CIFF Diary: Day 9 - Winds of Change

10/15 - While standing in line for Bela Tarr's new feature The Turin Horse on Saturday afternoon, one of the festival programmers made his way up and down the line in an attempt to save anyone from being late for a later screening, announcing that the The Turin Horse has had 20 minutes added to it.  I knew I was in line with some real film buffs when one of them said "that's nothing for a Tarr movie," and my response--"that's two shots!"--got a laugh, my partner Jen rolling her eyes at our collective film geek-ery.  So, with the running time now set at 156 minutes, we entered the cinema showing the new Bela Tarr picture.  If you have no experience with Tarr, it is important to know that to a good majority of the movie-going public, Tarr's movies would probably appear as the perfect, grueling example of artsy-fartsy, intolerably slow, black and white European cinema.  For myself and fans of Tarr's endurance test cinema, it is a rare opportunity to utilize the cinema in all of it's meditative and philosophical capacities, picking up in Hungarian where the great Russian master Tarkovsky left off.

Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker

Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

The Turin Horse does not disappoint as a new addition to Tarr's few-and-far-between filmography.  I tend to be a bit of a purist when it comes to cinema events like a new Tarr picture.  Although it's great to see great films any way you can get them, some pictures are just built for the collective theater experience.  Some of my favorite pictures this year have been those that turn the wide screen cinema into church, particularly Malick's The Tree of Life, and now The Turin Horse, neither of which I would imagine lend themselves well to the at-home rental experience.

Terrance Malick's The Tree of Life

Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

I can still recall the slight air of absurdity in attending my first Tarr picture, a screening of Satantango at Facets Cinemateque about 8 or 9 years ago that I was invited to by my friend, and equally adventurous movie goer, Nathaniel Carlson (check out his excellent film writing at Cineaste online).  7 and 1/2 hours? Two intermissions? Black and white?  Hungarian?  I was probably a bit skeptical, but Nathaniel knew I was someone who is always up for a challenging experience at the movies, and I trust Nathaniel because he's the only person I know who can hold film makers like Bela Tarr and Zalman King in the same intellectual head-space.

Zalman King's Lake Consequence

Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

And, yes, I do think that seeing Satantango significantly changed the way I watch movies...for the better, that is.  It certainly changed the vision of more than a few film makers, Gus Van Sant primary among them, as evidenced in his "Tarr trilogy" of Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003), and Last Days (2005).  Tarr is looking to hold all that is holy about cinema in his films, with the greatest stress being placed on the image.  And Tarr's images are worth spending time with, as small details shift and become endowed with a great weight.

Gus Van Sant's Gerry

Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

Yesterday at the festival I was trying to defend The Turin Horse to two long time CIFF attendees as we stood in line for the new Wim Wenders film.  The delightful and intelligent couple had given up on The Turin Horse before it's grim finale, and even though I understood that they had no idea what they were getting into, my defense of the film was that most commercial films don't even have images worth remembering, but Tarr is unique in that you can nearly hold the entire picture in your mind (whether you wish to or not, I guess).  The Turin Horse is ultimately less elaborate than either Satantango (1994) or Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) in it's narrative, but in it's attempt to follow the path of the animal whose torture apparently drove the great existentialist philosopher Nietzsche to the point of collapse, it succeeds as a meditative elaboration on the cruelty of existence, as well as the humor of futility.  Although there were a few (sometimes unsure) laughs at the Saturday screening of The Turin Horse, I think that the humor in Tarr is often overlooked.  Tarr inexplicably mines moments of humor from the desolate, wind-swept isolation of a father and daughter trapped in a circular cycle of dependence and subsistence.  Tarr really emphasizes the technique of repetition in his "Six Day" structure, and even though we are looking at the same routines, we are always seeing them from a different angle.  An extra belt of alcohol, or a slightly shifted placement of a glass--the nuance of day to day change--play against the constant, doom laden erosion of the relentless wind that pervades the film.  Admittedly, Tarr is not for everyone.  But opening yourself up to the possibilities of a Bela Tarr film, even once, has the potential for significant change.

Up Next:  Xan Aranda's new documentary rocks:  Andrew Bird:  Fever Year

CIFF Diary, Day 8 - A Little T & A... Well, actually, a LOT of T & A

10/14 - Earlier in my CIFF diary I was commenting on how the film American Translation nearly soured me on one of the beautiful details of human existence: the nipple.  Little did I know back on Day 2 of the fest that I would get tickets for a screening of the new film from the 81 year-old grandfather of American documentary film Frederick Wiseman, and that he would repair that brief accident of erotica.  With his new feature, Crazy Horse, Wiseman takes us inside the iconic Parisian cabaret club that was founded in 1951 by Alain Bernardin.  Wiseman spent 10 weeks inside the club, and the film keeps itself mostly focused on the musical numbers of the current manifestation of the "Crazy Horse" show, but also includes scenes of rehearsal with the creators, designers, and dancers involved in the ongoing production.  Only briefly does Wiseman allow us to emerge from the club, spend a few minutes with a city street or a police boat crossing the river before plunging us back into the night club.

Frederick Wiseman's Crazy Horse

What Wiseman is so brilliant at is evoking so many great questions without ever interjecting his own literal voice into the film, choosing instead to simply capture and let the images speak for themselves.  For instance, the "Crazy Horse" definitely presents some problematic depictions of sexuality, as the consistent template for a "Crazy Horse" dancer is one of strictly uniform body type.  This tends to drain the often artistically sophisticated dance numbers of any genuine erotic quality, rather than enhance it.  For a film that is so seemingly simple in it's construct and passive in it's point of view, Crazy Horse uncovers all of the layers, from the inherent sexism to the behind-the-scenes conflicts, which will surprise no one who has ever been involved in theatrical production, erotic or otherwise.

Crazy Horse

In some of it's best moments, Crazy Horse comes off like an experimental documentary featuring buns and polka dots.  One particularly memorable shot shows a landscape of buns, undulating like a time-lapse capture of silky sand dunes as they're affected over time by the eroding winds.  No film has ever presented asses the way Wiseman does in Crazy Horse.  I would be willing to hazard a guess that of the endless libraries of porn dedicated to the multiple variations of ass-based exploitation, there is not a film among them that shoots buns as adeptly as Wiseman.  A marvelous, hypnotic, and funny documentary.

  

Up Next:  Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

CIFF Diary: Day 7, pt. 2 - Encounters with Film Makers, New and Old

10/13 - After the screening of Kinyarwanda I caught a cab over to the film department at Columbia University where a panel featuring directors who are presenting films within the New Directors category of the CIFF answered questions about taking your first films from the page to the shooting process.  The panel was called "New Directors: Cameras Ready?" and featured directors Daniel Mitelpunkt (Women and Children), Hagar Ben Asher (The Slut), Prashant Bhargava (Patang), and Steven Lloyd Jackson (David is Dying).  One of the most interesting components of the panel was the inclusion of Karen Loop, a current instructor at Columbia University who brought her 20 years of experience as a Los Angeles based film producer to the panel.  In contrast to Loop's contribution to the panel, the primary message from the directors was that the old business model was dead, making the stories of Hollywood development seem almost antiquated in comparison to the obvious motivations of art and passion that the film maker's exhibited.  To make a long story short--make sure your script is great and ready to go into shooting, have a great producer and cinematographer, and go shoot your movie.  In terms of financing and marketing, that realm is being seriously redefined as we speak, and with social media and communal fund raising sites the tools to make great films without corporate involvement are at hand.

Hagar Ben Asher's CIFF Favorite, The Slut 

The New Director's panel was insightful and informative, but my anticipation for the event to come was stealing my attention, as the CIFF honors one of my film heroes, Haskell Wexler.  Wexler's achievement as a cinematographer and director are wide ranging, from having shot cinema classics like Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1966) and Milos Foreman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), to his lesser known work as a film activist, having made shorts and features combating nuclear proliferation, and covering conflicts abroad from Chiapas to Northern Ireland.  One thing was apparent in talking with the 86-year old film maker, and that is that he loves to shoot.  As I reported in a previous post, Haskell was even spotted darting around John C. Reilly at one of the other honoree events, and the moderator of our evening with Haskell informed us that instead of taking advantage of the Festival perks, Haskell had been out shooting the Occupation of the financial district in Chicago, so lets keep our fingers crossed for a new Wexler film addressing the uprising that is happening in the city concurrent to the CIFF.  Actually, even if it's not Haskell who makes that film, this event couldn't help but spark thought about how the new age of documentary shooters will cover the story of this historic movement, as a number of young documentary students took in the words of one of the masters on Thursday night:  "Good shooters don't just go out to get what they want--they have to want everything they can get."

Me and Haskell at the CIFF

For me, Haskell Wexler made one of the greatest and under-rated pictures of the late 1960's, a film that I frequently screened in my film class as an example of the Hollywood Renaissance, Medium Cool.  A nearly unprecedented combination of documentary and fiction film making, a bridge between the budding style and activism of the French New Wave and American film making of the period, Medium Cool is a journey through the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the riots that took place in Chicago during that time.  The film is also one of the most important examinations of a country sitting on top of only a few decades of TV saturation, at the time of the seminal media analysis of Marshall McLuhan who defined mediums of communication as "hot" and "cool," television being a particularly "cool," mind-numbing mode of engagement with the world.  In Haskell's masterpiece, one of the only films he directed, we open with a pair of television reporters pointing their cameras and sound equipment down at a suffering, bloodied woman who has just been in a car accident.  We hear the moaning of the woman as the reporters walk back to their news-mobile, pack up their equipment, slam the trunk, and only then conclude that "they had better call a doctor."  Not just cool, but chilling.  The idea behind this scene is carried through to the last frames of Medium Cool, which plays more like a filmic essay of ideas than a traditional narrative, leaving us with the director himself turning the camera on us as we hear the sounds of the protesters chanting "The whole world is watching!   The whole world is watching!"  Haskell's achievement with this film alone is monumental, and a tremendously potent piece of Chicago history.  It was an honor to be able to meet and talk with he and his wife at the CIFF, and I wish them all the best--thanks for taking the time with a true fan.

Haskell Wexler in Medium Cool

Up Next:  Frederick Wiseman's new documentary, Crazy Horse

    

CIFF Diary: Day 7 - A Tutsi Girl and a Hutu Boy, 1994

10/13 - Alrick Brown's new feature Kinyarwanda takes its name from the official language of Rwanda, a culture that was torn apart by genocide in 1994.  It is appropriate that the title refers to language, as the characters and events are woven together through various languages, and the ability to communicate the horrors of the genocide, to confront and forgive, are at the heart of the drama.

Kinyarwanda

For what might seem like a heavy afternoon at the the movies, what strikes one immediately about Kinyarwanda is it's sense of humor.  In the first segment of six, the film introduces us to the Tutsi Girl and the Hutu boy at the center of the narrative, where the language of music and dance dominates.  Without the use of a typical, worn out scene of romantic dialogue, Alrick sets up the romantic relationship that will arc toward the beautiful final scene of the film.  Instead, we understand everything about the connection between these teens through a simple serenade from the Hutu boy--maybe the last song I expected to hear in a film about the Rwandan genocide, and which took on a strange resonance as the film progressed, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton's "Islands in the Stream."  Later in the film, a young  boy (pictured in the still above) leads a group of Hutu thugs to his home where his family are keeping Tutsi friends in hiding.  The Hutu's, having demanded that the boy take them to where the guns and the "cockroaches" are, follow the boy back to his home, where the boy pops in a VHS tape of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Commando"--the guns--then kicks the rickety, wooden TV cabinet a couple of times, which produces the "cockroaches."

The refuge of the Grande Mosque of Kigali - Kinyarwanda

The other segments of the film deal with the struggles between the clergy of Rwanda, which lays out the cultural complexity of the genocide.  Kinyarwanda allows us to understand that the situation did not just involve a binary conflict, as we also see (in flash-forward segments) the struggles of the Hutu men who committed the atrocities as they try to speak to the genocide while in reformation camps.  The film also delves into the relationships within the militia that moved in to assist the Mosques that were harboring those trying to get to safety, whether they be Muslim, Christian, Tutsi, or otherwise.  The scenes depicting the military involvement feature Cassandra Freeman as Lt. Rose, probably the most notable actress in the film (having appeared in Spike Lee's terrific Inside Man), but unfortunately those scenes create a stylistic gap between some of the more successful, naturalistic scenes.  Ultimately, the real stars are the non-actors who are captured so well by Brown's quick camera, as the film was apparently, amazingly, shot in only 16 days.  Kinyarwanda earns the few moments when it journeys into stereotypical Hollywood-style "cheers of triumph" tropes because the real heart of the picture speaks through a different language.  The final wedding scene, particularly, redeems the few compromises within the storytelling, returning to the surprising beauty and humor of a film that handles such difficult subject matter so expertly.

Up Next:  More encounters with film makers, Old and New.

   

CIFF Diary: Day 6, pt. 3 - Blood Vomit Ballet!

10/12 - As part of the "After Dark" programming the CIFF screened Katsuhito Ishii's new Warner Brothers release Smuggler.  The film had a strong turnout on Wednesday night, and aside from a finale that failed to pay off entirely (perhaps making sacrifices in hopes of a sequel?) Smuggler achieved moments of fight combat brilliance that are definitely worth the price of admission.  I attended the screening with my creative collaborator and Japanese cinema enthusiast Brian Morgan, who once worked with the combat-heavy Defiant Theatre of Chicago, and who studied Stage Combat at Columbia a few years back with Fight Master David Woolley.  In the past Morgan and I have staged theatrical combat scenes ranging from knife and sword fights in Shakespeare to the blood drenched effects of horror classics like Frankenstein and Dracula.  Brian has taught me a great deal about creating violence for the stage over the years, and there is always something special about seeing a film like Smuggler with him, which features a gorgeous attention to movement that really appealed to our particular love of great fight choreography.

Vertebrae and Viscera - Smuggler

The number one lesson I learned from working with Brian about staging combat is this:  The fight is never about the fight.  In Smuggler, Ishii manages to create something that is at stake in the character relationships that transcends the battles between them simply being about violence for violence's sake, often with very little, and through a few terribly concise performances, particularly Masatoshi Nagase who plays the driver and supervisor of the smuggling operation, and the central assassin of the film, Vertebrae (Masanobu Ando).  In the scene where we first meet the deadly force of Vertebrae, Ishii uses slow motion to introduce the effortless, supernatural quality of Vertebrae's abilities, as he dances through the room of nearly motionless thugs taking them out one by one with his weapon of choice: an over-sized iron set of nunchaku.  Ouch.

Masanobu Ando as Vertebrae in Smuggler

Much of the fight choreography is contained in small spaces in Smuggler, which shows a particularly skilled attention to detail and articulation on the part of Ishii.  He lovingly cradles in full frame the near death of Vertebrae at the hands of his partner assassin Viscera, as he slows down the blood vomit ballet of Ando's performance, capturing the lightly hued saliva spewing forth from his mouth and the graceful undulating of his arms and legs...even Ando's hair seems to be in sync with the dance.

Smuggler

Although I can't speak from a place of expertise about manga adaptations, Smuggler seems to be a major achievement in translating that illustrative style to film.  The film is adapted from Shohei Monabe's manga series of the same name, and Ishii does a detailed job of getting his actors to not hold back in recreating the extreme visual style of the genre, particularly in the contorted facial expressions gets from them.  At times, this crosses over into some questionable cultural stereotype territory, but it is clear that Ishii is aware of this.  In a scene where the central character, failed actor Ryosuke (Satoshi Tsumabuki), is tortured by a villainous mob boss, the scene sadly echoes off the last decade of American torture porn, adopted from popular Japanese cinema trends.  I would say this scene is part of the film's failure, until a moment where the torturer exits whistling the American Army Air Corps anthem and then returns wearing a military get-up and a diaper.  Seemingly revived by his new outfit, he continues to drive hot metal spikes between the toes of Ryosuke.  Extreme, yes, but another moment where the violence became not about the violence itself, but, in this case, about a larger cultural context.  Smuggler is an unexpectedly thoughtful and well directed film that goes all out in its attempt to recreate the manic energy of manga on film.  Even the decapitated heads are mugging gleefully in this one.

Up Next:  Alrick Brown sheds new light on the Rwandan genocide with Kinyarwanda. 

CIFF Diary: Day 6, pt. 2 - Shady Characters and Low Budgets

10/12 - Joint Body is an American independent feature shot in Southern Illinois starring Mark Pelligrino (recently, of Lost and Dexter), and Alicia Witt (Twin Peaks, Friday Night Lights).  As a graduate of Southern Illinois University I am always curious to see films shot near my old home towns of Carbondale and Murphysboro, particularly because Southern Illinois contains some of the most beautiful landscapes in the state.  Joint Body tends not to utilize the more scenic aspects of the area where it was filmed, primarily confining itself to prison cells, motel rooms, church basements, and strip clubs.  The story involves recent parolee Nick Burke (Pelligrino) who is notified that he will not be allowed to see his young daughter after he is released back into society.  Confined to a motel room, which the film makers present effectively as just another form of prison, Burke meets one of the other motel residents, a "stripper with a heart of gold" named Michelle, who he eventually asks out on a date.  Before the date can happen, Burke is given a gun by a crooked cop, his brother Dean (Ryan O'Nan), which he ends up using to shoot the rapist who attacks Michelle in her motel room, in a ridiculously overwrought attempt to up the ante of the dramatic tone of the film (the less said about it, the better).

Joint Body

Pelligrino is an actor with obvious chops, and he and Witt stay mostly committed to a script that is probably not as good as the effort they're giving it.  The director occasionally manages to draw the character's psychology through the use of space, as when we see Burke attending AA meetings in a dim church basement, or in an early moment when we follow Witt's expression back onto the floor of the strip club as she exposes herself to a sleazy paying customer.  Both of these moments imbue the characters with the weight of experience, but unfortunately the interest the director establishes in those characters early on has long evaporated by the time we get to the third reel of Joint Body.  None of the other characters feel like anything other than loose sketches, and, although I realize there is some low budget design going on here, there are often scenes that really fail to hit for lack of any competent production design.   Ultimately, Joint Body needs a few more script drafts, but even then I'm not sure it would yield a film worth seeing.  The admirable arc of a father attempting to reconnect with his daughter is present, and handled in some nice ways in the quiet, sparse finale, but everything in between the few good notes they hit at the beginning and the end is not enough to keep this film afloat.

Mark Pelligrino as Nick Burke in Joint Body

Up Next:  The manga adaptation Smuggler, directed by Katsuhito Ishii, best known for the O-Ren Ishii animated sequence from Kill Bill, Vol.1.

CIFF Diary: Day 6 - A Conversation with John C. Reilly

10/12 - Although I think of John C. Reilly as having transcended the "Oh...THAT guy!" status of more obscure character actors, his name still elicited that response from a few festival goers when I mentioned attending the Tuesday morning "conversation" with him at the CIFF this year.  For me, Reilly will always be a significant player, having been featured in a couple of my favorite pictures, Malick's The Thin Red Line and Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.  More recently, Reilly turned in an excellent performance in the Mark Duplass picture Cyrus, and almost single-handedly saved the comedy Cedar Rapids from complete obscurity.  I hadn't considered what a diverse crowd Reilly would draw, as he is most popularly known for a few pictures that I haven't seen (I'm not playing movie snob here, because I'm certainly not above seeing Talledega Nights or Step Brothers--I just haven't seen them).  The questions ranged from people requesting advice from obscure Reilly characters to details about working with specific directors.

John C. Reilly

Reilly is at the fortunate point in his career of being able to work with directors that he admires (he says he keeps a list), and in this year's CIFF he has checked one of those names off the list, the director of Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay.  The new film from Ramsay, We Need To Talk About Kevin, featuring Reilly and Tilda Swinton, is being billed as a "psychological thriller" that "crescendos to a chilling, unforgettable climax" and screens at the fest this Tuesday at 7:54.  Reilly is a graduate of the DePaul University Theatre program, and was interviewed by one of his former instructors.  His presentation was part of the ongoing "Chicago Connections" programming this year at the CIFF.

"Hey, Haskell" - Haskell Wexler greeted by Reilly at the CIFF

Speaking of Chicago connections, I think I was one of the only people crowded around after the event that day who noticed that Chicago cinematography legend Haskell Wexler (also being honored at the fest this year) was one of the camera men buzzing around John C. Reilly on Tuesday morning.  Reilly casually patted Haskell on the shoulder as he exited, and with all the attention on Reilly I had the honor to talk a while with a film maker I have admired for many years, and whose rare and influential directorial effort Medium Cool I have screend numerous times in my film course.  Haskell shared with me some research suggestions on Medium Cool, as well as some information about his recent shoot in Northern Ireland.  More to come on Wexler and his career in a few days...

Up Next:  An American indie shot in Southern Illinois, Brian Jun's  Joint Body

CIFF Diary: Day 5, pt. 2: Searching for the Dead

10/11 - Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Cannes Grand Prix winner Once Upon a Time in Anatolia has been one of the most anticipated films of the CIFF, although judging from the fair number of walk-outs on Tuesday night it may divide audiences a bit, but not for the same reasons as Lars Von Trier's Melancholia.  While Von Trier's film may be similarly separated into two distinct halves, it lacks the careful meditation on the human conscience in the face of death that Ceylan so artfully achieves.  And, even though there are many aspects of Melancholia I admire, Ceylan does this without an ounce of contempt for his audience, even though he is similarly subverting narrative expectations along the way.  The difference with Anatolia is that the subversion is clear and thoughtful, with character usurping the primacy of plot, and the detoured destination of the film leaving those who stay the course a bit breathless (perhaps, for the first time at the fest since the opening of Melancholia).

Muhammet Uzuner as Dr. Cemal in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Ceylan is subverting a number of storytelling conventions here.  From the beginning it is clear there is a search involved, yet what is being sought is only revealed some time later in the film.  In this first half, as a murder mystery/police procedural, Anatolia allows it's primary characters to unfold through the humor of their flawed interactions as professionals.  This use of humor is beautifully tempered by the brooding performance of Firat Tanis as the primary suspect leading the police to a burial site that he seemingly cannot locate.  Among these police officials and men with shovels is Dr. Cemal, who emerges as the central character in the second half of the film.  As we travel the winding roads of rural Turkey with these men, Ceylan does not simply focus on the details of the search, but occasionally leaves you with the men who stay behind on the search.  For instance, in one memorable scene, we hear the Doctor converse with a driver that the other officers call "the Arab" about how to process an experience like this, "the Arab" giving him the advice that maybe it will at a least turn into "a story you can tell" in old age.  This sets up one of the primary tensions of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, which is how to tell the story of death, particularly when death is everywhere in your profession.  Certainly, the reaction to the death at the center of Anatloia is exhibited in a much different manner through Tanis's character than any of the officers or the prosecutor, as they joke over the shallow grave of the victim about the prosecutor looking like Clark Gable.  And, even though this is a common cop movie trope, it is rarely interrogated or taken as far as Ceylan is willing to go.

Firat Tanis in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

In some ways, I see this as an elaboration on the storytelling technique that Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers established with No Country for Old Men a couple of years ago.  Similarly, I recall a screening of that film where there were 8-10 walk outs during the last 20 minutes of the film, as (I can only imagine) for those audience members the story was over.  Of course, what is so challenging and memorable about what the Coens do at the end of that film has to do with an attention to character that needs to endure after the plot has fully dissolved; with an empathy that must extend to a character who has failed to triumph over any of the evil he's encountered.  In Anatolia, that character is Cemal, left with the viscera of a corpse on his face, and the cold reflection of who he has become at the end of puzzling journey, as the world moves on outside his window.  Ceylan allows us much more reflective, meditative time with the doctor in the final passages of Anatolia  than the Coens did with Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), so much so that I began to wonder if the film would break under the weight of the creeping pace Ceylan establishes.  But this patience really pays off, and by the end I had finally experienced that rush that every festival goer seeks.  Also, from what I understand, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is exciting as a transitional film for Ceylan, though I can only speak from my experience of having seen his exceptional film Distant from 2002, which is definitely smaller in scope.  As for Anatolia, the cinematography is truly captivating, mysterious, and no doubt some of the most accomplished we'll see this year--it definitely calls for including a few more stills here, which probably say more about the artistic level of the film in a few shots than one could ever hope to say in few words:

Up Next:  A Conversation with John C. Reilly

CIFF Diary: Day 5 - Twin Perspectives on Performance Art, Food, and the Body

10/11 - Tuesday's fest began for me with a screening of the new documentary by Lisa Boerstra, L.A. Raeven: Beyond the Image, which introduced me and much of the audience to the video and performance art of Lisbeth and Angelique Raeven, sisters who deal with issues of anorexia, food obsession, and the fashion industry through their perspective as twins.  Boerstra documents the twin artists in an incredibly thoughtful manner, often framing them in interviews in a close two shot, capturing the nuance of the reactions between the sisters as they deal with some pretty personal decisions in their lives, particularly Angelique's relationship with her boyfriend and desire for a child, which threatens to separate the two in a way that is unprecedented for the emotionally and artistically intertwined sisters.

Lisbeth and Angelique Raeven

As someone who is interested in performance art and artists, I found the exploration of this unique couple's work and lives fascinating.  Upon reading C. Carr's seminal performance art text On Edge:  Performance Art at the End of the Twentieth Century while taking a performance art course with writer/performer/mentor Craig Gingrich-Philbrook at Southern Illinois University (get into his work on the performance studies site Liminalities), one of the consistencies that struck me across the wild and wide ranging examples of performance artists covered there was how much of a necessity the creation of their art was, no matter how seemingly insane.  L.A. Raeven give off that exact same vibe of a tightly woven relationship between living and creating that seems to define the "performance art" impulse.  This is evident in what Boerstra so adeptly captures, and at the end of the screening I was not the only one who had questions about whether some of the scenes were leaning into Herzog-ian territory, maybe having been a bit more "performance" than "reality," but Boestra assured us that there was no interplay between the two.  A testament to Boerstra's skill in capturing these fascinating subjects, the film often looses any sense of documentary, unflinchingly witnessing and sharing not only the history of the Raeven's work, but their personal struggles, as well.

Still from an L.A. Raeven video/gallery piece, "Wild Zone"

Primarily, L.A. Raeven addresses issues of food and eating disorders in their work;  we see this through a skillful collage of some of the works, including "Wild Zone" from 2001, "Kelly" from 2006, and "Mindshare" from 2007.  We also see them creating video works like "Dead Man Walking," which involves lining their apartment floor with eggshells as a metaphor for living with HIV.  These obsessions carry over into scenes of the twins doing their daily routines, particularly in the distinctive ritual of the meals they share, at one point revealing that they have often made agreements to attempt to always eat exactly the same amount of food, an experimental agreement that then works it's way back into one of the videos we see them creating.

L.A. Raeven:  Beyond the Image

Boerstra's documentary is not only a great platform for exposing the work of L.A. Raeven to an audience that reaches beyond the performance art venues and video gallery scene, but also as an engaging narrative documentary.  I know I have some readers out there who are performance studies/art enthusiasts--for you folks in particular, this is one to seek out.

Up Next:  Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.

  

CIFF Diary: Day 4, pt. 4 - Sex and Politics in Argentina

10/10 - Santiago Mitre's The Student was written up in the CIFF guide as having earned comparisons to Godard and Truffaut, and although The Student takes us into the streets of Buenos Aries in the same way that the French New Wave favored the streets of Paris over the prison of studio production, The Student may not have earned those comparisons entirely.  The Student focuses on the politicization of young Roque (Esteban Lamothe), who gives a strong central performance in this low budget feature, which does manage to engage us in Roque's journey from his rural home town to the University of Buenos Aries, where he is introduced to the activist fervor of the student movement.

Esteban Lamothe in The Student

I can't say the same for the second half of the film, which takes us from the classroom activism and after hours sexual encounters of Roque's college experience to the unforgiving and somewhat paranoid world of real Argentinian politics.  Speaking of, if you are not at least a bit versed in the complexity of current Argentinian politics, The Student might not be for you.  At the same time, I found it an interesting introduction to that world, if not an entirely engaging narrative.  Judging from the light number of walk-outs on the film Monday night, I think those who were totally confused by the politics also felt the narrative trajectory was lacking a bit.

Santiago Mitre's The Student

The film makes some interesting moves in paralleling Roque's political involvement with his sexual and romantic relationships, which are particularly well drawn in the performances of his two female co-stars,  Romina Paula and Valeria Correa, but I wanted the film to go farther with those parallels, as it ultimately didn't seem to be able to open up anything resonant in relation to those established themes.  The Student has finished screening at the CIFF, but may be worth seeking out for those with a particular interest in gaining a framework for this place and time in history.

Up Next:  Twin performance and video artists Lisbeth and Angelique Raeven are featured in the documentary L.A. Raeven, with director Lisa Boerstra in attendance.