Savannah, 2025

Last week was the annual 8 day SCAD Savannah Film Festival, an opportunity to spend hours every day sitting in a dark theater, and the reason I did not post last week. For years Barbara and I have been buying passes and seeing as much as we could manage. There are some professional panels, and other education efforts, but the main thing is films–features, shorts, documentaries, animation–morning, afternoon, and evening, in three screening rooms. It’s a perk that our home is about a five minute walk to two of the theaters.

I enjoy the feature films, and I recommend several of the ones we saw: “Eternity,” “One Battle After Another,” “Nuremberg,” “Highest 2 Lowest,” “Hamnet,” “Rental Family,” “Song Sung Blue.” What I really like is getting to the “Shorts” and “Animation” viewings.

As a still photographer, I’ve spent years learning how to tell a story in 1/250th of a second, so I’m impressed with film makers who can tell a complex, emotional story in 5-10 minutes. As an image editor, I’ve spent years in chemical and digital darkrooms in a never ending struggle to get just the right feel of tones and colors, so I am in awe of animators who can create sophisticated worlds of dimension defining tones and colors, whether realistic or fantastic, from a blank slate.

I am less drawn to documentaries; I usually watch movies to escape reality, but I did see “My Mom Jayne” by Mariska Hargitay. It was impressive, and a reminder that there is so much more to people than their public persona.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index