Saturday morning, the final day of the festival, I walked into the Flickerings tent with a cup of Green Matcha Tea in hand, and I caught some more of the short films being featured there this year. I was quite impressed with this year's selection, believing this to be the best group assembled at Flickerings. Most impressive was a short film called "Trailer Park Unicorn" which had a distinct Tim Burton-esque visual feel. Also featured was a short featuring a collection of scenes of characters walking around the Cornerstone grounds, and a cartoon featuring the moral dilemmas of two young children and ice cream cones. After that, I took advantage of another beautiful day and relaxed at my tent until catching the final Leibowitz seminar. Then I caught three fine films at Flickerings. Lamerica was the story of two businessmen who move into Albania after the fall of communism and put together a scheme to swindle the government into making money for themselves. After setting up a puppet chairmanship, selecting a homeless man from a local shelter who has spent the years since World War II in jail. Their plans go awry when their puppet doesn't go along with their plans. Instead, he wanders off to try to locate and rediscover his past. As one of the businessmen pursues them, the film becomes a travelogue of a shattered country, the desperate locals trying to emigrate to Italy in hopes of a better life, and the emotional journey of both men forced to confront the landscape that changes the both of them. The director is named Gianni Amelio, and he deserves wider recognition. Then I saw two Roberto Rossellini films. Stromboli features Ingrid Bergman who marries an Italian serviceman immediately following World War II, and her world is turned inside out when he takes her to his home, a remote volcanic island called Stromboli. She resists the boredom, the local townspeople, and the natural landscape. She experiences a local church service, a local fish hunt, and a volcanic eruption, but her will is unbowed. The film culminates in a final desperate attempt to escape which forces her to the end of her own self-reliance, and a cry of help to God. This film reminded of Rosetta in that it deals with the weaknesses of our own strength and need for help from outside ourselves. Then I watched a short film by Isabella Rossellini's, the filmmaker's daughter, a surrealistic tribute to her father (or her father's belly, which is a disturbing major character in the film). Taking a short break, I grabbed dinner and watched people practicing Irish dancing in the Imaginarium tent. Finally I caught the final evening screening, A Voyage to Italy. This time Bergman starred with British actor George Saunders in the story of an estranged couple on the verge of divorce as they travel to Italy. As each of them experience and contemplate the slower pace of life and lingering ruins both from World War II and from ancient Pompeii, they realize the lack of their own connection with the past, and the insignificance of their own petty troubles. The film ends in a beautiful moment of reconciliation against the backdrop of a local festival. All in all, I thought Rossellini's style, thought it seems odd in that he shot without much of a script, results in powerful moments of local culture and how the landscapes cause his characters to realize the insignificance of their own petty troubles. All in all, this was an outstanding Flickerings program. Seeing this many outstanding films makes me realize that Snakes on a Plane is going to be a real letdown by comparison.

I ended the festival by seeing Leigh Nash. Her voice rung through the air with fragile beauty, especially as she closed her set with a simple classic hymn, "All is Well With My Soul." Then I stayed for what was scheduled as a Songwriter's circle. Actually it was a loose collective of musicians who played and worked at the Gallery Stage during the festival: Jeff Elbel, members of the Crossing and a Celtic folk duo called Cele De. It turned out to be a nice unplanned Cornerstone moment as they played a couple of worship songs and followed them with an impromptu jam, and parodies/tributes to Gallery Stage artists who played at the fest. The Starflyer 59 tribute was especially funny as they played a singer B-flat chord while Jeff Elbel stared straight at his shoes, like the Starflyer singer does in concert. Hey, if a band is going to play a short set like that at the midnight show, those young turks deserve it. After all, Glenn Kaiser used to play the blues all night long. After the jam session was over, I broke down and did something I hadn't planned to do this year. I walked down to main stage, where the bands play that the young people are into. There I caught some of the P.O.D. show. They sounded good, and I enjoyed a straight-up reggae song they performed. Then they played their rap-crunch hits, and I walked back to my tent site, hearing their music soar through the air, over the lake, and along the dirt path, fading as I arrived back at my tent. I fell onto my sleeping bag, satisfied with another outstanding Cornerstone festival. Here's to 2007 and more films, bands, seminars, hair-flinging, screamo, Elephant Ears, and a Daniel Amos reunion. Well, I can always hope for that last one, can't I?

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