WFF10: The Blog

 Photo of Documentary Shorts filmmakers from left, Liz Fulton, Bruce Stanbery, Ron Grunhut, WFF staff MC Martha Frankle, Casimir Nozkowski and Matt Morris.Small thumbnail photo of Matt Morris at Thursday’s filmmaker’s reception at New World Home Cooking in Saugerties.The Documentary Shorts at the Woodstock Community Center this morning glowed with eccentric hilarity. Real gems, each one…including the series of vignettes from The Unhappy Traveler: A New Yorker in India. These bits, by filmmaker Basia Winograd, seemed to be part of a larger future movie. They trace the unfortunate travel experiences of Brooklyn’s own Ramone, whose New Yorker moxie gets him nowhere in Kali-ma’s land of dashed expectations and the unsought enlightenments of India.New Yorkers stay in the lineup in “Bodega” by Casimir Nozkowski, as two round guys abounding in Bronx charm take us on a tour of food options available in the “poorest urban county in the country” — The Bronx. Bodega food includes “quarter water” and malt liquor, the Yellow Food Group and cakes that will last forever.”Dinosaurs and Rocketships” by Liz Fulton and Bruce Stanbery, track Boiceville’s sculptor Steve Heller as he welds discarded steel into fantasy creations. When the filmmakers encountered Heller’s yellow cadillac at a car show and devices in the interior had Buck Rogers references, they knew they had to check out the rest of his art, which include found materials steel dinosaurs 20 feet high (you can see one of these on Broadway in Kingston…no money to move it back to Boiceville now that the biennial art show is over) and rocket ships made of old car parts.One of the simple and direct charms of this series was “Pickin’ and Trimmin’” by Matt Morris, revealing the inner world of a Drexel, North Carolina barbershop. Most of the businesses have left town, and the town barber shop goes by its generic name with the same barber who’s been at the chair for 60 years. The magic is that musicians come from miles around for lively bluegrass jams in the equally generically named Back Room. Filmmaker Matt Morris’ vibrant portrayal of clean fun in good people is perfectly done. Though the Barber Shop might close because of tight finances, the crew in the back room never thought anyone would care to have a CD of their musical exploits, so Morris has generously provided DVDs of their story at cost so the shop might have something to sell to keep the doors open.I wrote about “Knock on Wood” in a previous post. I can only say that Ron Grunhut’s portrayal of a female percussionist’s  acceptance by the tribal elders in Africa is touching and beautifully done.