One standout was Two Nights, an amiable short which occasionally segues into split-screen, replete with dueling sound channels. It documents an immigrant's erotic dalliances with "Younger Man" and "Older Man." That the 400-seat main theater was sold out for the screening attested to the vociferous hunger of San Diego's gay community for representation onscreen.

Less crowded, albeit undeservedly so, was Puzzlehead, James Bai's dystopian jigsaw thriller. While set in an undefined future after what's only obliquely referred to as "the decline," and concerned with androids, it's science fiction minus the technobabble. In using sci-fi's fantastic possibilities to explore human concerns like identity and the self, it's more in the vein of Tarkovsky or Kubrick. Yes, A.I. would appear an obvious influence, said Bai in a post-screening Q&A, but the brash (cocky, perchance?) filmmaker admitted that Kubrick's death took a load off his shoulders -- until the project was rehabilitated by Spielberg. Puzzlehead took that much time -- eight years from script to print, Bai said -- and it shows: it's a masterpiece of creaking production design, as a desolate Brooklyn stands in for the timeless, proto-Victorian future-nowhere of the film. An icy, affectless dual performance from Stephen Galaida as the titular android and his creator Walter further bolsters the sense of triumph surrounding Puzzlehead, the most realized and transcendent of the films screened thus far.

Completely of a different piece was the raucous crowd pleaser Colma: The Musical. Named for suburban wasteland in San Francisco's backwaters where the dead outnumber the living, Colma follows the romantic foibles of a pack of high school grads slouching towards adulthood. With whip-smart writing and repartee between the diverse ensemble, it had the audience enraptured -- and that wasn't even during the songs. To admittedly cheesy backing tracks (one memorable number is set to a car alarm) the hormone-juiced gang waxes-that-ass rhapsodically on their desire for love, sex, and the need to be taken seriously, but not as adults. The flat, washed-out DV look of the film was at first a drawback, but as a counterpoint to the vibrancy and vitality of the writing and song, it made for a smart contrast, a visual conveyance of Colma's strip-mall twilight zone.

Which brings us back to "The Outer Limits." Cherie, a short from Dallas filmmaker Jason Wen, is a hallucinatory exploration of writer's block. Wen's tightrope walk between outre artistic expression and the outright grotesque doesn't always balance, but the ambitious outing collapsed when the troubled digital projector crapped out midway through. After a minimum of downtime, the program was rolling again with Doll Face, pulling double duty as an entry in SDAFF'S animation program. Andy Huang's short seamlessly solders a human face on a silvery, mechanical spider, functioning as a wry aside on the beauty industry and television's powers of persuasion. Plug us in.

LINKS:

Puzzlehead - Official Site | SDAFF info page

Colma: The Musical - Official Site | SDAFF info page

Cherie - Official Site

Doll Face - Interview with Creator Andy Huang

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Report by Wells Dunbar