Given that the artwork of this years festival is more personal to Allan’s taste, I figured my pick should follow suit to officially kick Allan Fish OFF 2019! ‘Kick’ seems an apt word, what with the subject matter of my pick for this year. You’ll recall that in years past I’ve used my pick not only to highlight works that I personally love, but that also say something about how I became, and remained, friends with Allan over the several years that I knew him. In 2017 it was Final Cut Ladies and Gentlemen, a kaleidoscopic film whose creation was entirely from old, classic film clips collaged together to form an entirely new narrative. Its purpose in selection obvious; Allan was a man of few peers in his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, watch the film rush past you I compared to conversing with Allan about film, his brain making seamless connections across genre, era, region, and everything in between. While last year, in selecting the Italian comedy classic The Icicle Thief, I moved more towards narrative cinema. But again, a work very much on the nature of watching and interacting with movies. It appeared that in both instances I was sticking to the object that tied Allan and I in the first place: watching movies obsessively.
But, this year I thought differently. (more…)