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ALL SOULS FILM FEST
"TUCSON EXPLORES SPIRITUAL THEMES THROUGH CINEMA"
BY ABRAHAM COOPER
Once a year, in the dusty, urban outpost of Tucson, both restless and retired descend upon the night to celebrate ancient ritual. In what has been dubbed The All Souls Procession, there is only one dialect abroad the multitude of cultural iconography: it is reverance for the dead. As the foot soldiers for the living apprehend 4th Avenue in a mystical march, one recieves the feeling that this parade is not as comparable to a funeral procession, as it is to a wedding celebration- marking the union between this realm and the ethereal. Hundreds upon thousands of gatherers walk together in an amorphous current of life on this sacred day, not to dismiss those passed on, but to help initiate their beloved into another stage of understanding.
Even if not all participants in this cultural spectacle perceive the All Souls Procession with such intense spiritual regard, what is certain is that the community has come together to collectively awaken their senses through costume, music, and dance. The essence of the procession seems to lie in the power of empathy among the vast spectrum of individual anthems coursing the parade. Approaching its sixteenth anniversary, the All Souls Procession has emerged a highly conscious phenomenon, captivating movie makers and photographers alike.
This year will mark the third annual All Souls Procession Film Festival to be held at The Screening Room December 9th & 10th, 2005. The festival’s purpose, as in years past, will allow those who documented the procession to screen their movies before the public. This exposé will be especially enjoyable for those who did not attend the parade and will once again serve to promote future processions, as well as allow the community to digest the chaotic symphony that it is.
This year’s program will attempt to look beyond its practical faculty as mere screening, and become recognized as a formal film festival. Hadji Banjovi, the festival’s director, with the aid of Tony Novelli, its primary coordinator, have combined their ideas to develop a deeper artistic sentiment within the festival by expanding its subject matter. Mr. Banjovi, himself an avid, local movie director, wishes to encourage more meddling in focal art pieces, rather than the typical video montage format, which so overwhelms the festival each year. Mr Banjovi does not presume to dictate what the movies should cover, though hopes the new arrangment of the festival will spark more unique cinema endeavors.
Many Mouths One Stomach, the organization responsible for putting the All Souls Procession together, continues to starve for financial support, while the costs needed to grow the procession increase. In lieu of this reality, the film festival’s new layout will incur a standard submission fee, typical of any professional film festival that will be used to advertise next year’s event. Perhaps most vital to the festival’s update will be the entry of submissions into several categories.
These categories will include general footage, taken directly of the procession; ritual/tradition material, inviting footage from festivals outside of Tucson; and footage specifically pertaining to an anually selected co-theme, which happens to be ancestry this year. Participants may choose to compete using any of the three categories as a basis, but must abide by a time limit. This breakdown, Mr. Banjovi hopes, will help address underlying themes in the All Souls Procession other than death, create more topical flexibility, and appeal to a wider audience of movie directors.
Mr. Banjovi’s decision to create these parameters for this year’s film festival occurred, in part, as a reaction to the nature of content so neglegently promoted at the majority of community film screenings in Tucson. “It’s a shame that we’re so easily programmed in this country to follow suit, and it’s a shame that so many filmmakers want to regurgitate the same Tarantino film with the handgun violence, and the 747-crashing-onto-the-Vegas-strip climax. There are a lot of people making beautiful, soulful movies in the world, and this festival is primarily about that,” states Mr. Banjovi.
While most of the public may feel perfectly content with the film festival as an act of sharing movies, Mr. Banjovi, as well as a steady fist full of other leading local artists, wish to raise the bar for cinema venues across the city. The All Souls Procession has encouraged the masses to venture inward by enacting those intimate messages outward through the very corporial act of festival. What Many Mouths One Stomach calls “Festal Culture” has definitely occurred here in the peculiar city of Tucson. Its diverse residents have shamelessly demonstrated harmony through festivity. The procession remains something ever visceral.
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