INhonolulu Magazine Issue #16 - April 2014 | Page 4

ART + FASHION
Report / Showdown in Chinatown

Swede it up!
Ed Hickman (DJ Fu Man Chu)
Photos by Kurt Loney

F

ilmmaking is hard. I’m going to repeat that because
what I’m afraid you’ll think
I mean is that filmmaking is hard
like going to the gym or finishing school is hard. No, believe
me when I say this: Filmmaking
is very, very hard. Even under
the best of circumstances, a film
is statistically more likely to turn
out to be unwatchable rubbish
than anything else.
Put it this way, can you think
of any other artistic medium in
which you can spend hundreds of
millions of dollars, have a multitude of skilled professionals dedPage 4

icate thousands upon thousands
of man hours and still produce
something that people might look
at once, ridicule for a week and
then forget about entirely?
As Sam Fuller once said, “Film
is a battleground,” and it is easy to
end up killed in action.
Having said all that, it takes a
special kind of masochist, then,
to sign up for a 48-hour film challenge. Speaking from personal experience, even under ideal conditions, when I’ve had time to plan
every shot and painstakingly massage my way to a final cut in the
editing room, I’m still far more
likely to make something I hate.
I have to take my hat off to anyone that signs up for the kind of
self-flagellation that goes hand in
hand with condensing the entire
filmmaking process into the same

time span it takes most people to
decide if they actually want to see
a film or not.
Thankfully, the film industry
is in no short supply of artists
that like to punish themselves for
our viewing enjoyment. For eight
years now, Showdown in Chinatown (or is it Kaka‘ako, now?) has
provided them a perfect platform
for ritual self-sacrifice and—quite
surprisingly—it has managed to
stay entertaining the whole time.
With equipment provided by
Hawaii Camera Rental (a business near and dear to my own
heart) and with a new venue in
Kaka‘ako, the organizers at Showdown have managed to keep the
event fresh and inviting. True,
the new space lacks the nightlife
vibe of past events, but that is a
problem easily remedied (and

something that some people may
prefer left unremedied, as the location change puts the focus back
onto the films themselves).
While few things will make you
more inclined to enjoy a short film
than a tall, stiff drink, even sober
the most recent iteration of Showdown was worthy of attention.
Sure, some of the films are tedious
and difficult to watch—but that’s
part of the experience.
As I’ve said, filmmaking is hard
even on those that ultimately watch
the films. Yet, even at its worst, it
can provide us with something to
talk about and teach us about the
filmmaking process. Even better,
when something does go right, it
makes it seem all the more miraculous. For example, the theme for
this year’s first showdown was the
“swede”—that is the act of recreat-

ing your favorite film utilizing the
kind of budget you’d normally associate with grocery shopping.
As one would expect, the results
are usually hilariously bad. That is,
after all, kind of the whole point.
When taken too seriously, movies
within this theme fall flat on their
faces; but when done with a light
heart and tongue firmly in cheek,
the results can sum up everything
we love most about filmmaking.
While I was especially enamored with a Lord of the Rings
remake, it was a joyously embarrassing Titanic remake that ended up getting the judges’ nod. Of
course, winning a contest such
as this is a bit of an ignominious prize; a continuation of the
self-flagellation I mentioned earlier. For the voyeuristic fetishist
such as myself, it isn’t so much

about joining in and trying to win
as it is about getting to see someone else revel in winning.
So while I can’t recommend
signing up to torture yourself (seriously, 48 hours is an unreasonably short amount of time to make
a film), I can recommend, at the
very least, showing up to meet the
kind of people that are into that
sort of thing. You may not enjoy
every film you see, but that’s kind
of the point. Besides when is that
sort of thi