The best film I saw was DOT, a hilarious mockumentary about the “New Economy” originally titled DOTCOM: HOT TUBS, PORK CHOPS, AND VALIUM. The film chronicles the rise and fall of dotcom startup Zectek.com, a company that offers “The Solution for eTomorrow.” What, you might ask, is said solution? You got me, since one of the movie’s best gags is the fact that no one, Zectek’s executives included, seem to be able to pinpoint exactly what product they are trying to sell. The company’s fortunes rise and fall, but the obliviousness of the partners remains an amusing constant.

DOT is the flipside of 2001’s STARTUP.COM, a real documentary that charted the highs and lows of govWorks.com, a company that promised similarly vague solutions to similarly vague eTomorrows. The executives at govWorks, initially friends, slowly come to antagonize each other. DOT takes the basic structure of STARTUP.COM and filters it through the sensibility of SPINAL TAP. Si, Mitch, and Stan (played by Simeon Schnapper, Michael Mazzarra, and Steve Walker respectively) start off as great friends and devolve into bickering, spiteful children. Having seen STARTUP.COM I admired DOT even more; its realistic situations pushed to eleven in hysterical ways.

Highlights include the interviews for the company’s Chief Financial Officer, in which an applicant describes his worst one-word quality as “...dicey...” and an errant boommike “accidentally” dropping into the shot during a very tender moment for one of our heroes. The standout character is Si, a unique mix of ambition, hatred, deceit, and frequently poor hygiene habits. He scolds his employees, lords over co-workers, misspells easy words in presentations to the company, and has eyes for any female who’ll give him the time of day. He’s the love child of John Belushi and Bill Gates with a dash of Peter Venkman from GHOSTBUSTERS.

The co-creators, Schnapper and Brett Singer (no relation), created the premise and drew up an outline that included every possible situation that could arise in a dot-com. They gathered an improv-trained cast and shot in the abandoned offices of a real Internet company that went bust. The result was 47 and a half hours of footage, which the duo paired down to a lean one hundred minutes.

It’s really worth your time, and I recommend you pick it up when it comes out on DVD and VHS in January. After that, it might even turn up on pay cable. It’s a great little film. The others I saw (in order of screening):

-LITTLE RED PLANE (dir. Joey Jones, Wira Winata): A computer animated short about a child’s unique emotional therapy for a lost father. A little rough around the edges, but still powerful.

-OCHA CUPS FOR CHRISTMAS (dir. Michael Fimognari): A gorgeously shot short about an American exchange student dealing with being away from home and family on Christmas. Superb acting, photography, and production design support the character-driven story. Only thirty minutes long, but I could have watched these characters for another hour or two.

-THIS IS NOT A LOVE STORY (dir. Ken Hill): A New Zealand film that won the DancesWithFilms screenplay award. A feature shot for about $40,000, it is seen by its director as a New Zealander’s version of a Woody Allen film - and the description fits reasonably well. An aspiring writer moves to the big city and gets tangled in a love triangle with a depressed soap opera star and his off-again-on-again girlfriend. Sarah Smuts-Kennedy is the star as the writer, but its Stephen Lovatt as the soap star who really steals the movie and provides it with its funniest and most emotionally affecting moments.

-SORORITY SLUTS 3: SPRING BREAK, THE OUTTAKES (dir. Johanna Stern): A short that opens in the final scene of the imagined porn SORORITY SLUTS 3, and then follows the film’s “credits” while outtakes from the filmming play. Only 7 minutes long, but entirely hilarious - even the cast list is a gag (“Co-Starring Franz The Horse as Himself”).

-THE KING (dir. Russell b. McKenzie): Elvis is reincarnated as a black orphan named Elrus, who leaves home to save his adopted grandmother’s favorite television show from cancellation. Director and star McKenzie does a great Elvis impression, and the film has an appealingly silly vibe, but the television show angle seems like a weird way to play the concept, and it doesn’t pay off as well as the audience would like it to.

Unfortunately, I could only attend one day’s worth of programming, but after sitting through one evening’s worth I desperately wanted more. I’ve attached links to some of these guys’ websites for interested parties out there. And keep an eye for film festivals in your area; most of them, IndieVision included, allow the general public to attend.