Just having survived the holidays with my dear relatives I can empathize with the woman who is searching to rent a family for her upcoming wedding. The problem with next of kin, unless your last name is Soprano, is that you cannot easily get rid of them if they pose a threat to your carefully crafted plans. Often the persons to whom you are closely related are not the ones you desire to spend your precious moments with.

From silk flowers to silicon body parts, we often purchase substitutes for the real thing usually when the genuine item is difficult to obtain or fails to meet our specific needs or expectations. Increasingly the fake is becoming more popular than the real. Synthetic diamonds, artificial flavors even fake bloggers —or flogs as they are called— are gaining in popularity; all because they are cheaper, more consistent or more easily controlled.

Hiring a faux family to help you sell a house, mourn your dead or save your wedding may be for many people the plastic fruit that makes the unstable reality of life forever fresh. In today’s world it might be better to buy your MySpace friends if you want to ensure that they wont humiliate you.

Or as Sue in the Channel 4 documentary My Fake Baby says, when asked if she ever thought of having a real family, “It’s too much of a commitment. I can’t do the noise, I’m so fussy really. If I could pick a child off the shelf that would be wonderful. Because I could say ‘I want one that’s quiet, I want one that’s well behaved, I want one that keeps clean.’ you know this kind of thing but obviously the reality isn’t like that.”

It is balancing this reality between messy life and idealized life that makes suffering family during the holidays so stressful. I want my family to be like this but often my experience is like this and as a result it takes me the better part of January to recover; usually by viewing several “dysfunctional family” flicks to experience the catharsis my psyche demands. Nothing is better than a little schadenfreude to make the aches of one’s own life go away.

Here’s my list of the top 5 “dysfunctional family” films to view while recovering from the “too much time with the relatives” blues. What are yours?

1. C.R.A.Z.Y
   
2. Santa Sangre
   
3. 400 Blows
   
4. Throw Momma From the Train
   
5. Little Miss Sunshine
   

From IndiePix:

These awards come from the ongoing dialogue (and griping) about the documentary picks for this year’s Academy Awards. Since there are so many venues for fiction films to be awarded (and rewarded), it seems that adding another venue for non-fiction films to get some love can not hurt.

Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, CA. Shown checking electrical assemblies. Photo credit: Bransby, David - June 1942.

Now, they have a new Flickr project. This photo is just one incredible example of some of the beautiful images available. Here are the goals for this project:

With Internet video consumption gaining popularity why has Sundance slashed its online offerings?

Why is it that no one is able to make iTunes-type money leveraging the collective Long Tail of independent cinema?

Wired author, Jason Silverman, says, “To date, none of the attempts to create viable online indie film outlets, including AtomFilms, CountingDown.com and iFilm, have clicked.”

Will Netflix’s new offer of streaming movies to subscribers fill this need or maybe it’s one of the new kids on the block, Indiegogo or Miro, who will be able to “show me the money?”

This is a busy time of year for all of us at Arts Engine with constant viewing of entries for The Media That Matters Film Festival to screenings of Election Day in Chicago and D.C. This year, I was the lone staff member to attend The Sundance Film Festival, rooming with our lovely ex-staffer Wendy Cohen, from Participant Productions’ Take Part and seeing all that chilly Park City had to offer.

Arts Engine was one of many organizations to sit at the outreach table in the Filmmaker’s Lodge. I answered questions about our filmmakers’ services and talked up Media That Matters. I had a great conversation with one of our current Media That Matters filmmakers Sam Kauffmann whose film, Massacre at Murambi, played at Slamdance this year. Finally he and I were able to discuss our shared experience in Rwanda—I went to Murambi in 2006—and it truly enriched his already moving film.

Since I did not buy tickets ahead of time (and had too many commitments to brave hours and hours in line), I was lucky to see the three that I did. They were:

A Good Day To Be Black and Sexy: A great selection of shorts about being well…black and sexy. This film is so much fun and my new catch phrase. Hopefully it will get distribution.

Be Like Others: A film about the growing rate of sex-change operations in Iran. Truly eye opening.

The Order of Myths: A film about America’s oldest (and still segregated) Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama.

I really wish I had seen Ballast because it was shot in the Mississippi Delta where I recently spent a week. The “buzz”–-I hate that word but sometimes it’s the only one that fits–-on this film is great. Oh well. Just another flick to add to my already too long list of films to see.

Sundance isn’t Sundance without parties and I tried to enjoy as many as I could. Somehow I missed the Maroon 5 and 50 Cent concerts. (And no I am not bitter. Not. One. Bit.) But in between sightings of Billy Crudup and Charlize Theron, I squeezed in a few shindigs. Our friends at POV threw a brunch honoring their amazing four films at Sundance this year. There were many familiar faces and several people had questions about DocuClub, a Works in Progress screening series that we are taking over the reigns of starting in February.

Afterwards I went to the announcements of the new Doc Awards and then to Chicken and Egg’s party high on a hill on Park Avenue. C&E funded development for Rose and Nangabire, one of our films in production. They are such great ambassadors for female filmmakers! (The next day, Freeheld, a film C&E funded, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.)

I attended two panels: The Tipping Point: Social Change Through Film at Queer Lounge and Blacks in America, a conversation on the current status of films by and about African Americans. My head is sort of swimming with ideas and questions after these panels.

Sundance is sort of like traveling to a developing country. By the time your body gets used to it, you have to leave! (OK I am exaggerating…sort of.) All and all a good four days. Harriette Yahr will write a nice long piece about the docs at Sundance so keep your eyes on MediaRights for that in the near future.

My case for connecting food & film gets stronger with the recent Wired headline “Indie Filmmakers Compete Iron Chef-style for Prizes.”

And with the winning entry earning its creator a $5,000 grand prize, the Underground Filmmaker Festival might be the strongest contender of the online indie film outlets to show us the money.