Still in Motion

Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces

Congratulations to friends, Jesse Epstein, Eric Scott Latek and Daniel Robin--hooray!  Click here to read about the 22 other fabulous kids bestowed with this honor.

You Won't Believe What's Happening in the California Desert . . .

You also won't believe what's happening in the deserts in and around Dubai, but that's another story.  With which I will regale you as soon as I can talk about it coherently.  In the meantime, I've just reached London this afternoon from that crazy place, and even though it's pissing down rain, I'm glad to be here!

Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber's Full Battle Rattle is having its theatrical rollout at Film Forum today.  Please go see this in the theater--not only to support these talented guys and their amazingly accomplished and exciting nonfiction film, but because the film should be seen on the big screen.

I got to interview Moss and Gerber for Shooting People and our extensive conversation is up on their site right now.  Please enjoy by clicking here.  Bring a snack; it's long.  But it's well worth reading about their experience making this prize-winning piece.  You can also read my review about the film after seeing it in Toronto at Hot Docs here.  Yes, war is that weird.

NEXT, Please

It seems fitting that my 200th post features a film made by a filmmaker who was one of my very first in-depth interviews with an artist of the video persuasion.  I met Pablo Aravena at the AFI International Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2006, where his documentary, NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting, had its US debut.  I grew up knowing some of L.A.'s most notorious graffiti artists and have always had a love affair with this outlaw art form.  And Aravena's is one of the best films I've seen (five years in the making) on this global underground movement that transmigrates through cultures, languages and states of mind about the world in which we live.

There's a revamped web site on hand as the film moves from its long trajectory on the festival circuit (Aravena has been rocketing around the planet with it for several years, and its international screenings are usually accompanied by some kind of art exhibit, installation or special show featuring some of the film's featured artists) to a more retail-oriented model.  There will be an online store opening this fall that will sell DVDs of the film, as well as original artwork.  DVDs will be on the market in North America in November.

In the first commission to use its riverfront facade, and the first major public museum to display street art in London, The TATE Modern will present the work of six internationally acclaimed urban artists this summer.  Aravena is curating a two-day, six-film street art documentary program at the museum August 16 - 17.  This independent producer has created a superb case study in how to market and prolong the life of your film, and has expanded his oeuvre as a filmmaker into curating (both art and film), producing live events and shepherding his first film through the gauntlet of various indie distribution scenarios.  You can read my conversation with this sharp-minded and hard-working dude here.  Congrats on a great run, Pablo. 

IFC/Media Lab Studios' Documentary Production Grant

Currently, the Independent Film Channel is unveiling some production initiatives for filmmakers.  At Media Lab Studios on IFC.com, they are hosting an initiative to stimulate independent documentary filmmaking by asking for three-minute nonfiction pieces to be uploaded to the site by the 20th of this month (it's, suddenly, July!).  It can be a short or a three-minute trailer or preview for a longer project and can be on any subject.  They are offering $7,500 to the best of the lot and $2,500 to the runner-up.  The grant site is here, if you're interested in learning more.

Shooting People Interview with Filmmaker Eric Metzgar

Last month, shortly after the Full Frame Festival, the good folks over at Shooting People asked if I'd be interested in doing an interview for them with Eric Metzgar, director of two extraordinary documentaries, The Chances of the World Changing and Life. Support. Music.  Being a fan, of course I said I'd love to, and now you can read our conversation by clicking here.

Metzgar, also a singer/songwriter/musician, has a very moving and quite intense music video called "Song for Morris Mead," currently available to view on his myspace page and next Thursday, the 26th, he'll be playing at Banjo Jim's.  Jason Crigler, the subject of Life. Support. Music., will be a featured player, as will Noe Venable.

Life. Support. Music. is currently in competition at Silverdocs for the Best Music Documentary Award.

Tribeca '08 Fellow, Hugo Perez

As I've mentioned here before, I'm doing a series of interviews for the newly launched Re:Frame Collection of several of the 2008 Tribeca Film Institute Fellows.  Hugo Perez received an Emerging Artist nod, and my interview with him is now posted here.  Perez (pictured with actress, Patricia Clarkson, narrator of his gorgeous Neither Memory Nor Magic) has produced an impressive body of work over the course of the past five years, both fiction and nonfiction, and the project he submitted to Tribeca is a feature script he wrote called Immaculate Conception--I've read it; it's wonderful.  This project will be his narrative feature directorial debut.

There'll be a bit of a lull in interviews over there for most of the summer since I'm about to skedaddle out of town to the Flaherty.  Hot on the heels of that, I have a month's worth of adventures out of the country--first in Dubai, UAE, and then I'll be hanging in London for a bit, ending my sojourn at Britdoc.  I know.  Don't cry for me, Argentina.

And I want to give a big shout-out to my blogger friend and mentor, Agnes Varnum, aka Aggie V (Mr. Schnack's moniker for this little spitfire that's taking Austin by storm).  She's celebrating the two year anniversary of her excellent blog, Doc It Out.  Right on, sister; a big happy anniversary to you!

Two Quickies

Just wanted to mention a couple of things before I dash off for the day:

I want to personally congratulate Mark Elijah Rosenberg, artistic director of Rooftop Films, program director, Dan Nuxoll and managing director, Genevieve Delaurier and their entire staff and crew on a stellar opening weekend for their 12th summer season.  I know of other local festivals and annual film events that have been around just as long, or longer, that don't begin to measure up to the professionalism, exciting programming and artistic potency that this organization has in its arsenal.  It's a bitch launching and keeping something going in New York City--finding your audience, keeping your audience and growing your audience is a full-time job.  With partners like Scion, IFC, indieWIRE, Indiepix Films, and others, they are obviously intent on kicking ass well into the next decade, and beyond. 

Last night's event in the East Village, on the rooftop of New Design High aka the "Open Road Rooftop," was fantastic and packed with hundreds of people, including downtown princess, Chloe Sevigny and the astoundingly prolific filmmaker and Academy-Award winner, Alex Gibney, in attendance, as well as the star of the evening, Mr. Clayton Patterson, photo and video documentarian, historian and keeper of the flame for the Lower East Side of our fair city, a place that is quite rapidly becoming monetized, corporatized and Disneyfied at an alarming rate.  A.R.E. Weapons opened with a blistering set, followed by the world premiere of Captured.  Big kudos to filmmakers Ben Solomon, Dan Levin and Jenner Furst for crafting a superb and riveting documentary.

Tonight, the special season opening weekend continues.  Click here for more info on the entire summer program.

Item Two:  On Wednesday, June 25, there will be a special downtown reception and screening during the 2008 Human Rights Watch Film Festival at 7:30 at Room Studio.  Cinereach, a supporter of the festival, will present the 2008 Cinereach Award, a $5,000 prize, to (the awesome) Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath for their amazing film, The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), the story of one family's epic journey from war-torn Laos to New York City, 23 years in the making.  Cinereach is an up-and-coming non-profit funded by a group of young filmmakers and philanthropists dedicated to promoting socially-conscious film.  We  will be hearing a lot more from this organization in the very near future.  There will be a conversation with Kuras and Phrasavath after the screening.

Interview: Iris Olsson, Director and Annukka Lilja, Editor SUMMERCHILD

Making nonfiction cinema offers a filmmaker many storytelling choices.  Depending on several different factors, including the director's stubborness to stick to her aesthetic guns, a story about a Russian girl who has taken herself to an orphanage because things are so bad at home and then is adopted for a short time by a wealthy Finnish couple offering to take care of that child during their vacation time as part of their "charity" work, could be a grim, didactic treatise on all kinds of social issues.  But instead, filmmaker Iris Olsson, decided to tell this story from the point of view of the child and, in just an hour's time, we go on a journey of discovery as told by 11-year-old Svetlana, a brave, highly emotional and expressive pre-pubescent girl who takes her own destiny a hell of a lot more seriously than the adults around her do.

It's quite an accomplished piece, made under the auspices of the University of  Art and Design in Helsinki, Finland, where Olsson and her editor, Annukka Lilja (pictured at right) met to create a  film called Summerchild (Kesan Lapsi).  They will both soon receive their Master's Degrees from the TaiK.  Having made just one student film before Summerchild, Olsson relied tremendously on her small crew to realize her vision and is still very much discovering her cinematic "voice."  And even though Lilja is still technically a student, her editing chops are first-rate; she has a born storyteller's instinct.  She's also been on the festival circuit this year with another award-winning film she edited for Elina Hirvonen called Paradise--Three Journeys in This World, which I saw at the IDFA last fall.  I met a very jet-lagged Lilja on the long shuttle bus ride from downtown Durham to the Hilton one afternoon at Full Frame and met Olsson there soon after.  They won the President's Award at that fest and a couple of weeks later, we met up again at Hot Docs where the film was a finalist in the mid-length documentary category.  We got a chance to sit and chat for a bit in Toronto about the making of Summerchild:

Still in Motion (SIM):  Finding your storytelling voice as an artist is a lifelong pursuit, but from the looks of this film, yours is already quite a defined one.  The solid structure is there; you’ve made some strong choices and you’ve, obviously, made your film for an intelligent audience.  There’s no exposition, no explanation; you just take us right in and trust that we’ll find our way.  I love those close up shots where the camera is running alongside the little girls' feet as they romp in the playground, juxtaposed with a steady, lingering shot of your main subject, Sveta, as she watches the other children at play from the window of her room. She is so unselfconscious in front of the camera, as if she’s been in front of one her whole life.  What, in your opinion, made her such a perfect film subject?

Iris Olsson (IO):  I think it was boredom.  I think she’d given up at some point.

SIM:  How do you think she interpreted your presence in her life?

IO:  It’s hard to say.  Someone in the audience asked this at the screening at Full Frame.  And I said that I cannot answer for her.  But, I think when we came, she thought that we would be fun, more people to play with.  We would be giving to her; we would be admirers.  She would be the subject and we would be the followers.  She very soon realized the advantages of being the center of that kind of attention.

SIM:  How old was she when you shot the film?

IO:  Eleven.

SIM: And how did you find her?

IO:  I first found out about the [Russian] home for orphans from a doctor in the east of Finland.  He told me about the charity projects they run there.  I wanted to find people who were doing this kind of “adoption” for the first time.

SIM:  Was this the subject you specifically set out to find for your film?

IO:  No, I was researching a totally different subject and that’s when I ran into this doctor.  All I knew was that it was time to make a film and I’d just have to go out there and find a story.  What struck me about this one, in particular, was a small phrase he used in describing it.  He told me that there were these children coming here [from Russia to Finland], and after a short time spent with some people involved in this charity, they would then return to the orphanage.  I already saw the possibilities just from hearing that and I knew that it had strong themes.  I immediately had so many questions.  My first reaction to hearing this was a very stereotypical one—they get to come here to Finland, this rich and wealthy land to stay with a family and then they’re sent back to that godawful orphanage.

SIM:  Yet we see that the orphanage is far from "godawful."

IO:  Yes, but before I went there, I imagined it was a horrible place.  It’s a very easy stereotype for someone from Finland, or anywhere in the Western world for that matter, to picture something specific when you hear the words “Russian orphanage.”

SIM:  The children are very well taken care of there and, obviously, loved.

IO:  Definitely, yes.  I was intrigued with my stereotypical images.  And in starting the film, I was committed to finishing it.  It took on a different aspect from what I anticipated.  There was more going on there than what I thought of as “charity,” in my mind.  Some of these children are social orphans—most have families in the community.  Due to social conditions that exist at home, it’s better for them to be in a state-run facility.  Svetlana took herself there; she was the one to walk away from her house.  That, to me, makes it even more tragic.  For an 11-year-old to leave her family, the situation must have been really, really bad.

SIM:  During the course of filming this, what surprised you the most in terms of what she allowed you to capture?  We never really see her cry or breakdown until the very end.  We hear about her crying fits, but we never see one until there's talk of bringing her to Finland for good.

IO:  We really only wanted scenes of her crying that we thought were cinematic and within the style in which we wanted to make the film--that is, not having her talking to me or interacting with me or the camera in any way.  That was something I decided I wanted even before I found the story for this film.

SIM:  This was a personal aesthetic challenge to yourself?

IO:  Yes.  I wanted to do a purely observational piece, to go “old style.”  I wanted to see if it was possible.  It’s so much harder to get the story from “real life,” one that has no dramaturgic structure.  That was something I wanted to do.  The other challenge was to get a film on television.  Not that that compromised or informed my artistic decisions, but it was a hope for me, that it would be of such good quality that it was worth broadcasting.

SIM:  Most filmmakers I know make work for public consumption.  You have to think about that if you want to survive on doing what you love.

IO:  During the editing phase, we were screening roughs and, of course, it was very important for other people to weigh in.  And, of course, the criticism was geared mainly to using voiceover narration or a lot of cards to establish what was going on.  We were deep into it and were feeling insecure and unsure of what we had.  I wasn’t thinking of audience when I made this.  I was doing it for myself.  I also think, though, that I’m a good audience.  I want to see a good film, to be taken into a film.  We were working on the dramaturgy a lot.  We used the Post-It method [laughing] in the editing room, just trying to combine the Russian and Finnish footage in a good way.

Annukka Lilja (AL):  We were trying to figure out how much information the audience needed to know about each place at the beginning.  The material looks so different between the two places.

SIM:  One scene that I found particularly devastating was Svetlana's first journey from Russia to Finland.  We hear Peter [the “adopting” father] telling us that during that ride, he observed Sveta's slow realization that she was traveling a vast distance and going very, very far away from home.  He describes how upset she was, crying and throwing up.  That was one of many parts, too, that felt like a fairytale to me—the little girl going into the dark and forbidding forest; however, she’s forgotten the bread crumbs she’ll need to help her find her way back.  It did also feel a bit like an abduction, especially as it got later in the day and the light started to go.

IO:  I don’t understand how she had the strength for it.  Of course, we were there.  I think she felt a small sense of security in that.  Those people were kind of new to her and to just hop into a car and drive away with them was very brave.  She also comes from an environment where there’s a lot of alcoholism, prostitution.  She could have been taken and driven anywhere!  She didn't have a mobile or any way of contacting anyone.  My nerves, as a child, could never withstand that.

SIM:  How unobtrusive were you really?  How much did your presence contribute to what played out in front of the camera?  That’s a tricky thing, especially in a story as intimate as this one and especially when you're dealing with a child.

IO:  There were a lot of issues surrounding that.  The couple [Tiina and Peter] didn’t really know how to be with the girl at all.  To my disappointment, I found that they were spending more time with the film crew than with the girl, I think because, perhaps, they were looking for some security from us, being at times uncertain how they should act as "parents."  That took me by surprise.  So, after a couple of days of shooting, I had to sit down with them and tell them that they needed to really start acting as if the film crew didn't exist.  And the essential thing to explain to them was that we weren’t really there for them, but for Svetlana.  That was hard, telling them not to talk to us.  I wasn’t even really thinking about the film, so much as I was thinking that I did not want our presence to compromise or hinder anything that was to go on between them and her.  She wouldn’t be forming any kind of relationship with them and that, in turn, would affect her future.  So we kind of had to push them away, force them to pretend we weren’t there.

SIM:  How long was your shoot?

IO:  In total, about 23 days. 

SIM:  Did you edit or structure as you shot?

AL:  No, it all happened afterwards.

SIM:  How many hours of footage did you have to work with?

IO:  Thirty-three.

SIM:  That’s very economical.

IO:  It was a lot for us.

SIM:  I’m used to talking to filmmakers that sometimes produce well over 100 hours of footage.

IO:  I also pre-selected from those hours what I wanted to digitize, so we edited through only 14 hours, ultimately.

AL: The only thing I did for the first week was to watch about seventeen hours of pre-selected footage.

IO:  When we did the first rough cut, we were at two and a half hours.  For a long time, we were at 1:30, and I kind of liked it at that length.  There was also a one hour and ten minute version I liked.  But it came down to broadcast industry standard, so we cut down to 59:30.

SIM:  What’s the theatrical distribution scene like in Finland for documentary?

IO:  At this stage in my filmmaking career, I don’t even think of that.  I just wanted to make a film, to complete a film.  But I was thinking in a cinematic way all the time, envisioning this on the big screen.  Being in film school, you get used to seeing films screened that way, but in thinking about where a film might be distributed, you only think in terms of film festivals.  I know I will always make films for the big screen.  A friend of mine in Finland wanted his feature film to go into theaters and he told me at the end, it would have been cheaper for him to give a DVD to all the people that bothered to come to the movie, plus seven euros, you know?  It cost him a ton.  In Finland, I think for a feature documentary, you might get about 700 people coming to the theater.  It's really not worth it.

SIM:  Your film was financed by the film school.

IO:  Yes, that and people working for free kept the budget very low.  We were given a small budget that went to production expenses, traveling and color correction.  Other things like camera rental, I facilitated.

SIM:  What kind of camera did you use?

IO:  We shot in mini-DV using a JVC-HDV camera.  In Finland, there’s still a huge incompatibility issue with digitizing HD footage, so the cinematographer [Anssi Leino] chose it for its mobility; it felt good in his hands.  It’s also a great camera for hand-held work which was very important.  We used a top-of-the-line lens, as well.

SIM:  How did you choose your crew?

IO:  Well, since it was produced out of the film school, Annukka was suggested to me from a professor.  I had done another film there and didn’t want to use the same editor.  For the cinematographer, I had someone besides Leino in mind, but he had a scheduling conflict.  I’m very happy I went with Anssi Leino—he’s also a student there.

SIM:  His shooting is really great.

IO:  Yeah, it is.  He’s a very open person; there's somewhat of an innocence about him.  And he also has a small child.  Before film school, he was a skiing coach for the Finnish Para-Olympics, where people in wheelchairs compete.  He’s very sensitive, caring, fatherly.  He felt very "safe" and he’s very personable, a good conversationalist—he was perfect for the project.  In the beginning we shot some research material, which for a long time we thought we would want to use in the film because it had an exceptional scene.  It was the first time that Sveta met the parents.  We were trying out things and the situation was sudden for us, as well.  We didn’t know it was going to happen so we had no preparation time.  Ultimately, it was a bad shoot; we used a research camera, so the material looked terrible.  We had to make a choice in terms of the cinematic criteria.  I wanted the piece to look like a movie.  I just couldn't use that shitty-looking material, even though it contains a great scene, an essential scene.

SIM:  I think that’s a common problem, especially in the beginning of a project.  There would be plenty of filmmakers that would decide to use it anyway in service to the story.

AL:  It would also have colored the whole story in a different light.  It was a weird scene.  The girl was sitting there and they were commenting on her, “Doesn’t she have beautiful eyes?” etc.  They weren't really looking at her as a person.

IO:  She also had a temperature of 40 degrees [100 degrees F]; she was very pale.  Tiina was trying to touch her and was talking at her, “Come, come.  You want to come to Finland with us?”  She didn’t even understand the language.  I hadn’t thought of that material since the edit.  If I start thinking of all of the films that we could have done with that material or second-guess what we should have done, it really doesn’t do much good.  It doesn’t come naturally.  When I watch the film now, I don’t think about what we should have done differently.  We had only small hints there in the film on so many things; we chose very carefully what to keep in and what we wouldn’t use.  Maybe that’s for the DVD extras or something, to include those kinds of scenes. 

SIM:  There's that scene where the granny comes in when Sveta is at Peter and Tiina's house.  There’s a whole room of people and they’re all talking about her as if she’s not in the room.  And during all this, as the camera stays still and focused on Sveta, we just hear the dialogue going on around her.  She’s almost catatonic.  That scene is very powerful; it says so much about her isolation.

IO:  We did a lot of work to get to that point—trying to find a way to film and focus on certain things.

SIM:  Sometimes there are a lot of happy accidents, too.

IO:  We had a lot of those.

SIM:  But the only way to capture those happy accidents, or be aware of them happening in the first place, is to be open and intuitive in the middle of everything that’s going on and realize that it will translate cinematically in a successful way into something highly effective and dramatic.

IO:  I have to say that the relationship I had with Anssi was essential for this.  There was only me, a sound person [Pietu Korhonen] and a camera person.  That means that, for example, if we were shooting in the children’s home and other children know you’re shooting in a room, they come peek; they want to play.  Somebody’s got to take sound and somebody’s got to take pictures, which means it’s the director who’s outside holding the door so the children don’t come in while we’re shooting.  At those times, I thought, I can never do this again!  Or sometimes I would have to take Tiina and Peter away, so Anssi could spend time with Sveta in a separate room to get something.  So, there was a little bit of game playing, but not too much, in my opinion. We were honest with them in what we were trying to do but the crew had to work together to orchestrate things sometimes so we could get what we needed.

We would all sit and review the daily rushes after every shooting day and sometimes I would give a really rough critique.  I was simultaneously creating a script with Post-Its while we were shooting and would re-write based on what we got that day.  I could also figure out what needed to be shot the next day.  For example, the great scene where Sveta is trapping the bees into the coffeepot in the yard—I was inside the house with Tiina, and Anssi was out there playing with Sveta.  It’s easy to get stuff like that with digital; he could just play with her and keep rolling.  It gave him the confidence to go ahead and shoot that material, even though I wasn’t there.

But we would also fight over things.  The shots of the trapped bird, for instance, on the windowsill.  I have a more poetic sensibility than Anssi and so I wanted to take that footage of the bird.  At first he objected but then he filmed a bit.  I didn’t like what he was doing so we started to fight about it.  If I have a cinematographer, I want him to take the pictures.  I can use the camera myself, but I want him to do it.  But at this time, I took some footage of the bird to show him what I wanted; I had definite ideas of what I wanted.  We filmed that bird for almost an hour to get the right image and when we got to the image that I knew would work, the other bird came [another bird appears on the opposite side of the window and the two birds, the trapped one and the free one, communicate frantically].  It’s hard sometimes to be a director because you have to criticize the work of your co-workers or demand certain things.  It’s a delicate balance, but I won’t forgive myself if I don’t do what I know will work.  So unless we had spent that hour getting that footage of the bird, we wouldn’t have gotten that shot.

All of the films in my head that I’d like to do, do not involve me doing the shooting.  I want to use a cinematographer.  I would use Anssi.  He does fiction, as well.  For me, it’s important to trust the cinematographer and I have great trust in him.

SIM:  What kinds of stories are important for you to tell?

IO:  There is something which comes from a quite personal place within me.  A friend actually pointed it out.  It is the theme of the guilty feeling of innocence.

SIM:  What does that mean to you?

IO:  It’s the situation of someone who is innocent, like a child, but they feel guilty, as if they’ve done something wrong.  There’s no reason for them to feel guilt.  It’s not their fault but they still feel guilty.

SIM:  Does Sveta represent that?

IO:  Yes, I think so.  The emotion I’m trying to explain is very personal.  You feel you’ve done something wrong, but you haven’t.  You feel you’re not good; you’re guilty.  But you’re not.  I think it’s a typical feeling for a child at times.  For her, she has a strong sense of responsibility; she cares so much; she worries.  This is the strong theme that runs through most of my ideas for telling stories.

SIM:  When it came time to edit, and considering the two of you didn’t know one another and had never worked together before, did you experience similar creative tussling (which, to my mind, is a very positive sign that more than just the director is invested in making a great film)?  Tell me about your creative partnership in the edit room.

AL:  Yes, it was the same creative back-and-forth in the editing.  It came out of our discussions from all the raw footage.  We were working really hard.  It was supposed to be a 30-minute film and knowing that it would be a longer piece, we were a bit rushed.

IO:  We kind of kept it a secret, how much material we had.

AL:  The school has its criteria for how long it was supposed to be.  Iris was in the editing room a lot to discuss everything she wanted to do.  She was, understandably, freaking out and I tried my best to calm her down [laughter].  I like to work like that, having those intense discussions between me and the director.

SIM:  What kinds of rhythms did you find in the piece?  I find most editors have their own particular way of finding the pace that’s right for the project.

AL:  I do think the material dictates that and in which direction you move.  Like most projects, it took a while to find that, and we really hit our stride towards the end when putting the fine cut together.  For Paradise--Three Journeys in This World, it’s shot extremely differently—very slow pace, long lingering shots, more meditative and so that's how it was edited. 

IO:  People do mention the rhythm and we actually never talked about that.

AL:  No, it came pretty naturally.  It was just a matter of re-working and re-working until we found it.  And we went with the emotions, using the moments that were relevant to emphasize what was happening emotionally with the subjects.

SIM:  When did the other production components come in, music, sound design, etc.?

IO:  The music actually came before filming.

SIM:  That’s interesting; tell me about that.

IO:  I don’t know how to feel about this, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad that I had in my mind already some kind of emotion that I wanted to have in this story.  I don’t know if it’s good that it came from me and not from the reality of the situation.  When we were starting to film, I had found this music in my roommate’s CD collection.  It was sort of electronic; it sounded like crystals touching each other.  Listening to it, I felt it was very innocent, child-like music, pure innocence.  I really loved it and I thought it expressed something essential for me.  I had written a lot about what I wanted to say with this film, in thinking of themes.  For a while, I was contemplating doing a film where the presence of the adults would be missing completely and it would be some kind of tribute to children or childhood using that world only.  That music, to me, had that innocent beauty of a child.

It was an Icelandic band so I was convinced we’d never have money to use this music.  We had a composer that did some music that wasn’t right.  I got kind of hopeless about it and, at one point, gave him the CD to listen to.  I remember telling him, "Just try and copy that!"  It was still terrible and wasn’t what I wanted at all.  In the meantime, we were using this music in the edit, but then we hit the final stage.  In my first film, I made the mistake of using a very expensive song in the edit and got so emotionally attached to it.  I, of course, had to change it and it tore my heart out.  I used a song from the movie Amélie, which was a stupid idea, I know.  I said I wouldn’t do that in this project. 

And then I was in a bar and was talking to a Finnish musician about this group, Múm, and wanting so much to use their music.  He told me that they have a Finnish member in the band.  I never Googled them or anything so I didn’t really know that.  I was convinced that I would never be able to afford to use this music so I never fully researched this.  So I called him [Samuli Kosminen, aka Son of Yoda] and he did the music for us! 

SIM:  A good soundtrack should be like another character that adds an emotional layer to the picture and sound.  It is tricky to get it right, that resonance, that emotional connection through the music.  What was the biggest lesson for you in making this film—besides the music issue, which, fortunately, worked out for you in that lovely serendipitous way?

IO:  To learn to trust myself.

SIM:  That’s a good one.

IO:  Yes, trusting myself, and learning that it’s not just about making the film.  It’s learning to deal with the feedback afterwards and dealing with the small success that it’s had.  At Full Frame, I was at the screening and was convinced that the audience was hating the film.  They weren’t laughing in the right places or reacting in any way.

SIM:  I was just talking to another filmmaker who said the exact same thing—that awful feeling in certain screenings that everyone watching it dislikes it.

AL:  Well, this feeling of hers happened also in the editing process.  She has a really strong vision and she was constantly second-guessing herself, saying, “This is not what I meant to do,” etc.

IO:  Yes, over-talking, over-thinking all the time.

AL:  Even afterwards, she was not confident.  People started to say how much they loved it.

IO:  Even then, I didn’t trust that.

AL:  I think you’re past that now [laughing].

IO:  Yes, well you learn through something like this to believe in yourself.

SIM:  Creating something like this is such a huge risk in so many ways—it’s scary.  For some, it gets more difficult with each project they take on, and while you may have built up confidence in certain ways, you still feel the same insecurities with each new endeavor.

IO:  Well, especially in documentary, there are so many things that can heavily dictate what happens with your film.  With the industry the way it is, I think the biggest challenge is not in creating the film but in being able to make it in the first place, to find funding, support.  You know that a lot of energy is going to go into that before you even get to the creative aspects of what you’re trying to do.  That’s the biggest challenge now.  You have to be a salesperson, to sell your idea to the right person, to convince them of what you have to offer aesthetically before you’ve even shot a frame.  In this instance, we all worked for free so I didn’t have to sell it so much, but for my next film, that will be the next challenge.

SIM:  Will you two work together again?

IO:  Yes.  There is a trust now.  I have a hard work ethic and I need that trust—to know that, just as I am working very hard to accomplish something, the people helping me will do the exact amount of work as, or even more than, I would do.  That creates the trust to know that they’re willing and able to do that.  When I feel like I’ve found these people, it means so much.  Otherwise, I just worry more than I already do.  That’s why things worked so well with Annukka; she has a good head on her shoulders.  After 10 hours of working and editing in a day, she would tell me, “Okay, now we stop.  Let’s go home now.  See you tomorrow morning.”  And I would have a fit and want to keep going through the night, thinking we could keep going and going.  At 11:00 p.m., I would tell her, “But we have a good four more hours to work!”  She was very firm with me and would tell me, “No, I’m going now.  See you tomorrow.”  If she hadn’t done that, we would have been going in circles.  You can really mess up a film like that.

SIM:  So ultimately you are very proud of this, right?  You do realize that the reception the film’s received here at these festivals is some very real validation?

IO:  Yeah, I’m proud of it.  I’m also proud of the girl, Sveta.

SIM:  It shows.  It’s a very weird but satisfying ending where she’s staring into the camera lens for several seconds.  We see this child that is the author of her own destiny and that is very much the way she will navigate through her life.  She’s nobody’s victim.  That’s a very beautiful thing to come away with.  Tell me about that last lingering shot of her in close-up.

IO:  We have this idea in our teaching we call “first image.”  That image is to be guarded within you, the first image that comes into your head when you start to make the film.  That was my first image.  Sveta has had a heart operation and actually, the image I saw was of her without a shirt on, a medium shot showing the scar over her heart as she gazes at the camera.  I didn’t want to ask this girl to take her shirt off, this young pre-pubescent girl.  Ultimately, it was a bit touchy for me ethically. 

So we did it with her clothes on.  For a long time, I wanted the film to start with that image.  For me, it’s a “reality check” shot.  When you go to watch a film, as a spectator you want to feel something, to experience your own emotional reaction to something that you see.  And that shot of Sveta is to say to the spectator, “It’s me.  It’s my life and it’s real and I will go on from here.”  She’s the one that has caused you to experience what you did—the laughter, the sadness, whatever authentic feelings come up for you watching this story.  We are looking in her eyes so that we can understand that.

SIM:  I like that you give her a chance to stare back at us, in a way, just as we’ve been staring so intimately at her.

IO:  For me, that was the important, essential shot, that image of her.  And, ultimately, while the scar over the heart shot for me was important, she would have been too bare.  She’s already exposing so much.

AL:  When I saw those images of her, I was really blown away.

IO:  Well, this is a funny anecdote, actually.  Because that was the only serious moment we could get from the footage—she was laughing so hard.  I was trying so hard to get her to look into the camera and not laugh.  It was the longest time in which she was looking serious and could be still.  We cut that exactly one second after she stopped laughing to the last second before she started again!  I want to say here that we did have an "actor agreement" with her.  After the first three days of filming, she totally blew us off.

SIM:  That’s not unusual for a subject to do that, especially at the beginning of a project.

IO:  And not unusual for a child to do.  She used us quite a bit.  She told the caretakers at the home that she was going to go with us and do things that were not permissible for her to do.  So we made this deal with her and also with the two other girls in her room.  We created a "contract" that stated that she would be an actor in this film and she got to ask for what she wanted as “payment” to cooperate and appear in the film.  At first they asked for TVs and stuff like that, which was too much.  They wanted make-up bags filled with shampoos and things like that, so we went to the store and let them take what they wanted to have their own pink make-up bag and that made them very happy.  That was the actors’ salary [laughs]. 

We ran into a lot of questions about all this while we were filming, so we handled that in the best way we could.  This contract was just a piece of paper torn from a ledger and done in pencil but it was also for her to understand that we wanted to do this film about her and we would give her something for her participation and cooperation.  It also clarified that this was something real, something important.  We had a lot of talks about that with her.

SIM:  It would be interesting to follow up with her when she’s older.

IO:  Definitely.

SIM:  Has she seen the film?

IO:  Yeah, she’s seen it.

SIM:  What did she think?

IO:  She liked it.  I, unfortunately, couldn’t be there when she saw it, but I totally trust the director of the home who watched it with her and she said she liked it.  It’s hard to talk on the phone because of the language barrier and it’s a day’s journey to go there; you can’t go without a visa, etc.   But she talked with the translator and so I know she liked it, but, ultimately,  really found it to be nothing that special.

I think from all this, Tiina and Peter will pay for her education, at least, and so all of this has created a big turning point in her life.  I don’t know what will happen in terms of them adopting her permanently.  There's also a chance that she could be adopted by a couple in the US.

SIM:  That would be a whole other story with its own set of wild circumstances.

IO:  Yes, that’s the sequel right there [in a mock "coming attractions" voice]:  “Sveta 2: Driving to America.” 

Jennifer Fox's Flying on the Sundance Channel

Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman is airing on the Sundance Channel starting next Monday, May 5.  The 6-hour film is also available for purchase now on DVD.  The Los Angeles Times says, "Fox travels the globe to talk sex, marriage, babies, divorce, work, identity, oppression, socialization and abuse with her fascinating far-flung friends.  And their combined stories add up to something remarkable: a kaleidoscopic meditation on gender-as-destiny."

I love this film very much and, like a lot of women who have seen it, feel it speaks directly to me and my life.  I also got to sit and talk with Jen last summer right before her NYC theatrical run; you can read our wonderful conversation here.

The film has been screening all over the world, and next week the Sundance Channel will start airing it episodically (you will be hooked, no question).  Click here for the schedule.

Flying is also now available on DVD and it would make for an outstanding Mother's Day gift.  You can pre-order from Alive Mind today and receive a special 15% discount.  The coupon code is AFLYNPO15.

Part of the coda to this wonderful story is that Jennifer did, indeed, end up with the man of her dreams, even though, like a lot of us, she fought it every step of the way!  I saw them walking together hand-in-hand in Tribeca just the other day on their way to see a movie at the fest.

Tribeca Film Institute's Coming Out Party for '08 Media Arts Fellowships

Tonight at the New York Academy of Art, the Tribeca Film Institute announced its Media Arts Fellowship recipients for 2008.  It was a lovely party and there was much excitement in the air for the possibilities of this newly formed partnership between TFI and Renew Media.  What a stellar group of filmmakers, media artists and all-around brilliant people that were gifted tonight with financial support for their projects.

TFI CEO Elect, Brian Newman, (for whom I will always have a special place in my heart for being the first person to hire me as a writer after I moved here last year) greeted the crowd and then introduced co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival, Jane Rosenthal, to say a few words.  (I'm fully aware there is a gigantic festival happening in my own backyard, as it were, but am crazed with work and finding it hard to find time to attend screenings, etc.!  But I will be attending some functions, panels and parties over the next few days and will try to report any interesting news.)

Then, the charming Alan Berliner (one of our esteemed inaugural Cinema Eye Honors presenters) came up to the podium to deliver a few words, and introduce the fellowship recipients.  Berliner was a nominator this year and has been a grant recipient for his ground-breaking experimental media works many times over.  He was genuinely thrilled to introduce these artists on the rise to the public.

The Media Arts Fellowships is a program of the Tribeca Film Institute and founded and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.  The program has awarded grants to more than 450 media artists since 1988.  These artists represent a full spectrum of creativity, ranging from emerging artists to those well-established in their careers.  Through this Fellowship, artists are encouraged to redefine, invent, explore, create and recreate visions and stories that reflect their diverse cultures.

Here are the 2008 Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts Fellowship recipients, and their projects:

Julianna Brannum.  LaDonna Harris: Indian 101 is a documentary about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who as the wife of a US senator in the 60s and 70s, worked from within Washington DC's political scene on behalf of American Indians.

Andrew Bujalski.  This currently untitled project is a feature length narrative that revolves around a pair of twin sisters, with the story shaped by the reality of the sister's identical faces and very different bodies.

Daniel Carrera.  Invoking Dolores is a feature narrative that explores religious customs of rural Mexico through the story of a priest who returns to his hometown to follow the footsteps of a leading exorcist.

Cherien Dabis.  Amreeka is a feature length fiction film about a Palestinian single mother and her son who arrive in rural Illinois to escape a life of oppression, only to face the fallout from America's war on Iraq.

Sharon Daniel.  Capitalist Punishment is a multi-media work which examines the politics of privatization and labor exploitation within the US prison system.

Joe Davis.  Call Me Ishamael (he came up and spun around gleefully on his wooden leg!!) is an installation of a scientific sculpture that will act as  a lightning-powered lighthouse intended to memorialize victims of natural storms.

Jacqueline Goss.  Hart's Location is an animated documentary that provides a portrait of the residents of a rural project in New Hampshire, set against the backdrop of the months preceding the country's primary elections.

Judith Helfand.  Heat Wave: An Unnatural Disaster is a documentary that revisits Chicago's deadly 1995 heat wave, in order to explore how impoverished urban neighborhoods could be better prepared for extreme weather.  (It's so nice to see support for this generous woman who supports so many artists herself.)

Braden King.  HERE is a narrative feature that chronicles the relationship between a satellite-mapping engineer and an art photographer who travel together into uncharted foreign territory.

Billy Luther.  Grab is a documentary about the traditional festivity of Grab Day and its contemporary celebration in New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo Indian reservation.

Shirin Neshat.  Iran/Laos will be an experimental film/video installation that intends to capture the collective identity crisis in Laos as it undergoes a clash between its communist and Buddhist cultures.

Josh On.  They Rule. We Work. is a reciprocal pair of websites looking at class in the US today.  While one maps the interlocking directories of top corporations, the other examines the state of the working class.

Hugo Perez.  Immaculate Conception is a narrative feature that re-imagines the Virgin Mary story within the context of contemporary Miami's Cuban community.

Laura Poitras.  Release is the second film in a documentary trilogy about America's response to the attacks of 9/11.  The film explores the long-term psychological and political repercussions of the US policy of detention and torture.

C.E.B. Reas.  This installation integrates sound components into the artist's custom-designed software TI that generates live abstracted images into structured shapes.  (Whoa.)

Dee Rees.  Pariah is a narrative feature that expands upon a previous short in which a black lesbian teenager juggles multiple identities in an attempt to please both her friends and family.

Michael Rees.  The Sculptural User Installation: Social Sculpture as Tree-ed Binary Large Object is an interactive environment that includes virtual objects on screens and their physical realizations as 3D printed objects.  (Whoa squared.)

Jennifer Reeves.  Firelight Song is an experimental narrative film about the life and work of Harriet "Petey" Weaver, the first female forest ranger in California in 1929.

Naomi Uman.  The Ukrainian Time Machine is a series of four sixteen millimeter films that combines personal, experimental and nonfiction approaches to capturing life in the Ukrainian town of Uman.

Paul Vanouse.  Latent Figure Protocol is an installation in which human DNA samples are treated in order to produce images that comment upon issues related to the genetic basis of identity.

Lauren Woods.  Fountains is a site-specific installation that comments upon the history of segregation and civil rights protest, as use of a water fountain triggers a video projection over the fading imprint of a "Whites Only" sign above it.

Jessica Yu.  Signs of Life is a documentary about the life and work of deaf educator Dr. Virginia McKinney, and her fight to keep open the school she founded over 40 years ago.

I will be doing a series of interviews with many of these gifted artists over the course of the year for Tribeca Film Institute's blog Re:Sources and also for the newly-launched Re:Frame project.

Congratulations to all!

 

Trenton--The Very City of Triumph

Something weird is happening since this is my second fiction recommend in the last few posts.  The sky was not falling the last time I looked.

Just got home from Toronto today and am still in a blither with all I saw, heard, felt, etc.  In the next few days, I will try to recount the highlights--when I cried, when I laughed, when I was amazed.  The usual.  (I also had some of the best damn Indian food I've ever eaten in my life at The Host.)

In the meantime, I want to say that Rocket Science is my favorite pick of the week.  It's been available to rent or download since late January.  The film had an '07 Independent Spirit Award Someone To Watch nomination for its lead actress, Anna Kendrick, as well as an '07 Sundance Dramatic Directing prize for its writer/director, Jeffrey Blitz.

All the actors were wonderful--really nuanced performances.  But it's actor, Vincent Piazza, playing  Hal's older brother, Earl, that really dazzles.  Brando comes to mind, let's put it that way.  Another someone to watch, if you will. 

And you'll want to download the soundtrack--muy bueno.

So that's my share for today 'cause all the stuff from Toronto is still slipping around in my head.  Tomorrow, my impressions of The English Surgeon (talk about slipping around in the head!), To See If I'm Smiling, and The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins (and yes, the movie is deserving of that grandiloquent fairy-tale of a title).   Fun for the whole family!

Forbidden Lies Wins Top Prize at Aljazeera Film Fest

Anna Broinowski, the brilliant filmmaker behind Forbidden Lies, has just returned to her native land of Oz from Qatar where the film won the Golden Award at the recent 4th edition of the Aljazeera International Documentary Festival (I wonder how many Americans applied for that fest?).  Well done, dear girl.  She says she's chuffed.  Ingrid Kopp uttered that word the other day in Toronto and I wasn't quite sure what it meant (Ingrid's a bit enigmatic) and now, I'm pretty sure it means someone's happy.  :)

I would not have expected such a positive response for the film from a place in the Gulf; I'm glad they got it.  Next stop for her, San Fran from April 30 to May 6 and, fingers crossed, during that jaunt she'll have a long phone chat with me that I will share with you, you lucky sods.

Up the Yangtze Opens in New York!

I'm sorry I'm going to miss the opening weekend of Yung Chang's wonderful film Up the Yangtze--it opens this Friday, April 25 at the IFC Center.  The filmmaker will be there.  New York opening weekends are crucial, especially for an independent.  Don't miss seeing this film in the theater--it's breathtaking.

Full Frame Re-Cap, Part Three

The hybridization of fiction and nonfiction in film is a tricky proposition and one in which I have intense interest.  I know it's been around for a while, but there are always films that push the envelope in this regard, and not always comfortably, for a spectator that ponders these things as I do.  I want to start with the Q&A of American Teen and work back from there.

Shown in another cavernous, unwieldy venue with horrible sound and a postage-stamp-sized screen, I never fully ensconced myself into what was going on up there but, instead, seemed to be more in tune with  the reactions of other audience members.  And while most seemed appreciative of the artful way the film was put together, and laughed in all the right places, I also sensed a bit of dubiousness and confusion.  The audience's questions were good ones, challenging and probing ones for the filmmaker.  Most of them were along the lines of, "Um, what exactly did we just see?"  Director Nanette Burstein's answers, to my mind, were so facile, so glib, she really didn't answer anyone in any substantive way.  And while her subjects were obviously in cahoots with her in terms of telling their own stories (they were "cast") and trusted her enough to capture certain things with "no judgment," there were a few points in the film where I really questioned her ethical calls. 

I felt like I was watching a totally fabricated piece--not really much that was authentic about it and since it's being presented as a documentary (that's what Full Frame shows exclusively), I'm not meaning this in a complimentary way.  It's a whitewash (literally) of the American teenager and has way too many similarities to the schlock that's shown on reality TV.  I expect nonfiction cinema to rise above that a bit.  This film panders to the worst sort of Hollywood mentality in filmmaking and maybe Burstein needs to move into fiction filmmaking because that's what this is--a fictionalized version of an "intimate look at the lives, hopes and dreams of four high school seniors living in a small Indiana town."  (And, by the way, I loved The Kid Stays in the Picture and On the Ropes.)

Was I emotionally moved a few times?  Did I laugh?  Did I tear up at certain moments?  Yes.  But I walked away not having any understanding of these people, nor do I care about what happens to them.  They all, to a person, played for and to the camera and it just got tiresome after a while.  I don't watch reality TV to begin with.  Why would I pay money to sit in a theater and watch the equivalent of an episode of MTV's Real World?  I'm far from a purist, but this film did not, ultimately, win me over.  It might do staggeringly well at the box office or it might bomb.  In the meantime, the marketing campaign says it all.  And, of course, the kids are going to be carted out to L.A. for the theatrical opening, all being offered internships of some sort as they participate in the launch and wide release of the film.  And this will serve what purpose exactly?

I saw some other films throughout the course of Saturday and Sunday, but in the interest of moving on to other things, the only one I really want to talk about is a multiple-award winning film from 2005 that Nancy Buirski curated for her special strand at this year's fest.

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia by Pirjo Honkasalo is a cinematic and emotional masterpiece.  I was urged to go see this by a few people whose taste I admire and respect, so Sunday morning, before the awards ceremony and barbeque that closes the festival, I went to go see it.  This was after another sleepless night (number three if anyone's counting), another hangover and an intense, but exciting meeting with some visiting Iranian filmmakers.  We chatted through an interpreter for a while as they handed over stacks of DVDs of their work for me to watch and we talked about the possibility of meeting in Dubai this summer at a brand new symposium called Documentary Voices: Pulling Focus for which I'm programming.  (And don't bother looking for any presence on the web yet, because there isn't one.)  To garner an atmosphere of trust and understanding, it's important for artists to get in a room, see one another's works and share ideas and thoughts on the craft of filmmaking.  Seeing the world through a stranger's eyes is always enlightening, but actually dialoguing with those strangers makes them strangers no longer.  This is the peacemaking of the future and I believe strongly in that.  More on this in a bit.

In the world of 3 Rooms, we visit Chechnya, a place so war-torn, one wonders if this culture can ever possibly sustain itself into any kind of civilized world again.  The land has been raped, as have the majority of the population including the children, both figuratively and literally.  It is a place so devastated and barren, and yet Honkasalo seeks renewal and re-birth in the place that makes most sense to find it--in the children of Russia and Chechnya.  There are so many images from this film that continue to resonate and haunt.  With the powerful combination of exquisite imagery (the extreme close-ups of the children's faces are devastating in their intense beauty), the lush score seemingly sung by angels and the subjects themselves, one is left, again, with a simultaneity of grief and joy. 

I want to re-print here, in its entirety, Honkasalo's director's statement which illustrates the sensibility so gorgeously reflected in her films:

The personal point of departure:    

Having completed my 'Trilogy of the Sacred and Satanic”(the full-length documentary films Mysterion, Tanjuska and the 7 Devils, and Atman), I felt I had purged myself of what I had sought from the documentary film: its purifying and implacable concreteness. I had given whatever I had to give; to that concretion, an intimation of human silence.

I felt an attraction and attachment to the logic of the dream, to which the fictional film provides the most natural path. The world of the dream is half in the past, half in the future. Its gods swing back and forth between life and death. There is no sense of longing in dreams. Time in dreams is not time in time. I directed the feature film “Fire-Eater”.

I have always been stimulated not only by the Sacred and Satanic, but also by the Poetic and Political. It was this that drew me back to the documentary.

I don't care for truths, for I see all thought as roiling foam that adheres to nothing nor holds fast; but in the time when I am not asleep or dreaming, I wish to know how the human tribe leads its life, shapes its history and expresses its will, which always seeks to improve the human condition and yet wallows, bewildered, in its blood like some elk gone astray in the city and impaled on the spikes of a cemetery fence. It should not happen this way.

Europe is filled with people who need grace of some kind to cope with their righteous rage. The righteous rage turns, a reflection, against them. And life is no court of justice; justice does not prevail, life does. It rises out of chaos in an ascending spiral, briefly appears to have structure, and descends in the curve of a downward spiral toward fresh chaos.

Stripping away icons of the enemy calls for the acceptance of grace along with righteousness. Grace is illogical and irrational - in other words, a profoundly gratuitous liberation from the compulsion to hate.

My last experience at Full Frame was this: riding with filmmaker Eric Metzgar and the subjects of his film, Life. Support. Music.  Jason Crigler is healing from a freak neurological incident that occurred while he was performing his music on stage in 2004.  Metzgar's film portrays a family that moves quickly from devastation and crisis to fierce action to help him become the man he once was.  Well, he's not; he's definitely different, but he's still here and he's mobile and living and loving and moving through the rest of his life with as much grace (a different kind of grace) as he had before--despite the grief of losing a part of that life, something that can never be retrieved.  And as Honkasalo so eloquently puts it, ". . . life is no court of justice; justice does not prevail, life does."

Full Frame Re-Cap, Part Two

Two of my favorite films from True/False played Saturday morning at Full Frame, and I would have gladly sat through both of them again. You can read my thoughts on The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories and Life. Support. Music. here.  Instead, I joined a small audience to listen to filmmaker, Ian Olds, present the three recipients of the second Garrett Scott grant program.  The program featured 10-minute excerpts from the 2008 Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant projects and gave the three young filmmakers a chance to talk about their work, what they have accomplished, thus far, and what they still needed to process and complete their films.

A couple of years ago, Garrett Scott died suddenly at the age of 37.  Without any formal filmmaking training, he directed Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story and also made Occupation: Dreamland with Ian Olds.  Shortly upon his passing, his family, friends and colleagues created this grant that recognizes first-time filmmakers.  Recipients are selected based on their works-in-progress and get treated to free travel and accommodations at the Full Frame Fest.

First up was Nathan Fisher with his project called The Party After the War.  In the largest exodus in sixty years, about five million Iraqis have had to flee their homes since the US invasion in 2003.  In an intimate and engaging style, the film tells the story of several refugees from different ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, now living in Syria and Jordan.  This is an extremely promising and important piece, mostly because it focuses on Iraqi civilians affected by the war in Iraq and their stories of how they had to leave behind everything they've worked for their whole lives--homes, careers, businesses, possessions--all told to a young American man not fighting that war.  (Fisher traveled there with just one other friend who acted as interpreter and translator).  He said that he wanted to go and see what was happening to the millions upon millions of Iraqi citizens that were displaced and I think the fact that a young American man took it upon himself to buy a plane ticket and just go and see for himself with camera in tow is remarkable.  He's done all the shooting, for the most part, and is ready to go into edit and is need of a translator here in New York who speaks fluent Arabic to help him with subtitling.  I recommended someone based in Brooklyn that works for another filmmaker friend and I hope she can help.

Next up was Mai Iskander's Garbage Dreams.  I met Mai in Utah at the Sundance Producers Conference last summer and was intrigued by this project and very anxious to see some footage.  (She makes her living as a DP.)  Beautifully shot, again, in intimate verite style, Iskander (who is part Egyptian) tells the story of the Zaballeen or "garbage people," a group of waste collectors in Egypt who earn their living recycling ninety percent of the trash they collect in the streets of Cairo.  The film follows some members of this community, now in crisis of losing their livelihood due to multinational corporations, hired by the Egyptian government, moving in and taking over the garbage collection.  She's  headed back a couple more times to do some additional pick-ups and is also heading into an edit.  She's seeking a good composer with which to work and I suggested she talk to Force Theory.  It turns out they already knew about the project from seeing a work-in-progress cut from the IFP Market last year and were anxious to talk to her.

Lastly, there was War Don Don (The War is Over) by Rebecca Cohen.  The film follows Issa Sesay, a Revolutionary United Front rebel commander in Sierra Leone as he stands trial for crimes against humanity.  The film interweaves the story of his rise to power with a many-sided account of a man some condemn as a war criminal, and others praise for persuading the RUF to disarm.  They credit him with restoring peace in the nation.  However, he was the leader who was responsible for wholesale slaughter of many, many Sierra Leonian civilians.  Really interesting project and a very complex story.  Cohen was interning in the country at the time doing work for the trial (she's a law school graduate, but not a practicing lawyer) and decided to follow this story.  Her 10-minute piece was expertly edited by Francisco Bello.

Next up was the Center Frame screening of Ellen Spiro's and Phil Donahue's Body of War which chronicles a year in the life of soldier, Tomas Young, after he returns home from just five days in Iraq, paralyzed by a bullet to his spine.  Wheelchair-bound and rife with medical problems and in much pain, he transforms himself into an anti-war activist speaking out for peace and an end to the insanity in Iraq, with his wife and mother by his side.  Spiro and Donahue (brought together by a mutual friend), followed Young over the course of a year, gaining extremely intimate access to him and his family.  The story is beautifully crafted and one acquires an emotional attachment to Young very quickly--he's irreverent, angry, emotional, proud and determined, and armed with a wicked sense of humor, besides.

The only really disturbing thing about this piece was the "roll call" of the Senate and the House, interspersed with Young's story.  Not only annoyingly disruptive, it was so vastly incongruous in style and sensibility to Spiro's intimate footage, it was quite jarring when that list of names kept appearing (the majority being "aye's" to give President Bush sole discretion and oversight to make the decision to go to war and invade Iraq, a responsibility and a duty that belongs to the Congress, not the executive office as set out by the architects of the US Constitution).  It is true that our lawmaking bodies perpetrated a fraud on the citizens of this country by handing over the reins to a war-mongering, lying chief executive, but there could have been a bit more finesse in the way in which this was portrayed.  The final scene, however, when the two streams come together, shows a meeting between Young and Senator Robert Byrd, the democratic party leader from West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in US history, his first term begun in 1958.  It's very powerful and packs an emotional wallop as the two fighters, one a young damaged war veteran still in his twenties, the other an octogenarian life-long public servant, come together in their common cause and, in unison, read out the names of the "immortal 23" who stood against the war and then, move slowly down a long hallway together away from the camera, Byrd supported by his crutches and Tomas' wheelchair. 

Spiro and Donahue did a raucous and impassioned Q&A after the screening, Donahue quite insistent that all of the mainstream media who supported the invasion and all the pundits and "experts" who continue to war-monger and prey on the fears of the American people while our youth, our future, are sacrificing their lives in the name of this massive policy blunder, have much blood on their hands.  Body of War opens in New York tomorrow.  Go see it.

A quick bite with Yance Ford outside and an impassioned debate about Trouble the Water and Body of War.  (I love talking to Yance; she makes me think.)  Then I dashed off to see Nanette Burstein's American Teen.  Hmm.  I kind of hated it and I kind of loved it--how's that for a review? 

But I will have to continue the rest of my Full Frame coverage on yet another post because I'm dashing off to Stranger Than Fiction to see Ondi Timoner's Join Us and meet the filmmaker to set up an interview with her tomorrow.  My talk with her will be coming up on SIM soon.  I'm also very excited to report that I will have an in-depth interview with filmmaker, Laura Poitras, also coming up soon.  Be a blogger--meet your heroes.