CIFF Diary: Day 11 - Gaze, Breath, Melt...Catharsis?

10/17 - The aesthetically puzzling new feature from Sri Lanka, Karma, was one of the films being featured as part of the South Asian focus that is unique to this year's fest.  The film is the second feature from director/writer Prasanna Jayakody, and tells the story of a young man named Piyal (Jageth Manuwarna).  Piyal is introduced in the opening image of the film; floating and gently rotating to the pronounced sound of breathing.  It is a striking opening image, followed by a voice-over where we hear Piyal saying:  "I was responsible for my mother's death."  The film toys with theatrical sets and imagery (Jayakody has a live theatre background) as we see what appears to be a staged depiction of his dying mother lying in bed next to Piyal.  Then, a rowboat suspended by ropes that swings left to right, as the rowers ominously question our central character in the middle about the meaning of life.  We later learn that this rowboat image is part of a play that Piyal is rehearsing, and that the aural and visual scheme of Jayakody's new film is going to omit clear narrative road signs in favor of more symbolic preoccupations.  As you may have already guessed, the symbolism becomes, at times, a bit heavy handed.  At the same time, for a film that veers so boldly into avant-garde territory, there is a clear narrative through-line at the heart of Karma, though it is handled in a way that has nothing to do with Western film language, which I've found increasingly refreshing in reflection, though maybe not entirely engaging for the entirety of Karma's brief running time.

Michelle Herft in Karrma

Piyal occupies a dingy space below the living space of Nadee (Nadeeka Guruge) and Amanda (Michelle Herft), a musician and his girlfriend who are trying to cope with the onset of Amanda's breast cancer.  As a way to deal with her illness, Amanda posts images on her blog of her naked breasts, asking the question, "What does this mean to you?"  The trajectory of the narrative involving Piyal's eventual intimacy with Amanda, and Nadee's increasing distance from her, as images of Nadee performing with his band are layered over the sounds of Amanda's anguish, is detailed through shots that frequently use mismatched sound components.  This technique seems to be the stylistic feature of the film, as it carries us through four segments: "Gaze," "Breath," "Melt," and "Catharsis."  In the same way that the film refuses to link it's sound elements to it's images, I had trouble linking the titles to the action and imagery in significant ways, and certainly never reached a point of catharsis, even though the final passage of the film features a memorable image of Amanda, post-mastectomy, as Piyal, now her lover, lays his head on her lap.

Jageth Manuwarna and Michelle Herft in Karma

I appreciate that Karma made some bold stylistic choices, but by the finale the constant moaning, sobbing, breathing, and squeaking noises were pronounced to the point of annoyance.  I can't imagine this cumulative effect was in line with the film maker's intent given the subject matter.  Ultimately, he does manage to create some potent images, and occasionally, as with Amanda's blog, raises some interesting questions.  In the end we are left with the mild impression one gets from time spent with an interesting abstract painting, rather than the full impact of an accomplished film, as we return to one of the more engaging images, the film coming full circle visually:  Piyal, spinning slowly in water as the sound of breathing continues.    

Up Next:  The new film by Werner Herzog, Into the Abyss

 

   

CIFF Diary: Day 10, pt. 3 - The Return of Baby Doll

 10/16 - Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty arrives with the "Jane Campion Presents" stamp of approval, and although the film maker shows the promise of creating images that rank with the most indelible of Campion's, her experiment in examining femininity through the confining frame of capitalism carries little potency by film's end.  This is too bad because, like the film that kicked off this festival for me, Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, I feel like there is a perfectly good film existing within the parameters of what the film maker released as a finished product.  Fortunately, even though I think both of these films could be re-edited and truncated into better pictures, I don't think that either Leigh or Von Trier got their films to that point of unraveling through a lack of ambition--Sleeping Beauty and Melancholia are films that want it all, and I tend to find that more interesting than a film that doesn't want much, and succeeds fully at getting it.

Emily Browning burns some income in Sleeping Beauty

Kirsten Dunst knows what's coming - Melancholia

Sleeping Beauty stars Emily Browning (Lucy), most recently seen in a role that resonates eerily with this one:  Baby Doll in Zach Snyder's under-appreciated Sucker Punch.  Though they use drastically different stylistic approaches, both Sleeping Beauty and Sucker Punch have expressionistic goals that use the particularly juvenile form of Browning as a reflecting surface for a number of culturally entrenched practices, and are primarily engaged with a feminist critique of how patriarchal structures, whether found in the working class video game set or the Eyes Wide Shut-level rich, keep the female body and imagination in submission.  This critique as a central idea for a film is a good one (as I said, I think Sucker Punch is entirely successful in the way these ideas rise up from it's seeming morass of misogyny and fan boy vapidness, although the film is anything but misogynistic and vapid), but with Sleeping Beauty there is a pervasive sense of first-year film school feminism that, put simply, comes off as pretentious.

Sucker Punch

Sleeping Beauty

But not everything about Sleeping Beauty strikes me this way, and it was very late in the film that I even came to this conclusion, reluctantly.  The way in which Sleeping Beauty evokes it's themes of human existence, whether male or female, as increasingly and often scarily bound by the relentless commodification of the everyday is at times executed beautifully through concise, absurdist sketches.  I particularly like the section of the film that portrays Lucy's home life with the ineffectual and ailing "Prince" Thomas (Eden Falk), who takes vodka in his cereal and complains of how tired he is of watching "Oprah."  Nearly every scene with Thomas ends with a reference to the television, and whether it be nature shows or pornography, there are some nicely threaded references to the naturalization of the male gaze as it relates to the kind of passive sexuality that is at the heart of the "Sleeping Beauty" tale from it's origins.  When we get to the point in the film where Lucy goes for the "big money," so to speak, by allowing herself to be drugged for the perverse pleasures of a variety of absurdly opulent elderly men, the plot involving Lucy's attempt to subvert the rules of the game with her secret surveillance fails to have the kind of impact I think Leigh intended.  Although, the various expressions of male sexuality as exhibited in Lucy's three visitors (characters billed only as "Man 1" "Man 2" and "Man 3") are scenes that manipulate our gaze as audience in some interesting ways, sometimes speaking directly to us or placing us at an uncomfortable proximity that had the Sunday night audience reacting in some delightfully awkward ways.  

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is an expressionistic drama, and Lucy is a character that is meant to reflect a number of female social roles.  Lucy is wife, waitress, office girl, college student, prostitute, and lab rat.  Yet, to deconstruct every role we see Browning playing in this film seems futile, as I think the overall effect of her character being dissected into these many recognizable parts is more of the goal for Leigh.  And part of the overall problem with Sleeping Beauty is that some of these tangents lead nowhere, as in the late-in-the-film drug journey with her restaurant co-worker, while others, as in the aforementioned scenes with Thomas, are effectively evocative.  Also, Sleeping Beauty is a difficult film from which to extract a central idea or theme, and this isn't helped by the film's disinterest in behaving in any traditional narrative manner (although the trailer for the film tries it's damnedest to pretend as if it does).  Finally, it unfortunately exists in a class of films that utilize its particularly staid, confining aesthetic to greater effect, from Lucille Hadzihalilovic's excellent Frank Wedekind adaptation Innocence to Todd Haynes's Safe (which, like Sleeping Beauty, was marketed through a desperate attempt at re-authoring a film through a trailer).  Sleeping Beauty is perhaps an interesting film viewed in relation to other similar pictures, or as an exercise in radical adaptation, but by no means a wholly satisfying film of either story or ideas.   

Up Next:  Cinema from Sri Lanka:  Karma

  

CIFF Diary: Day 10, pt. 2 - The Two Weakest Creatures in the Forest

10/16 - Natural Selection is the feature debut by Texas native Robbie Pickering, and the kind of personal, independent American film that will most likely connect with audiences at the CIFF, as it has at the SXSW film festival earlier this year.  I had already heard strong recommendations in regards to the film on a couple of pod-casts, and when I took my seat for the screening on Sunday afternoon I told the woman sitting next to me as much, when asked what I had heard about it.  Turns out she was testing the waters a bit, as she eventually revealed that she was Gayland Williams (Sheila), one of the actresses in the fine ensemble Pickering managed to assemble for his breakthrough film.  Williams shared with me some interesting details about the production of Natural Selection while we waited for the screening, which mostly centered around the performance of Harris, whose character is partially based on the director's mother.  Williams praised Harris's work in the film, which really is a revelation, and also let me in on the fact that a few of the costume pieces that Harris wears in the film are the actual clothes of Pickering's mother.

Rachel Harris in  Natural Selection

The film opens with a particularly memorable take on the prison break, which establishes Pickering's inventive sense of humor, but suffers from a bit of "indie quirk" indulgence, not unlike a few other moments from the film's opening passages.  I sensed this might be the case going in.  I've seen enough American indies at this point that I've have developed a kind of "quirk"-y sense (like "Spidey" sense, but instead of imminent danger I just foresee a lot of eye rolling).  Unfortunately, I think some of this grew out of films that I really love--the early Jarmusch and Hartley--but has become it's own kind of monster.  Natural Selection never totally succumbs to these indulgences, but I'm not sure it entirely succeeds in convincing us of it's narrative arc, either.  The strength of the film lies in it's characters, and Linda (Harris), the sexually dissatisfied wife of a repressed Christian fundamentalist (John Diehl, also excellent here, as he was in Monte Hellman's recent Road to Nowhere), is so well drawn and played that you feel as if the film could let go of a few other elements in favor of exploring her alone.  Linda is a fascinating character;  a particular blend of slightly obnoxious rural religiosity and weak will that audiences will recognize immediately.  When Linda seeks out and finds her husband's illegitimate son, Raymond (Matt O'Leary, also featured in Live Free or Die Hard and a couple of the Spy Kids movies), we discover the truly fragile balance of her religious convictions, as the film transforms into a road film, and Linda and Raymond connect in a way that reveals them as two of the weakest creatures in the forest.  Their plight becomes increasingly desperate, and a bit depraved, as Linda's husband, recovering from a stroke, waits at home with the pastor's wife (Williams).  Meanwhile, pastor Peter (John Gries, who will always be Lazlo Hollyfeld to me) pursues Linda with a perfectly played repression, cranking up the "metal" in some hilarious cross-cut moments.  By the time the pursuit has ended and Linda is back in her small congregation, the resolution of Linda and Raymond's relationship seems a bit forced, but Pickering rightly allows the film's conclusion to give everything over to Harris.  

Rachel Harris and Matt O'Leary in Natural Selection

The interplay of Harris and O'Leary is at the heart of the film, although Linda's character arc is much more well drawn than Raymond's.  O'Leary is very good in the film, but I think the strong divide between the prison escapee/drug addict that he has to strike such a harsh note with in his opening scenes collides with the indie darling he has to become by film's end, stretching his task as an actor a bit too thin.  A very watchable independent film with great performances, Natural Selection will definitely find a loving audience.

Up Next:  From one fairy tale to another, "Baby Doll" Emily Browning stars in the Aussie production, Sleeping Beauty.

CIFF Diary: Day 10 - Social Media: Spreading the Word

10/16 - At the last of three panels I would attend at the fest, the CIFF assembled film makers who have had experience and success in using social media to promote their work to talk about the role social networking and fundraising sites are having on film culture.  The panel included Xan Aranda, director of Andrew Bird:  Fever Year, which premiered at the fest the previous evening; Rider Strong, who was screening his short film Method at the fest;  Ky Dickens, director of the documentary Fish Out of Water; and Kristen Kaza, who co-directs Yellow Wing Productions, which she co-founded with Dickens in 2007. The panel was mediated by Stephen Gossett, who is the managing editor of the Chicago culture guide Flavorpill Chicago.

Social Media panel:  Gossett, Kaza, Dickens, Strong, and Aranda 

The panel attempted to get at how social media is changing the nature of how films are funded, shot, distributed, and appreciated.  As the panel shared their experiences and insight, I kept recalling Aranda's post Fever Year Q & A the previous evening, within which she made an eloquent statement in praise of her paying audience and in support of the collective cinema experience, as she reminded us of the power of sitting beneath a projected film that is larger than yourself.  In a time when our attention is so consistently drawn to smaller and smaller screens, there is an interesting divide between the ways in which our "smart phones" simultaneously benefit the world of the film maker, while also being a threat to the overall experience of film.  As Aranda reminded us the night before, Andrew Bird is going to sound like shit on your iphone.  But, on the panel Sunday morning, we were reminded by all of the film makers that as a means to raise funds on sites like "Kickstarter" and "Indie GoGo," or as a way to create waves of communication and interest in your project through social media sites, the current technology shift must be embraced.  Personally, as a kid who grew up in a rural area, and for whom it was a challenge to find the fringe culture artifacts that fascinated me (recording "the Pirate" FM radio that faintly wafted over from Iowa on Sunday nights;  dubbing VHS of "Night Flight" episodes for friends), I rejoice in the current access that artists and activists have to their specific, niche audiences.  The ability for people to have more varied access to the media they care about--to even fund the media they care about--is a powerful thing, and works hand-in-hand with the current movement against corporate structures.

Protesters occupy Chicago during the CIFF

In the new media landscape, Kaza and Dickens are able to tap into the LGBT community in a much more pervasive way than they would have been able to 15 years ago.  Their film, Fish Out of Water, which uses animation, narrative, and historical analysis to deconstruct the seven bible verses used to condemn homosexuality, is thankfully reaching the increasingly far reaches of the internet, and, ideally, giving hope and a sense of interconnectedness to those who need to tap into that message.  Likewise, in a less politicized way, Strong also expressed the benefits of social media in accessing his niche audience, tapping into the "ComicCon" crowd with his new short film The Dungeon Master.  Ultimately, one of the most sober reminders on the shifting nature of the social media landscape came from Aranda, who works with Kartemquin films, the documentary production company that recently produced Steve James' The Interrupters.  She reminded us that Kartemquin films, whose legendary documentary work focuses mainly on social issues as examined through everyday human drama, used to refer to themselves as "New Media."  From the conclusions of this panel, film making is still an important part of the "New Media" landscape, and the channels of access and funding are widening.    

Up Next:  The much-hyped SXSW favorite Natural Selection.

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CIFF Diary: Day 9, pt.2 - Opposite Day

10/15 - After the lengthy screening of The Turin Horse it felt right to transition to the new documentary about Chicago musician Andrew Bird, perhaps the perfect foil to the gradual fizzle of what is, supposedly, Tarr's final film.  Having visited the end of the world twice in this festival (oops!  spoiler!), a rockin' concert film was a welcome change.  And, although I'm not sure what kind of screenings Xan Aranda's Andrew Bird: Fever Year will receive in the future, I do recommend checking it out in a theater where you can get the full concert sound affect.  For my partner Jen and I this screening was a particularly special treat since we have seen Bird live before, but from the back of a rather sedate concert hall at a rather sedate Wisconsin University.  One of the great achievements of Fever Year as a documentary is that it feels necessary, as Bird's careful and improvisational use of looping mechanisms and his interplay with an extraordinary cast of musicians is something every music fan should get the chance to examine.  Aranda not only captures the concert footage in a way that gets you close to the action, but also lovingly intertwines a narrative of Bird as a relentless touring musician.  The "fever" of the title is literal:  Bird, although not in any serious ill health now, toured fitfully and feverishly nonstop for a year, which Aranda documents with tremendous care and fidelity.

Andrew Bird

Fever Year is one of those music documentaries that will deepen the appreciation of Bird for those who are already fans, and most likely get newcomers hooked.  Although the film is more concert film than narrative documentary (the music is the meat, and the narrative is the bones, as Aranda put it at a post-screening Q&A), it lays out Bird's process and his strengths as a musician and lyricist in such a way that it gets you anxious to listen more closely.  And the film, put simply, rocks.  Aranda covers a number of the full band numbers with Woodstock-inspired split-screen that made me wonder why more rock docs don't use that technique.  The presentation and performance of one of the early numbers in the film, "Opposite Day," is worth the price of admission alone (here is a live version--not from the film, but still very good).

Andrew Bird's and his custom-made touring amplifiers

Bird may not be the most immediately accessible musician and lyricist, and his career has gone through gradually changing styles and improvisations, but for those looking for a gateway to his music I suggest his incredible 2005 album "The Mysterious Production of Eggs."  Aside from that, keep an eye out for screenings of Andrew Bird: Fever Year.

Up Next:  A Sunday morning Panel Discussion--Social Media:  Spreading the Word

  

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.