And I believe it was the best night of the festival so far. I saw two features and one short, starting with the short AMONG THE GIANTS. In New York City there's a workshop that teaches and practices adaptive design. It's partly a story of people with unique disabilities (although I hesitate to use that term). Tamara Morgan is a little person with a brittle bone disease. She gets around okay in her wheelchair, but on the bustling streets she's often nearly tripped or run over. Raven DeSayles is a young girl, very athletic despite having no use of her legs. Her chair in school isn't even tall enough for her to see her work. And so the workshop designs and builds tools to help them, while also serving as a creative outlet for the students there. It's pretty amazing what you can build out of scrap cardboard.
That led into BETWEEN THE FOLDS, perhaps the definitive movie on modern origami. This isn't folding crude swans, this is incredibly detailed art and science. The film follows some fascinating people--people who make their own paper, artists who craft intricately detailed figures, scientists who study the math of origami (including the youngest professor ever at MIT), even post-modernists who rebel against traditional technique and discover what shapes can be made with a single fold. And there are Les Anarchistes, who crumple and wave paper around and still end up with bizarre mushroom creations. I can't do this movie justice. It really has to be seen to be appreciated. I can tell you it inspired me to fold my audience award ballot into a 5 (top score. I'm glad we don't rate them on a scale of 1 to 10).
And then I went over to the Little Roxie to complete a night of extreme art (odd, this year's Docfest has had more art and less music than typical) with WAITING FOR HOCKNEY. Billy Pappas is an artist from Baltimore who has always been good at realistic representation of figures. Working as a waiter, he met the...eccentric architect Larry Link. They got to talking, and Link encouraged him (and financed him) to spend full time drawing and find a new hyper-realism in his work. Billy re-taught himself everything. He learned to draw hair not just as a shape but as individual strands. He re-learned eyes, lips, everything. He learned to not just draw skin but to detail every pore. And he spent 8 1/2 years recreating a famous photo of Marylin Monroe in greater detail than the photo ever had. He's spend months drawing with a superfine pencil under a 20X magnifying glass. After four years, his arm was so sore he had to suspend it in a sling to keep working. He created something that has never been done, and it's amazing. But all that is past by the time the movie starts. At the opening credits he's already finished the drawing and is searching for his audience. Specifically, art superstar David Hockney. Billy believes if Hockney sees his work that A) he'll be amazed and B) he will make a phone call that will result in a commission for his next work and he'll finally be a working artist (oh yeah, the $300,000 Link gave him over the course of the drawing is a loan). So the movie follows him as he meets and amazes influential people in the art world who become his small support group trying to get him his audience with Hockney. The movie becomes something of a suspense thriller, as we hope desperately for all his work to pay off. This is heightened by the fact that the audience is only told of the drawing. We won't get to see it until/unless Hockney sees it, and dammit I wanted to see it! But no spoilers, you'll have to see it yourself. Of course, you could just click here.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Jason watches WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
In IMAX, no less. I slipped this little gem in as a matinee screening before my Sunday at Docfest
Okay, the book is a beautiful piece of childhood escapism that embraces and faces the crazy, angry, wild Id that is a part of everyone, and scarier in kids.
Confession, although I loved the book as a kid I haven't read it in decades. So any comparison I make to the book is inherently flawed. With that said the look of Max and hos wolf costume/pajamas is perfect. The Wild Things, created by the Jim Henson workshop, are straight out of the book. And Spike Jonze did a great job of expanding it to a feature length story without losing the simplicity, sweetness, and heart of the original. The real-world bookends do a great job of setting up the frustrations and fears every child feels (I think it was Bill Maher who mocked the idea of psychiatrists finding trauma in childhood by pointing out "You're little, everyone is bigger than you, and you have no idea what's going on. How hard is it to find trauma in that?") and the lessons he learned by being King of the Wild Things.
The message of the movie--maybe parents would be better parents if they remembered what it's like to be a child (not just childish, but remember how scary it was to be a child) and maybe children would be better children if they knew how hard it was to be a parent. On the other hand, I'm neither a parent nor a child, just a very childish middle-aged dude. So what the hell do I know?
Okay, the book is a beautiful piece of childhood escapism that embraces and faces the crazy, angry, wild Id that is a part of everyone, and scarier in kids.
Confession, although I loved the book as a kid I haven't read it in decades. So any comparison I make to the book is inherently flawed. With that said the look of Max and hos wolf costume/pajamas is perfect. The Wild Things, created by the Jim Henson workshop, are straight out of the book. And Spike Jonze did a great job of expanding it to a feature length story without losing the simplicity, sweetness, and heart of the original. The real-world bookends do a great job of setting up the frustrations and fears every child feels (I think it was Bill Maher who mocked the idea of psychiatrists finding trauma in childhood by pointing out "You're little, everyone is bigger than you, and you have no idea what's going on. How hard is it to find trauma in that?") and the lessons he learned by being King of the Wild Things.
The message of the movie--maybe parents would be better parents if they remembered what it's like to be a child (not just childish, but remember how scary it was to be a child) and maybe children would be better children if they knew how hard it was to be a parent. On the other hand, I'm neither a parent nor a child, just a very childish middle-aged dude. So what the hell do I know?
Jason goes to Docfest--Day 3
Jason goes to Docfest--Day 3
4 more programs on Sunday, starting with a triple bill (2 shorts and a feature) of incredibly personal movies.
JENNIFER: Stewart Copeland made this film about his mother, shortly after her death. She was a schoolteacher, and the movie focuses on one special day when her class got to talk to the crew of the space station.
THE STORY OF MY CANCER: A surprisingly funny story of a mother's (successful) round of chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
And finally, the world premiere of WE SAID NO CRYING. The title is a bit ironic, given there is a ton of crying in this movie. It was directed by Israeli filmmaker Assaf Gafni and follows him and his wife Hila as they try to have a baby through in-vitro fertilization. The movie focuses solely on them (almost always on Hila, since Assaf is operating the camera) no doctors, nurses, etc. shown. They are a very likable couple, and they're love is palpable on screen. The film takes follows them through sadness (failure to get pregnant traditionally), to joy
(IVF succeeds), to tragedy (they have twins, but one fetus is not developing right and threatens the health of both) and beyond, but always stays on their emotionally story rather than the medical side of it. I'm always amazed on the rare occasions when there are filmmakers and documentary subjects brave and open enough to share all the little moments in their life. It's rare (no more than once a year, and regular readers will now how many movies that is) to see such powerful, raw intimacy in a movie. Both Assaf and Hila were there for the screening, and I just have to thank them for sharing so much of themselves with us strangers.
So coming off that, I took a look at the death (or possible survival) of an American institution with I NEED THAT RECORD! The small record store has been a community touchstone in big and small towns across the nation, and more and more of them are closing. Director Brendan Toller does a good job of mixing personal stories of independent record store owners (all of whom have an obvious love of music and most of whom have a pretty wild streak) with interviews of musicians and a history of the music industry and how it got where it is (with enough statistics to make my head spin). There's an obvious animosity towards the major labels who are charged of the crime of knowing nothing about music and caring only about money. But the record stores sort of need the major labels for sales, and the decline of the record stores directly tracks with the decline of music sales overall. Along with the labels and their crappy business sense (letting young artists develop pays off in the long run. Suing fans for downloading music just pisses off your customers. Charging $20 for a CD that took 80¢ to produce is bullshit), big box stores (Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer of CD's, and sell them at a loss to lure people into the store) and media conglomeration (i.e, Clear Channel and the relaxed monopoly rules from the Telecommunications act signed into law by President Clinton) also come under the gun. Coming away mostly clean are the fans themselves. Sure, it's ultimately their buying choices that are directly to blame, but can you blame them for getting the music cheaper elsewhere (and more portable on their IPod)? Perhaps the one bright glimpse is a surprising resurgence of vinyl, at least among collectors (I confess, I knew nothing of this, but the movie says it's so, so it must be true). And perhaps the culture of the indie record store has simply gone online, and depending on your point of view, that might be a good thing. In any case, the movie raises lots of questions and shows the struggle of a lot of really interesting people.
The next film was a rather odd coming-of-age story. OFF AND RUNNING is the story of Avery Klein-Cloud, born (she discovers) Mycole Antwonisha. She's the adopted daughter of two Jewish lesbians. Her older brother Rafi is mixed-race, her little brother Isaiah (Zay Zay) is Korean. And she's the African-American member of this United Nations family. She's in High School, and is a track star. After thinking about it her whole life, she decides to try to contact her biological mother and find out where she's from. She writes a letter and gets a reply (learning, among other things, her birth name). But the letters stop coming, she's feeling abandoned again, and her two mommies are feeling a little rejected by her efforts (although they try to be supportive, fights erupt). To make it worse, Rafi is leaving for college at Princeton so she's losing the brother she used to talk to all the time. Things get pretty tough for her--she moves out of the house (meaning poor sweet Zay Zay has lost both his siblings) and struggles just to survive. She drops out of High School and takes the GED (which she aces, she's not dumb she just has a lot of issues). It's a difficult coming of age, with a lot more complex issues than most people her age have to face. And it's a very well done movie.
And finally, I don't even know how to describe VAMPIRO: ANGEL, DEVIL, HERO. Ian Hodkinson, aka Vampiro, was born in Canada but grew up to become one of the biggest stars of Mexican wrestling. Now he's announced he'll retire. At least, retire as talent so he can become a bigtime promoter, uniting Mexican, Japanese, and European leagues (as he says, everyone but the WWF). The movie cuts between his troubles as a promoter (36 hours to go, and if he doesn't come up with $18,000 the show is off) and his early life. The fame, the fans, the small venues in Ireland and Germany. The really early years living on the streets beating up and robbing pimps and drug dealers (I gotta think there's more to that, but it's somehow appropriate that he later joined Curtis Sliva's Guardian Angels). He even worked for a time as Milli Vanilli's bodyguard. He's still a guy who knows how to put on a show. And even though he's obviously near the end of his career, he has that one thing all showmen need--an undying belief that he is the most interesting person to ever walk the earth. He's a legend in his own mind, for a time a legend to a lot of other people, and for perhaps the final time, a legend in this movie.
4 more programs on Sunday, starting with a triple bill (2 shorts and a feature) of incredibly personal movies.
JENNIFER: Stewart Copeland made this film about his mother, shortly after her death. She was a schoolteacher, and the movie focuses on one special day when her class got to talk to the crew of the space station.
THE STORY OF MY CANCER: A surprisingly funny story of a mother's (successful) round of chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
And finally, the world premiere of WE SAID NO CRYING. The title is a bit ironic, given there is a ton of crying in this movie. It was directed by Israeli filmmaker Assaf Gafni and follows him and his wife Hila as they try to have a baby through in-vitro fertilization. The movie focuses solely on them (almost always on Hila, since Assaf is operating the camera) no doctors, nurses, etc. shown. They are a very likable couple, and they're love is palpable on screen. The film takes follows them through sadness (failure to get pregnant traditionally), to joy
(IVF succeeds), to tragedy (they have twins, but one fetus is not developing right and threatens the health of both) and beyond, but always stays on their emotionally story rather than the medical side of it. I'm always amazed on the rare occasions when there are filmmakers and documentary subjects brave and open enough to share all the little moments in their life. It's rare (no more than once a year, and regular readers will now how many movies that is) to see such powerful, raw intimacy in a movie. Both Assaf and Hila were there for the screening, and I just have to thank them for sharing so much of themselves with us strangers.
So coming off that, I took a look at the death (or possible survival) of an American institution with I NEED THAT RECORD! The small record store has been a community touchstone in big and small towns across the nation, and more and more of them are closing. Director Brendan Toller does a good job of mixing personal stories of independent record store owners (all of whom have an obvious love of music and most of whom have a pretty wild streak) with interviews of musicians and a history of the music industry and how it got where it is (with enough statistics to make my head spin). There's an obvious animosity towards the major labels who are charged of the crime of knowing nothing about music and caring only about money. But the record stores sort of need the major labels for sales, and the decline of the record stores directly tracks with the decline of music sales overall. Along with the labels and their crappy business sense (letting young artists develop pays off in the long run. Suing fans for downloading music just pisses off your customers. Charging $20 for a CD that took 80¢ to produce is bullshit), big box stores (Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer of CD's, and sell them at a loss to lure people into the store) and media conglomeration (i.e, Clear Channel and the relaxed monopoly rules from the Telecommunications act signed into law by President Clinton) also come under the gun. Coming away mostly clean are the fans themselves. Sure, it's ultimately their buying choices that are directly to blame, but can you blame them for getting the music cheaper elsewhere (and more portable on their IPod)? Perhaps the one bright glimpse is a surprising resurgence of vinyl, at least among collectors (I confess, I knew nothing of this, but the movie says it's so, so it must be true). And perhaps the culture of the indie record store has simply gone online, and depending on your point of view, that might be a good thing. In any case, the movie raises lots of questions and shows the struggle of a lot of really interesting people.
The next film was a rather odd coming-of-age story. OFF AND RUNNING is the story of Avery Klein-Cloud, born (she discovers) Mycole Antwonisha. She's the adopted daughter of two Jewish lesbians. Her older brother Rafi is mixed-race, her little brother Isaiah (Zay Zay) is Korean. And she's the African-American member of this United Nations family. She's in High School, and is a track star. After thinking about it her whole life, she decides to try to contact her biological mother and find out where she's from. She writes a letter and gets a reply (learning, among other things, her birth name). But the letters stop coming, she's feeling abandoned again, and her two mommies are feeling a little rejected by her efforts (although they try to be supportive, fights erupt). To make it worse, Rafi is leaving for college at Princeton so she's losing the brother she used to talk to all the time. Things get pretty tough for her--she moves out of the house (meaning poor sweet Zay Zay has lost both his siblings) and struggles just to survive. She drops out of High School and takes the GED (which she aces, she's not dumb she just has a lot of issues). It's a difficult coming of age, with a lot more complex issues than most people her age have to face. And it's a very well done movie.
And finally, I don't even know how to describe VAMPIRO: ANGEL, DEVIL, HERO. Ian Hodkinson, aka Vampiro, was born in Canada but grew up to become one of the biggest stars of Mexican wrestling. Now he's announced he'll retire. At least, retire as talent so he can become a bigtime promoter, uniting Mexican, Japanese, and European leagues (as he says, everyone but the WWF). The movie cuts between his troubles as a promoter (36 hours to go, and if he doesn't come up with $18,000 the show is off) and his early life. The fame, the fans, the small venues in Ireland and Germany. The really early years living on the streets beating up and robbing pimps and drug dealers (I gotta think there's more to that, but it's somehow appropriate that he later joined Curtis Sliva's Guardian Angels). He even worked for a time as Milli Vanilli's bodyguard. He's still a guy who knows how to put on a show. And even though he's obviously near the end of his career, he has that one thing all showmen need--an undying belief that he is the most interesting person to ever walk the earth. He's a legend in his own mind, for a time a legend to a lot of other people, and for perhaps the final time, a legend in this movie.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Jason goes to DocFest--Day 2
Four movies to start the first weekend of Docfest. Here we go:
First up was THE DRUMS INSIDE YOUR CHEST, which apparently played to a packed house the night before, but was nearly a private screening for just me today. Probably because the core audience was busy with the Litquake poetry crawl (final day of that, and I didn't even know until it was too late). Anyway, a few years ago a group of performance poets had the idea to take the energy, vibrancy, and humor of performance poetry from the clubs and put it on stage. This is the concert movie of the result. Fundamentally, the goal is to overcome the stereotype of "poetry is boring". In fact, the "concert" footage is very fun. It almost plays like stand-up comedy but with rhythm (and with a goal beyond just making you laugh). The performers riff on the nature of being "deep", imagine alternate worlds where Batman doesn't exist because Bruce Wayne is a poor loser, or give acceptance speeches thanking everything that is and has ever been wrong with their life. The film breaks the performances with short interviews with the poets, but for the most part let's the work speak for itself. And while the poems and poets are quite varied, the one constant is the performances are always entertaining and usually funny. It made me interested in actually seeing one of these performances live. And, incidentally, there was talk of making it part of LitQuake next year. So if that happens, and I remember next year, I may be in luck.
And then, from a surprisingly funny movie I went to a predictably depressing movie. But first the short TAKE MY HAIR. Filmmaker Cat Del Buono has really, really long hair. She has decided to donate her hair to make a wig for Sue, who has has cancer and has lost her hair to chemotherapy. The art both of having long hair and of wig making is playfully explored, until tragedy cuts the process short. Dedicated to her wig maker.
The same themes of tragedy, beauty, and body image are at the heart of FINDING FACE, along with a little tragically non-existent concept
called justice. When Tat Marina was just 16 years old, she was a karaoke video star in Cambodia. The Undersecretary of State Svay Sitha fell in love with her and seduced her, which was bad news since he's married. The "other woman" is always blamed there (rather than the philandering husband), and she was stuck. If she broke of the affair, he threatened both her and her family. If she continued the affair, his wife threatened her. And, in short order, the wife made good on her threat, getting a few thugs together to beat her up and then throw acid on her face (although the movie didn't say, the official website says it was nitric acid). There were a few repercussions, beyond horribly disfiguring her for life. First, her brother returned to Cambodia from America, and took her back to the U.S. with him, where she got the best possible care (but is still badly disfigured). Second, nothing happened to the Undersecretary or his wife. Third, as a result of the publicity and lack of criminal charges, acid attacks in Cambodia increased significantly. The film follows Marina and her brother in the U.S. As she tries to build a new life there, now centered around her son (due to her wishes, nothing is revealed about the father beyond that he's a legal U.S. resident). There are efforts by various organizations (and some very brave victims) to not just get justice for Marina but to end the culture of "revenge mutilations", but there doesn't seem to be much hope on the horizon. The movie is very well made, and emotionally powerful, but very hard to watch.
And then I moved directly to a world of hillbilly-sploitation and outright insanity with THE WILD AND WONDERFUL WHITES OF WEST VIRGINIA. If you ask anyone in Boone County about the White family, they'll either tell you some outrageous story or just won't want to talk about them at all. I don't even know wher to start. The drugs? The murders? The attempted murders? The welfare fraud? Maybe I should start with the tap-dancing. Patriarch XXXX was a mountain tap-dancing star, inventing dance moves only he could do (or so goes the legend). And then he was shot dead. Of the sons he taught to dance, only Jesco survives and carried on the tradition. He was the subject of a PBS Documentary THE DANCING OUTLAW, and often tours with family friend Hank Williams III. The other family members booze up, smoke up, snort crushed Xanax, and generally raise hell (except for one brother who moved away to Minnesota and is a proud hard-working man, despite the minor scrapes with the law in his past). At times the film plays like simple crass hillbilly-sploitation, but it's sort of hard to find much sympathy for a family that takes such obvious pleasure in their notoriety. Sometimes you gotta think they're playing it up for the cameras, like when they turn mama's birthday party into a drug orgy (mama, aka "The Miracle Woman" for all the kids--including orphans--she raised, does not seem amused), or when one snorts crushed pills in her hospital room just after giving birth (she has to go to rehab just to get visitation rights for Child Protective Services). But there are little glimmers of sympathy, like when one of them is shot in the face by his nephew. Okay, that's not sympathetic, but when he says "Part of me knows when he gets out of prison I gotta kill him, but I know I won't 'cuz I love him", well...that's sympathetic for this family. And then there's Jesco--remember he's the successful one--talking on the one hand about loving to get fucked up every night but then philosophizing how the whole family is already dead and just doesn't know it yet. I watched this movie like a car wreck, fascinated, enthralled, and relieved no one I care about is involved. I've never been more thankful that no one from the film was in attendance.
And finally, the night ended with DUST AND ILLUSIONS. I've been going to Burning Man actually longer than I've been going to film festivals (since '98). And I've seen a number of Burning Man documentaries. And so far they've all sucked. Because they've all been 'I went to Burning Man and this is all the cool stuff I did' and none of them look anything like my Burning Man experiences. To believe these movies, everyone is super-cool and we all get along. Maybe I'm a jaded old timer, but I've met lots of attention whores who piss me off out there and I've taken to calling Black Rock City the world's shittiest gated community. And don't even get me started on Center Camp Starbucks. Sometimes I feel like the only one in the whole nudist colony who can see that the emperor has no clothes.
Anyway, that was to set the stage to tell you DUST AND ILLUSIONS is a very different Burning Man documentary. It's not a party film, it's not "spiritual journey", it's a history lesson. It goes back to the first burn 30 years ago on Baker beach, when a few friends got together and built and burnt a wooden man. Director Olivier Bonin traces the origins back not just to the Baker Beach burn but to John Law, Micheal Mikel, and the Cacophony Society (and before that, the Suicide Club), it traces the move to the desert and the wild recklessness there (e.g., the drive-by shooting range). Then the art (sculptor Pepe Ozan is featured) and finally the population pressures that forced it to morph from a survivalist camping/radical freedom event into Black Rock City (fittingly, next year's theme is Metropolis). He mixes in interviews with some of the people who've made BRC pretty awesome--the Flaming Lotus Girls, Adrian of Piss Clear (their complete archives now available as a book). And it takes a critical look at what it's become, covering the split between Larry Harvey and the John Law/Chicken John contingent who formed Borg2. You can draw your own conclusions, and obviously it can't be the same thing with 50,000 people as it was with 100, but is it what it should be and can it be something better?
The next day, thinking about DUST AND ILLUSIONS and the changes I've seen in Burning Man in the past decade, I got what might be a great idea--Olde Towne Black Rock. A small region of the open Playa where people only camp in tents around a modestly sized man who stands on the ground. Maybe we can even bring back the drive-by shooting range with paintballs.
First up was THE DRUMS INSIDE YOUR CHEST, which apparently played to a packed house the night before, but was nearly a private screening for just me today. Probably because the core audience was busy with the Litquake poetry crawl (final day of that, and I didn't even know until it was too late). Anyway, a few years ago a group of performance poets had the idea to take the energy, vibrancy, and humor of performance poetry from the clubs and put it on stage. This is the concert movie of the result. Fundamentally, the goal is to overcome the stereotype of "poetry is boring". In fact, the "concert" footage is very fun. It almost plays like stand-up comedy but with rhythm (and with a goal beyond just making you laugh). The performers riff on the nature of being "deep", imagine alternate worlds where Batman doesn't exist because Bruce Wayne is a poor loser, or give acceptance speeches thanking everything that is and has ever been wrong with their life. The film breaks the performances with short interviews with the poets, but for the most part let's the work speak for itself. And while the poems and poets are quite varied, the one constant is the performances are always entertaining and usually funny. It made me interested in actually seeing one of these performances live. And, incidentally, there was talk of making it part of LitQuake next year. So if that happens, and I remember next year, I may be in luck.
And then, from a surprisingly funny movie I went to a predictably depressing movie. But first the short TAKE MY HAIR. Filmmaker Cat Del Buono has really, really long hair. She has decided to donate her hair to make a wig for Sue, who has has cancer and has lost her hair to chemotherapy. The art both of having long hair and of wig making is playfully explored, until tragedy cuts the process short. Dedicated to her wig maker.
The same themes of tragedy, beauty, and body image are at the heart of FINDING FACE, along with a little tragically non-existent concept
called justice. When Tat Marina was just 16 years old, she was a karaoke video star in Cambodia. The Undersecretary of State Svay Sitha fell in love with her and seduced her, which was bad news since he's married. The "other woman" is always blamed there (rather than the philandering husband), and she was stuck. If she broke of the affair, he threatened both her and her family. If she continued the affair, his wife threatened her. And, in short order, the wife made good on her threat, getting a few thugs together to beat her up and then throw acid on her face (although the movie didn't say, the official website says it was nitric acid). There were a few repercussions, beyond horribly disfiguring her for life. First, her brother returned to Cambodia from America, and took her back to the U.S. with him, where she got the best possible care (but is still badly disfigured). Second, nothing happened to the Undersecretary or his wife. Third, as a result of the publicity and lack of criminal charges, acid attacks in Cambodia increased significantly. The film follows Marina and her brother in the U.S. As she tries to build a new life there, now centered around her son (due to her wishes, nothing is revealed about the father beyond that he's a legal U.S. resident). There are efforts by various organizations (and some very brave victims) to not just get justice for Marina but to end the culture of "revenge mutilations", but there doesn't seem to be much hope on the horizon. The movie is very well made, and emotionally powerful, but very hard to watch.
And then I moved directly to a world of hillbilly-sploitation and outright insanity with THE WILD AND WONDERFUL WHITES OF WEST VIRGINIA. If you ask anyone in Boone County about the White family, they'll either tell you some outrageous story or just won't want to talk about them at all. I don't even know wher to start. The drugs? The murders? The attempted murders? The welfare fraud? Maybe I should start with the tap-dancing. Patriarch XXXX was a mountain tap-dancing star, inventing dance moves only he could do (or so goes the legend). And then he was shot dead. Of the sons he taught to dance, only Jesco survives and carried on the tradition. He was the subject of a PBS Documentary THE DANCING OUTLAW, and often tours with family friend Hank Williams III. The other family members booze up, smoke up, snort crushed Xanax, and generally raise hell (except for one brother who moved away to Minnesota and is a proud hard-working man, despite the minor scrapes with the law in his past). At times the film plays like simple crass hillbilly-sploitation, but it's sort of hard to find much sympathy for a family that takes such obvious pleasure in their notoriety. Sometimes you gotta think they're playing it up for the cameras, like when they turn mama's birthday party into a drug orgy (mama, aka "The Miracle Woman" for all the kids--including orphans--she raised, does not seem amused), or when one snorts crushed pills in her hospital room just after giving birth (she has to go to rehab just to get visitation rights for Child Protective Services). But there are little glimmers of sympathy, like when one of them is shot in the face by his nephew. Okay, that's not sympathetic, but when he says "Part of me knows when he gets out of prison I gotta kill him, but I know I won't 'cuz I love him", well...that's sympathetic for this family. And then there's Jesco--remember he's the successful one--talking on the one hand about loving to get fucked up every night but then philosophizing how the whole family is already dead and just doesn't know it yet. I watched this movie like a car wreck, fascinated, enthralled, and relieved no one I care about is involved. I've never been more thankful that no one from the film was in attendance.
And finally, the night ended with DUST AND ILLUSIONS. I've been going to Burning Man actually longer than I've been going to film festivals (since '98). And I've seen a number of Burning Man documentaries. And so far they've all sucked. Because they've all been 'I went to Burning Man and this is all the cool stuff I did' and none of them look anything like my Burning Man experiences. To believe these movies, everyone is super-cool and we all get along. Maybe I'm a jaded old timer, but I've met lots of attention whores who piss me off out there and I've taken to calling Black Rock City the world's shittiest gated community. And don't even get me started on Center Camp Starbucks. Sometimes I feel like the only one in the whole nudist colony who can see that the emperor has no clothes.
Anyway, that was to set the stage to tell you DUST AND ILLUSIONS is a very different Burning Man documentary. It's not a party film, it's not "spiritual journey", it's a history lesson. It goes back to the first burn 30 years ago on Baker beach, when a few friends got together and built and burnt a wooden man. Director Olivier Bonin traces the origins back not just to the Baker Beach burn but to John Law, Micheal Mikel, and the Cacophony Society (and before that, the Suicide Club), it traces the move to the desert and the wild recklessness there (e.g., the drive-by shooting range). Then the art (sculptor Pepe Ozan is featured) and finally the population pressures that forced it to morph from a survivalist camping/radical freedom event into Black Rock City (fittingly, next year's theme is Metropolis). He mixes in interviews with some of the people who've made BRC pretty awesome--the Flaming Lotus Girls, Adrian of Piss Clear (their complete archives now available as a book). And it takes a critical look at what it's become, covering the split between Larry Harvey and the John Law/Chicken John contingent who formed Borg2. You can draw your own conclusions, and obviously it can't be the same thing with 50,000 people as it was with 100, but is it what it should be and can it be something better?
The next day, thinking about DUST AND ILLUSIONS and the changes I've seen in Burning Man in the past decade, I got what might be a great idea--Olde Towne Black Rock. A small region of the open Playa where people only camp in tents around a modestly sized man who stands on the ground. Maybe we can even bring back the drive-by shooting range with paintballs.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Jason watches HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
I'm trying to sneak in a few screeners I have at home, before I get too busy with Docfest. Full disclosure, this movie was made by a man I once publicly described as a giant, empty scrotum. Further disclosure, I never feel like I can give a movie a fair screening on DVD at home. My opinion may change greatly when I get a chance to see it on a big screen with an audience. Anyway, here we go:
Morty is a sad, lonely, pathetic man. In the opening scenes he takes what might be the saddest bong hit I've ever seen. It's not just sad in that he a loser sitting around wasting his life, it's that he gets no visible joy from the bong hit. He doesn't even have another loser friend to smoke with and giggle like a retard.
Instead of friends, he has an ex. And she has friends who occasionally talk to him, but more often talk about him to each other.
If there's one thing sadder than his loneliness, it's his faltering, incompetent attempts to alleviate his loneliness. He delivers cringe-inducing lines like "What? I don't think it's weird to say I love you? What's so weird about that?" Or he awkwardly tries to talk to the receptionist at his psychiatrist's office.
To top it all off, he's unemployed and broke. More awkward painfullness comes from that. Early on there's a scene where he meets a friend (okay, more his ex's friend) and tries to convince her because he did her some unnamed favor recently she owes him some money. Eventually, his money problems become so untenable he actually has to perform a little side work in the dirtiest, most unscrupulous profession ever--he becomes a back-alley psychiatrist (more disclosure, I fucking hate psychiatrists). Okay, really he just gives advice to a friend (of his ex) and agrees--just so that it's not awkward--that he should give him some money.
You know, I'm afraid I'm giving you a view of Morty that's all bad. And actually I'm pretty sure in real life I would have a hard time if I were Morty's friend. But I should make it clear--I feel for Morty. I see a lot of my insecurities, fear, self-loathing, and simple poor social behavior in Morty, and I understand him. Yet more full disclosure: I wasn't always (and am not always now) as awesome as I'm sure everyone thinks I think I am. In fact, I've been known to be more than a little bit self-loathing at times.
I also want to make clear, no matter how many times I've used the word "painful" to describe Morty's life, this movie is also pretty funny. It's painful humor, but I like it. Prime example from early in the movie: Morty gets a job working for an artist (cleaning out her basement after a flood). She's describing her new shot which is extreme close-up photography of male genitalia. She describes projecting these penis shots on a wall 8 feet tall. Morty perks up a bit at the thought of giant genitalia. Then she describes how you can see tiny hairs and bits of disgusting crud and crust, and Mort tries not to look sickened. That's supposed to be funny, right? I'm not the only one, am I? Anyway, if you find that funny, this movie is funny.
It has occurred to me that this movie has made me want to reveal more about myself than I usually do. I don't know what to make of that.
Morty is a sad, lonely, pathetic man. In the opening scenes he takes what might be the saddest bong hit I've ever seen. It's not just sad in that he a loser sitting around wasting his life, it's that he gets no visible joy from the bong hit. He doesn't even have another loser friend to smoke with and giggle like a retard.
Instead of friends, he has an ex. And she has friends who occasionally talk to him, but more often talk about him to each other.
If there's one thing sadder than his loneliness, it's his faltering, incompetent attempts to alleviate his loneliness. He delivers cringe-inducing lines like "What? I don't think it's weird to say I love you? What's so weird about that?" Or he awkwardly tries to talk to the receptionist at his psychiatrist's office.
To top it all off, he's unemployed and broke. More awkward painfullness comes from that. Early on there's a scene where he meets a friend (okay, more his ex's friend) and tries to convince her because he did her some unnamed favor recently she owes him some money. Eventually, his money problems become so untenable he actually has to perform a little side work in the dirtiest, most unscrupulous profession ever--he becomes a back-alley psychiatrist (more disclosure, I fucking hate psychiatrists). Okay, really he just gives advice to a friend (of his ex) and agrees--just so that it's not awkward--that he should give him some money.
You know, I'm afraid I'm giving you a view of Morty that's all bad. And actually I'm pretty sure in real life I would have a hard time if I were Morty's friend. But I should make it clear--I feel for Morty. I see a lot of my insecurities, fear, self-loathing, and simple poor social behavior in Morty, and I understand him. Yet more full disclosure: I wasn't always (and am not always now) as awesome as I'm sure everyone thinks I think I am. In fact, I've been known to be more than a little bit self-loathing at times.
I also want to make clear, no matter how many times I've used the word "painful" to describe Morty's life, this movie is also pretty funny. It's painful humor, but I like it. Prime example from early in the movie: Morty gets a job working for an artist (cleaning out her basement after a flood). She's describing her new shot which is extreme close-up photography of male genitalia. She describes projecting these penis shots on a wall 8 feet tall. Morty perks up a bit at the thought of giant genitalia. Then she describes how you can see tiny hairs and bits of disgusting crud and crust, and Mort tries not to look sickened. That's supposed to be funny, right? I'm not the only one, am I? Anyway, if you find that funny, this movie is funny.
It has occurred to me that this movie has made me want to reveal more about myself than I usually do. I don't know what to make of that.
Jason goes to DocFest--Opening Night
The third leg of the SFIndie trifecta (Indiefest, HoleHead, and Docfest) started last night. I've only once did a clean sweep (all movies in all 3 festivals. I did it in 2007, and fell one movie short in 2008.) Docfest has been my week link, and as I've already pointed out it's impossible this year. As it turns out, what with other commitments I'll end up missing about 7 films this year. But I'll keep you posted on the ones I do see, starting...now!
Opening the Festival (in the little Roxie) was the war photographer story SHOOTING ROBERT KING. It opens in 1993 with Robert King outside of Sarajevo covering the civil war that split Yugoslavia apart. It's his first work (free-lance) and he doesn't know how to survive in a war zone. His photographs are overexposed and blurry. He doesn't even know the political leaders behind the various factions (or even the factions. Colleagues have to explain there's a difference between Croatians and Serbian Croats). Cut forward to 2007, in the woods of Tennessee. King is deer hunting and talking about how naive and idealistic he used to be. At first glimpse, he doesn't seem to have gained any competence--he can't even setup an automatically unfolding deer blind. The movie cuts across 14 years, going back and forth between young, stupid Robert King in Sarajevo and older King in Tennessee. In Sarajevo he learns a bit about survival (don't wear white shirts, etc.) and gets his first break--photographing French UN soldiers procuring prostitutes with cigarettes (his photograph made the front page of the Guardian).
About a half hour in, the 2007 Tennessee Robert King is talking about his self-destructive temperament and how that probably drew him to war zones and made him so good at what he did. I had the laugh, because so far the movie hadn't shown him as very successful or even competent. Only then does it flash to Chechnya, where he was one of the only photographers who stayed when they kicked the press out. Suddenly he is really good (helps to be the only one there). The movie then takes us on a whirlwind career spanning Chechnya, Rwanda, Iraq, etc. and juxtaposing war with drunken party photos from the time he lived in Russia. A prime opportunity is missed in Iraq when they only brush on the topic of embedded journalists. King was embedded, and had to stay in camp shooting shit (literally) while the troops went to investigate IED attacks. Perhaps that could be an entire second movie. But what is in the movie is the story of a young, self-destructive man who found a way to make a living in an extreme proffession. And the bond between his fellow war journalists (many of whom thought he'd never make it and now give him great respect) is palpable. Probably nothing short of actual soldiering matches or exceeds it.
Then I stayed in the Little Roxie (well, I went and had a quick beer at Dalva, then went back to the Little Roxie for the energy doc HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. By interviewing tons of oil executives, environmentalists, scientists, etc. the film gives a good look at the history of energy (i.e., oil) in the U.S. and the future (i.e., alternatives). The stories of the history--rise and fall of U.S. oil--was the second most interesting part of the movie. We often hear (sorry, I'm not old enough to have lived it) of the gas crisis of 1973, and the deals Nixon cut to get us through it. Ford, interestingly enough, comes off pretty well at least in terms of talking the talk. Carter likewise talked a big game, but failed to deliver. The big surprise (to me) was how Reagan brought oil prices way down (basically by strong-arming the region and cutting back room deals) and the repercussions. This didn't just lower the price of gas. Because the Soviet Union was such a huge oil exporter, the price drop crippled their economy and (in part) won the Cold War. But it also crippled nearly all the domestic oil companies. It was no longer worth it to explore either new oil fields or alternative energies. But this was the time of "Dallas" on TV, so no one sympathized with the evil oil men, even if--as one executive claims--the layoffs in the oil sector in the 80's dwarfed the layoffs in Detroit today.
The other interesting point is that every oil exec talked about alternative energy as the only hope for the future. Not of the planet, but of their businesses. It's sometimes hard to tell if their serious of just "green-washing" (there's a great scene on a private jet when some executives laugh about how Sierra Club activism is helping keep prices artificially high, and that's good for everyone). But they are in the business of being in business, and the film makes a compelling case that oil is unsustainable as a business in the U.S. as well as unsustainable for the global environment. Now the only question is what will replace it? Solar, wind (an eyesore to some, but there's an amusing scene with Joanne Herring talking about how she finds the windmills beautiful like ballerinas), even algae that creates oil much faster than rotting dinosaurs do. And with the likes of T. Boone Pickens making serious investments in renewable energy, I'm reasonably optimistic.
I guess the biggest surprise is how reasonable, charming, and not-at-all villainous these businessmen appear. I don't know if I should feel dirty being charmed by an oil executive, but given that they have the power, capital, expertise, and seeming desire to build the renewable energy industry, it seems like we should make friends with them. After all, they're going to be taking some of the biggest risks--the film dubs them the new wildcats--and some technologies are bound to fail and some of them will lose everything.
And that was a pretty nice opening of DocFest 2009.
Opening the Festival (in the little Roxie) was the war photographer story SHOOTING ROBERT KING. It opens in 1993 with Robert King outside of Sarajevo covering the civil war that split Yugoslavia apart. It's his first work (free-lance) and he doesn't know how to survive in a war zone. His photographs are overexposed and blurry. He doesn't even know the political leaders behind the various factions (or even the factions. Colleagues have to explain there's a difference between Croatians and Serbian Croats). Cut forward to 2007, in the woods of Tennessee. King is deer hunting and talking about how naive and idealistic he used to be. At first glimpse, he doesn't seem to have gained any competence--he can't even setup an automatically unfolding deer blind. The movie cuts across 14 years, going back and forth between young, stupid Robert King in Sarajevo and older King in Tennessee. In Sarajevo he learns a bit about survival (don't wear white shirts, etc.) and gets his first break--photographing French UN soldiers procuring prostitutes with cigarettes (his photograph made the front page of the Guardian).
About a half hour in, the 2007 Tennessee Robert King is talking about his self-destructive temperament and how that probably drew him to war zones and made him so good at what he did. I had the laugh, because so far the movie hadn't shown him as very successful or even competent. Only then does it flash to Chechnya, where he was one of the only photographers who stayed when they kicked the press out. Suddenly he is really good (helps to be the only one there). The movie then takes us on a whirlwind career spanning Chechnya, Rwanda, Iraq, etc. and juxtaposing war with drunken party photos from the time he lived in Russia. A prime opportunity is missed in Iraq when they only brush on the topic of embedded journalists. King was embedded, and had to stay in camp shooting shit (literally) while the troops went to investigate IED attacks. Perhaps that could be an entire second movie. But what is in the movie is the story of a young, self-destructive man who found a way to make a living in an extreme proffession. And the bond between his fellow war journalists (many of whom thought he'd never make it and now give him great respect) is palpable. Probably nothing short of actual soldiering matches or exceeds it.
Then I stayed in the Little Roxie (well, I went and had a quick beer at Dalva, then went back to the Little Roxie for the energy doc HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. By interviewing tons of oil executives, environmentalists, scientists, etc. the film gives a good look at the history of energy (i.e., oil) in the U.S. and the future (i.e., alternatives). The stories of the history--rise and fall of U.S. oil--was the second most interesting part of the movie. We often hear (sorry, I'm not old enough to have lived it) of the gas crisis of 1973, and the deals Nixon cut to get us through it. Ford, interestingly enough, comes off pretty well at least in terms of talking the talk. Carter likewise talked a big game, but failed to deliver. The big surprise (to me) was how Reagan brought oil prices way down (basically by strong-arming the region and cutting back room deals) and the repercussions. This didn't just lower the price of gas. Because the Soviet Union was such a huge oil exporter, the price drop crippled their economy and (in part) won the Cold War. But it also crippled nearly all the domestic oil companies. It was no longer worth it to explore either new oil fields or alternative energies. But this was the time of "Dallas" on TV, so no one sympathized with the evil oil men, even if--as one executive claims--the layoffs in the oil sector in the 80's dwarfed the layoffs in Detroit today.
The other interesting point is that every oil exec talked about alternative energy as the only hope for the future. Not of the planet, but of their businesses. It's sometimes hard to tell if their serious of just "green-washing" (there's a great scene on a private jet when some executives laugh about how Sierra Club activism is helping keep prices artificially high, and that's good for everyone). But they are in the business of being in business, and the film makes a compelling case that oil is unsustainable as a business in the U.S. as well as unsustainable for the global environment. Now the only question is what will replace it? Solar, wind (an eyesore to some, but there's an amusing scene with Joanne Herring talking about how she finds the windmills beautiful like ballerinas), even algae that creates oil much faster than rotting dinosaurs do. And with the likes of T. Boone Pickens making serious investments in renewable energy, I'm reasonably optimistic.
I guess the biggest surprise is how reasonable, charming, and not-at-all villainous these businessmen appear. I don't know if I should feel dirty being charmed by an oil executive, but given that they have the power, capital, expertise, and seeming desire to build the renewable energy industry, it seems like we should make friends with them. After all, they're going to be taking some of the biggest risks--the film dubs them the new wildcats--and some technologies are bound to fail and some of them will lose everything.
And that was a pretty nice opening of DocFest 2009.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Jason goes to the SVJFF patrons event and watches EL BRINDIS
So many film festivals are starting up right now. The Arab American Film Festival started last night. Docfest starts tonight. And the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival (aka Jewfest South. Who, BTW, have just entered the world of blogging) starts tomorrow. Just to let you know my loyalties, I'll be spending most of my time at Docfest. Hope the other festivals aren't too jealous.
But this post is about SVJFF, because this is the first year I became a patron of the festival (as opposed to just a fan). So I got to go to the pre-festival patron event last night. There was good food (really good food), and it was cool to hang out with my festival friends there, and the highlight was a secret film not playing in the festival. Incidentally, this was my 365th movie of 2009 (not the earliest in the year I've reached 365, but only because Docfest used to start earlier).
That film was EL BRINDIS (literally, THE TOAST but translated as TO LIFE. Jews get that.) It's a Chilean movie, about a tight-knit Jewish community in Valparaiso. Isidoro is a kind, beloved old man, who decides to go through his Bar Mitzvah at the age of 80 (not too strange, my grandpa has actually said he'll have a second Bar Mitzvah at 113). His not-really-Jewish daughter (the result of an affair in his past) comes to visit, and is immediately a fish out of water. She knows nothing of the prayer over the wine on sabbath, so when the glass is passed to her, she simply raises it and says "Salud!" (the traditional Spanish toast, literally meaning "Health!"). The one who treats her the nicest is David the rabbi who is way too cool for the town (and so he's planning on moving away). In fact, he treats her a little too nice. That whole affair should've either been removed or gone somewhere. David's behavior has already riled the community leader, and there's some pretty obvious tension (that also didn't go anywhere).
The camerawork is beautiful, the acting is good, and there are quite a lot of individual notes that I liked (without giving anything away, I did like the ending, although the big twist was completely predictable). But there's a lot of tangents in the story that could either be fleshed out or dropped entirely. Not bad, not perfect.
As I said, I'll miss most of the first two weeks of the festival, but should be around for most of the rest. As for films I've already seen and can vouch for, check out THE WEDDING SONG (my review), FOR MY FATHER (CQ audience award winner. My review), and LOST ISLANDS (my review)
But this post is about SVJFF, because this is the first year I became a patron of the festival (as opposed to just a fan). So I got to go to the pre-festival patron event last night. There was good food (really good food), and it was cool to hang out with my festival friends there, and the highlight was a secret film not playing in the festival. Incidentally, this was my 365th movie of 2009 (not the earliest in the year I've reached 365, but only because Docfest used to start earlier).
That film was EL BRINDIS (literally, THE TOAST but translated as TO LIFE. Jews get that.) It's a Chilean movie, about a tight-knit Jewish community in Valparaiso. Isidoro is a kind, beloved old man, who decides to go through his Bar Mitzvah at the age of 80 (not too strange, my grandpa has actually said he'll have a second Bar Mitzvah at 113). His not-really-Jewish daughter (the result of an affair in his past) comes to visit, and is immediately a fish out of water. She knows nothing of the prayer over the wine on sabbath, so when the glass is passed to her, she simply raises it and says "Salud!" (the traditional Spanish toast, literally meaning "Health!"). The one who treats her the nicest is David the rabbi who is way too cool for the town (and so he's planning on moving away). In fact, he treats her a little too nice. That whole affair should've either been removed or gone somewhere. David's behavior has already riled the community leader, and there's some pretty obvious tension (that also didn't go anywhere).
The camerawork is beautiful, the acting is good, and there are quite a lot of individual notes that I liked (without giving anything away, I did like the ending, although the big twist was completely predictable). But there's a lot of tangents in the story that could either be fleshed out or dropped entirely. Not bad, not perfect.
As I said, I'll miss most of the first two weeks of the festival, but should be around for most of the rest. As for films I've already seen and can vouch for, check out THE WEDDING SONG (my review), FOR MY FATHER (CQ audience award winner. My review), and LOST ISLANDS (my review)
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