» Bill Cowell, Founder of The Buffalo Niagara
Film Festival is proud to announce a victorious
return for #2.
Bill pledges that this will be a spectacular 2nd year with large events and big
surprises to be talked about for years to come. Enjoyment to all, and to all
an enjoyable plight. See you soon.
A
Cigar at the Beach (triskelionent.com)
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Wednesday, March 28th, 10:15pm UB North Campus,
Center For the Arts (CFA), The Screening Room
Surreal,
satiric, lightly erotic, and surprisingly
spiritual, A Cigar at the Beach is a modern
tale starring the male psyche, as a married
man filters the demands of domestic life
through fantasy. High-octane bikinis! A Gypsy
Siren! Adventure on the high seas—until
The Wave washes everything clean.
DIRECTOR
STATEMENT
Here's my version of the mid-life male with a surprise spiritual component lurking
beneath the apparent eroticism of the fantasies. None of the fantasies are strong
enough to complete or to satisfy, driving the Smoker (protagonist) off the mainland
and onto the high seas in search of distant horizons. What he finds aboard, however,
is his own reflection, enacted by four Mariners who voice the Smoker's own compulsions
from a madness he will soon acquire if he doesn't jump ship, which he does. And
what catches him? What answers his quest for fulfillment? The great Mother Sea
which comes to snatch him up and purify him and rinse him clean and restore him.
The old life recedes and loses its grip, while a new birth comes upon him unawares
and takes hold. This is a "Coming of Age" tale.
There is, too, the Odysseus element. The hero is “grounded” or as
unemployed Merchant Marines put it: “on the beach”. The modern domestic
man, engaged as Zorba would say in the “full catastrophe” of wife
and children, must find a new goal. The Sirens are no longer an option. The horizon
is for others to explore. Here in this moment and on this earth with these people—wife,
son, father—what is the hero’s response? Perhaps it’s the Hero
Imago itself which must be washed out by the monster wave.
I had to get permission from my wife to make this film. In trying to convince
her, I emphasized the more symbolic and spiritual elements of the story. But
she focused on the more physical aspects and, though she relented, remains unconvinced
this piece is anything other than pure autobiography.
I believe that drama does urgently exist in moments of stasis, those in-between
times where we are fogged and without answers and paralyzed. Mine is the drama
of privacy.
