At Squeaky Wheel, a dark and dingy little building tucked inside the heart of Buffalo, the wine and beer are served in styrofoam cups for $2 donations. The metallic chairs are placed uncomfortably close to one another and a capacity crowd mutters political jargon.
It's an ideal setting for independent film screenings.
The Squeaky Wheel, a likely haven for the goatee-clad artistic type, debuted the first of a four-part series of the "Visions and Decisions" film festival Wednesday night. The series continues through Saturday.
The festival showcases several local and national political documentaries that are tied to this year's presidential election.
Although the "Visions and Decisions" program features a non-partisan cover with both Kerry and Bush, the film selection seemed to be slanted to one side of the political forum.
The life-size cut out of Ralph Nader next to the screen gave viewers a good idea of which side of the political debate the filmmakers find themselves.
Over a dozen films ranging from one to 20 minutes in length are shown. Each gives some form of political commentary.
Stephan Komp sets an apocalyptic tone in "Twenty Years Later" by implanting President Bush's face against a grainy black and white screen while manipulating his lips to speak a despotic passage from Orwell's "1984."
Marc Moscato and Michelle Matthew's flick, "If Ralph Nader Was President," lightens the mood with a satirical look at a world in which children read books instead of watching TV, and the right to marry is extended to people and their pets. It's nice to know bestiality is supported on the Nader/Camejo ticket.
In "Colors of Terror," Brian Milbrand and Meg Knowles, of UB's media study department, criticize the terror alert status codes by exhibiting actors that react to green, yellow, orange and red lights. In the background ran a transcript of former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer awkwardly explaining the pertinence of the color-coded system.
Jae LeBlanc's "I Say a Little Prayer" was by far the most entertaining and most risqu?(c) film. An actor throws himself into a crowd of Bible-toting Republican protesters on a Buffalo street corner. Dressed as the Messiah, the actor mockingly preaches peace and the scripture, offending everyone present, driving them to ridicule his counter-protest.
The most unique, the most challenging and the most mind-numbingly awkward film was Lenka Clayton's "Qaeda, Quality, Question, Quickly, Quiet." Clayton had taken on the strange and awesome task of organizing every single word President Bush said in his 2002 State of the Union Address into alphabetical order.
She even included "the" in her alphabetized list.
The first minute was entertaining and eye-opening, as the viewer had a mathematically precise perspective of how Bush conveys his priorities. It was bit disturbing to take note of how many times Bush says the word "terrorist" compared to "domestic." Nineteen minutes later though, at the letter "Z," the message was answered by a packed theatre of "zzz's" as the monotonously over-drawn flick finally pulled down the curtain on the first installment of the "Visions and Decisions" film festival.
Given the amateurish nature of many of the filmmakers, it wouldn't be fair to measure their documentaries against those made by the likes of Errol Morris or even Michael Moore. However, some of the documentaries fit the bill as a college-made, over-the-top "art" film. Some of them tried too hard and broke one of the cardinal rules in filmmaking - that the film must be interesting before anything else.
"Visions and Decisions" will be heading back to the Squeaky Wheel Friday at 8 p.m. featuring selections of Dee Dee Hallock's "Shocking and Awful" series. Admission price for the screening is $6.
