Space Oddity (David Bowie) - Review

---

"Ashes to ashes and funk to funky

We know Major Tom's a junkie

Strung out in heaven's high

Hitting an all-time low..."

Sang David Bowie in 1980 to remember that fantastic character who, in 1969, conquered everyone, taking people with him into space and poetry.

But what happens to the heroes of a song that is still so rightly imprinted in the collective memory?

Marco Committeri, Italian guitarist and composer, gives us his version of the story by directing Space Oddity (David Bowie), a musical parody where Major Tom, now sadly reduced to a wheelchair, lives in complete solitude in a NASA hospital, lost in his memories, light years away from what he was, waiting for a new fantastic adventure  that life unfortunately cannot give him.

Written by Alessandro Orlandi - also Major Tom in the video - the film is a nice tribute to the musical genius of Bowie, to the great director George Melies and to all the old people who remain anchored to their dreams.

Planet Earth is  still blue... and all we can do is smiling and singing.

When a girl enters a house, she brings her youth...and a bit of chaos.

Elsa (Sarah Moliski), a free-spirited and independent teenager, is forced to move to her step-relatives.

From the beginning, she will understand that the house in which she will have to live has not only strict rules but also particular tenants.

The severe manipulator Marcia Garth (a very good Caroline Winterson) and her two sons, Tab (James Nester), a pianist who frantically chases the dream of making it as an artist and Emery (Avery Ryder Turner), a craftsman expert in restoring furniture and primary source of income for the family; two young adults sadly orchestrated like puppets by the  arrogance of their mother.

Elsa, with  her freshness and the typical rebellion of her almost 18 years, will be a source of inspiration and desire for the two brothers  that  probably for the first time  will feel the necessity to escape from the house where they live like recluses.

Out of State-A Gothic Romance, well directed by Victoria Bugbee and co-written with her distant cousin Charles Bugbee, is a dramatic comedy but also a fascinating modern fairy tale where the freedom of the young people is threatened by the tyrannical landlady, overprotective and control freak. 

An hymn to independence, where rationality and feelings fight each other... but who will really win the battle?

Never disturb a girl while she's exercising!

The talented Louise Mason literally makes everything - director, cinematographer, costume designer, editor,  actress - and give us a little funny prequel of her short film “Sewing a Nightmare” .

Mean Call is in fact a three-minute peek into the life of Tiffany,  the naive  tailor.

Surrounding by her colorful forniture,  the young woman is trying to do some training when she receives a strange phone call…

 What initially appears like a normal misunderstanding starts to increase the tension.

Who's on the phone? And what does he/she wants  from Tiffany?

A super short film that succeeds in turning on anxiety and mystery!

A new city, a new life.

A challenge not to be underestimated the one that Vivian Tsang tells us about in her short documentary The New Immigrants- Hong Kongers.

Make a life change  is perhaps one of  the most difficult thing a human being can  face, but Tsang immerses us in the new reality of people who have decided to leave the chaos and frenzy of Hong Kong preferring the slow pace of Manchester, Uk.

For some it was a dream, for others an opportunity.

Thus we discover through the eyes of these people the city, its customs, its history and all the cultural and social differences that affect the new inhabitants.

Fascinating and very interesting, this short film shows us how a big change, despite the initial inevitable difficulties, is a panacea for the soul of those who have the courage to take risks.

Sometimes the past comes back to help you face the present.

Two childhood friends meet after years of distance and silence.
Dwight is a successful young man who can boast an independent life and  a fulfilling and profitable job; Christine, on the other hand, looks fragile, surrendered and  trapped in the same place, in the same house, in the same backyard... the backyard where she played as a girl and that seems to have sucked all her energy, all her desire to live.

After the typical initial pleasantries, the two begin to really talk, to really question each other about their life  and start to remember the past.
Something obscene and unspeakable happened to Christine in that little backyard but no one, not even Dwight, was able to help her and to believe her.

Old memories and a truth kept hidden for too many years spring out of their souls and everything seems to collapse...

But sometimes are the earthquakes of the soul that make a life flourish again from its own ashes.

Written and directed by the talented Susan Jennifer Polese - filmmaker, journalist and mental health crisis counselor - and produced by Michelle Concha, Under the One-Time Sky, is a short film full of meaning and feeling, not only for the dramatic theme it deals with - rape - but also for how it is treated: sensitively, respectfully and honestly.

Thanks also to the excellent performance of the two actors - Danica Lee Clauser and Ted Gibson -  the film shows us with simplicity two lives in comparison, where multiple feelings mix and clash to unearth a secret buried for too long.