Taking a bit of a detour off of the festival circuit for a minute, though I guess that's somewhat untrue. More on that later. So as part of my film education I found myself in Cinema and Diversity, which is a lot less ethnically involved than one might think. During the first hour we spent time discussing the topic of diversity, and while the first few comments were that we were a diverse group, I broke in by simply saying no. We like to think of ourselves that way, but in reality we're more eager to be part of a crowd than to be an individual. This got us rolling into a far more interesting string of dialogue, and the class became so much more than it could've been.
So then the conversation settles, and we head straight into some viewing, starting with excerpts from
"Freaks" of 1932. It is a truly sickening film, in about every aspect possible. The best I could say is that the director challenged convention in a time when it could end your career, and pretty much did. No intention to see the rest of it. And then we watched the entirety of
"Gummo", which as it turns out premiered at Telluride in 1997. Suffice it to say that the instructors weren't intent on going soft on us out of the gate. It really separates us pretty strongly by opening with such a polarizing film.
