The tag line for Independent Film Festival Boston 2017 is “It Stays With You”.  In my case, that is certainly true.  You’ll see what I mean in a bit.  First, some back story. A year ago Sunday, I was in the latter stages of moving.  My then-landlord was… not the best at maintenance, to be charitable.  The house was near the beach, which meant you had to keep an eye on the wood weathering from the salt air.  The front door threshold had been...

Spoiler alert: Ian Cheney's documentary The Search for General Tso ends with the audience desperately craving General Tso's Chicken. Luckily, the rest of the film is full of surprises. For one, who was this military man who lent his name to America's second favorite ethnic dish after pizza? To whet the palate for a feast of history, Cheney asks sundry Americans this very question. Answers range from the ridiculous to the ridiculous. Traveling to Shanghai, the filmmak...

IFFB ’11 also screened a trio of films about what happens after the sun goes down. The two designees for this year’s festival-within-a-festival IFFBoston After Dark were The Catechism Cataclysm and Stake Land.  The former is a quirky comedy that gradually turns dark and surreal. Starting with a peppy, lonely priest using a misremembered friendship to emotionally coerce his childhood idol onto a canoe trip, we meander to a finish that includes campfire stories with two giggling panda-head...