Still in Motion

La Estancia: Hiding in Plain Sight

In milky pre-dawn light, a small group of men and women of various generations moves silently through lush greenery, assisting one another across a narrow path in what appears to be some kind of clandestine border crossing. There is nothing outwardly urgent in their demeanor but they move with purpose. In the series of carefully framed and composed tableaux vivants that follow, director Federico Adorno stages a pantomime illustrating the aftermath of something terrible, an event that has decimated a small population of farmers on an estancia in the countryside of Paraguay. The realization surfaces slowly that they are “trespassing” back onto the land they call home.

La Estancia, Adorno’s spare and elegant 14-minute film, world-premiered as a selection in this year’s international competition at the 60^th edition of the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen / International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. By festival’s end, the international jury awarded the film with the highest honor of The Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen.

Adorno’s film is a ghost story told in fragments, based on a deadly clash that occurred in June of 2012 on Campos Morombí in the city of Curuguaty. Currently, five landless peasants stand accused of taking part in the killing of eleven farmers and six policemen during a land eviction procedure, such cases being common in Paraguay, a country where over 80% of the land is in the hands of less than 2% of the population. Illegalities abound and cases of blatant corruption between the elite and the state are the norm. Landless individuals have no rights in this place. They are invisible, dispensable, powerless, voiceless.

Adorno’s cinematic vision is not concerned with the task of providing any kind of facile re-enactment of an actual event. Many films in the Oberhausen program this year dealt in myriad ways with re-enactment, the ritualizing of selective memories staged in anonymous rites or rituals of celebration or mourning, often using the warp and weave of grand landscapes to encounter secret, inchoate histories. Because of the breadth of its brutality in a place where brutality is the currency of the entitled, this particular case of the peasants in La Estancia is a story that has been recorded. Yet Adorno represents them in the complete and authentic isolation that is the only reality that truly belongs to them. They cannot even seek refuge in the stolid permanence of land appropriated by others more powerful than they. They are chased away over and over again. The cows can stay. The people who tend them must flee.

Subdued ambient sounds from the natural surroundings are the only aural elements to orientate us. There is no score, nor is there any text to accompany the passion play that unfolds before us. Abandoned by these reliable signifiers, we are left with the eerie tranquility and stillness in the aftermath of unspeakable things. Adorno uses the short film form as a master writer uses the short story: catching the essence of a moment, the shock and devastation where the unwritten, undocumented part of all this – the never-ending, stunning grief of voiceless people – is absorbed by the landscape, a landscape where they are able to hide in plain sight. The surprise comes from how easily they blend in. In most every scene of Adorno’s story, after a few moments of looking around, we conclude that there is no one there. And then like ghosts inhabiting corporeal form for brief moments as ghosts do, they appear, looking out at us from the underbrush, praying and administering over their dead loved ones, standing silently watching, ensconced in the living tomb of their brothers, sisters, parents and children. There lays a single small black rubber boot on its side in the mud, there a delicate white plastic rosary, amongst other unidentifiable detritus at a ravaged campsite. There is nothing else but the breaking daylight and the soft susurrations of the breezes to accompany the survivors as they go about discovering and recovering the ones that have fallen, also left like so much detritus scattered across the suddenly abandoned landscape.

A couple of months ago, in March of this year, the five peasants being held responsible for the massacre went on a hunger strike for more than thirty days in order to demand justice and freedom, seemingly their only source of protest in a country where their lives are less than incidental. After watching the poetic precision of Adorno’s film, we can begin to understand that wasting away, eventually disappearing altogether, is something the state and the land-grabbers rely upon them to do. And so they play their parts. They play them so heartbreakingly well.

In a statement read at the closing ceremonies in Oberhausen, the filmmaker expressed his solidarity with the people that are the inspiration for his film. From Paraguay, he had written to express his gratitude to both the festival and the jury for the honor, but felt he needed to forego an opportunity to travel to Germany. He needed to remain by their side.

More on Oberhausen at the FIPRESCI site here.

 

 

 

 

Anna Odell, Director THE REUNION

Swedish artist Anna Odell’s début feature is causing quite a stir. When one starts watching The Reunion (Återträffen), particularly when it’s part of the international competition at CPH:DOX, a festival that’s renowned for presenting work in the genre-free zone, one at first takes it in for the “re-enacted documentary” it’s meant to be. But then things start to get a bit complicated.

The opening scene is a high school reunion, where classmates who graduated together 20 years ago have gathered. But there is a guest among them who has something to say to all of them – something they really don’t want to hear, especially at a celebration. Shot like a feature film with three-camera coverage and superb acting, the first part of the film is a passion play of a “what if?” situation when someone confronts her childhood bullies head-on. The second half of the film was meant to be the individual meetings the director requests from her classmates to show them this short film of their reunion, get their reactions and have further dialogue. But this goal is thwarted and so Odell continues the reenactment, this time based on actual conversations she had (or might have had) with her former schoolmates.

Subtly raising many questions on the theme of bullying and group hierarchies – something the artist is intent on exploring in all of her work – the film becomes a terrific medium in which to provoke a larger discussion on the ethics involved in dealing with real people and events. It offers a complex construction, based in fact, but completely fictionalized within the context of a narrative film –emotionally engaging, thought provoking and thoroughly entertaining.

The Reunion was awarded the FIPRESCI prize for best début feature in the Orrizonti and International Critics' Week sections at the 70th Venice Film Festival. Last November, I sat with Odell in Copenhagen to talk about her process of making the film.

(Part of this transcript appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of DOX Magazine. I am re-publishing it here following the news that The Reunion has been nominated for the Doc Alliance Award 2014; the winner will be announced at Cannes.)

 

Still in Motion (SIM): The Reunion is quite moving in a very surprising way. Even though you're constantly shifting and changing your narrative tone, it’s cohesive. The emotional through-line never wavers.

Anna Odell (AO): In the way I can work as an artist or a director, I can realize those things to which I have only had a long internal process of thinking and feeling, to see what would happen if it got played out. In my work, I am very interested in this topic of bullying and in using my own experience. I started to write the speech I deliver in the beginning scene at the reunion, because it had been 20 years since this class of mine had left school. I wanted to go to this reunion and deliver it to them like I do in the film. But I got a message on Facebook from a girlfriend that it had already happened. Everyone had been invited but me. At first I was really disappointed because I wanted to start this art project at the reunion.

SIM: Was the plan to have someone there document what happened when you read the speech to your classmates? Would that have been possible?

AO: Yes, I wanted in some way to document it. If I couldn’t somehow film anything, I would record it. For me, it’s really important that I don’t expose people who don’t want to be exposed, but I also want to be able to use any material I gather as I want. After getting this message, I had to start re-thinking things, to find answers as to what they were afraid of by encountering me again, and what could happen if they had invited me. But ultimately, it turns out, that it was even better that I wasn’t invited because otherwise this film wouldn’t have happened.

However, it was still important for me to meet my old classmates because as an artist, I want to use a real experience from which to launch my work. I really don’t want to talk about my feelings. I want to examine relationships. So this is how I decided to do this first part of the movie. Then, the process of contacting my classmates began. The meetings you see in the film are re-enactments of these meetings, not with the real people, but with actors. But not the same ones as in the first part.

SIM: It’s a fairly high level of difficulty to work both behind and in front of the camera. The film language you use is very sophisticated, even for an experienced director.

AO: Yes, it was all a new experience [laughs]. I wanted to make it work as a film. But probably the process was really different from the way most would make a movie. In Sweden, we can apply for funding from the Swedish Film Institute and from the television station. Usually, you have to have a very tight script, completely finished. But I just had this idea and a vague script of the first part of the film at the reunion. The idea was how it might be worked out in the second part but with nothing really developed. But they believed in the project and gave us some money for research and so I began to figure out the different ways to approach it, working with actors and shaping the narrative. We started a casting process where we would ask the men and women to tell us their own experiences from school. The actors, for the most part, have similar experiences in terms of where they fall in this hierarchy as they do in the film. So I gave them my idea of how they were as kids and then, together with their real-life experiences, we created the characters.

 

In the first part of the movie, we figured out the dramatic arc and what we were going to speak about by letting them use their own words. It was really important to me that it had this kind of authenticity. It was, therefore, risky for them, too. To create a safer environment, we rehearsed together a lot, but never the scenes from the movie. We were always our characters and got to know one another as the characters that we had created together. I think all this work is evident when you watch the film.

 

SIM: It’s evident mostly because you let things take a hugely dramatic, pretty violent course of action. We go from a somewhat subdued situation to something quite intense and extreme in an eyeblink. It's shocking. But you also really believe these people have known one another for decades.

 

AO: They needed to treat me as if I was a freak so that they felt fine bullying me. But then I’m also the director. To ease this process, we went back to school and acted together as if we were all 15 years old again. They could experience me not as someone they had to listen to, but be able to express this power they felt they had over me. Sometimes, it would just be me and one other person, or a small group of us, some all together, so the relationships could be built.

 

SIM: What does this one man who is always by your side in the second half – who plays one of your worst antagonists in the first half – represent? He becomes your ally or even, I could say, your intermediary, your collaborator, in the dealings with your former classmates.

 

AO: There’s almost too much to say about this because the process was so big and so intricate, and there are so many things we ultimately cut away from the film, a lot of really good stuff. But, somehow, it didn’t fit in to the main story. This is the case with Rikard [Svensson], the man you’re talking about. He’s the guy on the roof with me at the end. But my editor, Kristin Grundström, thought we looked like overgrown teenagers who were in love with each other and that was wrong. I wasn’t in love with him but something happens when we are together. But for the overall film, it just didn’t work.

 

SIM: It works on maybe some subtler level because you are so alone, so isolated with no one by your side and then in the second half – when you are taking control – he’s always there with you.

 

AO: Yes, it shows that I’m not alone anymore and that it’s not just me searching for revenge. It’s me, as a mature adult, who wants to examine these relationships.

 

SIM: Your presence, even though you are reliving a tortuous experience, is very light and most of the time very funny. There’s something so delightful in this little, delicate person with big eyes obstinately standing there and not going away until she gets answers.

 

AO: I think the answer lies in the fact that I am free from my history. Now, I’m interested in how it all works, this hierarchical structure that put me at the bottom. The first part of the film was very stressful because I’m dealing with a lot of people and three cameras. It needed to be very strategic, organized, meticulously choreographed. The other stress was the question: Can I really meet my classmates? How could I act to make it possible for them to talk to me and not feel like I wanted them to feel guilty and view me as still coming from that low place? How do we speak about that history together? It was really problematic. I didn’t necessarily want this confrontation where I would corner them and say, “You are a bully!” I really wanted to know how they saw it.

 

Almost everyone would answer when I called the first time. When I tried to then coordinate meeting with them, they didn’t answer. We have this famous investigative journalist in Sweden called Janne Josefsson. My editor told me, “Anna, you have to be like Janne Josefsson.” [laughter] But, interestingly, their reactions were reminiscent of how they would avoid me when I would ask to play with them at school. Now I was calling and calling and calling because I wanted something from them. It wasn’t for my own feelings this time, but for the film. But I think for them it was really much the same as the other and they just wanted to avoid me and came up with every excuse not to meet with me. All of a sudden, they had a new number or they lost their phone or had no time for the next three years [laughter].

 

SIM: I want to ask you about one of the last scenes, another point at which you shift things again to talk about this idea of representation and recreation. One of your subjects approaches the actor who plays him in the film, and they proceed to have this discussion about what it’s like to have yourself fictionally portrayed. It becomes a very funny and surreal discussion, and in the same light-handed way, you broach a topic that is rampantly – and quite seriously – discussed in documentary circles. Why did you include this in your script?

 

AO: In some ways, I wanted to tell the audience I was aware of what I’m doing in this film or in the way I chose to make it. And that it’s highly problematic. Maybe I did hurt some people along the way in the way I portrayed them and that they feel like I’m using them. I wanted to express that I’m aware of all that. But I hope it’s not too much. I’m also very interested in these layers of fiction and reality. My favorite lines are when the real guy – who is an actor – says to the actor who portrays him that it’s not every day you meet the guy who plays you in a film. And the actor says, well, it’s not every day you meet the character you’re portraying in a film. The scene didn’t happen, but it could happen. Maybe it will happen. [laughter]

 

SIM: How was the medium of film essential in the way you constructed this project? Why didn't you stage it as an installation piece or something along those lines?

 

AO: I chose this way because I thought it was the best way to explore this theme. At the beginning, I really did think I could make the second part possible, but then I did realize that it was going to be really hard, or impossible, to get to talk to them. And then it all had to be a re-construction. I had a really strong idea but so many different angles I could have explored and there were many alternatives I had to put away. 

 

This was a really, really good experience and fun to do this movie. I would love to do it again. But, for me, the most important thing is the theme, to keep exploring this interest of mine. There might be another film but there might also be another way to keep exploring it. I am very influenced by how people react to power, the role of the victim and the role of the person who has the power and how that relationship happens. My last project turned out to have so many different outcomes, some of which really surprised me. [Odell created and performed a highly controversial and divisive art installation called Unknown, woman 2009-349701, where she enacted a psychotic episode on a bridge in Stockholm. She was later fined for violent resistance and fraudulent practice.]  

 

SIM: Yes, but here we can then talk about the hierarchy of art and film criticism, which is something that fascinates me personally. In reading about your other project and the various reactions to it – both as an art installation and as this irresponsible stunt done by this woman calling herself an artist – you see the ways in which this power is wielded. Most of it, not surprisingly, is quite chauvinistic in nature, including the criticisms The Reunion has received.

 

AO: Yes, you can see in the ways that certain people react to the movie, what kind of person it is. I read the review in the Hollywood Reporter. The guy that wrote the review said that this was the work of a narcissistic artist who wanted to put herself front and center and that really, I am not interested in analysis at all. He writes a bit about my earlier art piece and seemed to take his information from the people in the media who didn’t like it and called it a suicide attempt. This is not the truth. I never pretended as if I was going to take my own life. In fact, no one who was there thought I was going to take my life. They called the police because I was underdressed for the cold and displaying this behavior that made them feel as if they just couldn’t leave me there. Those who also said I was violent and hitting people at the hospital were lying. I did no such thing and it was proved that no such thing happened by the eyewitnesses who were there. But once this information is out there, then people cannot change their minds about what they “heard” had happened. It’s too late to re-think things. Many people in Sweden still believe this version reported by the media.

 

I mean, I’m not saying that people can’t have a negative reaction to what I do or think this film is a bad piece of work. As the artist making the work, I find all this really, really interesting because all of this happened not because of me as a person – no one really cared about that or even knew who I was – but that it had been staged as an art project. This was where the real controversy was. So I saw this misuse of power first-hand from the media and from the courts and also how people perceived art and what art is. I got so much out of it! I expect the same from reactions to this film.

 

Hidden Cities 2

In Raissa, life is not happy. People wring their hands as they walk in the streets, curse the crying children, lean on the railings over the river and press their fists to their temples. In the morning you wake from one bad dream and another begins. At the workbenches where, every moment, you hit your finger with a hammer or prick it with a needle, or over the columns of figures all awry in the ledgers of merchants and bankers, or at the rows of empty glasses on the zinc counters of the wineshops, the bent heads at least conceal the general grim gaze. Inside the houses it is worse, and you do not have to enter to learn this: in the summer the windows resound with quarrels and broken dishes.

And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the scaffolding, "Darling, let me dip into it," to a young serving-maid who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where the philosopher says: "Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence."  --Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

The Last Ledge

I'm living in a country looking for help from people who don't know how to help themselves. But they're learning how. And so should I.

When you go to a deeply wounded place for self-healing, you're in for one hell of a shock. The shock of encountering how truly and utterly lost you are.

How to survive in the desert without sunblock? How to know where the desert ends and the road re-appears? The road you've moved so far from. How to know when enough's enough?

I am a helpless baby now. But unlike a real baby--a tabula rasa brand-new human (except for the fatefulness of DNA), I have lost things that are essential to my survival, namely: loss of trust in people, loss of faith, suspicion, anxiety and unending fear of a life that's gone off the rails. I'm told by some who've been through this, that this is the best part--albeit in hindsight. In the present, it feels like constant nausea and night sweats. This is the part where a tipping point is presented. One can move ever further into darkness, keep exploring, seeking, roaming. Or. . . I don't know what. Nothing good. Nothing healthy. Something like settling on the couch with a jumbo bag of chips and a big, fat boyfriend who can't climb a hill anymore without getting heart palpitations.

Did I mention the thing that's gone missing that hurts most of all, the loss of which causes me much dysfunction? That causes me to walk into walls, or get my computer chord caught on someone's shoe? It's my faith and trust in myself. This leaves me pretty fucked-up most of the time. As well, I spend a lot of energy hiding that fact, which is also exhausting.

It's time to step into the void, the one I came here to fill. I'm holding on for dear life to the last ledge.

 

Kafka Was the Rage

There's something so eerie and unspeakably sad when a lot of your young Facebook friends are presenting a black box of mourning as their profile photos. I asked a friend who had died and he said a friend from Prizren who now lived in Prishtina. He was 24. I won't go into the particulars of what happened mostly because I really don't know except through hearsay, and to honor the family's privacy.

I then pick up a book a friend lent me a while ago and began to read the author's introduction. Many people ask me what Kosovo is like, what does it feel like there, how is it? And I can always come up with some sort of articulation about it, but that's all it is is an utterance, an answer to a question pulled from the flotsam floating on top of my brain. In other words, not very meaningful.

The following excerpt describes New York's Greenwich Village in the 1940s. The book is Anatole Broyard's memoir called Kafka Was the Rage. He wrote this intro in April of 1989, 24 years ago. The age of the man who died today.

I think there's a great nostalgia for life in New York City, especially in Greenwich Village in the period just after World War II. We were all so grateful to be there--it was like a reward for having fought the war. There was a sense of coming back to life, a terrific energy and curiosity, even a feeling of destiny arising out of the war that had just ended. The Village, like New York City itself, had an immense, beckoning sweetness. It was like Paris in the twenties--with the difference that it was our city. We weren't strangers there, but familiars. The Village was charming, shabby, intimate, accessible, almost like a street fair. We lived in the bars and on the benches of Washington Square. We shared the adventure of trying to be, starting to be, writers or painters.

American life was changing and we rode those changes. The changes were social, sexual, exciting--all the more so because we were young. It was as if we were sharing a common youth with the country itself. We were made anxious by all the changes, yet we were helping to define them.

That feels a lot like Kosovo to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prishtinë, mon amour

 

There might have been a new breed of creature born this past month. It would be a young man or woman, most certainly Balkan (although not in every case), artistic, open-minded, curious, adventurous and paying careful attention to what is going on around him or her. It's also a person who notices that there are places in the city where the empty spaces have been left null and void for decades. He or she might think that that place could be inhabited and enlivened again, if only. . .  Let's call them Bororamizians.

Since August, there has been a Bororamizian colony setting up shop in one of Prishtinë's old historic landmarks, the Pallati e Rinisë, aka Boro Ramiz. The building's former sports complex is literally, just a shell of itself, its main function now that of a parking lot. The basement has not been touched, everything left just as it was the day the building was abandoned--old flyers, office equipment, chairs, file cabinets. And, most eerily of all, a giant pile of old ice skates, lying like some monument or memorial to things strongly remembered by a certain generation that still inhabits the country's once-great capital. The brainchild for this project belongs to its three  founding members, Astrit Ismaili, Rina Kika, and Tobias Bienz.

The city of Prishtina has its share of spaceship architecture (for want of a better word) amidst its pulverized sidewalks, open construction pits and quiet tree-lined streets with internet-ready coffee, drinking and eating spots filled with people day and night--sitting, smoking, talking, checking one another out. Boro Ramiz, which sits above the now infamous NEWBORN scuplture (which Rita Ora used to dance around on in her new music video that was being shot the same day as the "Prishtinë, mon amour" performance), looms in communist-era fashion above the skyline of the city. Originally built as a sports palace (it still has a pristine basketball court), it's shaped, somewhat, like a pyramid with the front of it featuring an enomous likness of Adem Jasheri, a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, killed with all his family members in Prekaz by Serbian military forces in 1998. 

The group of thirty-two artists and the performers and other people contributing to the "residency" and ultimate one-hour performance called "Repetition," welcomed a vast crowd of close to 500 people that came through the building's doors last Saturday night. The project pays homage to some seminal artistic influences, starting with the title of the collective, named after Alain Resnais' 1959 film, Hiroshima, mon amour. There was an homage to contemporary performance artist, Marina Abramovic, in one of the performance pieces. Even the sequined roller skating couple dancing gracefully and followed by a spotlight in the middle of the concrete parking lot (a work specially created for the exhibition by filmmaker, Shota Bukoshi performed by Lirona Rexhepi and Ergin Abdullahu) conveyed evocations of film, art, sports and youth, creating a kind of nostalgia. This was a nostaliga, however, that was meant to be intentionally obtuse. My impression was that this was the whole point--to allow the spectators who came to see the result of several weeks' worth of planning and building (and much, much cleaning) to come to their own conclusions, to walk through the space in their own personal reverie. And then there were the sheep. But that's another story, coming soon. (All photos, courtesy Still in Motion aka moi)

And a huge Faleminderit to G. Bajri, pictured below--a pleasure to work with and a total pro, what a combo.

(There was also an article published today by Hana Marku of Kosovo 2.0 which I think should be required reading for us all. Read it here.)

And yes, I am remembering September 11 today, of course, but it's much easier to write about the pain of someone else's country than that of your own.

Sound and Vision: CPH:DOX's Sound Design Workshop

The following article appears in the current issue of DOX Magazine.

 

In testing the permeability of the various borders and boundaries between fiction, nonfiction and visual art, the conversations in Copenhagen this year, as in any other, went beyond genre into the actual artistry of storytelling in film. While many filmmakers, artists, and professionals from other disciplines that feel compelled to make films, move deeply into this process in a fairly intuitive way, there are few established festivals and forums that specifically nurture, showcase and help find support for film work that falls into undefined territories.  Continuing to creatively riff upon its founding ethos nine years ago, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival pushed even further with this year’s impressively diverse and challenging program selections, as well as in the 27 projects that were chosen to pitch at this year’s CPH:FORUM.

As part of its ever-growing roster of talks and workshops, this year festival programmer, Niklas Engström, put together a wonderfully inspiring master class / roundtable of filmmakers and sound designers called Sound Design in Documentary Films. In a two-hour discussion, the panelists shared samples of work—most appearing in this year’s program—to illustrate how soundtracks and soundscapes are used as an integrated part of a film’s language, “exploiting all the countless possibilities that exist to support, expand and shape narration,” discovering a film’s identity through the exploration of sound and music in creating cinematic pieces.

I tend to concentrate on the New: Vision and New: Vision Expanded programs when I go to this festival because I know some of my deep-seated ideas about narrative structure and storytelling in film will be turned upside-down and backwards. And this was so, this year more than ever, in terms of how soundscapes not only enhance, but shape, narrative structure. Every natural (or unnatural) sound reproduced by art “colors” the space in which it is presented to the public, not of the space it is supposed to reproduce. If we hear a storm, the howling of the wind, a clap of thunder, etc. in film, we hear it in the timbre appropriate to the soundtrack, not in the timbre of an actual forest, or ocean, or voice, or whatever the scene is supposed to represent.  Every sound bears the stamp of the space in which it is actually produced, but this sound can also be created in a studio with effects, a live orchestra, creating a bespoke aural palette made specifically for a certain story.

Just as a film shot preserves the viewpoint of the camera, a sound recording orientates, as well, whether it is through abstract sound, non-sync sound, collected sound, delayed sound, or effects created in a studio using symphonic instruments. Sound, even more than vision, in film can release the fixed, immutable distance between the spectator and what is happening on screen. Not only as viewers, but as listeners, we are transferred from our seats to the space in which the events depicted on the screen are taking place.  The shapes of visible things have several sides, right, left, front and back. Sounds have no such aspect and layers of sound do not necessarily tell us from which “side” a shot was made.  Thus, using sound filters enables a visual artist to build a defined character for images that might be clichéd in some way, whether the shots are of a person speaking, a portrait of a city or place, or, perhaps, the life of a building, as in Pedro Urano and Joana Traub Csekö’s HU Enigma, which is actually more of a portrait of an idea, about as abstract as one can get in film. 

During the session, when asked about the mechanics of finding one’s way into this kind of aural portraiture, Urano said, “It comes down to being true to yourself; you create it yourself.  It’s a personal thing, organic in essence.”  Urano and Csekö’s 75-minute film from Brazil, features the crumbling structure (and eventual destruction) of a university hospital complex as its main protagonist, an exposed “body” or representation of the past. While the film’s visuals are stunning, it is the sound design that makes this piece incredibly powerful.  Through the perspective of this completely manufactured soundscape, a viewer can constantly alternate between the objective appreciation of the pure beauty of the architectural images, and a more personal relationship with not only the building itself, but the place and time in which it was built and the ghosts of the thousands of people who worked or convalesced there.

Phillippe Grandrieux’s film, It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve - Masao Adachi, won the prize for the New:Vision Award.  This feature documentary, also showcased in the workshop, offers a beautiful example of how a film’s unique aural culture can be increased like any other, how composite sound enables us to “see” the dimension of space and its place in time.  The ear can distinguish more delicate nuances than the eye, and Grandrieux, as a filmmaker in love with sound, knows that there is a considerable difference between perceiving a sound and identifying its source.  He used this knowledge to great affect in his film about the criminalized and long-suffering life of Japanese director, Adachi.  (Pictured above left, Danish sound designer, Peter Albrechtsen, and filmmaker, Phillippe Gandrieux.)

We are accustomed to drawing conclusions about visual things from the sounds that accompany them.  This “defect” can be used nicely in film since the slow recognition of a sound may cause a far more profound tension than the approach of something visually unrecognizable. These possibilities for meaningful dramaturgy create a slow and gradual process of recognition, enabling the natural resistance of the consciousness to give way to a “reality” that is easily audible.  (Film still below from It May Be That Beauty.)

Danish sound designer, Peter Albrechtsen, another participant in the workshop, did the sound design for Vibeke Bryld’s short film, Bedtime Stories from the Axis of Evil, which appeared in the Amnesty Award program.  In Bryld’s film, we visit three countries, all of which are governed by authoritarian regimes.  But, they are also three countries with vastly different cultural narratives, and so Albrechtsen created three distinct and allegorical soundscapes for Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang, North Korea. Acoustic “close-­ups” make us perceive sounds which are mixed in with the accustomed noise of day-­to-­day life, but which we never hear as individual sounds because they are drowned in a general din of noise. If a sound can be featured in “close-­up,” such a sound immediately makes us aware of its effect; at the same time, its influence on the action is made manifest.  This appears to be Albrechtsen’s particular forte in his sound work.  After Albrechtsen recounted the director’s shocked reaction to watching her film once the sound mix was added to the fine cut, Bryld told me later that she was, indeed, speechless and immediately needed to view it again, since she was hard pressed to recognize the film she had cut together without these enhancements.

As in a silent film, or a segment of a film whose only sound is silence, film sound can be scarcely perceptible, intimate things conveyed with the secrecy of an eavesdropper. Subtle associations and interrelations of thoughts, emotional or intellectual linkages, can play a decisive dramaturgical part in building emotional resonance for the images. It could be the (authentic) sound of the song that chimes when it’s time for Japanese children to go home for dinner from the playground, as it is in a transcendent scene from Grandrieux’s film.  Or a ticking of a clock in an empty room, a slow drip from a burst pipe, the moaning of a little child in sleep. 

In a close-­up in which the surroundings are not visible, a sound that seeps into the shot sometimes impresses us as mysterious, simply because we cannot see its source. It produces the tension that arises from curiosity and expectation. This use of asynchronous sound, then, acquires considerable importance, for if the sound or voice is not matched with the picture of its source, it can, and does, grow beyond the dimensions of the latter. The creative means by which a director can convey pathos or symbolic significance is precisely to use sound asynchronously, something experimental and jazz musicians have known for decades.  (Film still from Bedtime Stories.)

It is the business of sound in film to reveal for us the acoustic environment, the aural landscape in which we live, the sounds that move beyond human speech, that speak to us in the vast conversation of life going by. Poets hear these significant sounds of life and try to describe them in words. Sound designers allow them to speak to us directly from the screen.  Sound contextualizes story and creates emotional resonance that visuals unaccompanied by sound cannot begin to tap into.  In order for a director to open him- or herself up to a story’s most profound potential in this way, he or she has to create the capacity to go deeply into the “truth” of a story.  There, the right sounds will emerge and in the words of one filmmaker, “You will hear your movie.” 

 

 

I'll Be Your Mirror: Nan Goldin's Film Curation at CPH:DOX

Read my essay on American photographer Nan Goldin's film curation at last month's Copenhagen International Documentary Festival, featured in the Festival Reports section of the just-released issue of Senses of Cinema here.    

The Art of the No-Hand Aerial: Tristan Patterson DRAGONSLAYER

Read my interview with Dragonslayer director, Tristan Patterson on BOMB here.

Rrugë e hapun / Open Road

Open road, speak to me of hearth and home

Vow to express your longing, loneliness,

and fevered future dreams

I am listening.

 

Rrugë e hapun, fol me mua për vatër e shtëpi

Betohu që ki me i shprehë lirshëm andjet, vetminë,

dhe andrrat plot ethe për ardhmëninë

Po ndëgjoj.

 

Image by Lindsay Isola

Translation by Sokol Ferizi

 

 

Dokufest 2011: Mirko Ilic Does Prizren

One of the personal highlights of Dokufest this year was meeting up again with old friends, and making new ones.  We had quite a few illustrious lights of nonfiction filmmaking there, James Longely, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Gary Tarn, Marshall Curry, Alex Nanau, Pietro Marcello, Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher, etc., etc.  And then there was Mirko Ilic, wildman and creative force.  The guy is fly.  And while not a filmmaker, Ilic knows all about the intense power of the image.  Here is a "reprint" of the article I wrote for the DokuDaily during the fest after Ilic's talk there.  (Fisnik, you're a prince among men.):

Yesterday afternoon [24 July] in Prizren’s Hammam Museum, the great designer, illustrator and thinker, Mirko Ilic, delivered a talk to a packed house of young designers and artists in a lecture entitled, “Design of Dissent.”  The Bosnian-born 57-year-old runs a very successful three-person commercial design studio in New York City.  He was introduced by Prishtina-based designer, Bardhi Haliti, and later in the post-lecture Q&A, Ilic expressed intense admiration for the young artist, in fact, calling him “heroic,” since Haliti had chosen to give up a successful career in New York to come back and work in Kosova.

In his hour-long talk, the charismatic Ilic spoke eloquently and powerfully (and quite humorously) about his own personal journey to discover the power of good design and how it can be used to socially and politically charge a populous to think about the world around them.  And, in turn, protest and agitate for change.  In speaking specifically of the challenges young Kosovars might face in building a career in the industry, Ilic presented a cautionary tale.  Acknowledging that building a local vibrant economy in this young, burgeoning country is of utmost importance, he did mention that this is a designer’s great dilemma.  For if someone works for a commercial entity, he or she will constantly have to push products and ideas, which have little to do with the culture in which he or she is living.  It is a necessity to make a good living and build a sustainable career.  However, it can also sound a death knell for an up-and-coming artist’s ability to constantly create and present a singular vision and body of work that has substance, heft and meaning.  The age-old quandary of any creative in the face of a lucrative career is that that career will most certainly present an encounter with the ethics of design and advertising, which can be sticky.  (Portrait of Ilic by Lindsay Isola.)

Ilic “deeply believes in laziness,” and feels that the “lazy” creative—one who, say, might think about things six hours of his or her work day and actually produce something for about two—will, in essence, produce much more profound and meaningful work than the designer who “works hard” in front of his or her computer for a solid eight hours or more, for “thinking is the most creative aspect of this business.”  It is important to question why one is doing what one is doing for, historically, according to Ilic, “thinking has saved art.”  And the ability to produce socially and/or politically motivated work requires time to think.

In speaking specifically of designers and artists working in oppressive regimes, Ilic compared the landscape of working in a controlled and censored regime, or system, versus working in a totally free environment like the one in which he works in the US where he can create anything he wants and put it out for public consumption with little or no risk to his personal safety.  In systems of oppression, designers have had to learn to survive by mastering the subtle art of delivering the double message, becoming fluent in “double speak,” the encoded language that is hidden beneath the surface of a, seemingly, mundane symbol or image.  “Any idiot can do work that will land him in jail.”  It is the intelligent artist who will constantly dredge the depths of his or her creative vision to deliver a wallop subtly, and artfully, to his or her audience, in essence, saying to the client, “If you don’t trust me, I can always mess you up.  Trust me, and everything will be transparent.”  This takes risk and bravery from not only the artist, but also from the publisher of the work itself.

This led Ilic to talk about the importance of building a personal aesthetic, a personal vocabulary of protest through art, and protecting that at all costs.  He, himself, shills for big, corporate clients with big, fat budgets, creating commercials and other design work to sell television shows and other products.  However, he also constantly creates, self-publishes and self-distributes work that is not beholden to any paying client.  He says, “It is important to do work that protects the rights of others in order to protect your own rights.”  If artists can’t or won’t speak for the powerless, the oppressed, the imprisoned, the work is, indeed, meaningless.  “In order to be a good subversive, you need brains and the bravery to use them cleverly and clearly.”  Speaking specifically of gay rights, women’s rights, black rights, human rights, Ilic emphasized that “you must know your symbols to insult someone on purpose.”  In other words, effective insult never comes “by accident.” 

To wrap up his talk, Ilic shared an extended slide show of images that he has published in his seminal book co-created with Milton Glaser, The Design of Dissent, sharing the subversive work of artists from all over the world, work that could, and has, resulted in some serious trouble for its makers—imprisonment, expulsion from their homelands, and even, in some cases, death.  The book consists of designs that risk, particularly in their use of symbols and imagery of protest about what is happening in the artists’ own culture or country, protest “from within.”  An extension of this idea was addressed in the Q&A with the audience (many of whose comments Ilic summarily dismissed as naïve or misguided, urging people to go out and live a little and “then come back and tell me something worth knowing”). 

“Change must happen here,” Ilic stated emphatically to the audience.  For it’s all well and good, he says, for the very few who will get a chance to study abroad, or get opportunities to work outside their own country to build successful careers.  But for those who will stay and build an articulate creative landscape in their own country, the imperative is to have the bravery and intelligence to make a difference in your own backyard.

 

 

 

 

Interview on BOMBLOG

Be sure to visit the BOMB site to read my latest interview with Australian director, Amiel Courtin-Wilson, and actor, Daniel P. Jones, about their new feature film, Hail.  Click here to read more.

DOKUFEST Rides Again, 10 Years Strong

The International Documentary and Short Film Festival, aka, Dokufest (23 - 31 July) is in the midst of launching its new website, and a new look, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary.  But in the meantime, you can read the daily blog by Ardit Bejko for updates and get the latest news about this year's extraordinary program, its largest ever.

Hamburg, Germany's own A Wall Is A Screen returns to the festival for the second year in a row to project fantastic shorts on the walls of lovely Prizren, Kosovo--the bank in the square, the mosque, whatever interesting surface might be available to them, as the audience walks around the town watching the program they put together.  The Stravinsky Portrait will play as a tribute to the recently deceased great Richard Leacock, one of the most influential documentary DPs in the history of the genre.  Patricio Guzmán's elegiac and deeply moving personal essay, Nostalgia de la luz will open the festival on 23 July.  Sheffield Doc / Fest's In The Nursery program will also be returning this year with an outdoor screening of Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera with live musical accompaniment at the Riverbed cinema.  Mohsen Makhmalbaf and James Longley's works will be spotlighted in special programs with both directors in attendance (pictured at top, Makhmalbaf, left, Longley, right).  There will also be an extensive Made in Switzerland program which you can read about here. 

As well, some powerful musical guests will be joining us, as English singer / songwriter, PJ Harvey (pictured middle), and Irish photographer, Seamus Murphy, present the twelve short films on which they collaborated for Harvey's recent album, Let England Shake.  The screening and a Q&A with Harvey and Murphy will follow the closing ceremonies on 30 July.  And lastly (at least for right now), The Sofa Surfers, Wolfgang Frisch and Timo Novotny, are creating a musical / visual evening especially for the fest.

I was invited by Dokufest's Artistic Director, Veton Nurkollari, to curate a strand of nonfiction films about artists, and we will be exhibiting eight fantastic films: Pietra Brettkelly's The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins; Gary Tarn's Black Sun (Tarn will be joining us in person); Jeff Malmberg's Marwencol; Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions (thanks, Thomas); Marie Losier's The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye; Wiktoria Szymanska's Themerson & Themerson; Zoran Solomun's Super Art Market; and, Jeff Feuerzeig's The Devil & Daniel Johnston.  More info on these and other strands will be on the site soon.

I am very excited and honored to be a part of this fabulous festival again.  I had the privilege of serving on the international jury last year, and that week in Prizren was one of the most magical experiences of my life.  And many of the same people will be returning to share the magic once again.  You can read my SIM blog posts from the fest from last year here and here and here and here. 

Viva Dokufest and përgëzime on your ten-year anniversary!

 

 

 

Finland in New York

Next month, as part of the ongoing celebration of its ten year anniversary this year, the Helsinki-based DocPoint film festival, founded by filmmaker, Arto Halonen, will bring a slew of Finnish documentaries to New York audiences. There will be a program of 47 selections hosted by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Scandinavia House, 92Y Tribeca, UnionDocs, and Tribeca Film Institute.  The films will include festival faves and award winners from the past decade, student films, and selections from the always wonderfully curated program for kids, DOKKINO.  I have been privileged to be involved in this festival for the past three years, and cannot speak highly enough of the calibre of work coming out of this small country and the talent coming out of its film schools.

International multiple award winner, Steam of Life, by Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen, FInland's entry for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards this year, will be shown at the MoMA with five New York and five US premieres. Reindeer Spotting--Escape from Santaland (2010) will be the program's opener and will have a week-long run at the museum.

The program at 92YTribeca will include Mika Kaurismäki's ode to Brazilian music, Moro No Brasil (2002), Visa Koiso-Kanttila's Father to Son (2004), and Arto Halonen's Shadow of the Holy Book (2007).

Scandinavia House will exhibit twenty titles and host two panel discussions, one of which will be hosted by The Flaherty Seminar.  And, UnionDocs in Brooklyn will host a fantastic program of student work from Finland's fine film and technical schools.  The entire DocPoint NYC program has been organized collaboratively in New York with MoMA, Scandinavia House, 92YTribeca, UnionDocs, Tribeca Film Institute, The Flaherty Seminar, the Consulate General of Finland, and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland; and in Finland by AVEK--Audiovisual Promotion Center, the Finnish Film Foundation, the City of Helsinki Cultural Office, Aalto University, the Ministry of Education and Culture, and YLE.

You can check out the full schedule of films and other events at the links above. Don't miss out on any of these superb programs and experience the beauty and elegant storytelling of Finnish nonfiction filmmaking. Happy 10th anniversary, DocPoint! 

 

Interview: Alma Har'el, Director BOMBAY BEACH

 

Thinking of a series of dreams

Where the time and the tempo fly

And there's no exit in any direction

Except the one that you can't see with your eyes

Wasn't makng any great connection

Wasn't falling for any intricate scheme

Nothing that would pass inspection

Just thinking of a series of dreams.    --Bob Dylan

 

This interview originally appeared on the Hammer to Nail site.

Israeli-born filmmaker, Alma Har’el’s first feature film, Bombay Beach, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival this past winter to quiet but consistent accolades, and will have its American premiere in competition at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York today, April 22.  Shot in the surreal environs of the Salton Sea, a man-made body of water that sits in the middle of the California desert, the film itself has plenty of surreal aspects of its own.  It is, in certain respects, a recognizable vérité piece about several people who inhabit the seaside town of Bombay Beach and the nearby community of Slab City. But Har’el is also an award-winning music video director and so has collaborated with her subjects to tell part of their stories in sequences where they interpret their lives through dance, accompanied by the haunting voice and horn of Zach Condon of the band, Beirut. In an article for New York Magazine in 2006, a very young (and exceedingly stage-frightened) Condon said of his music, “It’s impossible for me to play these songs and not feel joy.”  It’s impossible to listen to them without experiencing loads of it, as well.  The film also contains some musical selections from an upstart named Bob Dylan. 

Bombay Beach is a tremendously moving piece of cinema—human scale, intimate and warm—with gorgeous cinematography by Har’el, and tender and playful dance sequences choreographed by Paula Present, a long-time collaborator of the director’s.  A couple of weeks after the film’s début in Berlin, I had a chance to speak to Har’el via Skype at her home in Los Angeles about the magical encounters she experienced in making this piece of work.  And meeting and befriending an extraordinary little boy named Benny Parrish who will be making his very first trip on a plane out of his little hometown to New York City this week.  If you're there, you should go meet this little dude because he's spectacular.

Hammer to Nail (H2N):  Without any confines of traditional documentary storytelling, you went about making this film in a very low-key way, working intuitively and almost completely on your own. What are you learning about this film from audiences who are now sharing with you what they think about this unique collaboration that took place between you and your subjects?

Alma Har’el (AH):  I find myself quieting down quite a bit and listening intently to what people have to say.  And in doing that, it’s allowing me to learn about what it was I did do exactly. Because I’m not really sure what that was. [laughter]  It brings me a bit closer to understanding the film.

H2N:  What led you to focus your efforts on these extraordinary protagonists; how did you go about establishing such intimacy and trust with them?

AH:  Several years ago, very early on in my career, I worked for National Geographic, doing an interview show for them about the Middle East. At the time I was a TV presenter, hosting a music show on Israeli television.  When the National Geographic people offered me this presentation job, I told them I would only do it if I could also direct.  And they agreed.  A man with a high position there came to talk to our crew and he said something that has really stuck with me.  He was talking, in particular, about interviewing techniques and how to talk to people for the camera.  Mostly people will just show you what they want you to see, the story that everybody sees.  If you’re good, you might get to see some of their personal lives.  And, once in a while, you might get to see their secret lives.  The way he explained all this, I got the distinct feeling from how and what he told us, that you were supposed to steal these secrets, almost without them knowing. I knew he was right, that that’s what makes it interesting. But instinctually I didn’t really relate to it at all. There was something about it that didn’t click. 

Back then, I don’t think I really knew what intimacy was, but during the making of this film, I understood that I didn’t want to steal anything from these people.  I wanted to reach a state of intimacy with them that was genuine and to be honest about what I wanted to do.  Although neither did I want to completely ruin the magic of discovering things together by explaining too much.  The trust and intimacy was a process and the friendships grew as I continued to film with them.  We would do creative things together or I would help them out with certain things.  It was really special.  But saying that reduces the process, somehow, since I’m sure most documentary filmmakers experience that in one way or another.  But I think doing those creative things together gave them insight into what I was trying to do, making me less “the enemy behind the camera” who was trying to steal things from them, and more like a collaborator.

H2N:  It seemed to me that these people, considering where and how they live, don’t have that much to occupy their time and attention, making it a ripe situation for someone like you to come in and orchestrate something extraordinary—the dance numbers on the beach, the ways in which they can express themselves verbally, storytelling about their lives.  But there’s also a huge capacity to play and invent and break out of difficult existences.  They are playful; they do dance around; they do sit around and ponder things deeply.  You tapped into something intuitively that you must have recognized, which is to say that that childlike ability to improvise and play is still very much innate, perhaps because of the lack of other things to do. The strong creative aspect is still very much on the surface and not buried under more, let’s say, “sophisticated” ways in which we entertain ourselves.

AH:  This is the very thing I picked up on when I first came to that place.  I first went there to do a music video with Beirut and Zack Condon [their video, entitled, The Concubine, was shot partly on location in Bombay Beach in 2009]. That’s Mike [Parrish] Jr., Benny’s older brother, who stars in that video.  You can also see Pamela doing the dishes and Benny and Sarah, as well, appear briefly.  It was really hard to find the time to do this video and it was getting a bit frustrating, so I decided to go do a random location scout.  A friend of mine told me about this desolate Salton Sea area. The first time we went there, I became so intrigued by the place, I had to go back the very next day. California was the place I learned to drive since I never learned in Israel.  Being a really nervous driver, I never took the freeway; it just terrified me. I couldn’t do it. But I had to learn how to drive on the freeway to get to Salton Sea.

One of the first things that impressed me was just what you were speaking about—this direct connection to childhood.  I met these kids, the Parrishes and their friends, at the beach when we shot the music video.  They invited me into their house. And even though my family and my experience is so different, there was something about the easy access of this mode you can get into when you’re a child.  Your perspective is really limited to the world in which you’re growing up.  You don’t yet have any context to who you are, your country, where you live, your social demographic, or what have you. In a way, you’re in the most accepting place in terms of your family. 

I know many children are not like that.  CeeJay [one of the film’s three main protagonists, a black teenager who moved to the area to live with his father shortly after his young cousin was gunned down in a gang-related incident in LA] is an example of that; he certainly has perspective on his family and where he comes from and he definitely has judgments about all that.  He knew he wanted something different at a very early age, wanted to be the first of his family to go to college, and definitely did not want to be part of the violence he grew up with all around him. He has a lot of criticism for his family and the way they live their lives.

Opposing that, the Parrish kids and their parents are more romantic when it comes to their feelings about family.  No matter what happens, as a family, you hold on to this cohesive unit and infuse it with love all the time, into every relationship, even if they’re not so great or they’re dysfunctional.  But there is romance about life and a focus on what they do have together. I also didn’t really want to know anything about the Salton Sea, the place itself, its history.  I wanted to feel like one of the kids, more like how Benny feels about the place, this sea he lives beside with all the dead fish.  But the beach is a fun place, a place where you go swimming, “when you want to be happy,” as he says in the film.  When we remember our childhoods—at least when I do—we forget the “in-between” stuff and only very certain specific things remain in our memories.  I wanted to experience that with them in this place that feels like it’s outside of time.

H2N:  The way in which a lot of the scenes were shot did make it seem like you were on some abandoned movie set. It felt like a place unattached to the rest of the world, a universe unto itself. In my opinion, you really could have foregone the bit of archival info we learn at the beginning of the film about this place.  While it’s interesting and the footage is delightfully kitschy, it’s really not that relevant to the stories you tell about the people living there.  The dance numbers you stage with your protagonists, however, do feel quite organic; they might spring up out of nowhere at any given moment. It’s such a lovely, non-verbal way they’re able to express their feelings for one another.  That’s one of cinema’s strengths, and, perhaps, why people love the music video format so much.

AH:  Making this film was a real process for me and that includes discovering these various story arcs. I just landed in that place and decided to make a film, not knowing what I would find.  I knew I wanted to do something magical, with dance sequences, in this place.  When I moved there, I didn’t have any subjects.  I met CeeJay once in the street and met the Parrish family while shooting the video for Zach.  So when I got there, I just called them up and started to hang out with them.  I lived in Indio [a desert community in the Coachella Valley, about one hour’s drive from Salton Sea] for four or five months and drove back and forth every day—on the freeway.

Very early on in the process, I started editing as I was shooting.  I’d edit and then I’d go back every few weeks to shoot more.  This was my process for over a year—edit, go back, edit, go back.  So even then, I was weaving the stories together as I was shooting them.  I also knew where I wanted the dance sequences to be, based on what I was shooting.  For example, there is the scene where a group of older kids are making fun of Benny, telling him he can’t participate in their games because he has “no class,” leaving him out completely. Then they went outside and played with those carts that later became a part of that dance sequence.  After editing that scene together, the choreographer, Paula Present, and I rehearsed with them at the community center and we had them wear the same clothes that they wore that day and shot it over two days at the same time of day.  So it really looks like they just stepped out to play and then started to dance.  The gazebo dance with CeeJay and his girlfriend was shot more like a real scene, although a lot of their dialogue was improvised.  I record everything with lav mics so I don’t really have to be that close to them all the time; I can just film and let them talk in a more intimate way.  We were just finding things as we were going along.

H2N:  There is a real sense of discovery.  The structure of your film has all of these interwoven story arcs where we follow different protagonists.  We intuit they know of one another, yet in the film, their lives really don’t intersect.  But, for me, the spine of this piece is Benny’s story, specifically the story of his “illness and treatment.”  You have portrayed one of this country’s many drug-addicted children in such a pure way and I connected to him so viscerally. I can honestly say that my emotional attachment to this kid stemmed mostly from his victimization from a negligent medical establishment, something that enrages me like very few other things do.  The doctors’ and caregivers’ solutions to making Benny “better” is to bombard him with more medications and higher dosages until his poor little body and mind are malfunctioning.  You documented this deterioration over the course of the time you were shooting.  Obviously, you didn’t set out to make any kind of hard-hitting social issue statement about anything, but that’s the real beauty and artistry of the film.  The way in which it’s edited, however, very much drives home certain points about what has happened and is happening to these people and how they cope.

AH:  Yes, and the solutions that they’re offered. I was very aware of all of this while it was happening.  It was, and still is, something I deal with every day—how to react to it, how to be supportive of the situation.  I try to provide as much information as I can that might help.  But that’s as much as I feel I can do.  It’s tricky as a filmmaker and it’s tricky as a human being.  The people around Benny are doing what they think is the best thing to do. Bluntly, the truth is that that area is notorious for lots of doctors that are practicing there that have, let’s say, failed elsewhere.  There are a lot of doctors and health care people in that area who are in training, just starting practices. They don’t necessarily have the right information or attitude and the “expertise” they can offer is limited in many ways.

It’s particularly enraging, because to me, Benny is not only smart, he’s probably one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in my entire life.  His spirit and imagination I would like to think will be stronger than anything that’s happening to him physiologically.  The only hope is that he won’t be damaged by all of this forever.  These people really do play a kind of Russian roulette with these kids’ brains.  It is unbelievable that they give those drugs to kids that age.  He’s been receiving them since he was four.  The amounts increase, the medications change, and the definition of “bi-polar,” which is what he’s diagnosed with—well, you can’t say that a kid has a bi-polar disorder.  That kind of condition is only diagnosable in adults according to the DSM-IV [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders].  There’s no such thing as a bi-polar condition in children.  They impose that diagnosis because they don’t know what else to call it.  They might say, “Well, this is where we think it’s going,” and start doing drug trials.  They’re experimenting and don’t really know the outcomes.

But this film can only serve to show glimpses into some of the larger issues one can pick out from these people’s lives and the way in which they live their lives in this particular place.  All these things that can be perceived as wrong or right, or bad or good, all reside together, side by side.  This is the human experience of life and that’s what I wanted to illustrate more than anything, how things co-exist, all the wrongs and the rights together, the love and the violence, the broken dream and the persistence of dreams.  I hope the film gives a feeling of a more rounded feeling of life, not something dissected into pieces.  I don’t want to say if this certain thing or that certain thing was remedied everything would be okay.  I don’t believe in that.  Benny’s predicament is one heartbreaking element of everything else going on.  As a friend, I intend to do what I can do to educate and help with things.  But as a filmmaker, this is what I’m interested in illustrating.

My stance is not one of criticism for films that are more blatantly “social issue” films.  I watch those, too, and learn from them and think they’re so important.  But the film I made didn’t have room to supply that kind of information; that’s not what I set out to do. Going back to the context of the place itself:  up until the last minute, there was a debate on whether we should include the introduction that is there—the history of the Salton Sea and the genesis of this place.  I think the film would have been fine without that, too, because, in essence, not knowing where you are doesn’t matter.  But it does, of course, give context to this idea of the broken American dream. 

Red and CeeJay and the Parrishes all have so much to do with this kind of mythology for me.  I have only experienced this “American Dream” from afar as anyone who isn’t from this place does.  As I’ve gotten closer, I still see the “football dream,” the “success dream,” where one is lifted from your environment into a new destiny. Red is the traveler, the seeker, who worked in the oil fields.  He represents the loner with deep wisdom smattered with that deep-seated racism that has been handed down to him from older generations.  There’s Mike Parrish’s fantasy of being in the military, the obsession with guns and explosives as a form of entertainment, the love for family in a straightforward and honest way.  All of this is so evocative of America—or, this lost America, more accurately.  Even though the dream is broken, you can still see the people.  And in terms of the place itself, it’s like when you see an old woman: you know she used to be beautiful and vibrant and it gives her another dimension, not because it makes her tragic, but because it makes her heroic.  It moves her from being an object of beauty to being a subject with depth and history.  That place, for me, is redolent of that, a place sold to people as a dream.  And now it’s a place where you can meet yourself in a real way, a grounded way, and there’s beauty in that, too.  Because the only thing that’s left is the intimacy you can have with the other people who are there with you.

H2N:  Your collaboration with Condon provides a really lovely ingredient in all this, his voice and horn so evocative of something both melancholy and joyful.

AH:  That sound is how I feel when I’m honest about my life, that juxtaposition of melancholy and loneliness with the absolute enjoyment and happiness of being alive.  Ever since the first time I heard his music and his voice, it’s been such an influence and there are always wonderful surprises along the way.  I feel like that when I’m around him, when we work together.  We collaborated for three or four years doing all these music videos.  I started feeling a bit tied down to that form.  I did videos for other artists and just didn’t feel that inspiration, that spark or connection with other musicians as much as I did with him.  I wrote him an email at one point telling him I needed to do my thing, that the music video work was limiting for me at that point and that I had found something I wanted to make a film about.  I told him I would love it if he did the music.  I sent him the scene with Benny and Pamela and the pink wig at the beach, which was one of the first things I shot, and based on that scene, he started making music for the film.

H2N:  This bond, this relationship between Benny and his mom, is the absolute heart of this film.  She really is his only friend.  The parent/child relationship is so often portrayed as one of antagonism and strife these days.

AH:  I agree with you and I also deeply appreciate the deepness of their bond.  It’s a very honest, but very kind relationship.  Pamela's a mom that has energy and space left to explore the good parts of her children. She loves being a mother.  She also feels frustrated and, in a lot of ways, stuck on certain things but she wants her children to have what she doesn’t, which is also something very much a part of the American character, to make sure your children might have a different destiny than the one of the generation before.  That’s universal, of course, but the reward of that seems to be higher in people’s fantasies here.  But despite her high hopes for her kids, she’s still the one who gives Benny his medication, insists on it, making sure he takes everything the doctors give him.  Pamela does have a lot of problems dealing with his behavior and controlling it.  He takes up a lot of her time and energy.  But that’s parenting—you’re often the best thing and the worst thing to happen to your child.  But, I don’t know too many people who just do good things all the time.  The most important thing to give your child is love and acceptance because no matter what he has to deal with later, he will always have that.

H2N:  Then there’s the old man, Red, who’s totally estranged from his whole family and very much alone.  He seems like a very loving person, but he also seems like he might have been someone who was not brought up with a lot of love and acceptance.  Can you talk a bit about growing a relationship with him?  You’re a young woman “from the big city” showing up with your camera, an interloper.  What did he make of you?  I would imagine his attention and respect was hard-won.  He’s a great storyteller with a wonderful voice.  And he’s a hell of a snappy dresser.

AH:  I was hanging out at Slab City hoping to discover a great subject.  I met this guy who was a hitchhiker and filmed him for a bit.  He told me about a trip he took with a guy named Red.  He took me to see him and Red came out in a bright red shirt.  He was tanned and he worked every day in a little garden right outside his trailer.  There are very few men like him anymore.  He can sit outside in his chair and just think for hours.  He thinks deeply about things and then thinks about how to articulate those thoughts in a way that will capture people’s attention, almost as a poet would do.  He would come up to me and say, “You know, I sat outside my trailer today and was thinking about blah, blah, blah, and this is what I think . . .” and he’d be off.  He was definitely not very trusting in the beginning.  I was some girl from LA with a camera and he wanted to know what I wanted, what I was trying to get.  But he would go and sit with me on the beach and I’d ask him pretty general things, what he thought about certain things.  I was kind of trying to talk to him about things that were bothering me while I was filming the Parrishes, what he thought about love, travel, family, etc.  I was building up this Red library of beautiful things that he’d say.  So we ended up spending a lot of time together.  Initially I was thinking of using only his voice as some kind of narrator. I was touched by his life.

But he would ask me to call before I came and was angry when I’d just show up.  With the Parrishes, I’d just drop in, throw down my bags and hang out the whole day or sometimes I would stay the night on their couch.  That was my base camp.  But Red always had a very tight schedule [laughs] and would only give me an hour or so of his time, always scheduled in advance.  Once we became friends, he took me on a long trip on his dune buggy; we went on a four- or five-hour ride into the desert and you see some of this footage in the film.  It was beautiful and intense, sometimes scary.  I would think that if anything happened to him, we’d just be stuck there in the middle of the desert with no reception [laughter].  It was a real adventure.  From then on, after that trip, I was all right in his book.  He opened up to me a lot more. He was very surprised to get that attention, very taken by the fact that someone cared that much for him and was interested in what he had to say.  He definitely is lonesome and keeps certain people at a distance.  But he has a lot of friends and the ones that do get close to him love him dearly.  He has intimacy in his life; he’s not always alone.

H2N:  Circling back to this interview technique you were taught by the NatGeo guy, about how to get close to people to learn about their secret lives or intimate aspects of themselves they don’t normally share with just anyone.  Obviously, you are adept at getting people to trust you, open up to you, befriend you without stealing anything from them. It’s pretty exciting to think of other subjects with whom you can collaborate in this way.

AH:  I love a good story.  I also write and am working on a script right now.  You never know, but I have a feeling, whatever I will do, it will be wide open in terms of style or genre.  I don’t think it’s necessary to be confined to one thing or another.  Once I discover a story, I just want to feel free to use the things that I love in art in order to tell it, dance or what have you.  Film is such an incredible format to explore other arts.  I’m not a cinephile at all, one of those people that have been sitting inside a dark cinema since childhood watching every film that comes out.  I think the diversity of what inspires me will make its way into what I create. I like learning as I do something—it deepens my understanding in such a profound way.  Whatever inspires you in life can find its way into your filmmaking; it’s just a matter of feeling free enough to do it.  And you just hope that other people like it, too.

All photos courtesy Alma Har'el.

 

Senses of Cinema Issue #58

Read my début article in Senses of Cinema's latest issue on Harmony Korine's film curation at this past year's CPH:DOX here.

"Trusting the Strength of Ordinary People": A Masterclass with Pirjo Honkasalo at IDFA

At this year’s 23^rd edition of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Finnish filmmaker, Pirjo Honkasalo, was invited to make the “Top 10” selection for the festival.  These were her choices—The Earth by Aleksandr Dovzhenko (Russia, 1930); The Mad Masters by Jean Rouch (France, 1955); The Earth Trembles by Luchino Visconti (Italy, 1957); Close-Up by Abbas Kiarostami (Iran, 1990); Kyoto, My Mother's Place by Nagisa Oshima (Japan, 1991); Quince Tree of the Sun by Victor Erice (Spain, 1992); Brass Unbound by Johan van der Keuken (Netherlands, 1993); Tell Me What You Saw by Kiti Luostarinen (Finland, 1993); The Smiling Man by Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann (Germany, 1996); and Blockade by Sergei Loznitsa (Russia, 2005). 

Perhaps, ten “exercises” one can fold into one’s film school curriculum.

All of these works were selections that resonated profoundly with Honkasalo while she was just learning the craft of filmmaking in her late teens. In the two-hour masterclass she hosted, moderated by Iikka Vehkalahti, commissioning editor of Finland’s YLE, we saw clips from these films filled with images that initially inspired Honkasalo back then—not just as an artist, but as a human being.  Listening to her talk, one feels quite strongly that filmmaking was just one of the many artistic avenues she could have explored, for this 63-year-old who “feels an attraction and attachment to the logic of the dream,” and who “trusts the simple poetry of image,” can capture the revelations of deep emotional intelligence through her camera lens like very few can.  I feel this might be true if she had chosen a musical instrument, a paintbrush, a quill and parchment, or what have you.

For me, watching a work by Honkasalo is a singular experience, one not easily described in words, particularly the limited language used for critiquing a work within the context of a certain cinematic style or milieu.  Even though she has worked in documentary for much of the latter part of her career, her definition of the genre speaks foremost to the craft of image making:  “Making the image for me is the documentary; the visual aesthetic is the essential part.” When she composes her stories, like the best minimalist musicians, it is in a very circumscribed and disciplined way.  During the talk, she laughingly recalled her producer’s predicament in the initial stages of making her latest piece, Ito—Diary of an Urban Priest, about a young Buddhist man residing in Tokyo.  She had come back to Finland from an extended stay with her subject in Japan, accompanied by barely any footage.  Her producer pleaded:  “Please start shooting something!"  (Masterclass still of Honkasalo and Vehkalahti, courtesy Felix Kalkman.)

Yet what engages Honkasalo is the steady pulse, or gradual transformation, of the smaller moments, her compass set for an interior quest for the answer to something only she herself might know she is investigating.  It struck me that calling this talk with this particular filmmaker a masterclass was a misnomer, of sorts. (Especially one set up as an over-lit chat show with Honkasalo and Vehkalahti sitting, seemingly, miles away from the “live audience.”)   Like most master filmmakers who have worked for decades at their craft, her personal process is one fraught with more mystery than practical advice. In fact, most of the ways in which she works is completely antithetical to what any “film expert” these days might have to impart to a budding film director.  But then again, not too many of us can create works of art from “fresh chaos,” particularly the interior variety which she is able to glean so eloquently from her protagonists.  Providing an opportunity to choose an infinite variety of ways for a viewer to “walk through the landscapes of my films” are of greater import to her than linear story, narrative, exposition.  “I trust the audience and that enables me to create a certain style.  I leave space to think your own thoughts.  . . . Film can talk about what we cannot talk about—there is the power of silence, the beauty of stillness.”  (Still from 3 Rooms, pictured above.)

As we now all live in a world of constant “image noise” (Honkasalo’s phrase), grappling with films like hers, like Dovzhenko’s, like Visconti’s, Erice’s, et.al., is akin to learning a new language, or rather learning to re-listen, to re-look. I have seen most of her films more than once, read numerous critical essays and reviews, have listened intently to her talk about her work when I’ve had the opportunity. Still, I oftentimes feel as if I am only scratching the surface of something innately impenetrable. Yet, the inestimable rewards have been glimpses of profound beauty (Mysterion, Ito—Diary of An Urban Priest); insights into devastating psychological traumas (3 Rooms of Melancholia); the searing personal, familial and cultural pain of her 1998 drama, Fire-Eater; unflinching intimacy and a magnificent portrait of stubborn dedication in Atman.  (Still from Ito, pictured above.)

Honkasalo’s films are complex, often disorienting, providing the polar opposite of any kind of conventional narrative structures we rely upon to ease our way into strange and foreign worlds. Acquiescence, a voluntary surrender, is required on the part of the viewer.  These days, especially, there is something liberating in drifting in a sea of ambiguity, always off-center, a giving of oneself over to someone who, in the core of her being, believes that something exists beyond the reach of our five senses; this is what she sets out to discover anew with each new project. In essence, this is her life’s work.  In return, this work is based on the director’s own erasure of self, a submission to the world around her, an obeisance to the uncontrollability of life. Her expansive interior stories are odes to the accidents of everyday experience, whether they be trivial or momentous—and who is to say which is which, she always seems to ask us. Consistently, she is able to intuitively calibrate all this through the agency of her camera, and bestow extraordinary cinematic gifts on us all.  (Still from Fire-Eater, pictured above.)

Like many of the master filmmakers to whom Honkasalo paid homage in her Top 10 picks, she leaves wide swaths of room in her films for personal discovery.  “If a personal self-discovery is experienced while watching a film, it’s a success.”  This speaks to the generous nature of a filmmaker who is intent on communion with her audience, not the opposite intention, of which works like hers are often accused.  She shares the very personal spiritual journeys she embarks upon quite generously in the language in which she is most fluid—the language of pictures.  Those pictures bring collective longings, fears and questions to the forefront, prodding our collective hidden psychic terrains. In the process, she is willing to expose her own weaknesses, her own vulnerabilities, doubts, half-formed beliefs, knowing that she will likely be misinterpreted and misunderstood.  Thankfully, she doesn’t really seem to care.  (Still from Atman, pictured above.)

Externally, I may not be able to interpret and articulate all this very well, but I recognize the strength of an ordinary person when I see it portrayed in Honkasalo’s films.  It is always a welcome sight—as is the strength of this extraordinary artist.

 

Expanded Cinema: New Vision at CPH:DOX

The NEW:VISION Award is CPH:DOX’s competition for experimental, innovative, reflective documentaries and the festival presented twenty-six diverse, genre-bending pieces this year.  In managing to watch them all, I experienced profound discoveries about expressing a deeply personal aesthetic in film. In a post-festival correspondence with programmer, Mads Mikkelsen, he told me, “Part of the project here is to not think in opposite terms of ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction,’ but to think in the very basic term ‘filmmaking,’ with a reference to the real. That said, there is a strong, current interest from the art world in what could be called the documentary project: reflecting on the world we live in from perspectives that acknowledge the formal potential of filmmaking. This is, of course, especially visible in the New Vision program.”

What was common amongst the films in this category was an original interpretation of that ineffable matter within us that keeps us connected to the world of dreams. Many of these film works act as amorphous metaphors for the secret sources of our spiritual and intellectual power, creating new myths in relation to our physical selves and the ways in which we interact subliminally with the physical world around us.  And while all of this might be hot stuff to creative programmers and adventurous cinephiles, I wondered what kind of feedback the festival gets from local audiences.  Mikkelsen again:  “Well, the fun thing is that I talked to people that are not cinephiles, who had a genuine experience of change from encountering these works in a cinema. I think that is vital to the cinema-going experience: to change.”  Part of his mandate from festival director, Tine Fischer, someone who is highly informed about currents in the art / gallery world, is “the very basic act of bringing these works to the screens of Copenhagen and to the public here. I do not think that the cinema space can be elitist, but perhaps that is too optimistic."

Perspective (from the Latin perspicere, to see through) is generally defined as an approximate representation, as seen by the eye, on a flat surface of an image. In their works, the makers in this category “saw through” the more impenetrable layers of our beings, transforming their material into rich storylines that animate some aspect of daily life. It is extremely encouraging that an event calling itself a documentary festival supports this kind of work.  Documentary has a propensity to be a genre that can become stale all too easily with its own self-referential and myopic way of telling true stories. Many of these pieces were a slap in the face to all of that, and I mean that in the most complimentary way.  (Still above from John Price's Home Movie.)

As the makers of these film and video works traverse deeply personal and quixotic territory, they often instigate an unfamiliar shift in a viewer’s perspective. Whether that intention is inadvertent or not is hard to say since so much of what these pieces offer is distinctly intuitive.  But there is no doubt that when watching these films, installation pieces and other UFOs, there is a focused attention to detail and nuance, where one’s experience of a “cinematic encounter” can be redefined.  But only if one meets the work at least halfway.  For there is work involved to be sure, and according to filmmaker, Ben Russell, that is quite intentional.

Russell, last year’s New Vision Award winner, is an American artist that executes visionary work in contemporary experimental documentary.  One afternoon during the festival, he and Canadian filmmaker, John Price, hosted a masterclass moderated by Mikkelsen. Both of these artists work on the forefront of this exploratory borderland. This year, Russell’s first feature, Let Each One Go Where He May, was part of the New Vision category, along with the seventh in his Trypps series, Trypps #7 (Badlands).  John Price's latest film, Home Movie, had its European premiere at the festival and is described as “a psychedelic science fiction film with a distant relative in Tarkovsky.”  Whatever you want to call it, it's gorgeous, tactile work.  As well, these filmmakers make work intentionally both for the cinema as well as for installation.  (Still above from Russell's Trypps #7 (Badlands)).

Referencing the historical avant-garde film tradition, along with a modern interpretation of “ethnographic” filmmaking, Russell mentioned the reinvention of cinematic space offered up by Gene Youngblood in his seminal book from 1970, Expanded Cinema. Youngblood talks about the passive versus active filmgoer encountering a cinema where there is no immediately evident structure. There is a lot of space for an audience member to exist, becoming a self-reflexive experience where one participates in that experience, actively creating meaning for that experience as one watches.  Russell: “I think to ask cinema to be a representative medium is asking it to do something much less than it can do, which is to produce some other experience entirely.  That’s the ambition with [my work], to create something else than what we see.”

The New Vision Award this year went to German philosopher/author/filmmaker, Hito Steyerl, for her sharply subversive and entertaining biography of an object, In Free Fall.  Steyerl credits her contribution as the film’s “recycler,” instead of its director. The jury was impressed by the film’s innovative approach “that moves between critical, documentary and personal,” a trademark of Steyerl’s distinctive work and, indeed, a trademark of all the films in this category.  (Still from film, pictured above.) 

Israeli artist Roee Rosen’s Out (still from film, pictured below) was given a special mention by the jury, and I want to give it a special mention of my own. This staggering half-hour piece, according to the jury, “dares to employ the radical methods in the form of bodily rituals to expose the prejudices that exist within us all.”  The reflections of one of the two female protagonists are especially poignant.  She is the one asked to perform an exorcism in a psychosexual passion play of ritualized dominance and subordination, unglamorously staged in a sparsely furnished living room. The demon she must exorcise from her sub is Avigdor Lieberman, one of Israel’s most extreme right wing politicians, a man with virulent nationalist and racist ideologies.  Quite eloquently, she speaks about him in relation to something that is inherent in the nation of Israel, as a whole. I, in turn, as the active viewer, extrapolated what she had to say into a more universal message, and it moved me deeply. 

After researching Lieberman in preparation for her role as exorcist, she states, “You cannot approach an exorcism with negative feelings only; you have to be able to identify with the demon, to find empathy towards him.” As a queer feminist activist born in Israel in 1978, she and Lieberman (born 1958 in Moldova) obviously come from very different places in just about every way.  Yet, she finds some things that will tie her emotionally to him. “I must say that I prefer Lieberman over most of Israel’s political system in one sense: that he tells the truth. His truth may be terrible, but at the end of the day, it is his truth.  . . . My main problem as an exorcist is that Lieberman is a very evasive demon.  He goes out of one body and enters another.  He resides, in fact, at the heart of our collective body. Lieberman is not the demon, but only one of its incarnations.  The real demon belongs to us all.”

 

Look for my article on Harmony Korine's guest curation at CPH:DOX in the next issue of Senses of Cinema, coming next month.

 

 

 

 

THE GREEN WAVE: Tweets From a Revolution

This review was written for Hammer to Nail and will be posted there very soon, technical difficulties.  The store manager is a bit busy right now since he has a film in Park City, too.  However, in the interests of time since it's playing at Sundance now, here is my review of The Green Wave:

 

“Iranians, it was once said, are afflicted by a unique strain of melancholy: Those who live in Iran dream of leaving, while those who were exiled dream of going back.  . . . A country like Iran that has repeatedly been subjected to public heartbreak over the last few decades -- most notably the loss of over 200,000 native sons in the ruinous eight-year war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- naturally confronts the self-inflicted death of a child of privilege with mixed feelings.” 

-- On the suicide of Alireza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.  From “Persia’s Little Prince” by Karim Sadjadpour, published in the 7 January 2011 edition of Foreign Policy.

 

It’s all well and good for us to complain about the privacy issues we’re all risking as we compulsively, and publicly, update the mundanity of our lives.  That doesn’t seem to stop a lot of us from jamming the ionosphere with the latest posts and tweets about what we had for breakfast, how we’re feeling that day, or the latest triumphant monetary goal on Kickstarter.  But what if these tools—our blogs, tweets and posts—were the only ways in which we could communicate when we were in real trouble?  When no one from “the outside world” had any idea that the leaders whom we live under, in whom we place all of our faith and hope that our individual lives matter, had turned against us, were silencing us by cutting off our phone lines, our SMS feeds, our internet connections?  And were brutalizing and killing us in the streets.

In its last presidential elections, the citizenry of Iran experienced a profound deception.  Thus, the beginning of 2009 saw a revolution from mostly young Iranians who were placing all their hopes for change on the upcoming elections that June.  A peaceful, non-violent movement called the Green Wave was fueled by the modern modes of communication.  Journalists, lawyers, activists and students started blogs that challenged the status quo, calling for every citizen of Iran to personally participate in much-needed change by getting themselves to polling stations and casting their vote.  The groundswell of excitement was abetted by the fact that there was every indication that Mir Hossein Mousavi would garner a sure-fire victory over the incumbent, ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, on June 12, 2009, Ahmadinejad, who has the full and public support of Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Khameni, declared victory with a majority vote.

Ali Samadi Ahadi’s fourth film, The Green Wave, competing for the World Cinema Documentary jury prize at Sundance this year, begins as a calmly narrated, fairly traditional documentary.  The story is meticulously set up for the viewer, the omniscient narrator speaking in unaccented English in a clearly modulated voice. Through talking head interviews and slickly produced, precisely narrated animated scenes, the story of this second stolen election is revealed. The careful detail, the reliance of first-person accounts, the tone and mood of the country and the people at the time is explicitly recounted.  Which makes the onslaught of the most horrid human rights violations that follow all the more shocking and devastating, whether it’s directly from live footage or from recreated animations, and gives this documentary its urgency as a powerful testimony to a revolution solely documented by the victims of a vicious crackdown by the state militia, one fully sanctioned by Iran’s governmental and religious leaders.

As we circle back again and again to our storytellers, particularly the journalist, Mitra Khalatbari, human rights lawyer, Shadi Sadr, and blogger and journalist, Mehdi Mohseni, we realize that we are listening to Iranians in exile.  These young professionals and activists were swept up in the violence, and in (mostly) stoic fashion tell us what they experienced—from capture and imprisonment, to enforced informing, rape and torture—every human rights violation one can imagine.

Iranian authorities have often accused their own human rights lawyers and journalists of colluding with foreign governments to undermine the country’s Islamic government. Just this month, in the 10 January edition of the New York Times, William Yong reports on the Tehran sentencing of Nasrin Sotoudeh to eleven years in jail for “activities against national security” and “propaganda against the regime.” Five years of that sentence are for accusations that she was a founding member of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, an association of lawyers led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who left Iran in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election and subsequent crackdown on opposition figures. Ebadi, who is featured prominently in Ahadi’s film, points out, quite a few times, that human rights violations in Iran continue to be ignored by Europe and the rest of the world.  Silence is one thing, but countries like Germany (where the film’s director is based), France and the UK still sign contracts and business treaties with Iran, keeping it financially powerful on the world stage despite now very public knowledge that human rights violations continue unabated.

The Green Wave is an important addition to the growing archive of this vital documentation.  The first-hand accounts of arrests, torture, brutality, kidnappings and murders are there, irrevocable, undeniable.  They live on twitter feeds, on Facebook, on YouTube, and now in this film, messages and footage of citizens paying the price for raising their voices, by asking what happened to their votes, for ignoring the directives of their leaders to keep silent.

Towards the end of the film, former UN prosecutor, Dr. Payam Akhavan, talks about the “seismic shift, the democratic tidal wave” that occurred in Iran in 2009.  He goes on to say, “It’s very hard to imagine that this systematic, wide spread violence against thousands and thousands of protestors, this use of rape and torture against thousands and thousands of victims, is done without the acquiescence, if not the express instructions of those in positions of authority.  . . . Today, it may not be possible to bring these people to justice.  But we know from history, that those who are in power today may not be in power tomorrow.  And the leaders of Iran today have to think about the consequences of their actions.  They have to understand that their crimes are being documented, are being recorded, and a day will come when they have to answer.”

 

 

It Was Waiting for Me: A Conversation with Marie Losier

Filmmaker, artist and curator, Marie Losier, was born in France in 1972, and has been living and working in New York City for the past seventeen years. She creates singular portraits of vanguard filmmakers, musicians, composers and artists, although many of them are far from obscure.  Losier has given her distinctive filmic treatment to the likes of Mike and George Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman, Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge, the subject of her latest piece called The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. She also has intimate friendships with all of these talents.  Here’s what filmmaker Charles Burnett wrote to her in 2006 about her work, “I sit with a smile on my face. I wish there were more people like the characters in your films, in the world. It takes you on a ride that weaves the real and surreal.” And Maddin has dubbed her “Edith Sitwell’s inner Tinkerbell.”  

Her films have shown widely in museums, galleries, biennials and festivals all over the world, including P.S.1 in New York City, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Biennial, Rotterdam International Film Festival, La Fondation Cartier, The Tate Modern, The Wexner Art Center, Luxe Gallery, White Column Gallery, the Ismailia International Film Festival in Egypt, Anthology Film Archives (where she also curates experimental film and video shows), Ocularis, British Film Institute, the Musée d’Art Contemporain, among many others. She was recently the subject of a full retrospective at the Buenos Aires Festival of International Cinema.

Since 2000, Losier has also worked full-time as the film curator at The French Institute Alliance Française in New York City, where she presents a weekly film series and has hosted the likes of Raoul Coutard, Claire Denis, Chantal Akerman, Jane Birkin, Jeanne Moreau, Jackie Raynal, and Anouk Aimée.  As well, she has performed in films by George and Mike Kuchar, and Jackie Raynal, and in plays by Juliana Francis and Tony Torn.

Her work with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, born Neil Andrew Megson in Manchester, England in 1950, has been a seven-years-long collaboration, and has resulted in her first feature film, which will début as part of the Forum at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is a glorious pastiche that features the story of the incredible love between Genesis and Lady Jaye. Tragically, in the midst of creating this project, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge unexpectedly passed away at the age of 42 on October 9, 2007.

Most famous for the bands, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, the 63-year-old Genesis  currently resides in the house in Brooklyn, New York where he lived together with Jaye.  There, Genesis reads, paints and writes.  He also tours extensively, giving lectures, talks and performances throughout the world.  As part of the Forum Expanded section, Genesis and Tony Conrad will perform an improvised violin concert together on February 19^th at Berlin’s Hebbel-am-ufer Theatre.

During a trip to New York at the very beginning of this year, I met with Marie at the charming East Village coffee and pastry palace, DeRobertis Caffe.  In walked a tiny figure, bundled up in a long coat and chapeau against the winter chill—an utterly charming and warmly-smiling gamine—to talk to me about her latest project, her unique and intimate relationship with Genesis, and the long and hard road she traveled to complete this film:

 

Still in Motion (SIM):  I think it’s always pretty easy to tell when the subject or subjects of a film have encountered the maker that’s meant to record their story.  I’ve seen wonderful examples of that several times in the last few years.  You have a distinctive way in which you do portraiture in film. Some of the first footage I saw of this piece was where you and Genesis were playing a game of hide-and-seek amongst the shelves of a gigantic home archive. It was so playful and so lovely.  And, of course, it’s an amazing and deeply moving love story.

Marie Losier (ML):  Very moving.  Gen is amazing.

SIM:  When and how did you first meet one another?

ML:  Seven years ago, I went to see a concert of Alan Vega with Suicide at the Knitting Factory [in New York City].  I was really excited because I loved his work but, unfortunately, it was a terrible concert—really bad.  However, the third part of the concert was Genesis, of whom I didn’t know anything.  It was Three Majesty, her third band.  So it was Bryan Dall, Genesis and Lady Jaye on bass, and she was reciting poems and it was so amazing, her energy and her presence were astounding.  I had no idea who they were.

The next day I went to an opening—which I never do—right in Soho.  I walked into this gallery and it was a show about music and painting.  It was packed with so many people.  I was crushed against a wall because I’m so small and I stepped on someone’s foot.  I turned around to apologize and it was Gen. She looked at me and all I saw were huge gold teeth in a big smile.  I told her that I had seen her concert the evening before, told her how beautiful I thought it was, how moved I was.  She looked at me for a couple of seconds, gave me her card and asked me to call her.  When I called, she asked me to come over.

When I got there, I was introduced to the basement where she greets people when she doesn’t know them.  I was sitting on this gigantic plastic chair shaped like an open palm. She was staring at me and then called Lady Jaye.  Jaye walked down the stairs, looked at me and asked me if I’d like a coffee.  She asked me what I did, what kinds of films I made, so I talked a little bit about my work. 

Something passed between the two of them and Jaye looked at me and said, “She’s the one. She’s the one who’s going to film our life.  We’ve been waiting for you.”  Ten days later, they took me on tour with Psychic TV. I didn’t know their music at all, but it had been a dream of mine to go on tour with a band.  It was really intense.  I jumped in.  That’s how we met.

SIM:  It sounds like you had no choice in the matter.

ML:  It was like it was waiting for me, yes.  I always wanted to be in a rock band and this was it.  And then, through the years, I learned about Gen and Lady Jaye.  I lived with them for a time.  It was then I saw the love story.  Also, filming the concerts and being on tour made me really sure I didn’t want to do a film about a rock band.  It’s very repetitive and a bit cliché.  I wanted something more.  Discovering their archives made me realize how much was there.

SIM:  The film belongs to Genesis, in essence, since he, she?  I notice you refer to Gen as “she.”

ML:  Yes.

SIM:  She’s front and center in this film.  It appeared to me that Jaye, at times, was a bit reticent about being filmed.  She could ham it up for the camera like in home movie fashion, but she seemed to almost shy away a bit once in a while.

ML:  She was more of a private person.  But also she had a very strong personality.  They would do everything together.  There was a complete energy balance with everything they did, all day long.  The pandrogyny project was as much Jaye as it was Gen. They were muses to, and for, one another.  So I saw something really balanced.  Jaye was much less comfortable being filmed.  I first did spend more time with Gen because she was so open. And then, suddenly, in 2007 Jaye died.

I thought that would be the end of the film, really, because it was so tragic, but I kept filming up until last year, 2010. I did really think that would be the end, though.  Her death was a complete shock and Gen was completely devastated.  It was the end of the band; it was the end of everything.  Gen stayed at home crying for about a year.  I spent a lot of time there and she said to me that she didn’t want me to stop.  She wanted me to keep making the film in memory of Jaye.  I had to adjust to both taking care of her and supporting her and also to keep the film going. It was just really painful and hard, so heavy.  I film alone so it’s not like I have a crew to make it a bit less intimate, so it tends to be very emotional.  You have to be careful—sometimes, you get taken into things you don’t want to and it’s very painful and, at times, very forceful.  Sometimes you see things you really don’t want to see and there’s no protection.

SIM:  One senses that vulnerability.  There is one scene where she’s sitting listening to a song and starts to weep and the camera gets put down immediately as you go to her.  There would be a lot of filmmakers that would have just sat there and kept shooting.

ML:  I’m really close to Gen; she’s a very dear friend.  We’ve been through so much and she knows me inside out.  She also knows how hard I’ve worked on this and that I’ve done it entirely by myself, including negotiating music rights, archival rights, credits, and other things where I really have no idea what I’m doing.  It’s endless—building a website, on and on.  Steve Holmgren, who came on as a producer after the film was made, is helping, but I’ve had to do everything else by myself.  Not to mention the fact that no funding for which we applied came through.  It’s been a hard film to pull out since I also work fulltime so it’s been one roll [of film] at a time.  I think the film is just too experimental for many funders, and I think Gen scares some people.

SIM:  Ironically, their story has been an inspiration for other films.  I think of Jake Yuzna’s Open, which won a Teddy at Berlin last year, for instance.  Also, the times that they lived through and the incredible people that Gen calls friends and colleagues is pretty damned impressive.  You’ve captured an important piece of literary, art and music culture in the 20^th century.

ML:  Yes, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, the list goes on and on.

SIM:  It’s possible you would have been supported more extensively if you had been making this film in Europe.

ML:  Well, it was also one of those instances where I just started filming.  There wasn’t a choice in the matter and I have never really worked with a producer before so I didn’t have one on this film either.  To then look for money three or four years into the project was difficult.  Thankfully, I had a few grants that supported me during that time. But the film was basically self-funded. I also didn’t want to bend at all in my creative vision for this piece.  When I did the IFP market, I met with a lot of people who really wanted to help but the film needed to be a bit more “commercial” for them to be able to do that, more of a traditional bio-pic, I guess.  So that made it clear that I just had to keep making my film my way.  I have so much material that is not going to be in the final film.  I’ve done many, many interviews that I’m not using and I have interviews of people who are no longer here, like Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle, who died a month ago, people like Gibby Haynes [of the Butthole Surfers], Peaches [Mermaid Café, The Shit].  I decided in order for me to really make it my piece, it would have to be Gen’s voice and Jaye’s voice.

SIM:  There are also these wonderful, whimsical interludes that you use where you dress Gen up in costumes and do little “passion plays” and such.  You externalize the flights of imagination she’s used throughout her career to express herself.  For anyone who knows your work, “playtime” sessions with your subjects are de rigueur.

ML:  I also live this way.  I do a lot of that playtime type of thing in my daily life with my friends.  It was great to push Gen to do it without a lot of thought; she just trusted me and dressed up and did what I asked.  She’s always portrayed as a rock icon, very posed, the whole concert/fan thing.  But I know the Gen who can be so whimsical and so out-there in another way.  I wanted to turn her into this other character.  She lives her life as a sort of fiction, anyway.  Gen fears nothing.  Yet she’s the most sensitive and emotional person, and quite shy, actually.  She loves being alone, reading books.  Everything else she releases on stage.

SIM:  Berlinale is, of course, one of the most important film festivals in the world.  Are you excited, intimidated, nervous?  You’ve exhibited films there before, but this time, Genesis is also going to perform a live show with Tony Conrad at the fest, which should be amazing.

ML:  Gen is nervous.  I introduced her to him for a scene in my film about Tony.  She saw the film [Tony Conrad DreaMinimalist, 2008] and just fell in love with him and asked me about him. She didn’t know his music or anything.  And I knew Gen’s favorite instrument is the violin.  So I set up a scene where both of them are playing the violin. I organized something more formally, since people really wanted to see this unique collaboration.  We made it into a two-day concert at ISSUE Project Room and also did an album.  They became really good friends and now are touring together.  I should be an agent [laughing].  So in Berlin, they’ll do their concert, which will be totally improvised.  (Still of Tony Conrad and Genesis in "Slap the Gondola," 2009, photo by Bernard Yenelouis.)

The curators in the Forum Expanded section are really amazing about pushing the edge, creating events for the festival. Vaginal Davis and Bruce LaBruce are always creating something really unique and special there, all these amazing artists that live in, or come through, Berlin regularly.

SIM:  What’s so delightful for me, always, is the fabulous sense of humor that accompanies all this madness. It’s great fun.  Gen, too, is a very funny person, almost like an old vaudeville performer.  The sections without synch sound are so evocative of the silent movie era

ML:  Well, the use of no synch sound in the film was a bit scary.  I worked for years without that.  I was afraid it would put a viewer too much outside the film.  But I think I found ways to bring a viewer in.  Gen’s always worked with cut-ups.  So, in a way, certain parts of the film act as kinds of cut-ups.  It works with the subject.

SIM:  Have you edited the whole film on your own, as well?  It’s beautifully edited.

ML:  Yes, essentially, but the editing started with the support and help of friend, Charlotte Mangin.  She went through all the footage with me and helped shape and build the story.  I also had invaluable help after eight months when everything was assembled, including sound.  My friend, Marc Vives, came in and helped me to move things around when I couldn’t see anymore.  The story needed some shaping and I wanted it to have more of a feature narrative storyline.  I’m not a narrative person.  And I couldn’t move the pieces anymore.  I’ve always edited my own films; it’s an essential part of the process for me.  It wouldn’t have my touch otherwise.  I had about 20 hours of 16mm film and about 60 hours of interviews on HD.  I also have non-HD video; there’s a lot.  I could make many movies [laughing].

SIM:  I would think that someone, at some point, would be very interested in the archive you’ve gathered.

ML:  Yes, I always keep an extensive archive.  Gen’s used some of the material for music videos or projections for her concerts.  You see some of that footage being projected during some of the shows—a movie within a movie.

SIM:  The way in which Genesis has recreated herself over and over again speaks to that way in which your footage will probably be manifested in several different ways. That’s the joy of making art and, to me, that’s apparent in all the film work you do.  Your pieces remind me in a way of handmade quilts, excuse the quaint analogy.  I guess what I’m saying is that no one else can weave together these elements like you can considering your emotional proximity to your subjects.

ML:  I’ve also learned so much from living next to Gen for so long.  As an artist, it opened many doors in ways of thinking about things and ways of being.  I see someone who is fearless, who doesn’t have a lot of money but lives in this uncompromising way and keeps going, really experimenting.  To me, that’s the key of life—that freedom.  It’s really hard to do it.

SIM:  How does she survive?

ML:  She sells some of her paintings.  Now it will be a bit difficult since Throbbing Gristle doesn’t exist anymore.  That was paying a good amount touring with that band.  Psychic TV also doesn’t exist.  There will be some shows here and there, but not enough to make a living.  She also lectures, sells artwork.  (Lady Jaye, second from left, and Genesis, center, in a Psychic TV publicity still.)

SIM:  Can you talk about your impressions of the pandrogyny experiment, this living art piece that Genesis and Lady Jaye created together?  It’s been called performance art.  It’s been called a lot of different things.

ML:  Well, I will say that, for me, that was not the subject of the film and not something I was interested in focusing on.  Their “credo” about all that and why they did it was not really the interesting thing for me, so much as the love it expressed.  What I saw in all that, almost exclusively, was the love story.  To do a story on two people who engaged in plastic surgery to transform themselves to look like one another as a piece of performance art wouldn’t be up my alley, frankly.  But I’ve known her for years and have an archive of rock music and so that pandrogyny was part of the cut-ups, being male and female simultaneously.  It’s part of the “performance” but it’s also so much about being Gen and Jaye and their love.  It became something else for me.  People might be disappointed because this is not a “fan” film about Throbbing Gristle or Psychic TV.  It’s a disturbing love story.

It was a bit difficult for me since I was moved by both Gen and Jaye, as people.  But I was compelled to tell this story of this unique transformation.  These are real people.  As strange as it is, when you think about what they go through, it’s just a human story.  For Gen, it’s not about becoming a woman or being transgender.

SIM:  But the “he” has become a “she.”

ML:  She likes being “she” right now.

SIM:  A way to stay close to Jaye.

ML:  Jaye is always there.  She’s unbelievably present.  Gen still uses the pronoun “we,” not “I.”  It’s both of them, all the time.  I’ve only known Gen as a “she,” so it’s pretty straightforward for me.  It’s much harder for people who’ve known Gen as a man to say “she,” the daughters, for instance.  They call her Dad.

SIM:  To me, the most important thing this portrait of a life says is that all of us are separate but equal to everyone else and we can do whatever we want with our lives. Genesis is inspiring in that way of never asking permission from anyone about how she feels she needs to realize and validate her existence.  I really hope audiences will tap into that more than anything else in your film.  That and the amazing music she creates.

ML:  Yes, the music is something that has attached me most strongly to the film.  Seeing her perform makes me remember that, how much I love the music she makes, her voice, that singing / talking voice that carries everything.  Gen’s voice, for me, is just beyond.  I want this film to be a musical ballad; this is why that word is in the title.  It’s also, of course, a love ballad.

SIM:  There must have been moments over the past several years when it all became too much for you considering this devotion you’ve had to Gen and Jaye and their story.

ML:  [She laughs, shaking her head.]  There were moments when it was really hard and I wasn’t really that strong yet.  Gen was hard on me, as was the band, at the beginning.  They were testing me.  I had to go through a lot.  And there were some really heavy times, emotionally.  I was fragile and sometimes it ate me up.  There were times I wanted to stop.  I was also making other projects and keeping up with my everyday life.  It’s hard to only be with one person for so long.  Gen also saw how stubborn I am and has discovered other things I do, all the friends I have, the life I have.  But she also knew I would never give up on her and the story and the project.

But now that the project is finished, I am looking forward to just going to a movie together with her, eating ice cream together, and not be filming everything!  But I relate to people mostly through my work, working and collaborating on something.  And our relationship is based on this creativity so I’m sure we’ll keep doing things together.  And we have several months ahead touring together with the film, of course.

SIM:  Gen’s life, post-Jaye—what does that look like?  I know from what you say, Jaye’s presence is always there, but do you think she will want to spend the rest of her life alone?

ML:  She explains it this way: Jaye was the ultimate love of her life.  She told me that in order to be with someone else—which she would love because it’s hard to be alone all the time—that person would have to love Jaye, as well, and accept that Jaye will always be there.

SIM:  That would take a pretty expansive individual. It sounds highly romantic, but difficult.

ML:  That person will be very hard to find.  Most of the time I see Gen, she’s alone and she seems to be okay with it because Jaye’s there.  And she’s also surrounded by a few, genuine, really good people who care for her deeply and have been a part of her life for a very long time.

SIM:  You chose a very open ending for this film which is, obviously, appropriate for a life far from finished.  What were some of the harder editing choices you had to make for the cut audiences will see at festivals?

ML:  There were some really, really beautiful scenes with Peaches dancing that were really great.  There were some fantastic and funny scenes with Gibby Haynes. Those kinds of things were hard for me to let go.  There were some with Sleazy.  But it became too cliché to have those scenes in the film.  They really belong to any kind of “extra” material.  Ultimately, they distracted from the main story.  There were also some beautifully shot, very whimsical scenes with Gen with great costumes and things that were hard to let go.

SIM:  What’s the distribution plan post-festival run?

ML:  The only thing I know for sure right now is that the film will be distributed by Arsenal in Germany.  Stephanie [Schulte-Strathaus, co-director of Arsenal—Institute for Film and Video Art, member of the selection committee of the Berlinale Forum, and founding director of Forum Expanded] was the first person to show my work at a major festival and has had a huge influence on my ability to exhibit my films.  I owe her a lot; she’s been an incredible mentor. 

But other than that, I don’t really know.  Steve has some ideas.  It’s so nice to have someone working with me with so much passion and excitement, someone who’s working so hard without getting paid.  It’s such a gift to have such a dedicated producer; I’m not used to that.  Also, I must mention, too, that Martin Marquet, a dear friend, is working on the producing and publicity aspect.  And Elyanna Blaser-Gould, my assistant, has my eternal gratitude.  Without her constant support, I could not have done any of it.

SIM:  I’m looking forward to meeting you and Genesis in Berlin.  People there will love the film; I know it.

ML:  We’re both so nervous and anxious, but also incredibly excited.  Yes, see you there!

 

(All photos courtesy marielosier.net, with the exception of Psychic TV still, courtesy Dan Mandell, www.danielmandell.com.)

 

 

 

Animated Standard Time

At the 53rd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Films back in October, I spent most of my time immersing myself in the wonderful animation programs, some of which I'm hoping to bring to Berlin soon for Kino Satellite with the cooperation of curator, Annegret Richter.  Here is a reprint of my article on the programs there from the newly-released Winter 2010 / 2011 issue of DOX Magazine:

 

Time works differently in the animated world.  In just five minutes’ time, we can travel through wide swaths of space, live many lifetimes, extract the essence of a complicated emotion or event, or unravel a deep human mystery.  These stories are mostly told nonverbally with sound effects, music and glorious image replacing traditional narrative styles. With abstract images, absurdist plots, and a very liberal sense of time and space, a distinctive universality emerges that transcends culture. 

At the 53^rd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Films, the artistic and narrative diversity on display in the animation program was truly remarkable.  The International Competition consisted of four themed programs with a total of 32 films; the International Panorama showcased 27 films; there were two Animadok programs exhibiting 16 films; 22 films of Neue Deutsche Animation; 19 films in the Anima Für Kinder program; and, Pink Elephants, the best of the young international animation scene. 

In addition, there were three curated programs by Latvian-born animator, Signe Baumane, also one of the competition jurors, along with Olaf Encke from Germany and Andy Glynne from the UK. Finally, in a special encore, there was “Battle of the Sexes—Animated!,” a show that Baumane and Bill Plympton débuted at the IFC Center in New York City this past spring.  Plympton, “the king of indie animation,” was also at the fest to lead one of the master classes. It all amounted to a boatload of cartoons.

Much has been written of late about the power of animation in documentary film, specifically its ability to deal with difficult subject matter, or the ability to re-create historical events in which no recorded film footage is known to exist.  Yet, in the daily AnimaTalks held in the café next to the animation theater, all the visiting filmmakers, whether they are making fiction or nonfiction, talked about the elasticity, the freedom, to create whole worlds in accelerated time.  Animals act like humans; humans act like animals; an identifiable creature turns into something we’ve never quite seen before; a person can tell his or her story just using voice and other aural elements accompanied by illustrated abstraction. 

Or the image is quite literal, drawn in a clearly delineated style—we recognize what we are seeing because it is “life-like.”  But perhaps it is the soundtrack that is shattered into abstraction, using non-realistic interpretations of what the event sounded like as it was happening.  Real life can be intensely surreal, and there is no better cinematic tool to explore surrealism than animation.

Not all, but most of the pieces in the programs, whether they were fiction or nonfiction, were pretty brutal, exploring dark themes and difficult material.  Viewers were taken on a multitude of journeys into the subconscious minds of the creators of these stories, stories told in brooding, or outright violent palettes creating emotional dislocation, a waking dream—or nightmare.  In this vein, the films in the international competition reflected these dislocations in a myriad of ways.  In a program entitled Kein Kinderspiel (No Child’s Play), seven filmmakers explore the relationship between parents and children, and the role of children in the family from the child’s perspective. Ann Marie Fleming in her film, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (Canada, 2010), adapts a memoir that explores the influence that a parent’s very dark past can have on his or her child.  These films dealt with divorce, the death of a parent, abuse.  A family only communicates via technology when they’re sitting around the dinner table together in Daniel Greaves’ Speechless (UK, 2009)—a story for the modern-age, to be sure. 

Yet in the program called Reiseaussichten (Chances of Traveling), other filmmakers turn to whimsy, using extremely bizarre humor to explore journeys to different worlds—from the ones taken right in our backyards to trippy travels in alternate universes.  Some of the creatures making those travels cannot even be seen by the human eye, as in Matray’s hilarious Babioles (still pictured above), which won the Silver Dove in the competition and clocked in at a cool 4 minutes 40 seconds. The coveted audience award went to another traveling animated piece, a documentary of one man’s travel diary, Bastien Dubois’ Madagascar, carnet de voyage (still pictured below), an absolutely exquisite piece of storytelling at a more satisfying 11 minutes 30 seconds.  The illustrations, the color palette, the music, the sound design of Dubois’ film, were all so thrilling, I would gladly have sat through a feature-length piece.

This brings us to the more practical aspects of making animation—the costs and the inordinate amounts of time it takes to put together a piece of animated cinema.  Bill Plympton talked a lot about this in his master class.  Even though he speaks of making animation as being “god-like, creating all these characters and creatures by hand,” he also talked a lot about the practicality of the work itself in terms of the marketplace; he’s a fan of the "short, cheap and funny."  This is the case for Signe Baumane, as well, an artist who worked for Plympton when she moved to New York from her hometown of Riga in the mid-90s .  “I like to eat and I like to fuck, so my films always are about food and sex,” she told a delighted audience at one of her late-night shows.  Ironically, both are currently working on feature-length animation films.  Baumane shared a few minutes of her work-in-progress with me called Rocks In My Pockets, an autobiographical account told in her own voice of the time she spent in a mental institution in her native Latvia.  Like a lot of the best animation, it is both riotously funny and profoundly sad.

Leipzig has a special program for animated documentaries where they screen the best new films of the genre, and explore the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction as the best doc programs these days do. In Vom Menschlichen Wert (Stories of Personal Value), curator and new head of the animation program at Leipzig, Annegret Richter (formerly the artistic director of Filmfest Dresden), showcased films “with a very personal perspective that raise fundamental political questions.”  Standouts, for me, in this program were A Kosovo Fairytale, a student film by Anna-Sofia Nylund, Mark Middlewick and Samantha Nell, which tells the story of a family torn apart by war—one parent Serbian, the other Albanian.  The filmmakers animate the family's escape from their war-torn homeland minus the youngest son, who stays back in Kosovo with his grandparents because he is too young to make the days-long journey in a dark, cold truck that carries the rest of them to a better life in Finland.  White Tape (still from film pictured), a painterly film that only lasts for two minutes, is based on five seconds of video footage from the project “shooting back,” initiated by the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem.  The organization gives Palestinians video cameras to document life under occupation.  The extraordinarily moving and inventive film, Shall We Take a Walk?, tells the story of a blind Korean boy who takes his hospitalized older sister on an imaginary walk through a world that he’s created in miniature with his own two hands. 

The other anima-doc program called Nobody Is Perfect was “a smorgasbord of bizarre stories.”  The great Swedish animator, Jonas Odell, opened the program with his latest, Tussilago (still pictured right), a beautifully drawn film accompanied by a narrated story from a terrorist’s girlfriend, who explains in a ravaged voice how she got caught up in some bad business in 1977 which ruined the rest of her life.  Netherlands’ filmmaker, Rogier Klomp, creates an eerie atmosphere with drawings, graphics and voiceover to explain the amalgamation of the world’s media companies in his 4-minute film, This Is Propaganda: Part A—The Masters of the Media.  And Daniela Sherer from the USA interviews her 83-year-old grandmother who tells her about one night when she was a frightened 17-year-old in 1941 Krakow, Poland, and her memory of a small kindness from a stranger when she was in hiding from the Nazis.

At this juncture in our cinematic evolution, we see that animated films can go beyond stories that show things that can’t be filmed.  That’s no longer the point, really, although animation can be a creative refuge for difficult-to-relate stories, whether it is because there is, indeed, no visual record, or because of the personal trauma the subjects have experienced. Collectively, we are discovering that even though documentaries capture what appear to be spontaneous happenings, animated true stories rely solely on the artistry of a singular human creation.  The quantifiable aspects of time and space are loosed from their moorings in reality, allowing filmmakers the ability to re-chart the course of those elements so that they can be experienced in a more malleable way.  Hopefully, the debate will never stop raging about what can call itself documentary, and what cannot.  But seeing so many diverse and creative pieces of animated fiction and nonfiction only makes me believe that much more strongly in personal vision—its freshness, its immediacy, its originality, its artistry.

 

Look for my review of the partially-animated new feature documentary, the devastating and artfully-told, The Green Wave, as part of Hammer to Nail's upcoming Sundance coverage.

 

 

 

Palmieri and Mosher on the BOMB Blog

Read my latest interview with the directors of October Country here.

Interview: Jeff Malmberg, Director MARWENCOL

Upon discovering the captivating photography work of Mark Hogancamp in an issue of ESOPUS Magazine, an arts journal that is published twice a year featuring "aspects of the contemporary cultural landscape," Los Angeles based editor, Jeff Malmberg, got in touch with Hogancamp in hopes of doing a short cinematic portrait of the man and his work.  Four years later, after dozens of self-funded trips from his home on the west coast to Mark's home in upstate New York, together, Malmberg and Hogancamp came out the other side of an incredibly intense and life-changing journey for both of them.  (The director, pictured left, next to his subject, Mark Hogancamp.)

The result of their magnificent collaboration is a feature documentary--Malmberg's first--called Marwencol.  (Be sure to check out the film's fantastic website to read about Mark's story and to see his creations).  The film débuted at the South by Southwest festival in March of this past year, and walked away with the grand jury documentary prize, the first of many festival awards including the Cinematic Vision Award at Silverdocs, Der Standard Readers' Jury Award at the Vienna International Film Festival, and the Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Filmmaker Award from the International Documentary Association.  An unabashed critics' darling, as well, the film received The Boston Society of Film Critics' Best Documentary award and voted Malmberg Best New Filmmmaker of 2010.  Marwencol is currently rolling out what is proving to be a very successful theatrical release through New York-based distributor, The Cinema Guild in the US and KinoSmith in Canada.  The film and its maker have gathered a slew of nominations, including four from the Cinema Eye Honors, and Best Documentary and Truer Than Fiction noms from the Spirit Awards.

When the film played at the 2010 Sheffield Doc / Fest in the UK in November, I moderated the Q&A for one of Marwencol's screenings with Jeff and his wife and producer, Chris Shellen.  Both are engaging, open-hearted people and it was clear they were having the time of their lives (although they both had flu and Jeff had injured his arm).  The audience was deeply moved by the film and obviously charmed by Malmberg and Shellen--as was I.  Between theatrical engagements in San Francisco and Berkeley in Northern California, and the film's opening in Denver, Colorado, Jeff took some time to chat with me over Skype from his home in LA about the past five incredible years of his life. 

Still in Motion (SIM):  How’s the rock star tour going?  Does it feel like a rock star tour?

Jeff Malmberg (JM):  It does, except for the budget and no wild stories.  But other than that, it kind of does feel like that, yeah.

SIM:  And congratulations, as well, on all the nominations and critical acclaim—that must feel pretty wonderful.

JM:  It does.  But the audience reaction to the film is really the big thing.  It’s so amazing to see how Mark’s story goes over.  It’s really interesting to see.

SIM:  Has he been able to accompany you to theaters some of the time?

JM:  No, but occasionally we’ll call him so we can do a phone Q&A for a couple of minutes.  He likes doing that and the audience really likes hearing from him.  He came down to New York for the opening there [at the IFC Center].

SIM:  I would think it still must be very difficult for him to be in large public spaces with lots of people around.

JM:  Yeah, but I think it helps him to know that everyone's on his side.  He’s not comfortable flying and not comfortable with a lot of people who don’t know him.  It’s usually not really what he’s up for.  He handled the New York thing really well because I think he felt like everybody there was going to protect him.

SIM:  I’ve had the opportunity to see firsthand an audience react to the film and to Mark's story. Why do people love this film so much, do you think?  What is it tapping into, in your opinion, in terms of the zeitgeist right now?  What are people responding to?

JM:  There’s something about Mark that’s really honest—a lot more honest than probably most everyone is in the course of a normal day. A lot of us convince ourselves of certain things that maybe aren’t above board and we know it.  Mark is so incredibly honest.  He made a promise to himself that in his "second life," as he calls it, he would never lie.  In the film, for instance, when he’s explaining how Deja Thoris' time machine was built, he doesn’t necessarily want to tell you those details, but he has to, you know?  [laughing] 

The other thing I think the film taps into is the notion of alter egos, alternative creations, being another person or representing yourself with some kind of avatar, either online or what have you.  Here’s this person that’s taken that concept to the nth degree.

SIM:  My admiration for Mark is in his absolute monk-like devotion to what he’s doing, how he’s living his life, tending to his own wellbeing with everything he has. You, in turn, display that kind of attention and nurturing in the way you record him. There are lots of other—quite distracting—elements in this story.  Obviously, we want to conduct this interview without divulging any spoilers since those “surprises” are such an essential part of the human being that’s being revealed to us.

JM:  I agree.  But what we can say is that he’s one of those really special people who is just not kidding around.  Initially, it might be easy to dismiss him in one way or another.  You think you understand this guy or you can see what he’s doing as just kind of sweetly “playing with dolls,” or whatever.  But as I got to know him, and as audiences get to know him, you realize that he’s one of those people who is on a mission.  He’s using every moment in his day to try and scale this mountain, so to speak.  And it is a really beautiful thing.  Frankly, it’s just downright inspirational.  What he’s created is monumental, mentally and physically.

SIM:  The film is remarkable, too, for the way in which you juxtapose the footage to the events in the unfolding story.  It psychologically matches the relationship that developed over the course of those years you were filming, as you were growing a relationship with one another.  I think the way in which you put this piece together really speaks to that, and totally justifies the liberties you decided to take with the chronology of how things were revealed to you.  Your intuitive decision-making in that regard was really in high gear.  To me, that is the essence of a really good documentary filmmaker.  It’s so obvious to me when someone has that.  The curator from ESOPUS that discovered Mark’s work and took it public has that instinct, too.

JM:  You’re hitting on the most interesting part of the process for me and one I don’t really get a chance to talk about.  I first encountered Mark through his photos and this backstory of his that was so fascinating.  But it was one of those experiences where you really need someone who’s ready to go down that road.  Many people at Q&As ask me how Mark let me in; everyone wants to know about this access I had to this person. 

The short answer is that I met someone at a time when I really wanted to get down to it in a pretty serious way as a filmmaker.  The smart things I did, looking back, were going to see him and film him by myself for the longest time.  I never set up any lights or reflectors; most times I didn’t even take a tripod, I would just balance the camera on my knee.  So all that was helpful.  But more than that, I had encountered a person who was really ready to let it all go.  We were two people who wanted to go down that same road, a road of discovery.  We both knew certain things, but there were also other things we didn’t know, things we didn’t yet understand.  He certainly didn’t understand it all when we started.  Our quest was the same one and together we could figure it all out.

I had a lot of scenes, for instance, of us going to the courthouse, or to meet the woman who found him on the side of the road the night he got beat up, Nora Noonan, who is this really wonderful person.  We went with her to see the spot where she found him.  But somewhere along the way, I realized that these scenes weren’t necessarily really germane to the arc of the story.  It was, however, important background that we had to do together.

SIM:  Sounds like an archeological expedition.

JM:  It was totally like that!  I was filming from 2006 to 2010, six to ten years after his attack.  One thing that struck me as I was getting to know Mark during that time, and that I hope is reflected in the film, is the process he goes through as a victim of an incredibly violent incident.  He’s constantly chewing on these negative equations of this post-traumatic stress disorder.  He’d been doing that for close to a decade. It would have been better, of course, if his therapy hadn’t been cut off like it had; maybe he wouldn’t have been in this situation of having to figure things out for himself.  That being said, if you’re going to do a documentary about someone and that someone is going to open up everything to you, it’s important to make sure that he’s going to get something out of it, too.

SIM:  Well, what’s a bit ironic—and I’m sure I’m not the first to point this out—is that I don’t think any expert or therapist, or what have you, could ever have accompanied him on the journey he takes, the one you took with him with your camera in tow.  That is the most moving thing about this film for me, Mark’s self-salvation, with very little help from anybody.  We live in a society where it’s very common to look outside ourselves for help, for aid, for support.  

JM:  In order for us to show up, all the other people have to show up.

SIM:  There was no one there for Mark, and this was someone who really needed help!  His discovery of this incredible inner reserve as a newly born person is, indeed, inspiring.  There’s no other word for it.

JM:  The biggest thing I learned during this whole thing was that there is no replacement for using your heart.  A documentary from fifty years ago or a doc made today—if they’re well made, they have this overlap, this idea of kindness and appreciation.  If you look close enough at anything, it’s possible to see beauty.  I didn’t expect to find a teacher like Mark.  I thought I was making a little eight-minute short of somebody who plays with dolls in his backyard, who’s created this really rich fantasy world and photographs it.  I didn’t expect to go on this journey.  This might serve as some sort of template for me as I continue to make more films.  Go find something that fascinates in some way and jump in.  And take your camera with you.  I don’t expect all of these ideas to pay off in the way this one did.  My wife and I joke about our “doc-of-the-week” ideas.  Let’s go make that film!  And next week, it’ll be something else.  Sparks are easy.

SIM:  Short attention span cinema.

JM:  Exactly.  I think it’s best to always just think of these potential projects as short films and let it be a surprise when it turns into a feature.

SIM:  Not a bad strategy.  Let’s circle back to the onslaught of regard for this film.  As a début feature director, it’s obvious you’ve splashed big, at least in the American market which is probably the toughest market there is, particularly for documentary.  And as documentary makers, it seems the world toys with us endlessly to see if we’ve really got what it takes to make nonfiction films.  Most of the best makers I know just have this inexplicable devotion to the craft of making nonfiction and the rest seems like so much background noise as they go about their work, as you have done with this film.

JM:  I think I’d be extraordinarily lucky to meet anyone like Mark again and I was incredibly lucky in meeting him when I did.  But there’s always the next step: what do you do with this “stroke of luck,” do you know what I mean?  I always want to get inside people’s heads; it’s an interesting place to be.  It’s something you can do in documentary that you can’t do in narrative.  It happens in novels, maybe.  Mark let me inside his amazing head. 

There’s really nothing to understand about the “business” end of things in making these kinds of films.  It’s mind-boggling.  I really appreciate the response this movie is getting right now.  But you know as well as I do that on another level, this was not a “grant-able” or fundable film.  All these dynamics I encountered during this project were kind of through a side door.  What I can tell you is that now I do want to buy some new equipment [laughs].  I just bought some sound equipment and now I’m looking at cameras.  I just want to be in a place where the next time something comes across my path that I want to do, I can just go out and shoot it.

SIM: You started out with the intention, as you said, of making a short film about Mark.  When you realized you had a feature on your hands, to whom did you turn for advice besides your inner circle of producers? 

JM:  It always was only that inner group, the four producers on the film—my wife, Chris Shellen, and my friends Kevin Walsh, Tom Putnam and Matt Radecki.  And me. That was it.  We didn’t really show it to anyone at all.  We didn’t know anyone to show it to!  It’s only now after moving through this festival tour that I’ve met all these great people with whom I do want to consult and show cuts to the next time.  It would be great to have that input.  As an editor, I really thrive on that, and I need it.

SIM:  All that input can be a mixed blessing sometimes, too.

JM:  Yes, definitely, it’s got to be when you’re ready for that.  I didn’t even show anything to those four producers for the longest time.  I wanted to get lost.  At least in this case, it was appropriate to get lost.  Mark had created this world that was so vibrant, I wanted to get lost in it.  I also knew those four people would make sure I didn’t get too lost [laughing]. 

Once the film was at rough-cut stage, it was really Janet Pierson [the director of the South by Southwest Film Festival] who saw through the crummy video output to the film’s real beauty.  She could see what it was going to look like and was the first one to really champion it and program it. That was everything for us in terms of launching this film.

SIM:  Well, considering you walked away with the documentary grand jury prize, her instincts were spot-on.

JM:  It was a dream come true.  I remember calling Mark from the bathroom after it happened.  “Mark, Mark, we just won the grand jury award!”  In his mind, grand jury means something else completely.  So he goes, “Grand jury!  . . . Is that good?”

SIM:  That puts things in their proper perspective pretty darn quick, doesn’t it?  [laughter]

Do you find the festival junket and constant Q&As a surreal experience?  I’m asking this for a specific reason since I conduct a good number of Q&As with artists and filmmakers regularly.  It’s such a weird experience to present the person who made the work to an audience that just experienced something pretty intense, pretty wild.  This instant dialogue is meant to happen when people are still processing.  But there’s the expectation that there’s this amazing opportunity to talk to the maker—ask brilliant questions--go!

JM:  I know exactly what you mean.  It’s a bit unfair to an audience. Everyone’s still processing what they just saw, the lights come up and I bound up there and say, “Hi, I made the movie.  What do you want to know?!” You can kind of see a certain anxiety on a lot of people’s faces, especially if it’s not a festival environment.  Chris and I were just in San Francisco and Berkeley this past weekend and I saw that on their faces there.  This was a weeklong engagement at a Landmark theater.  There’s this weird adjustment period that can be very awkward. 

But I will say what we realized doing all these Q&As was that it’s really important to always make sure that you work on a subject that you don’t mind talking about for a solid year—or longer.  The great thing about Mark and Marwencol is that I don’t have all the answers to that; I never will.  I’m a pretty studied person on all this and, in part, can be everybody’s tour guide, but the audience actually informs me and makes me rethink things constantly.  It would be really tortuous otherwise.  We find that the questions people ask, for the most part, are very subjective in nature.

SIM:  That’s the best litmus, I think, for the success of a film. Do people take it to heart and really resonate with it in a personal way?  This guy is, or could be, any one of us.  But how many of us could self-heal like Mark does, in that particular artistic way?  And not to sound completely cheeseball about the whole thing, but you really feel the love you have for him—it’s there in every shot.  Yikes, I sound like a Hallmark card, sorry; I can hear you laughing.

JM:  I’m laughing because I’m not necessarily that person all the time.  But that kind of love and devotion was required.  I was talking to you about this at Sheffield when we were discussing how every movie should match its subject—the form of it--especially in documentary.  You don’t really know what the form of what you’re making is ultimately going to be.  You really can’t if you’re doing it with any amount of integrity.  And you really need the person you’re shooting to be on the journey with you.  You don’t really know the “genre” your film will fall into until you’re done shooting.  As I was shooting, all I really knew was that I wanted to bring it, because I just care for that guy so much.  That soaked through, I guess.  And hopefully, it’s representative of how the audience feels.  I just read a review that said, “Movies rarely let you inside someone’s head.  But this movie pops open Mark Hogancamp’s head and lets you jump in.”  That made me really happy because that’s sort of what I was going for.  What is it like to be on the other side of that crime?  So often we hear from the aggressor’s side, the prosecutor, perhaps, but the victim is always this kind of MacGuffin in that his or her situation gets the story going and then they sort of take a backseat to the "action."  But I wanted to try and show what it’s like to really be that victim, on the other side of evil.  What does it take to get the trauma ground out of you, and can you ground it out?

SIM:  Or the ways in which you just can’t.  You don’t supply any nice, happy ending, that’s for sure.  What’s so beautiful about docs is that you show one aspect, one part of a real person’s life.  The movie may end here but that life goes on.  It’s one thing to admire a fictional character, but it’s quite another to know that this person you just spent an hour and a half with is still out there somewhere just living his life, still processing what happened to him in his own distinctive way, still creating all this remarkable art work because it’s the only thing that makes it possible for him to go on. The role of artists in our society right now is a really dire one, I think.  It’s really rare to find someone that pure in the way they express themselves.

JM:  Mark brings up a lot of questions that I’ve always been interested in, particularly this idea of “outsider art.”  What exactly is that term supposed to mean?  Outside of what, exactly? He’s somebody who has to do this; he has no choice.  He’s not doing it to impress people.  He’s doing it because he wants to express something about himself, to himself.  When those people are labeled “outsider artists”—I don’t know.  It’s so incredibly ridiculous to me.  I’ve never understood that and I didn’t really want to make a movie about that.  To me, Mark is the perfect example of why that term is owned lock, stock and barrel by the commercial art world.

SIM:  It’s just one more thing to commodify.  What you just expressed really nicely articulated something I’ve been thinking about lately.  As someone who writes about art, I’m currently going through what I can only call a severe case of paralysis about writing something about anything anyone is making anymore.  It seems so pointless, such an inane exercise in many ways.  I don’t even know what I’m writing about.  A movie?  A social cause?  Some artistic phenomenon?  It’s fabulous to celebrate good work but I’m really questioning the exact value of doing that.  It’s all a self-referential nightmare after a while.  [Malmberg laughs]  Anyway, I really like what you just said.

JM:  We had some people from New York see it recently who are from the art world—you know, capital A, capital W.  Their reaction to the film was really interesting.  I don’t think they quite knew what to make of Mark.

SIM:  What were their impressions?

JM:  It was their lack of impressions.  They said, “Thank you very much,” and they left.

SIM:  Well, I suppose you can be flattered if you left people like that speechless.  That's something, I guess.

JM:  I hope it shook them a little.  I don’t know.  That’s why I always subscribe to ESOPUS.  I think a lot of what that publication does makes you question those boundaries, those lines, those rules.  Mark naturally brings up all those questions.

SIM:  But he had a taste of that gallery world and we see how confusing and, ultimately, meaningless it is for him.  It's like a Martian landing in the midst of that  world and you see the people there trying to adjust to his frequency, some willingly, some not.  But he is really not able to adjust to their frequency at all.

JM:  As much as I got along with Mark from the beginning and really felt a kinship with him, it wasn’t until we got to the art show that it really sunk in for me what this movie was going to be about.  Thank god for videotape or a card where you can just keep rolling.  You just never know.  I remember that moment very clearly when he asked me outside the gallery what in the world he was supposed to do. I could see how bewildered he was.  The whole last period of time that I’d been shooting with him, which was pretty substantial, immediately ordered itself in my mind.  I think the audience gets set up in this, as I was set up, in thinking that somehow the art world was going to solve all his problems, that we were going to go on that typical narrative journey where getting to the "big art show" was going to make him better.  We want him to be better, right?  We’re used to narrative fixing people, in books or movies, or whatever.  But in real life that’s not always really the case.  Your use of the word Martian made me think of that.  That’s what it felt like for me.

Now that the movie’s done, I can say that I feel like the time for analysis and discussion is before or after the making of a film.  But if you’re engaging in any of that during, you’re sunk.  There’s a time where the work is pure muscle; you’re just showing up every day with your camera.  Then there’s time to do the work with your heart and there’s a time to intellectualize with your mind.  I have to be very careful in these interviews to really convey that I did not know ahead of time a lot of what I discovered.  The mystery and loss of control was the wonderful thing about it, the best part, to my mind.  I would hate for some wanna-be first time filmmaker to get the wrong idea.  In a lot of interviews I do, it seems like the person interviewing and crafting the conversation is setting things up to make me look a lot smarter than I actually was about all of this.  It’s just not true.

SIM:  Were you fearful a lot of the time you were shooting with Mark?

JM:  Yes!  There were many periods where I had no idea what I was doing.  And here I am with all these wonderful prizes and nominations for my directing and editing work.  So, the next time I’m that frightened, I’ll just think, “Oh wait.  I must know what I’m doing somewhere.  The last time this happened, I got nominated for awards!”  Maybe I don’t have to be so frightened next time [laughter]. 

Seriously, the real honor is that I had a subject with whom I could get that lost and get so upside-down about.  But I hear from filmmakers all the time about how they set out to make a certain movie; it was going to take exactly one year from start to finish; and they made it, the end.  And these are mostly movies I don’t really vibe with most of the time.

SIM:  So what I hear you saying is that fear and uncertainty are good.

JM:  As long as you’re willing to work through them, they are.  You’ve got to keep pushing.  All I can say to someone considering making documentary films is that you’ve just got to have an undying, burning desire for it.  It’s really a format that can be very user-friendly if you’re willing to go for scaling the wall, for a crazy idea.  Or something that really matters.

 

 

 

Winter's Sleep (Notes from the Overlook Hotel)

If you're wondering why I haven't blogged in over a month, it's because I've been depressed and woefully uninspired. Not that I haven't encountered inspiring things (and people) on a regular basis, but there is a logjam between my head, my heart and my brain that somehow is preventing me from writing, at least not easily or very coherently without a lot of pain and anguish involved.  

And I'm a bit crabby that no one asked me for my Top 10 anything. Actually, I don't really care.  Yes, I do.

I think this blog from now on, or maybe just for right now (did I mention indecision is an issue, too?) might consist of interviews (I'm still a good talker when it comes to that and the filmmakers I wrassle with are, as well); highlights of overlooked festivals that are displaying some bespoke, thoughtful and engaging programming in overlooked places; and, if you're lucky, more poetry or song lyrics or odes to my cute, but overlooked, belly button.  Let's just hope I don't pull a Jack Torrance my first winter in Berlin.  

To tide you over and appease my blogging network from dropping me, here's a poem I wrote that is an ode to this dreary, dark season:  (ahem)

I want to slow these days--

a sun oblique, pale

too quick

brittle dawn to dusk.

I want to linger on the southern slopes

foraging like a brown bear

after roots, berries, and honey stumps

of autumn's last red camp.

Something in me slows against my will--

heart, fire, and hunger.

The past fills up and holds the

most proportion of brightness.

And there is nothing to do for it

but shuffle into my cave

worrying round and around the shadows

until I slump down in a long winter's sleep.

If only it were that bear simple,

to lie down in darkness,

to wake in a new season of light,

and know exactly what is necessary.

And in more exciting news:  Posted here soon will be a wonderful chat I just conducted with Los Angeles-based filmmaker, Jeff Malmberg, creator and director of Marwencol, a small documentary that is, thankfully, not being overlooked, and has taken the critics and viewing audiences by storm with its inspirational story of one man's mission to rebuild his life.  This film, I would imagine, will appear on many top 10 lists this year.  It certainly would have been on mine if I'd been asked to supply one.  So stay tuned for the soothing sounds of Jeff Malmberg.

And to wrap up this strange post, in more great doc news, you can now own two of the most fabulous nonfiction films to come out of the US of A in a while courtesy of Carnivalesque Films: Darius Marder's grossly overlooked Loot, and Bradley Beesley's slightly less overlooked (it's all relative), Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo. Seems like team Carnivalesque is busy building a very impressive roster of films--kudos.    

Oh wait, here's another poem you might like called The Art and Science of Guilt:

Upturned faces of ponds, lakes

wear thick-skinned masks now,

and the rifle crack of splitting trees

is heard; approaching another century's

end, nearer life forms burst

in sudden monstrous spasms

of growth, and distant mountain

ridges vanish in smoke,

reappear in sulfuric haze;

it is summer's end, not

the world's.  Surely as snakes shed

their skins whole, the seasons

will turn sweet or bitter,

sap and blood will sleep and rise,

and we will drift from shadow to sun

again, crying out like hawks on the hunt.

Together in tribal darkness we forgive

the actors and ourselves: nothing

except the movies works.  Uncountable

layers of space flattened on a screen

deliver up inner-outer union:

exotic home, familiar dangers pure

and depraved, unjudging, unjudgeable.

From the first scene to last tracking shot,

we dream of going from movie to movie,

out-of-body out-of-mind,

to freedom.

 

It turns out I'm still inspired by the movies, after all.  Happy holidaze.

 

 

Ken Jacobs at KINO SATELLITE (and Other Paraphernalia)

A quick post betwixt fests:  just coming down from Sheffield Doc/Fest and a very active marketplace--wow!  I just filed my report for DOX Magazine; look here for film reviews in the coming weeks.  Loved, loved, loved Marwencol (and felt very honored to host the Q&A at Sheff).  This was the film's UK premiere and during the Cinema Eye Roller Disco party, it was announced that the film had garnered nominations for Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking (CEH's version of "best film"), as well as nominations for outstanding achievement in direction, editing, and début feature.  The film opens this Friday the 12th at the Landmark Nuart in LA, Malmberg's hometown.  Don't miss it!

I also saw The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, a 187-minute tour de force from director, Andrei Ujica, and also a nominee for a Cinema Eye Spotlight award.  Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop was another film I was lucky enought to host with its producer, Jamie D'Cruz, and editor, Chris King.  Exit is nominated for six Cinema Eyes: best film, production (award goes to the producer), editing, international feature, début feature, and the audience award.  Quadrangle, an outstanding piece directed by Amy Grappell, was a film I saw at the last SXSW, but I had a chance to see it again at Sheffield where it played with Catfish.  (I loved Catfish so much!)  Quadrangle is one of the nominees in the CEH best short film category (which is new this year), along with Andreas Koefoed's Albert's Winter, Arsy-Versy by Miro Remo, an amazing student film that has won many awards around the world, James Blagden's Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No, and Vance Malone's The Poodle Trainer.  I also got a chance to see the world premiere of Jerry Rothwell's excellent Donor Unknown, a totally ready-for-primetime doc--that's a compliment.  Delights out of the Scottish Documentary Institute Focus strand:  Calling Home, Surpriseville and Twinset.  More coherent thoughts beyond "I loved it!" on all of these outstanding films at some undefined free moment in the future.  And to see the rest of the categories and nominees for the Cinema Eyes, taking place at The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens on January 18 (and broadcast on The Documentary Channel), visit the site here.

Early tomorrow morning, I fly to Copenhagen for CPH: DOX to spend a few days taking in their incredible program.  I've already seen quite a few pieces out of there which has just whet my growing appetite for more visionary programming.  I mentioned to a colleague recently that it's getting harder and harder for me to watch more traditional docs when I see all the innovative ways in which young filmmakers are stretching, mashing and creating new ways in which to storytell.  Very exciting stuff, indeed.  Look for articles on the New Vision category out of CPH in DOX and on the program that Harmony Korine curated for the fest this year on Senses of Cinema.  (Pictured, still from Israeli artist Roee Rosen's staggering film, Out.)

The call for entries is open for the International Women's Film Festival Dortmund | Cologne.  The theme for 2011 is NOW WHAT:  Films About Getting Out of Here.  They are looking for films by women directors that deal with topics on Quest for Meaning, Orientation, Confidence, Antagonism, Rebellion, Utopia.  There are no restrictions on genre, running time or year of production.  You can find more detailed information here.  Entry deadline is 29 November. 

There is also an International Fiction Feature Competition endowed with 25,000 Euro; that entry deadline is the 7th of January and the film must have been finished within two years of the festival date in April.  As well, there is a National Director of Photography Award endowed with a 5,000 Euro prize for fiction, and a 2,500 Euro prize for documentary.  This is an advancement award for an up-and-coming German cinematographer/DP.  They also accept films by DPs who either live and work in Germany, or finished their training here.  Entry deadline is 31 January.  Vist the web site for updates and to download entry forms.  The festival will take place in Köln, Germany 12 - 17 April 2011.  (Pictured, still from Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir's Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement, 2009.)

In New York, the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival opens once again at the Museum of Natural History, 11 - 14 November.  On Saturday the 13th, the festival will present the New York premiere of Human Terrain with filmmakers David and Michael Udris and their collaborating Watson Institute Research Fellow, James Der Derian, for a post-screening discussion.  In a co-presentation with the Goethe-Institut in New York, the festival's opening night will honor Veterans Day with Dustin Grella's Prayers for Peace and the New York premiere of Jens Schanze's Plug & Play, a documentary starring some of science's most famed researchers.  In another strand, the fest will celebrate The World's Children with films that address the unwavering hope of children around the globe faced with difficult circumstances.  Featured films will be Born Sweet, Shelter in Place, Jean-Pierre Duret and Andrea Santana's exquisite Because We Were Born, and one of the most moving shorts I've seen this year, Carol Salter's Unearthing the Pen.  Visit the web site for more info and on how to purchase tickets.  (Pictured, still from Unearthing the Pen, 2009.)

Lastly, but far from leastly, our second KINO SATELLITE show happens tomorrow night in Berlin with a selection of work from filmmaker, Ken Jacobs.  We're pleased to present a program of recent works by the legendary filmmaker, one of the pioneers of the New York avant-garde.  The program includes the German premiere of his most recent film, a loft, which just premiered at the 2010 Viennale (still from film, pictured).  The show will be introduced by Ekkehard Knörrer of Die Tageszeitung, Cargo and Perlentaucher.  We will show The Day Was a Scorcher (2009), 8 minutes, color, silent; an excerpt from THE SKY SOCIALIST Stratified (2009),19 minutes, color, sound, music by Olivier Messiaen and Michael Schumacher; Capitalism: Slavery (2006), 3 minutes, color, silent; Capitalism: Child Labor (2006), 14 minutes, color, sound; Ron Gonzalez, Sculptor (2009), 20 minutes, color, sound; and, a loft (2010), 16 mintues, color, silent.  I will, of course, be in Copenhagen, as mentioned above, but Andrew Grant will be on hand to welcome you to Direktorenhaus--doors and bar will open at 7:30 p.m., and the screening will start at 8:00. 

Goodnight, London.