One Way Donkey Ride

One world or many?

Today inaugurates the First Annual Be the BQE Festival of Road Movies. Fear not, it's a virtual festival so you don't have to brave the BQE to see the films. For the first one, though, you do have to extricate yourself from your computer monitor or television, because it's not on Netflix.

Angel Gabriel and Mary

It's in a fricking art gallery! That's right, get your ass to the Marian Goodman Gallery on 57th Street to see Annuciation, part of the Eija-Liisa Ahtila show on until December 3. Annunciation is a 33-minute film--or three 33-minute films projected simultaneously--about a theater piece based on the annunciation scene in the New Testament (long story short, Mary gets some surprising news). The piece is being made by a group of women who, apart from the director, are non-actors and clients of a Finnish women's support center.

I'm not about to give away the story. Instead a few superlatives:

• Best 3-D movie ever (ever, ever).
• Best Christmas movie since The Apartment.
• Best Finnish movie since Leningrad Cowboys Go America (also a road movie).
• Most unexpected appearance of a Townes Van Zandt song (cover) on soundtrack.
• Best road movie (so far) in the festival--if a woman walking a donkey counts as a road movie (it does).

There are also a LOT of trees in the exhibit. But that's another festival.