What I Liked in this years Oxford Film Fest

In addition to my daughter’s film, I especially liked “I Am A Man” and “Mississippi Queen.”  Also quite good were “Weedle’s Groove” and “D Tour”

By sheer coincidence, I ended up watching documentaries only, and saw eight of them.  I enjoyed everything, but found the five just mentioned particularly good.

“I’m A Man” was about the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike (the one Martin Luther King arrived to help, when he was killed).  It focused on the sanitation workers themselves, to great effect.

“Mississippi Queen” was a documentary memoir by a woman who grew up in a Baptist family in Clinton and realized in high school she was gay. Her mother later founded an “ex-gay” ministry– one focused on “converting” gays.  The movie was remarkable in its sensitivity to essentially every point of view of subject in the film, letting everyone say their piece and the audience draw its conclusions.  The distinct impression was that the filmmaker used this as a way of communicating with her parents.

“Wheedle’s Groove” was about the soul scene in Seatle, and was a fun look at a minor soul scene.  I was intrigued enough to buy the cd compilation that inspired the documentary.

“D Tour” was about a musician– the drummer in the band Rogue Wave– who, as his band was taking off, had to deal with the fact that he was on dialisis and awaiting a kidney transplant.  It was intensely and genuninely emotional, with some startling narrative turns.

Seeing eight documentaries means I saw only a small fraction of the whole festival– I missed the narrative, animation, and lots else.  But, as noted, I enjoyed what I saw.

From here on: Tell me what you liked in this year’s Oxford Film Festival.