IFFBoston Overview: Match Films to Your Lifestyle Preferences

It officially kicked off yesterday, but the majority of Independent Film Festival Boston starts unreeling tonight. If the festival's coverage in the Globe is any gauge of the way moviegoers choose their movies, it is clear that most people want their movies to match their lifestyle preferences. IFFBoston, with its long list of films and many venues, leaves these kinds of category distinctions to the hapless fan. Bostonist attempts to do the work for you.

Movies for the Nerd

The aforementioned Globe article, with its imprecise use of the word "geek," doesn't really comprehend the nerd demographic or what the nerd demographic enjoys watching. Nerds, for example, are by-and-large uninterested in Nerdcore Rising, a movie about hipsters who appropriate both nerd and hip hop subcultures. Real nerds are likely to be watching Second Skin, an examination of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. Nerds also like Vikings and wizardry, so look for them at Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America and We Are Wizards, a documentary about Harry Potter fan art. Also a good bet: Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a documentary about Harlan Ellison that demonstrates that science fiction writers are just as bilious, self-absorbed, and poorly socialized as you have always guessed.

Movies for the Earnest

We've already mentioned The Greening of Southie and Crawford, which are must-sees for people who like a little political heft to their documentary films. Those types will also enjoy At the Death House Door a movie about Carroll Pickett, a chaplain at Huntsville Prison in Texas who ministered during 95 lethal injections. Very Young Girls profiles underaged sex workers in New York City, and Frontrunner follows Massounda Jalal's historic but failed campaign to win the presidency during the 2004 elections in Afghanistan, the first democratic contest her country had seen.

Movies for People Who Love Movies

Boston's film buffs surely know that IFF will close with the East Coast premiere of Werner Herzog's latest documentary Encounters at the End of the World, an account of scientists stationed at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Cinephiles might also check out anachronistic stylist Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, a silent documentary built from a mélange of found and original footage. Apocalypse Oz, a remix of Apocalypse Now and the Wizard of Oz using fragments from both screenplays, and The Beaver Trilogy, a weird experimental work starring Crispin Glover and Sean Penn, will appeal to those movie snob who digs kitsch.

Movies for Orientalists

Finally, there's a handful of movies for those who love people from non-Western places. Big Man Japan pits a putz against a crew of giant monsters. Mongol is the Genghis Khan biopic that dudes with socks in their sandals have long awaited. Flash Point and Triangle provide a couple of doses of Hong Kong action.

And fans of endangered languages may enjoy the international travels of The Linguists, but they may also be frustrated by the documentary's focus on the titular white dudes (and their frequent insistence that "We are scientists") when the film could instead give us more footage of the last speakers of forgotten tongues. (Paging Werner Herzog: there's a Native American man driving around in his truck conversing with a recording of his moribund language.)

C. Fernsebner contributed to this post.

Stills from Encounters at the End of the World, We Are Wizards, and Apocalypse Oz courtesy IFFBoston.