17th SF IndieFest 2015 Is Here

They grow up so fast, don't they? SF IndieFest is old enough to drive this year, but you should still take public transportation to the kickoff film, Hits. Writer/director David Cross' keen sense of misanthropy shines through in this story of a small town whose residents (and a few outside agitators) become dangerously obsessed with getting internet-famous. Also considering the perils of fame is The Cult of JT LeRoy, Marjorie Strum's documentary about the writer whose autobiographical tales of being an abused transgender teenage prostitute made them a cause célèbre, at least until it was all revealed to be a hoax. (Details, details!) Meanwhile, Patrick Ryan's Darkness on the Edge of Town concerns a young woman named Cleo (Emma Eliza Regan) whose older sister is found brutally murdered; happening to be a talented sharpshooter, Cleo takes revenge into her own sights. A film about a very different kind of marksman, For Your Height Only is one of the strangest Fililpino exploitation films of the 1980s, and that's saying a lot: a James Bond spoof starring the 2-foot-9-inch Weng Weng as Agent 00, obviously. And lest you think that sounds like another LeRoy-level hoax, Andrew Levold's documentary The Search for Weng Weng hunts for him in the Philippines, where truth is always stranger than fiction.