LunaFest 2022: Emotionally uplifting

LunaFest 2022 • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, appropriate for ages 13 and older

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.16.22

This year’s LunaFest features a strong showing of short subjects by and about women.

 

Akanksha (Akanksha Cruczynski), who takes her dog-sitting job quite seriously,
ensures that the adorable — if overly pampered — Timothée never is out of her sight.

From its inception in 2001, LunaFest — the world’s first all-women traveling film festival — has given a national platform to a diverse and talented set of women filmmakers. From one small California screening that first year, the program has grown into an annual event that has showcased more than 170 filmmakers, and raised more than $6.5 million for local women’s causes.

Although this year’s offerings once again feature a wide variety of subjects and filmmaking styles, several are linked by an artistic response to the norm-shattering arrival of the Covid virus.

 

This topic is at the heart of Canadian filmmaker Andrea Dorfman’s How to Be at Home, a very cleverly animated “how-to” primer on coping with isolation during the first year’s soul-wrenching withdrawal from public contact. This 5-minute short — adapted from a poignant poem by Tanya Davis, which is narrated throughout — blends two- and three-dimensional animation to remind the viewer that we are united in our misery.

 

“If you’re really anxious, don’t worry,” the poem begins, “it’ll get worse.”

 

The subsequent suggestions range from wise to amusing, from “Hug a tree” to (my favorite): “Watch a movie, and watch all the credits … because you have time.”

 

Covid also influenced the “social experiment” at the heart of Emily McAllister’s Wearable Tracy, which profiles an adorably eccentric Bronx woman named Lee, who indulges in “design thinking.” She decided to wear a goofy “crown” made of pipe cleaners one day, as a means of celebrating her friend Tracy’s birthday.

 

Intrigued by the response this drew, Lee turned this gesture into a daily event with three firm rules: each day had to feature a new (and increasingly elaborate) “wearable Tracy” pipe cleaner crown; she had to wear it all day, at work and during her subway commute; and she had to ask the name of anybody who spoke to her about her unusual headwear.

 

As Lee explains, this got her past a life-long fear of judgment; it also broke down barriers, as it provoked — in a positive way — communication with strangers.

 

She did this every day, for more than a year … and then Covid hit. As for what Lee did next … well, that would be telling.