Arte Six/FILM: B'klyn Indie Film Fest June 3, 2004

Arte Six listing/FILM/Festivals/Brooklyn
Brooklyn International Film Festival
June 4-June 13

BIFF is a festival for and by independent filmmakers.

BIFF's mission is to discover, expose, and promote independent filmmakers while drawing worldwide attention to venues and local artists in Brooklyn. Yo!

Highlights: Features

?Headrush?: Black comedy/crime caper about two stoners, Charlie and T-Bag, who hope to solve all their problems by working for notorious underworld criminal, The Uncle.

The boys hear through their dealer Blowback that The Uncle is looking for new drug mules, so Charlie conceives an elaborate scam to smuggle a consignment of cocaine back from Amsterdam. As they lay their plans, each one egging the other on, each one refusing to admit to any fear, a series of coincidences start unraveling their carefully laid plans. Director: Shimmy Marcus

?Outpatient?: A stylish psychological thriller of duplicity and the descent into madness.

When a soft-spoken young writer, inadvertently committed to an asylum for years due to a systems glitch, is released into the ?real? world, his writing begins to blur the boundaries of reality and paranoid hallucination and his therapist, Dr. Patricia Farrow begins to suspect she has inadvertently unleashed a ruthless murderer. Director: Alec Carlin

Highlights: Short films

"Underground": A political thriller set in the subway of an anonymous city. A woman riding the subway is being followed.

What lies ahead is not what you expect and will leave you thinking. ?Underground?...what are you afraid of? Directors: Aimee Lagos and Kristin Dehnert

?Mother?s Crossing/Passag?res Clandestines?: The film tells the story of an Iranian woman and her two daughters on the run from her violent husband.

A smuggler takes them on a dangerous journey trough the marshlands that separate Turkey from Greece. At four o?clock in the morning Rojanne (11) - who cannot walk - is literally carried across the European border on the back of the smuggler.

Smugglers are invariably labeled as criminals, who make desperate refugees the victims of their greed and operate in vast networks. The truth is different. A fair number of smuggling operations are relatively small, safe and good value for money. "The smuggler did not push me on this dangerous journey," says Sima, the mother. "I took the decision alone, in my heart." Director: Lode Desmet

Highlights: Experimental

?We Have Decided Not to Die?: Three Rituals. Three figures. Three modern day journeys of transcendence.

?We Have Decided Not to Die? is about a mental state where logic drops away and anything is possible.

It is an audio visual narrative that uses sound, stunts and visual effects to create a world where characters are separated from logic, space and time.

The film tells the story of three characters' modern day journeys of transcendence; journeys into a place where death is no longer inevitable. Director: Daniel Askill

?Love & Suicide?: A filmmaker is asked by a stranger to document his suicide. Part documentary, part fiction, and refusing to be tied to genres, the film begins as a work of invention and ends in the belly of the real.

The story centers on Richard, an eccentric, intelligent, but ultimately fatalistic 30-year-old who has decided to end his life. Searching for a perfect ending, he recruits a filmmaker to record his final minutes. Director: Rene Gabri

Highlights: Animation

?The Erl-King/Der Erlkoenig?: An animated film adapted freely from the poem "The Erl-King" by Goethe. Director: Hannes Rall

?Delivery?: Abuse leads to rage as two friends compete for a delivered package. Was the result of this conflict worth the prize found within the box?
Director: Patrick Smith

Find it: Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, New York
Get info: (718) 486-8181

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