Cleveland International Film Festival 33

Let's all go to the lobby!

The Cleveland International Film Festival is easily one of my favorite events of the year. This year, they’ve linked to a lot of movie trailers at youtube and elsewhere around the web. It’s kind of a pain to watch the trailers and return to the list of movies between each one. I made a youtube playlist which you can see below. In addition to collecting them all together,I included a few which weren’t listed on the CIFF website. It has 114 videos.  There’s a separate playlist of videos that aren’t trailers but still relate to a movie in the festival. The third playlist contains a few trailers that I could’t find on youtube but were on sites that permitted me to embed them here. Finally, I just threw in a few links to individual trailers when all other efforts to add them to the collection failed.  Enjoy.

For no good reason, over the years I’ve decided that going to the Film Festival should mean eating out near the Film Festival. In past years I’ve eaten at Century and after that closed then at Muse. I haven’t decided were I’ll eat this year. Hopefully, I’ll have the chance to catch at least three movies so I’ll need to think of three places to eat. Tower City isn’t   in what I’d call a target rich environment from a culinary perspective. There are a few new (to me) places that I’m considering. Freddie’s is supposed to have great Polish boys. There’s Tucky’s, a new hot dog place. I’m interested based on their web site but I’ve never heard or read anything about them. Metropolitan has been around for a little while but they have a new, well respected chef. I’ve heard good things about La Strada although much of the praise is about the atmosphere. Or, instead of trying to think of some place new,  maybe it’s time to return to somewhere I’ve been but written off? Someplace that might have been good but on my one or two visits didn’t really wow me? Maybe Johnny’s? There are some new shops hoping to open in Tower City before the festival. One is an olive oil store and there’s also a soup place. I’ve heard good things about the soup place at a previous location but I’m still not excited by it.

There aren’t very many movies with a big food angle. Neither are there very many movies with a local angle. There is one that combines both of these themes. Poly Cultures: Food Where We Live examines issues of the local food movement and highlights some efforts in Northeastern Ohio. HomeGrown also examines the local food movement in other communities. I don’t think I’ll be seeing either of these movies. It seems like they’ve been produced by people who accept that locavorism is a meaningful step towards long term sustainability. This argument seems pretty flimsy and I can’t believe the movies will be very interesting to me if they don’t at least examine a  contrary perspective.

In addition to these two documentaries, there are two narrative movies: Chef’s Special and Apron Strings. I don’t know very much about them but they appear to be set in kitchens for substantial portions of the movie and sometimes that’s almost enough to make a movie worthwhile.

Besides the movies that involve food there are well over one hundred other movies of all shapes and sizes: comedies, documentaries, thrillers… Something for everyone. The first trailer that caught my eye was for Tokyo! I find the complexity of big cities endlessly fascinating. The movie is composed from three smaller selections. You may be familiar with Michel Gondry, director of the middle piece, from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Or from this:Michel Gondry Solves a Rubik’s Cube with his Feet. I hope I’ll get a chance to make it through a good chunk of the rest of the trailers and I may update this post as I find other interesting movies.

Here’s the big playlist of trailers (these may be easier to navigate if you click through to youtube):

[youtubeplaylist 48A6152C9A2B7576]

Here’s a small playlist of non-trailer material:

[youtubeplaylist 5E9F1AAE567614DD]

Here are another half dozen other trailers collected into one non-youtube playlist.

And one, two, three, four more individual trailers.