With Cinequest once again in full swing, the familial nature of the entire festival necessitates another report from the trenches.
As the artist lounge opened for business on opening night, I was reminded of just how much family is really involved here. Nathan Louie, who is now sadly no longer with us, was once again dearly missed. Nathan was the guy decked out in traditional Chinese attire that welcomed everyone in front of the California Theatre, for what seemed like decades.
Also gone was Joe Noonan, who often sat with us, in the balcony every opening night for several years. Noonan passed away in 2022, but his unabashed enthusiasm for all things San Jose was dearly missed.
Speaking of the lounge, as soon as I waltzed into the Continental Bar, there was Bob Meyer sitting in the far booth, just like every Cinequest VIP lounge for the last 20 years. Now in his nineties, Bob is the “spirit wrangler,” for Cinequest, the one who connects the VIP lounge to the liquor distributors of the landscape. You can’t enter the lounge at opening time, every day, without seeing Bob commandeering the far booth. He’s like Norm from Cheers.
On opening night, Athenna Crosby, one of the locals that interviews people on the red carpet, was back this year. The only difference? Over the last year, she was crowned Miss World America and crisscrossed the globe for photo shoots and philanthropic endeavors. Inside the California Theatre, every dude with a camera scrambled to sneak photos. It was a beautiful mess.
Oh yeah, there were films too.
Opening night was a matrix of past, present and future. Thanks to the AI Filmmaking Hackathon from MIT, a series of two-minute shorts screened ahead of the main film. Each short was augmented by various AI-related techniques, environments or algorithms. Crosby then interviewed the student filmmakers on stage, all of whom talked about how AI expanded their filmmaking process, whether it was editing, effects, sound or even postproduction. One of them described AI as “the best collaborative communal hallucination” he ever experienced.
The opening night main film was The Luckiest Man in America, inspired by one man’s appearance on the ’80s game show Press Your Luck. It was everything America is all about: the little guy just trying to beat the system and the crooked CEO who won’t let anyone else get rich unless he gets a piece.
As always, variety ruled. From India, In the Name of Fire was a dark, haunting, atmospheric story filled with witchery, caste struggles and child sacrifice. The next night, A Little Fellow: The Legacy of A.P. Giannini sold out Hammer Theatre and brought tears to several eyeballs.
Set in Mombasa, Kenya, The Dog was a violent noir thriller about a man who falls for a prostitute and then tumbles into the city’s drug-addled underbelly.
On a more uplifting note, Saints and Warriors beautifully portrayed a First Nations basketball team on the island of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia. I wanted to go there.
The shorts program by students on Saturday was equally inspiring. Plenty of future filmmakers are out there.
Speaking of family, it was great to see 3Below Theaters back in the Cinequest schedule. Knowing the history of that building, when it was Camera 3 for years, made me smile. The opening several days felt closer to the heyday of Cinequest, that is, when everything was in the neighborhood, straight down to grabbing a slice from Pizza a Go Go, I mean, Pizza My Heart, while making a mad dash from one theater to the next.
The way Cinequest unfolded—and continues to unfold this week, in conjunction with everything else in the neighborhood—was, and is, inspiring. At presstime, the Nvidia conference was just starting to explode with 25,000 people. Many downtown San Jose folks who’d apparently never seen a real urban city with a real convention couldn’t understand why the streets were closed off several days in advance, as Nvidia began its neighborhood takeover.
Meanwhile, as you read this, Cinequest is not finished by a long shot. This weekend, you can still choose from a variety of stuff. The original Nosferatu, more student shorts, or Gillian Anderson in person. Don’t hold back.
