Eight Days a Week

November 11-17, 1998

HI DENSITY The idea was so crazy it was bound to work: take ultra-highbrow concepts and present them as lo-fi as possible. Thus was born the hi/LO Film Festival, three nights of experimental shorts that suggest that not all cinema is simpleminded and big budgeted. Started last year as a vehicle for showcasing a film about a fiery chocolate hurtling through space (no fooling), the lineup for the festival's second year includes animated doodlings, a 35mm tour of Sacramento's landscape, and all cinematic points in between. Perhaps most exemplary of the fest's M.O. is Enjoy, a hilarious take on idol (idle) worship in the culture of commodification that combines guerrilla-style pranks with linguistic theories and hipster commercial parodies. Filmed in Hi8 and densely funny as hell, this piece alone is worth the trip out. (David Fear)