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South Elgin High School students win top honors at Teen Film Festival

Congratulations to South Elgin High School students Jeevan Acharya and Kevin Czasca for winning the Best Overall Film Award at the 11th annual Teen Film Festival, sponsored by the Arlington Heights Memorial Library on Friday, Aug. 11.

The pair won the coveted award for their smart and energetically performed political slap-down, “Epic Rap Battles of History: Woodrow Wilson Vs Theodore Roosevelt.”

Other winners:

<b>Best Comedy:</b> “5 Steps to Getting Your Teacher to Like You” - Keller Junior High School students Allison Fiondro, Andi Vanden Boom

<b>Best Music Video/Experimental:</b> “wanderlust” - Kathleen Oku, Buffalo Grove High School

<b>Best Drama or Documentary:</b> “A Soldier's Journey Home” - Andrew Wisniewski, John Hersey High School

<b>Best Horror Film:</b> “E.D.” - David Petratos, MacArthur Junior High School

<b>Best Animated Film:</b> “Night Life in the Woods” - Valerie Depa, Prospect High School

Contest judges included stand-up comedian and actress Tamara Chambers, former Teen Film Fest winner Robert Kraybill and Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire.

Robert Pattinson stars in "Good Time," directed by siblings Josh and Benny Safdie. Courtesy of A24 Films

Filmmaker bros exude 'Good Time' chaos

New York City born-and-raised siblings Josh and Benny Safdie codirected the new comic crime film “Good Time,” opening this weekend. The production notes call it “a psychotic symphony of propulsive intensity crafted by two of the most exciting young directors working today.”

I hit the two “most exciting young directors working today” with four questions during their recent visit to Chicago. Here are the short and heavily edited highlights of our chat.

<b>Q.</b> People who work with you say you guys thrive in chaos. Are they accurate?

<b>Josh.</b> The idea is to be inundated with enthusiasm. Most people see chaos. We see a world of enthusiasm. The point of making a movie, or making anything, even making love, is to get into the pocket of the eye of the storm, and you can see the clarity there. That's what we do.

<b>Benny.</b> I don't look at it like we actually create chaos. But it looks like we are. We're creating an energy, a world and a mindset that hopefully translates to everybody on the set, from the actors down to the people doing the smallest jobs, everybody's involved. It breeds this interesting energy. You could call it chaos. I'll call it interesting energy.

<b>Q.</b> You seem to have a Vulcan mind-meld thing going on with cinematographer Sean Price Williams. Why are you guys so simpatico?

<b>Josh.</b> He understands the poetry of the moment. We were all very in sync on this film.

<b>Benny.</b> And he would question us about every decision we made on the set. Was this to be a dolly? A Stedi-cam? A tripod? He wanted to get all of our reasoning. Nothing was arbitrary.

<b>Q.</b> I understand you originally had Eric Roberts in the cast. What happened to him?

<b>Josh.</b> In the bail bondsman scene, we originally shot that scene with Eric Roberts the actor. He played the bail bondsman. We shot it in a real bail bondsman office. The artifice of having an actor who you know is not a real bail bondsman was really pulling it down.

So we recast it with the actual bail bondsman. His wife is his partner, sitting at the desk dealing with Jennifer (Jason Leigh). We inundated the scene with so much nuance in the relationships. All of that nuance is just masking a piece of exposition.

<b>Q.</b> Speaking of exposition, most movies are really clumsy when it comes to implementing that. But not your movie. What's the secret?

<b>Josh.</b> That's a great question. I absolutely abhor exposition. It's not how the human brain deduces information. Sometimes (in the bail bondsmen's office) everyone's talking over each other. It makes the exposition just something you find out while you're watching something else interesting.

I think that when audience members can own the fact that they're deducing information, it's a richer experience. I think audiences are way smarter than people give them credit to be.

<i> Dann Gire's column Dann in Reel Life appears on Fridays in Time out! Follow him on Twitter at @DannGireDHfilm.</i>

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