I first learned about the True/False Film Fest last summer.
I was sitting in my favorite chair in the living room, binge-watching “Arrested Development” and, in anticipation of coming to MU in the fall, Googling “things to do in Columbia, Mo.”
I stumbled across the festival, and my interest was instantly sparked. After all, how many movie-loving college kids are lucky enough to have such a huge film fest within walking distance of their campus?
And now it’s finally here. Beginning tomorrow, True/False is taking over downtown Columbia with a weekend of films, music and art. I can’t wait to go downtown and immerse myself in documentary after documentary after documentary.
These are my personal True/False picks that I can’t wait to see this weekend:
**1. “Jodorowsky’s Dune”**
Up until two weeks ago, I had never heard of Alejandro Jodorowsky or “Dune,” the science fiction movie he attempted to make in the 1970s before it ultimately collapsed.
Based off the 1965 Frank Herbert novel, “Dune” was going to be a trippy, psychedelic epic that, as Jodorowsky states in the “Jodorowsky’s Dune” trailer, would “give the people who took LSD at the time the hallucinations that you get with that drug, but without the hallucinating.”
With the help of his team of artists, which he called his “spiritual warriors,” Jodorowsky constructed a storyboard of more than 3,000 images and a script as big as a phone book. Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles and Pink Floyd had signed on to the project. By the time production was shut down, Jodorowsky had estimated the film would end up being more than 12 hours long.
“Jodorowsky’s Dune,” covers the two years Jodorowsky spent working on this movie that would never be made.
When [I wrote about the documentary for MOVE](http://move.themaneater.com/stories/2014/2/19/frank-pavichs-documentary-comes-truefalse/), I got to interview the film’s director, Frank Pavich, who said this film about failure took an unexpected turn into an inspirational story about a man’s ambition, with Jodorowsky’s lost vision for “Dune” finally coming to life after 40 years.
**2. “Private Violence”**
A documentary about domestic violence, “Private Violence” focuses on two survivors, Deanna Walters and Kit Gruelle, who address a grotesquely common element of life and the repeated question of “Why doesn’t she just leave?”
**3. “Boyhood”**
Unlike most of the films at True/False, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” isn’t a documentary.
The film follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from first grade to high school graduation, from age 5 to 18. The film stars Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason’s divorced parents trying to raise him. This fictional coming-of-age story about a boy in 21st century Texas was created over the course of 12 years, with scenes filmed from 2002 to 2013, so the audience sees the actors grow and mature over the course of the decade.
“Boyhood” is one of the festival’s closing films and arguably one of the most buzzed-about at True/False, and with good reason. Linklater and Hawke have worked together in the past in the flawless “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight” trilogy, so I have high expectations for their latest creation.
(The problem: The only screening is during the Academy Awards, and I am currently still in a full-out internal war about which to give up.)
**4. “Kith & Kin”**
A series of six shorts, “Kith & Kin” explores the relationships and interactions between family members — husband and wife, parents and children, et cetera.
**5. “Rich Hill”**
Taking place in a small town in rural Rich Hill (population 1,393) this film focuses on three boys, all under the age of 15, who face major life struggles such as poverty and absent parents.
“Rich Hill” received top honors at its premiere at Sundance Film Festival, taking home the grand jury prize for U.S. documentaries.
