During its first year with a full slate of animated entries, the seventh annual Elgin Short Film Festival on Saturday gave its top prize to a Chicago-made comedy about speed dating. But the audience’s favorite was a movie from Spain that has both comic and tragic tones as it tells about a washed-up actor and a child who likes cowboys.
When the film festival committee decided last year to invite animated entries, only one animated film was received. But this year, Co-Chair Joe Vassallo said, seven animated films were entered, along with about 23 live-action ones.
They came from as far as China, France, Spain, Canada and New Zealand. And the entry from Seville, Spain ended up not only winning the second-place trophy as evaluated by a panel of judges, but it also won the People’s Choice Award, based on votes by each of the several hundred people in the audience at Hemmens Cultural Center.
Called’ “Cowboys,” the Spanish film is about a washed-up, divorced, alcoholic English actor who reluctantly agrees to take a job escorting a 5-year-old boy to a costume contest at a seaside carnival in Spain. Comical hijinks there climax with a surprise twist as the actor learns why the little boy wanted him to be his escort.
But the judges gave their top award to a film made in Chicago through DePaul University’s Project Bluelight, named “Speed Dating.” Director Meghann Artes said it was inspired by how she tried to find a mate via speed dating before she married her husband. Rather than finding Mr. Right, the movie’s sweet but plain heroine ends up confronting a hilariously undesirable cavalcade of “loser” men, ranging from one who looks like an insane serial killer to guys who obviously care only about sports or booze. She finally meets a man with a beard — a very unusual beard.
Seeing the big crowd at Hemmens “reminds me of how much fun we had making this movie,” Artes told the audience. “It’s a wonderful festival. I’m going to come back.”
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“Cowboys” is told mostly in Spanish with English subtitles, and the movie awarded the third-place prize by the judges also was made in Spanish with subtitles.
Copying the style of a 1961 Mexican horror movie, “Una Mujer Sin Preico 1961” (“A Woman Without Price 1961”) from director Alec Rocha tells the story of a scientist who recreates his dead wife in robot form, but doesn’t quite get it right.
The festival again was emceed by Chicago comedian Mike Toomey and began with a series of red-carpet Hollywood-style arrivals.