is hard for male actors to be directed by a woman.
• In Europe movies are publicly funded and jobs attributed by committees who don't care about sex
• In Sweden the ratio men/women in directing is 50/50 in average (including Documentaries..) but in fiction features it is more 80/20. Hanna Sköld's explanation is that less women propose project of the same quality because they don't dare applying by fear of rejection
• In Asia like Laos it is definitely more difficult for a woman to find a place in the Cinema industry
• In Argentinian Cinema there is no discrimination but in Television yes.
• The is no particular discrimination in Genre Cinema. Almost the contrary because it may seem more interesting to have a female director that brings a different sensitivity
• Do women stay in independent films because they have more freedom?
• Quite off-topic, a question from the Audience was "Where do you meet people to make movies, peers?" The unanimous answer was: Festivals, which led to the listing of a few in South America which I didn't know of: Ventana Sur end of November in Buenos Aires, Morbido Filmfest end of October in Mexico City, the Montevideo World Film Festival in July and the Zinema Zombie Fest end of November in Bogota, Columbia. 

I found that the panel discussion provided some interesting pieces of information, but failed to converge on a common point of view between the several female participants, and a clear conclusion. This is especially marked in the contradiction between the statement that female directors should be considered like male ones, and the one that women bring a different sensitivity to the Genre. The only common opinion is obviously that discrimination is bad.

Conclusion
After the Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre Festival, FANTASPOA is the second I have visited in South America and I am pleased to have found already two venues to satisfy my craving for Genre Cinema, in spite of a scarcer offer on that continent than in Europe.
Over the next months/years I will continue to explore other Festivals but it is good to know there are already two I can count on.