The Obsessive Viewer

Last night was Indy Film Fest’s Awards Night. The film shown was Noah Baumbach’s latest Mistress America (opening August 14th). I’ll have a review of the movie posted tomorrow. For now, I just want to share my quick thoughts on Awards Night at the 2015 Indy Film Fest. Of course, you can find all of ObsessiveViewer.com’s coverage of the Indy Film Fest right here. 

Mistress America played to another packed crowd in The Toby theater in the IMA. Introduced by Indy Film Fest executive director Craig Mince, the movie played for a very vocally amused audience. Much like the Opening Night festivities moviegoers were instructed to head upstairs following the movie for the After Party featuring food once again prepared by Duos.

As for my personal experience at Awards Night, I once again went alone. I was happy to bump into filmmaker Kurt Nettleton from Billy and Brandon Watch Movies and Intruder (which was shown at our first Shocktober in Irvington event last year). He has a short documentary that’s being shown at Indy Film Fest this year as part of their Portrait of an Artist shorts programs. Here’s the description for his film Your Catfish Friend: Philip Campbell: “Artist Philip Campbell spent more than a year of his life creating a hand carved, wall sized, wooden piece depicting ‘Your Catfish Friend’. It reflects far more than just that year.” The “Portrait of an Artist” shorts screen tonight at 7:45 in the DeBoest Theater in the IMA and on Wednesday in the DeBoest at 11:00am. You can find more of Kurt’s work (including Your Catfish Friend: Philip Campbell) on his vimeo page.

I also ran into Takisha, the woman I met at the opening night after party on Thursday. She told me she had been at the IMA all day yesterday for Film Fest. She was happy to have gotten the chance to bring her kids to the Cereal Cinema screening of Shaun the Sheep yesterday morning. Cereal Cinema is also one of Indy Film Fest’s many year-round events. More information on the “family-friendly films with a kid-friendly cereal buffet” can be found here. Takisha also took her kids to the Film Fest’s Stop-Motion Animation Workshop that was led by members of Ball State University’s animation faculty.

After the attendees got their fill of the wonderful food from Duos and had a couple drinks from the bar, the awards were announced. In addition to its Grand Jury award, the Film Fest also announced Best Feature and Best Short winners for each of its three categories: American Spectrum, World Cinema, and Matter of Fact (documentaries).

I personally really want to see Night Owls (which, as you can see above, won Best Feature in the American Spectrum category). However, I can’t make tomorrow’s showing. So i may have to see if someone will cover the last hour of my shift on Wednesday so I can make the 4:00pm screening. Wish me luck.