Indie Spirit Film Festival 2009

The average city dweller has lived about thirty plus years of life. In those thirty plus years, is an accumulated storage of far too many memories. Of which the strongest ones are those with indelible moments of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch. Two people fall in love through a shared commonality, but never meet. A mother fantasizes over her son's best friend. A young girl sprays cologne over common household items. A man develops a palate for his mother's goldfish. A girl follows a limping stranger around a city. From a series of 12 films created once a month in 2008 by filmmaker David Shiyang Liu, comes this anthology of 5 films centered around the 5 human senses; inspired by and featuring the music of Nine Inch Nails' GHOSTS I-IV album. '5films' are the moments in our lives we don't forget, a testament to the stories that everyday people collect.

When Infamous street artist Ron English's image of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama merged together gains national attention for being illegally pasted all over Boston, he decides to gather a crew of artists and musicians and take off across America, plastering the image wherever they can find an open wall. In the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson and the Merry Pranksters, Ron English and crew take you on an unforgettable trip through America's underground. Along the way they meet up with counter culture heroes such as Shepard Fairey, Morgan Spurlock, and David Choe, and spread their subversive propaganda to America's heartland on a grassroots campaign to get Barack Obama elected. Abraham Obama is a raw unfiltered look at the power of street art and offers a rare glimpse inside the insane lives of some the most prolific artists in America today.

Welcome to Absurdistan, a small village in the high desert mountains, just on the outskirts of reality, where magical visions and bizarre events fuse together, but the sexes are divided. The village is facing a water shortage, but the men are too lazy to fix a rickety pipeline and the women are getting fed up with their good-for-nothing husbands. Led by young Aya (Kristyna Malerova), the women make a simple vow: “No water, no sex.” The men’s only hope is Temelko (Maximilian Mauff), whose long-promised wedding with Aya is put on hold until he finds a solution to the water problem. From the wild imagination of the award-winning director of Tuvalu comes this perfectly pitched lyrical comedy that is romantic, surreal and boundlessly poetic.

This passionate story explores the human condition and the complex relationship between fathers and sons. Offering humor and virtue, the film follows Rick Cree on a journey to the small town in eastern Kansas where his father grew up. Hoping to gain understanding and wanting to avoid the same estrangement he felt with his own father, Rick brings his son along. It’s a story of regret, reconciliation, and redemption told with grace and care.

Katherine awakes in an underground cell with three other women; Jane, Natasha and Elaine. With complete amnesia Katherine and the other women have little time to wonder where they are before the arrival of the sadistic Dr Murdoch and the mysterious Handsome Man. The women soon discover they are part of a gruesome experiment with no obvious purpose. That night, Jane stays awake long enough to witness the first visit to their cell by the terrifying figure of the blood splattered Surgeon. One by one the Surgeon cuts a number into each woman's skin, a four digit number, the exact time he will return to kill them. Each woman must piece together the dark secret behind Dr Murdoch's experiment and survive the Surgeon's nightly visitations of pain, torture and grisly murder.Is there any way to escape? What is the purpose of the experiment and who, or what, is screaming every time the lights go out?

Naples, Italy. 1950. Four friends are playing soccer out on the street when their ball is accidentally kicked into the evil old ladys yard. Theyll never play with their ball again...and for that the revenge will be deadly....

After truck driver, Roy Tidrow, cuts off a random car on the freeway (Joe O'Neil's,) a complaint is phoned in and Roy is immediately fired, sending him into a violent tailspin. Roy threatens his wife (Valerie,) who works reception at the trucking company, forcing her to supply him with the name of the complainer. Days later...Valerie realizes she's made a horrible mistake. Not only has Roy murdered the man who Valerie identified (Andrew Williams,) but she mistakenly supplied the wrong information and a completely 'innocent' person was killed. When Valerie confronts Roy, he attacks her and gets the correct identity of the complainer (Joe O'Neil.) However, this time Valerie calls to warn the stranger... Joe O'Neill, a straight-laced, nine-to-fiver, is filled with paranoia and fear. He buys a gun to protect himself and is forced into using it when Roy Tidrow attacks him in his home. In a strange twist of fate, it is Roy who is shot and killed. In the end, Valerie, as the sole beneficiary of her husband Roy's life insurance policy, collects a large settlement. Joe O'Neil is questioned by the police and forever scarred. And Andrew Williams' widow, Margaret, receives an envelope of cash, leading us to believe that Valerie may have orchestrated this bizarre collision of lives, whereby no one is a beneficiary.