Still in Motion

Los Angeles Has Pomegranates! and Gogol Bordello

Massoud Bakhshi's wonderful nonfiction film, Tehran Has No More Pomegranates!, is having a limited theatrical engagement in Los Angeles, a rare opportunity to see this remarkable, beautifully realized and engaging history of Tehran shot on 35mm.  Written, directed and produced by Bakhshi, the film was made over the course of five years.  We follow its director and his crew on their ambitious mission to make a film about the unwieldy, chaotic city they call home.

With much humor and sarcasm, they find frustration, at every turn, in getting their film made and they explain to their overseers at the Documentary Film Center why this project cannot, ultimately, be completed.  They decide amongst themselves to explore the city's past in order to give the Tehran of the present day better context.  What ensues is a comedic narrative about the city's transformation from a small, but sophisticated, village into a place of increasing urban decay, pollution (having just returned from there, I can vouch for the horrific air quality), inadequate housing,  stratification of a once-homogeneous society and, of course, the fatal destiny of the city's poetic symbol of the pomegranate fruit.  (According to the Koran, they grow in the gardens of paradise and the prophet, Mohammed, is said to have encouraged his followers to eat pomegranates to ward off envy and hatred.)

For 68 minutes, one is flooded with rare and beautiful archival footage from the past 150 years, unconventional photography, mock interviews that are really hilarious, and a wondrous and cacophonous soundtrack, most of it incredibly nostalgic for Tehranis.  Variety says that it is "an imaginative and engaging history of Tehran that uses a petulant barbed humor to deliver a steady stream of irony about this drastically transformed society."  I think the huge population of Iranian Americans in Los Angeles (both those born there and here) will appreciate and adore this film.  You can click here to watch the opening sequence of the film narrated by Nosrat Karimi and featuring music by Mohsen Namjoo.  You can also read my in-depth interview with the film's director here.

The four screenings will be on November 5 and 6 (next Wednesday and Thursday) at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. each evening at The Landmark Theater in Westwood Village.  Click here for more info or to purchase tickets online.

Another film which I had a chance to view recently, and really liked, is having its North American debut, also in LA, at the AFI International Film Festival this week, playing there on the 1st and 5th of November.  The star subject of Gogol Bordello Non-Stop, Eugene Hütz, is very much in the spotlight right now, currently starring in Madonna's new flick, Filth and Wisdom, now playing at New York City's IFC Center.   Margarita Jimeno, Non-Stop's director, editor and shooter, gives us an up-close-and-personal experience of the genesis and growth of this now world-famous band of gypsy punks: musicians and performance artists ranging in age from 25 to 50, its members hailing from many diverse places and cultures.  Following Hütz over the course of several years starting in 2001, she captures the popular groundswell of the raucous party atmosphere that the band serves up wherever it plays, from its early days in the Russian disco scene of lower Manhattan to the tireless global tours on which it embarks, truly going non-stop, "instigating creative hell and attacking people's passivity," in the words of its dynamic founder.  Go to the AFI fest site's film guide for more details on the screenings.

American Documentary Filmmaker Imprisoned in Iran

Noses, Iranian Style, A Soldier's Story, Fest Winners and More from Tehran

Tehran-based photographer, writer and director, Mehrdad Oskouei, is one of Iran's most prolific independent filmmakers.  With humor, pathos and a sharp understanding of his native culture, he tells stories about what life is like in Iran today through intimate stories of the people living there.  He started his career in theater in the early 80s and started making films a few years later, so far creating twenty-four documentaries and short films, most available from Sheherazad Media International.  His hour-long piece, It's Always Late for Freedom, won the Best Mid-Length Documentary Award at Hot Docs this past spring, and he was there, in person, as part of a coterie of Iranian filmmakers that participated in the Spotlight on Iran strand at the festival.

Freedom tells the story of three teenage boys living in the Tehran House of Corrections, victims of addiction, poverty and broken families.  They are serving sentences related to violence, theft and drugs, and like young troubled people everywhere, display a mix of world-weariness, toughness, cockiness and compassion for one another, all having been abandoned by their families, one way or another.  Oskouei is a consummate vérité storyteller and shooter, capturing raw moments of boys bonding through camaraderie and play.  The interviews are riveting as the young men open up about their hopes and dreams and talk about their conflicted frustrations with their long-term captivity, both physical and social.  We stay with them in this cloistered place, only experiencing the outside world through their sensibilities.  It's a gorgeous piece of cinema and says so much about missed opportunities and the redemptive and healing aspects of friendship and rediscovered childhood in the unlikeliest of places. 

Oskouei is a fount of ideas and his subject matter is extremely diverse.  In 2005, he made Nose, Iranian Style.  We saw nose jobs everywhere and were told that wearing the post-surgery plaster proudly was part of the cultural landscape.  This goes for both men and women, young and middle-aged, and it is a ubiquitous rite of passage in modern society.  Even the poor manage to save up enough money to get the surgery done.  Statistically, Iran has the highest incidence of rhinoplasty in the world, and the film explores the various reasons why the young generations, in particular, are so keen on changing their appearances.  (The Bob Hope ski-slope and the pig snout seemed to be the top two preferred models.)   The film surveys and analyzes urban youth culture and uses the alteration of features as a commentary on all kinds of social issues young people grapple with today.

In 2004, Oskouei weighed in on the burka and made The Other Side of Burka, a multiple prize-winner, where we visit the southern island of Qeshm, Iran, a very strict traditional region that follows ancient African-Arabic social structures and ways of life.  Women everywhere in Iran are under the thumb of an oppressive patriarchal society (the wearing of the burka, head covered whenever a man is present, separate entrances on the buses, seats only in the back of the bus, an enforced one-child policy, and, what I found most shocking, forced Caesarean section deliveries).  The film describes the different mental and physical manifestations of this oppression which are "treated" in ancient ceremonies.  Oskouei managed to get unmitigated access into this very secret, clandestine world and his subjects reward him with bold honesty and a willingness to unveil themselves to talk about their lives.  A sharp social critic with an aesthete's eye, Mehrdad Oskouei is a filmmaker to watch. 

Filmmaker Faria Samarani's Dreams of a Persian Soldier is exactly 100 seconds long.  Produced this year with $110 of her own money, the film was made in memory of her three brothers, all of whom were casualties in the Iran-Iraq war.  The visually stunning film, sans dialogue, plays like a beautifully realized vision of a dream.  During the festival, Samarani made a gracious, but persistent, beeline for some of the special guests there, including me, and gathered a small group of us together in the video library to watch her film a couple of times.  She's very keen to exhibit and sell it and is seeking funding to make a longer feature.  Obviously, this is a project that probably will not be supported by the state due to its subject matter and her insistence on a bold anti-war vision, highly stylized though it is with nary a weapon or battlefield in site.  Bruni Buress, newly-appointed executive producer of ICTJ Productions, formerly of the Sundance Institute, strongly encouraged her to submit her project for the Sundance Documentary Fund.

The prizes for the International Competitions consist of an under 60-minutes category and an over 60-minutes category.  The international jury for the 60+ films consisted of Khosrow Sinai, Iikka Vehkalahti and Alessandra Meleiro and the under 60 jury consisted of Artur Liebhart, Suliman Mohamed Ibrahim and Dr. Ahmad Alasti.  The 60+ Best Documentary wins a prize of 10,000 euros, a diploma and a trophy; the Best Documentary up to sixty minutes carries a prize of 7,000 euros, a diploma and a trophy; and the special jury prize is 5,000 euros, a diploma and a trophy. 

The jury for under sixty granted its awards to the following:  "Because of the compassionate portrayal of a character engaged with the remainder of a community on the verge of disappearance, the jury gives a Special Mention to Walz, directed by Victor Asliuk from Belarus."  "Because of the sympathetic representation of a character engaged in the caste system, the jury grants its Special Prize consisting of 2,000 euros to Lakshmi and Me, directed by Nishtha Jain from India."  "Because of the extraordinary storytelling, refreshing down-to-earth humor, the coherence of the narrative structure, the sensitive sound track, and the pleasant depiction of the lively spirit of a tailor, the Grand Prix consisting of 7,000 euros goes to Final Fitting, directed by Reza Haeri from Iran."

The international jury bestowed its Special Mention award to Tinar by Mehdi Moniri from Iran (pictured receiving his award at the closing ceremony), "in which a predictable loneliness of the protagonist develops into a story where even the smallest events become important.  There are moments in the film, which like lightning, open the world of the protagonist to us."  This is, indeed, a beautiful film; it was a marvelous viewing experience even without benefit of subtitling--a truly cinematic treatment of the quiet life of a farm boy.  The special jury award went to a film "dealing with a very important contemporary human issue.  It is done in a very skillful and strong way and it reaches the life, minds and emotions of the protagonists, women suffering the consequences of the war."  This award went to All My Mothers by Ebrahim Saeedi and Zahavi Sanjavi.  The Grand Prix was given to two films, one a film "where a filmmaker is working with complexity in form and content with a very essential philosophical question of our being, the importance of art, death and the beauty of life"--The Fortress by Fernand Melgar. The other film "deals with one of the most crucial problems of the world, immigration.  With an admirable professionalism, the film tells a very universal and important story in the world today, taking us on a journey to realize the value of every human being"--Existence by Marcin Koszalka. 

Congratulations to chairman, Mohammad Afarideh, festival director, Massoud Bakhshi, market director, Shirin Naderi and everyone affiliated with the festival and the DEFC for putting on such a diverse and exciting festival, sure to put Tehran on the map as an annual destination for viewing and buying the great nonfiction cinema being made in Iran, showcasing underrepresented international fare, as well.  They know that the moment is so right for this and there are more exciting collaborations to form as they grow this festival in years to come and continue to help up-and-coming filmmakers learn to compete on the world stage.

The Missouri Review's New Film Competition

Our True/False friends are helping to support a new video competition out of Mizzou, courtesy of the brilliant Missouri Review.  Founded in 1978, the Review is one of the most highly-regarded literary magazines in the US, publishing the best in fiction, essays and poetry, as well as wonderful interviews with world-renowned authors and found-text pieces, never-before-published works by Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and more.  Now, they're supporting an enhanced Audio and Video Competition.

Their call for entries is officially open now with $4,500 in cash awards, $1,000 of that for the new video categories.  The prize money will be divided between the first-place winners for Best  Creative Short and Best Documentary.  Running time for entries is 10 minutes or less.  (There is also a non-cash award for Best Student Entry.)

Winning and other selected pieces will also qualify for a screening in conjunction with the True/False Film Festival, February 28 to March 2 in Columbia, MO, one of our most outstanding domestic nonfiction festivals.  Winners will also be featured in video podcasts on the Missouri Review's web site.  The judges are T/F co-directors, David Wilson and Paul Sturtz; Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, Robert Swope; and novelist and editor of the Review, Speer Morgan.  The entry fee is just $24 and you get a one-year subscription to the Review with that.  The deadline is the 1st of December--click here for the guidelines and entry form.

An American in Tehran

Just winged in from Iran last night on my '08 Poverty Jet Set tour.  It's hard to believe that Tehran is just a bit over 6,000 miles from New York because it feels like the other end of the world.  So I'm jet-lagged and am finding writing about my experience there attending the incredible 2nd annual Cinema Vérité Iran International Documentary Film Festival almost as overwhelming as the actual trip turned out to be.  Suffice to say, that it was a distinct privilege, as an American, to get to visit the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Like the United States of America, it is rife with contradictions, has incredible beauty and diversity in its people and its land, and contains gazillions of human beings just trying to live happy, productive, meaningful lives while jockeying for their place in a very chaotic and trying world thanks to traditionalist governments (that's the most diplomatic word I can come up with right now).  It ain't easy.  (For the record, I do have several rolls of film that are now being developed.  I am still that dweeb that shoots film stills instead of digital; I know it's antiquated, but that's the way it is, so you'll just have to be patient.)

I could do a whole essay just on experiencing Iran as a woman--and I probably will, but will save that for another time.  I have major stories.  In the next couple of posts, I will talk about the festival itself, the films, the special guests that attended, the people I spent time with, new friends and discovered talents, and will share part of a post-mortem conversation I had with festival director, Massoud Bakhshi, and a few others to access how it went, the issues and problems as well as the triumphs and accomplishments, and a look forward to next year and years to come.  It was a loose advisory panel, but it was very exciting to be a part of a nascent international film event that will, no doubt, become hugely significant on the world stage.  They are strong out of the gate and mean to go the distance.  In Bakhshi's words, "The festival is here to answer all the demand that exists in this country."

"This country" has many stories to tell and they are telling them in floods of films--not all of them up to snuff in terms of quality, to be sure.  Due to the country's imposed isolation, the filmmakers rely on the dribs and drabs that come in through the veil of censorship (or those that are able to leave the country and return).  So their sense of what makes good cinema is sort of akin to "naive" art. And like d'art naif, it has a fierce but clumsy beauty and a very distinct sense of the world that doesn't easily gibe with, or translate into, what is considered great cinema.  I, for one, appreciate that enormously when so much of what we see and taste and smell and hear is generic garbage.  Because of this dearth of "information" (and we know how dubious that can be), they use their imagination, their emotional intensity, their creativity and their wondrous humor to tell their stories.  It may be sloppy sometimes, but it's so alive.  A gallery owner I was introduced to said to us, "Oppression does wonders for the arts and literature."  (The cover of this year's film catalog, pictured.)

What was really interesting is that the gentlemen that were being feted this year (Richard Leacock, Peter Wintonick and Jorgen Leth--all of whom could save the world with their charm), the invited guests, and the special strands of Finnish and Polish and American films and other programs were also not your run-of-the-mill fare.  It was a very peculiar mélange, a type I've never quite experienced before.  It was really weird and wonderful.  And I felt very much at home.  (Despite nearly choking to death on the pollution of Tehran; let's get with the emissions standards, people!).

And the brilliant James Longley is there filming his next project.  He arrived the day after we did having finally been granted his visa (which he had expected to get seven months ago).  We chatted a bit at a party and he also appeared at the cinemas a couple of days later; they had slipped in his films for exhibition at the last minute, a wonderful treat for the festival attendees which reached tens of thousands in number over the course of the five days--all local to Tehran and its environs.

This festival has astounding statistics:  it's received 1,300 national applications since its inception and the Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC), the folks who put on the festival, co-finance and co-produce a lot of these films (300 documentaries a year!) with other local independent film companies.  And they are truly independent since a lot are not state-funded.  This is an option they themselves choose, so they're ready to say what they want to say and there are consequences for that.  These films that get made may still not be able to publicly exhibit in Iran.  That's the price one pays--your own countrymen don't get to see your wares in a theater or on TV (sound familiar??); however, there is an enormous DVD market, both above- and below ground, and a very large and very hungry audience.  On the plus side, the negative labs are subsidized by the state.  And while the government does have its hand in absolutely everything, it is invested in the film industry financially and makes it possible for someone like Bakhshi, who wanted to shoot his film, Tehran Has No More Pomegranates! in 35mm, to do so for about $100K.

There are 200 theaters in Tehran.  (That's a lot; but until you've been there, you cannot imagine the size of this city.  I come from Los Angeles.  I know from big, unwieldy cities with urban growth challenges.  But this city is the Godzilla of cities.  You have to be tough to hang in that burg.)  But another similar situation with which the film industry there deals, as do we, is the content/distribution quandary.  (The DEFC is also a major distributor.)  How to get it out there; how to get it seen once it makes it out there.  And what to do with it after it's been publicly exhibited.  On the DVD black market there, one can buy both Iranian, American and other foreign fare for a buck.  A "legal" DVD is still only three to four dollars.  But the major, major difference between here and there is that a cinema ticket there is about $1.20.  One can actually afford to go to the movies!  It's actually encouraged!!  Is someone paying attention?  Maybe it's time to bridge the gap between what it's costing to make movies these days and what it costs to see one, eh?  And "free" really shouldn't be an option, in my opinion.  We pay for the crappy PEOPLE magazine at the checkout; we can certainly pay for a good flick, even on the Internet.

There are a lot of self-organized festivals in Iran from very small, specifically-themed ones to larger, regional ones, but the Cinema Vérité festival is the only international festival in the country.  They experienced a 30% increase in international submissions from last year, receiving close to a thousand films from abroad, mostly from Europe and South America.  For the last three years, Bakhshi has been staging an "images from the east" strand at the festival in Sao Paulo, laying some expert groundwork for international exchange.  They've also started a doc fund that encourages Iranian filmmakers to go outside the country first before coming to shill for funding in their own country--that's truly revolutionary, I think.  Bakhshi really wants to open things up, including the average Iranian artist's scope of things.  He also courted the amazing Nisi Masa group, and for the first time, a festival outside of Europe had a wonderful daily magazine with interviews, person-on-the-street photos and comments, reviews and festival highlights.  Impressed?  We were.

Okay, now for the drawbacks:  because many of the Iranian-made films come sliding in at the last minute with no regard to a submission deadline, a lot that were exhibited in the cinemas hadn't had a chance to be subtitled.  That's a problem if you truly want to court an international audience.  The other issue is, when they are subtitled, the idioms used and other language boo-boos sometimes make them nearly incomprehensible or garner laughs when something distinctly unfunny is happening on the screen.

The viewing schedule was packed to the gills.  Tehranis are used to glut, but for visitors, it was untenable to try and get everything in.  (Admittedly, this was due to just sheer exhaustion and confusion.)  This is fairly normal for a festival where you're working, and those that traverse them regularly know this.  So we lucky few can retreat to a viewing library.  This is another area that will need a lot of organization and work.  The viewing library only contained DEFC-produced fare and even then, a lot was not available.  It was particularly important to at least have all of the national competition films.  Again, I think this was just due to the time crunch they faced getting a festival of this magnitude up on its legs.  But, all in all, it was a challenge to see films for visitors or non-Farsi speaking people. 

The cinema complex was always packed and there was a lot of foot traffic on all three levels.  However, the cinema space itself could be used to much better effect.  There were just gobs of people everywhere with no sense of organization or where to go to ask for what you needed, whether you were a filmmaker looking to meet a particular producer or film executive, or a press person wanting to chat with a particular filmmaker.  They did their best by having this absolutely amazing team of coordinators helping to connect people, but if this group hadn't been so sharp and on it (Bakhshi admitted this was an issue last year), it would have been utter chaos with missed opportunities for meetings and other important encounters one relies on having at an event like this.  There weren't even any parties with filmmakers.  The guests were fed, watered and squired around like we were royalty which was fab, but we never really got to mingle en masse with filmmakers and this was a shame.  We came there to meet them and they came there to meet us.  There should be more of a meet market approach, the kind that Heather Croall is praised with creating at Sheffield. 

The space where the actual market was could have been better conceived.  It was a bit too exclusionary and a very static and unwieldy space to navigate, even though it was housed in a beautiful gallery conveniently across the street from the cinemas. 

Having said all that, the tribute sessions and panels were very well-attended with Maestro Wintonick giving a five-hour session to a small group of filmmakers (that's including translation time, but still!).  Everyone worked hard, audience included, to make this event all it could be.  It was quite easy to connect once you figured out who you wanted to connect with--it just took a bit of time, that's all.  But a bit more organization and forethought will come with experience, I've no doubt about that.

In my next post, I'd like to share a 100-second film by an Iranian woman who made her extraordinary piece for $110 (and impressed the hell out of me with her sales skills), and to also talk about another (already accomplished) Iranian filmmaker that many of us are certain has a long and solid career in front of him for as long as he desires.  These and a few others will be coming to our shores soon, inshallah.  More in a bit.

Next Stop, Iran: 2nd Annual Cinema Vérité International Documentary Festival

Yes!  Yours truly is Tehran-bound in a few days to attend the 2nd iteration of this new and exciting festival run by filmmaker, Massoud Bakhshi, director of the glorious Tehran Has No More Pomegranates!, a tour-de-force piece about his hometown, which played to rave reviews on the festival circuit this past year.  As an American, especially, it is a distinct privilege to be going to Iran to celebrate our nonfiction craft (Azaadi Square pictured left).

This past spring, one of the strands at Hot Docs was a "Spotlight on Iran" and Bakhshi also served jury duty for the best Canadian feature prize along with Michael Burns and Rada Sesic.  He also runs the Documentary and Experimental Film Center in Tehran and produces for up-and-coming Iranian filmmakers.  (At Hot Docs, I had an opportunity to grab a great interview with him that you can read here.)  I invited Bakhshi to Dubai this summer for our inaugural Documentary Voices: Pulling Focus event; however, due to conflicts in his schedule, he wasn't able to come.  But he's returned the favor and invited me to his fest and I'm very, very excited and honored to attend.  Thank you to the Iranian Consulate in DC for processing my visa so fast--in the middle of Ramadan!!

They have a really wonderful and diverse program planned--you can go to their web site to see the particulars.  They are returning the Canadian hospitality they received and are honoring the great RIchard Leacock (also honored at Hot Docs) and the ubiquitous Peter Wintonick.  They're also celebrating the work of Danish filmmaker (and father of Asgar), Jorgen Leth.  (If you're a filmmaker and you still haven't seen The Five Obstructions, get on it!)  Should be an amazing time.  I don't know if I'll manage to blog from there, but rest assured, I'll share everything when I get back.

Also, a couple of other things of note:  a reminder that this Monday, the 13th, the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar will start its screening series, Flaherty NYC, at Anthology with filmmaker, Oliver Husain (a still from his video, "Squiggle," pictured).  He's an extraordinary artist doing fantastic work--I guarantee you've never seen anything like it and, of course, it's a rare treat to have him in the house to explain how his magical mind works to create his pieces. 

Wanted to also mention that one of my favorite films from the festival circuit this year, Life. Support. Music., is now available on DVD.  Filmmaker Eric Metzgar writes, "The film is continuing through the film festival circuit, getting wonderful and heartfelt reviews and winning a few awards along the way.  But more importantly, Jason's story is authentically inspiring the folks that come out to see it, especially those who have loved ones suffering through difficult circumstances.  Fortunately, Jason and his family have been able to attend many of these screenings, where they always receive long standing ovations and give out hugs to weeping audience members.  Also, it looks like the film will be screening in a theater in Manhattan early next year."  You can purchase a copy on Film Baby.  Read my interview with Metzgar conducted a few months ago for Shooting People here.

The Paley Center's Doc Fest

The Paley Center for Media's annual festival celebrating the documentary will take place October 16 - 27.  Each screening will be introduced by the filmmaker and followed by a Q&A.  This year's line-up:

Toots will screen on October 16, Kristi Jacobson's tribute to her grandfather, legendary restaurateur Toots Shor (pictured).  On the 17th, Morgan Neville's Johnny Cash's America has its New York premiere.  There's a Youth Documentary Showcase on the 18th, as well as a work-in-progress screening of Whatever It Takes about  the first year of the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics.

On the 23rd, Judy Kinberg will have her New York premiere of American Masters: Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About.  Another New York premiere, Running the Sahara, will screen on the 24th.  The Art of the Documentary Pitch Workshop will take place on the 25th and, later that evening, there will be a special preview of Eric Scott Latek's Sweet Dreams.  (Latek was just named one of FILMMAKER Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film and his debut feature doc is one of the most exquisite films I've seen in recent memory.  Please don't miss seeing this astoundingly accomplished piece--you can read my review here.)  The series will wrap on the 27th with filmmaker Richard Kaplan and actress, Liv Ullmann.  In 1979, Kaplan made A Look at Liv: Norway's Liv Ullmann; Liv Ullmann's Norway.  Fillmmaker and subject will reunite and engage in a post-screening conversation.  For more info and to purchase tickets, go to the Paley Center web site.

Full Frame Call for Entries

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is now accepting submissions for its 12th annual festival in Durham, NC.  2009's fest will take place April 2 - 5.  Shorts and feature nonfiction films completed after January 1, 2007 are eligible.

There's an early submission deadline of October 15 with a $40 submission fee, and the final deadline is November 30 with a submission fee of $60.  Click here for more info.

Mushrooms and Mosaic Dreams--More Docs from Woodstock

Writer, producer and director, Ron Mann, makes films that explore those underbelly-ish, secret worlds where visionaries and explorers of the mind and spirit gather to play around with substances that alter our inner (and outer) universes (Comic Book Confidential, Grass, Go Further, Imagine the Sound, Poetry in Motion, among others). 

After viewing Astra Taylor's Examined Life (which Mann exec produced), I remained in the beautiful Bearsville Theater complex to see his latest opus on feeding your head, Know Your Mushrooms.  It seemed like an exceedingly appropriate flick to see at Woodstock.  Technically still a work-in-progress (Mann told us he lost his sound mixers for the moment to Saw V!), the film includes footage shot at the 28th Annual Telluride Mushroom Festival where fungi lovers gather to talk and imbibe and learn about all kinds of 'schrooms--edible, hallucinogenic, lethal, magical.  We're also schooled in all kinds of mushroom lore and factoids by short, sharp animated sequences and goofy archival selections about the dos and don'ts of ingesting those little suckers, all accompanied by a wonderful soundtrack courtesy of The Flaming Lips.

Long and lean Larry Evans (pictured) is our enthusiastic tour guide.  An itinerant soul, he caravans around the planet from Alaska to the wilds of Borneo gathering samples in the dark, loamy places where mushrooms grow and disseminate their spores.  The world of the mushroom is a lush and sensuous one, whether they're being used for a wicked pasta sauce, a health remedy or a spiritual journey.  The other main mushroom guru of the piece is famed mycologist, Gary Lincoff.  The absolute highlight of the film, for me, was Lincoff's hilarious narrative of a mushroom trip he took from a house in Laurel Canyon in LA into outer space.  Please watch it here--it's delightful.

The next afternoon, after attending an inspiring panel called "Amazing Women in Film" with film critic Thelma Adams, actress Rita Taggart, producer Maggie Renzi and filmmaker Barbara Kopple, followed by that absolutely wonderful conversation with Karen Durbin and Honorary Trailblazer Recipient, James Shamus, I went to see Kief Davidson's latest nonfiction piece, Kassim the Dream, which world-premiered at Tribeca this past spring and won the American Film Market award at Silverdocs.  (There were lots of other great films showing in the nearby towns of Rhinebeck and Rosendale; however, without a car, it made more sense to just hang out in the town of Woodstock to see films.)

Davidson is a superb storyteller; I loved The Devil's Miner.  In this film, he tells the extraordinary story of Ugandan-born American boxer Kassim "The Dream" Ouma, an electrifying and exuberant personality who holds nothing back about the way he might be feeling at any given moment. This makes for potent emotionalism, as well as unmitigated mischief and glee.  (He does a wicked imitation of a "redneck" in his heavy Ugandan accent in one scene that's a riot.)  At six years of age, Kassim was abducted and inducted into the rebel army as a soldier where he quickly learned that if he was to survive, he would have to brutalize and murder his countrymen, including women and other children, when ordered to do so.  Ouma is shockingly candid and forthright about his experiences during that time, at one point explaining that he came to enjoy some of it.  But he also blames himself for his father's torturous death there and is haunted by the loved ones he left behind after deserting the army and fleeing the country to the US where he knew not a soul and didn't speak the language.  The first place he headed was a boxing gym.

During the Q&A, Davidson, a long-time, award-winning editor, admitted that there was a huge editing challenge in making Ouma's American story and his Ugandan story mesh.  And, indeed, the film is almost two separate pieces.  The first half portrays his life here in America where he trained as a boxer, had a son with an American girl, brought his mother and the son he had in Uganda to the States to be with him, and gathered a posse of trainers, promoters, supporters, friends and hangers-on as he worked his way up the food chain of professional boxing, becoming the Junior Middleweight Champion of the world.  An American success story, to be sure.  In the second half, the underlying darkness of Kassim plays out when he's finally granted permission to return home after many, many years of convincing the consulate here and other political organizations to help him get a pardon and an authorized release from the military for his desertion, to revisit the place of his nightmarish childhood, and to see his beloved Jaja, the grandmother he misses with visceral longing.

The scenes in Africa are exquisite and stirred a wellspring of deep emotion. The cinematography is so rich and lucid, at once capturing the rough beauty of the land and the gentle beauty of the people.  There's one scene in particular where Kassim goes into a hut and trains with some young men there who are learning to box as a refuge from unrelenting violence and war.  Their slender, ebony bodies gracefully bob and weave through filtered light, their faces rapt with concentration and focus as they follow Kassim's moves.  It took everything in me not to start bawling loudly in the theater.  As much love as he has for his home, we watch Kassim literally fall apart as he confronts and mourns his past.  It's a complicated redemption song as he drapes himself over his father's blood-soaked grave, swings his grandmother around in his arms promising her new teeth, and guzzling massive quantities of alcohol (an ongoing problem for him even to this day) to cope with what borders on hysteria at all the things he's experiencing. 

I hope that Davidson might revisit the ending of the film, because after all the finesse of weaving an exquisite tapestry of this young man's quest into a deeply resonant experience for the viewer, the film ends really abruptly with a scene shot back here in the States with Kassim and his two sons (both of whom are spectacular) singing happy birthday and smearing cake all over one another.  And then the credits roll.  It's a cute scene, but the transition from being in Africa is jarring, to say the least.  I would hope there could be a more satisfying end scene to say something more significant about the story we've just witnessed.  Executive produced by Forest Whitaker (Academy Award-winner for Best Actor for playing Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland), the filmmakers continue to fund raise and support activism about raising awareness and funding services for children in Africa.  To see a list of participating organizations and to learn more, go to the film's web site and click on "Get Involved."

And then there's Jeremiah Zagar's In a Dream.  Hoo, boy.  Suffice to say I was still shedding pent-up tears on the bus ride back to New York.  This was the last film I saw at the fest on Sunday morning.  It had been announced the night before at the awards ceremony in Kingston that In a Dream had won an editing award for Zagar and Keiko Deguchi and won Best Documentary Feature.  Everyone I know who got to see this at SXSW (its festival debut), Full Frame or Philadelphia raved about it and the film hasn't left a festival without a prize.  So expectations were high.  I wasn't disappointed.  In fact, it packed such a wallop, I probably should wait some more to write about it coherently, but I'll give it a go.

There have been lots of profoundly moving family autobiography documentaries told by a member of the family being portrayed.  It's a tricky proposition for both filmmaker and subject(s), obviously.  But it's a rare thing, indeed, to witness the sheer love and generosity in which this particular mother and father engage and co-create this piece with their youngest son.  That generosity starts with the film's main subject, Isaiah Zagar (pictured), Jeremiah's father, a man with deep obsessions (and demons).  His work is the main obsession as he creates and installs astounding magical mosaic murals that practically cover whole city blocks of South Philly, at this point--over 50,000 square feet installed over the course of four decades, in fact.  His life and art, indeed, create a waking dream, one in which the family resides, all of them nesting inside a physical representation of Isaiah's riotous psyche and his depiction of the genesis and growth of the family unit--every second of it, seemingly.

Zagar shot for many years, and during the course of that time, the family went through an hellacious period of pain, upheaval and remorse on a scale that nearly tears it apart for good.  Yet they prevail; they go through the pain with grace and humor, losing none of their personal integrity along the way.  Yes, there is yelling and crying and rending.  But due solely to the superhuman resilience and emotional strength of wife and mother, Julia, also an artist and a wondrous humanist, the family's implosion burns and scars everyone, but the center, ultimately, holds.  And they go on.  The film exhibits, quite beautifully, both the brutality and the refuge of family in equal measure.  It displays the most rambunctious ways in which we engage with those closest to us by blood, and the impact those encounters have in creating who we are and how we see the world. 

There is all that, but what this film also displays is exquisite craft from every quarter.  The gorgeous cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt and the lyrical and moving score by Kelli Scar sent me over the moon.  Isaiah's art is certainly eye candy, and so is his son's film.  J. Zagar also had some robust assistance from the likes of executive producer, Ross Kauffman who, in turn,  brought in brilliant sound designer, Tom Paul, and consulting editor and teacher extraordinaire, Sam Pollard.  I really, really hope that someone out there champions and takes on the distribution this film so richly deserves so more of the world can see it.

I've really come to love the town of Woodstock and its inhabitants.  It's a lovely, lovely place.  As some friends and I waited for the bus back to the city in the town's main square, we watched what appeared to be a quiet and dignified war rally (I constantly heard rabidly passionate political discussions about the election everywhere I went through the course of the four days) while behind the stoic placard holders, a fashion show went on with thumping disco music and all, while some local women vogued the latest in Ulster County chic--wild. 

Click here to see the rest of the honorees and prize-winners.

The Docs at Woodstock

In my last post, I waxed lyrical on the inspiring, warm and exceedingly well-organized and well-programmed Woodstock Film Festival.  I saw several films and attended a couple of panels, as well as one of the most enjoyable (and raucous) awards ceremonies in recent memory.  Here are my thoughts on a few of the films: 

After settling in on Thursday afternoon, the first flick I saw was a special screening of Larry Charles' Religulous, fresh from its debut at Toronto.  I was at BRITDOC this past summer in Oxford where Charles was the special superstar they had for their "In Conversation With" event that preceded the awards ceremony on the last day of the fest.  As part of that talk, Charles showed extracts from the film and shared some behind-the-scenes stories.  Oddly, almost every scene we saw didn't make the final cut, so we essentially saw outtakes, it turns out.  I had uneasy feelings when I saw those bits then, and seeing the cut that has already released in theaters, that feeling of unease persists.  (But it's doing gonzo box office and it's a doc and Variety calls it "brilliant and incendiary," so hurray, I guess.)

I'm a huge fan of Bill Maher's.  I think he's relentlessly funny and smart with seemingly unending reserves of chutzpah (his Jewish side, natch).  He's a great comedian, in other words, with important things to say. What was so sorely disappointing about this film is that the amazing opportunity and access they had at their disposal in doing a theatrical feature on this topic went largely by the wayside.  Maher has been on the pulpit, so to speak, about the insidiousness of organized religion and its damaging effects on the mass human psyche for decades.  It's something near and dear to his heart and he's fiercely eloquent and wickedly wry when he talks about the "myths of religion."

To be sure, I expected loads of irreverence, sarcasm, wise-ass behavior and all kinds of shenanigans.  He was directed by the helmer of Borat, after all.  They could have done an uproarious piece and still put what I like to call substance in the damn thing.  The film is bookended by Maher, in a who-cares moment sitting and talking with his mother and sister about their religious upbringing (his mom is Jewish and his dad is Catholic and he and his sister were raised in the church--another scarred ex-Catholic, how "incendiary"), and a tacked-on diatribe at the end where Maher gets all high-and-mighty from the mount of Megiddo in Israel (the site prophesied in the New Testament as the place where the final battle between good and evil will happen, aka Armageddon, aka The End of the World!), and holds forth about how religion is the root of all evil and one of the key things that is taking this world down.  What's sandwiched between is nothing more than a series of gags, poking fun at pretty much everyone that agrees to be interviewed.  It has none of the intelligence and hard-hitting investigation that could take it beyond portraying anyone who believes in God and worlds beyond this one as an ignorant idiot, and the doubters or skeptics (like Maher) as the only folks who have an ounce of sense in their heads.  Maher displays the same disdain for his subjects that religious fanatics show for the heathens. So where does that get us exactly?

Nonfiction, as we've seen in plenty of instances, can be as highly cinematic, entertaining, engaging and exciting as a narrative story can be.  This film has none of those qualities:  It's shoddily edited, whipsawing us back and forth between cozy little chats with freakazoids, smarmy commentary from inside the traveling minivan, and sloppily produced segments of decreasing hilarity.  This is just plain silliness and I came away with a very empty feeling, a what-was-the-point-of-that? feeling.  As an audience member, I don't need to be constantly winked at to assure me I'm in on the joke, especially when the joke is right out of some Catskills stand-up schtick.  And can someone please explain to me the necessity of showing the crew filming every scene at every location with Larry Charles documenting the production?  Weird. 

The next morning I took myself to the Documentary Shorts program.  I rarely see shorts at a fest, don't know why, so I thought I'd mix it up a bit.  The Community Center venue is not a good one at all.  The whole system in there needs upgrading and why they didn't put every piece on one master reel instead of having gaping amounts of time between each film put an awkward kink in the whole program, a program obviously curated very carefully with one piece, The Unhappy Traveler: A New Yorker in India, used as an interstitial between the other films. Substantively and artistically, they were all very strong and distinctive.  Stand-outs were Dinosaurs and Rocketships, about local Woodstock artist and designer, Steve Heller (he designed our beautiful Cinema Eye Honor statuette) and festival award-winner, Pickin' & Trimmin' by North Carolinian, Matt Morris.  I hope Morris might consider trying to qualify this piece for a Best Doc Short Subject Oscar; it's a superb piece of storytelling clocking in under twelve minutes with lots to say about all kinds of things, in a subtle and artful way.  I could have watched a lot more.  Morris has been making shorts for years, but this is the first time he's ever submitted a piece to a festival.  Don't be so shy from now on, son--show us your wares.

The last film I'll write about in this post is director (and Woodstock resident) Astra Taylor's second documentary feature, Examined Life.  This was its US premiere post-Toronto and Taylor will also show her film here this month in New York as a special screening in Thom Powers' Stranger Than Fiction series on October 23 (for pass-holders only--buy one).

Taylor's film is one of the most thought-provoking, exciting and richly conceived films out there right now--it fed my soul and head in equal measure.  It's also cinematically stunning, so the eyeballs were taken care of, as well.  And a lot of it is laugh-out-loud funny.  (It's everything Religulous could have been, but isn't.)

Taylor introduces us to some of the most profound and prolific thinkers of our day through ten-minute vignettes where high-falutin' and challenging ideas are set against the background of familiar public spaces.  As these philosophers' minds and thoughts travel, so do we--over bridges, through city streets, over water, riding in cars, gliding through airport terminals, strolling through parks and hanging out in garbage dumps.  Here are some of Taylor's thoughts from her blog on the TIFF site:

"For the film, I invited each of these thinkers to take a walk.  It’s a simple conceit, I know, but one that has numerous implications. Historically it speaks to philosophy’s peripatetic origins and to the fact that many great philosophers were enthusiastic wanderers. Cinematically, the walk provides an opportunity for movement, gesture, and variation of scene (on this front I was partially inspired by the incredible sequence in the documentary Bright Leaves where director Ross McElwee is pushed around in a wheelchair by a rabid film theorist). The walk also illustrates my intention of taking philosophy out of the ivory tower and 'into the streets.' I wanted my subjects to talk  about their ideas in a way that was free of jargon and directly relate-able to the viewer's experience, so an academic office didn’t seem like the right site for such conversations.

"I also didn’t want to totally be in control.  Any art-maker knows magic happens more often by accident than design, thus another benefit of being out in the open was the emergence of obstacles and encounters that provoked reactions and insights I couldn’t have planned.  Unfortunately, some of the most memorable impromptu moments didn’t make the final cut, like when we were heckled by irate, obscenity-shouting gutter punks in Tompkins Square Park (unflappable, Avital Ronell wryly remarked to the camera, 'We have a great audience!'), or when Peter Singer was cross-examined about his theories by an inquisitive security guard on Fifth Avenue."  (From the Hip's Ingrid Kopp had a lot of questions for Mr. Singer, too!) 

Along with Ronell and  Singer, the film features Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek (the subject of Taylor's first nonfiction feature Zizek!), Judith Butler, Michael Hardt (I have a crush), Kwame Anthony Appiah and Martha Nussbaum.  Provocative and eloquent, each speaker takes us on a journey through layers of thought and feeling on how we should muster ourselves for the daily human experience; they each invite us to pull those peripheral questions and quandaries to the forefront of our individual and collective consciousnesses and challenge us to shift our orientation to one of intense engagement and yes, responsibility.  As the firebrand prof, Cornel West, has said, "Who wants to be well-adjusted to injustice?  What kind of human being do you want to be?"  I will be interviewing this talented and intelligent filmmaker when she comes to New York this fall.  Look for our conversation soon on this blog.

Tomorrow, Ron Mann's Know Your Mushrooms, Kief Davidson's Kassim the Dream and Jeremiah Zagar's In a Dream.

Mavericks, Trailblazers and Busted Toilets

Just got back this afternoon from the 9th Annual Woodstock Film Festival.  It was a really, kind of, magical four days (Know Your Mushrooms! lovely meeting you, Ron Mann), and in the next couple of posts, I'll try to explain why.  I'm actually sitting here watching a movie, for God's sakes.  I just got back from several days of film viewing and, while far from saturated, I'm absolutely inspired.  More, please.  (I guess it helps that the film you happen to be watching is Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep.)

I saw brilliance everywhere, and while that may sound hyperbolic, I did.  Brilliance in the air and sun and green of the town itself, and the fierce brilliance in the passionate, kind and kooky people that live there.  And I mean kooky as a huge compliment.

The word "brilliant" can connote "outstanding in every way," and I do mean it in that very broad sense.  I mean it in the way you witness, day after day, folks just getting their art on.  The art of the camera's eye, the art of the sound design that leaves you breathless, the humility and compassion filmmakers have, especially right now.  And, in the way that James Shamus just is.  For those of you at the festival who missed his conversation with Karen Durbin, you really missed out.  We, in this crazy biz, should be so jazzed to have a guy like that amongst us, to share the same tenure as ours.  The people we'll be able to say we came up with back in the day will be stupendously happy human beings if they only just keep doing what they're doing, as long as it satisfies. And when it doesn't, you pull on your Wellies and wade into deeper shit.  Right, Kevin Smith?

So more in a few--want to get back to my movie.  Peace, love and Obama, man.  And thank you, Suki, for a lovely stay at the Twin Gables.  Damn, secret's out.