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Sulayman too (2017)
Kyrgyz Road Movie/Family Drama
Elizaveta Stishova's directorial debut Suleiman Mountain, takes us to Kyrgyzstan in this story about a family of grifters. The titular, mystical peak stands as a silent witness to the constant stream of turmoil brought on a nomadic family by their patriarchal head, a charismatic, but drunk, con-man. When one of his two wives brings home their long lost son, the young boy not only changes the family dynamic, but offers the moral compass they lack. Like the stark landscapes of Kyrgyzstan contrasted with the multicolored textures & patterns of the textiles throughout, this poignant family drama is balanced by interjections of organic comedy.
The resolution felt hurried, but also little kinks to be expected of a first-time filmmaker lost a few stars for me.
Tanna (2015)
10 for Tanna
Do you like movies with star-cross'd lovers, tribal rivalries, scampish little sisters, pristine Polynesian islands, active volcanoes & penis sheaths? If so, TANNA is the movie for you! Simultaneously heart-breaking & hopeful, this film was the first to be shot entirely in Vanuatu. At times you will laugh, gasp & most definitely cry, as you follow the timeless tale (based on a true story) of two lovers caught in the middle of parental & tribal responsibilities. The cinematography was breathtaking & displayed the impeccable photographic vision of filmmakers who had previously created documentaries. The performers were not trained actors, but members of the Yakel tribe--however, their performances were as heart-felt & gut-wrenchingly real as that of any Oscar winning actor. The stand-out for me, was the young girl, Marceline Rofit, who played the role of the impish little sister, Selin. The depth of emotion that she evoked is well beyond her years & is a stand-out among all the incredible performances in this film.
Campanadas a medianoche (1965)
Chiming in with my opinion
What can be said about Chimes at Midnight that hasn't already been said? Orson Welles' ode to Fallstaff, a part that Shakespeare obviously created with Welles' himself in mind, seems to be the perfect culmination of his enormous (no pun intended) career. The meager budget of the film is only reflected in the bad dubbing & sound quality, which is still glaring despite restoration efforts. Welles makes up for this in film noir lit faces, intense battle scenes, and of course, his impeccable acting & connection with the character. With the minute movement of his eye, he can garner laughter or sympathy. While we may be used to chuckling at Falstaff's bumbling, brazen arrogance, Welles also brings us, in the end, to profoundly feel the anguish that lies at the depths of Falstaff's soul. His performance seems to be a psychological study on fatherly influences, quite probably pulling from his experiences with his own Fallstaffian father, among others. Having recently watched My Own Private Idaho, it is hard not to make comparisons & observe the obvious inspiration Gus Van Sant drew from Chimes for his quintessential film. It was also interesting to watch the dramatic battle scenes, which on a shoestring budget are very cleverly shot & edited to feel big budget. This film has probably inspired many larger budget Shakespearean, war & movies in other genres, and yet stands in a league of its own.
Girl Asleep (2015)
Adolescence as allegorical dreamscape
Girl Asleep is a imaginative take on the wild ride that is adolescence. This tale is told from the perspective of Greta, an awkward Australian teen who moves to a new house & school on the precipice of her 15th birthday. Having moved to a new city around the same time in my life, I definitely identified with Greta's plight--the difficulties of making new friends in a place where it seems everyone knows each other, all while dealing with hormones, mean girls & overbearing parents. The family dynamics between Greta, her kooky parents (a dad who loves short-shorts & potty humor, a mom who matches her outfits to the meals she makes & works out on a stationary bike in wedge heels) and a surly, world-wise older sister, make for plenty of hilarious moments. Originally a stage play, written by Matthew Whittet (who also adapted the screenplay & plays Greta's father), this film takes place in the 1970s, with a groovy soundtrack to match (including SYLVESTER!). The color palette is eye-catching, and found somewhere in the center of a venn diagram joining Napoleon Dynamite & any Wes Anderson flick. The subtitles for the passing of time (& even the opening title) are cleverly interwoven into the scenes--appearing on a basketball or the growth chart on a bedroom door. I just realized that if I sat here & told you all the fun, quirky details in this movie, we could be here for hours. . . so I will move on from that. For the first 45 minutes of this movie, non-stop laughter filled the theater, at times making it hard to hear the dialog. We are all far enough removed from this age that we can easily laugh about the parts that made adolescence traumatic at the time. (To preface Chaplin &/or Keaton, "Tragedy is a close-up. Comedy, a long-shot".) When her parents throw her a birthday party (without her blessing), a trio of mean girls show up with a "present" for Greta in the form of a song called "You've Got No Tits" (which I've had stuck in my head since last night). With that, Greta retreats to her room, and the dream sequence begins (hence, the title). The heroine's quest for a music box that ensues is a perfect allegory for navigating the space between childhood & womanhood. This was the first foray into film for director Rosemary Myers & I look forward to seeing more of her work on the big screen.
Uncle Howard (2016)
Searching celluloid for what remains
Going into this documentary, I don't think I had researched it as much as the other films I've picked to screen at SIFF 2016. I must've just seen "William Burroughs" & "Jim Jarmusch", threw my hands up & exclaimed, "That does it! I must see this!". Needless to say, the subject matter went above & beyond my simplistic expectations. While this is a movie about a nephew (Aaron Brookner) trying to piece together the life & works of his uncle, filmmaker Howard Brookner, it is also a movie about something much deeper & broader. While it was a delight to watch clips & outtakes from Howard Brookner's film Burroughs: The Movie, moments from home movies of Brookner's family, and follow the present-day storyline of Aaron Brookner delving into storage lockers, picking the brains of his uncle's friends, and trying to pry reels of film from the caretaker of Burrough's Bowery apartment "The Bunker", the real meat of the film was a much more poignant tale. In the smaller scope, it is a tale about what one man could accomplish in such a truncated life--about living to the fullest & doing what makes you happy, regardless what those around you may think. It is about a life cut short by AIDS. In the broader sense, it is an open-ended question with no possible answer--what did we, as a society, lose because of the AIDS crisis? While I cried tears of sorrow for a talent like Howard's taken too soon, for the palpable lasting sadness of his family & friends, for the anguish of those around me who lived through this and lost their loved ones & partners, I also cried tears of anger. What if those in power had taken this epidemic more seriously & much sooner? Would we be watching a retrospective of Howard Brookner's work made up of 15-20+ movies & not just 3? Could our culture have been guided towards acceptance of all our beautiful variations & colors more gracefully if a generation of thinkers, artists & unique souls had not been ravaged by this outbreak? It is impossible to inventory the scope of such a loss, unlike the boxes of celluloid rotting in a Bowery basement--but indeed, it is a profound loss that can never be recovered.
Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell (2016)
TINY packs a powerful emotional punch
TINY: THE LIFE OF ERIN BLACKWELL is Martin Bell's follow-up documentary to 1984's Streetwise & the culmination of 30+ years of work between Bell & his wife, Mary Ellen Mark. In Streetwise, we meet many characters, all street kids in Seattle--but the charismatic stand-out of the film was Erin "Tiny" Blackwell, a 14-year old runaway, who makes ends meet through prostitution. In Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell, we step further into Tiny's world, from the time she met Mary Ellen Mark in 1983 for the LIFE Magazine photo essay "Streets of the Lost", to the present day as the mother of 10 struggling with a methadone addiction. Throughout the film, we meet her children, who range in age from 30 to 5. We witness not only the continuing struggles of Erin's life, but also those of her children, some of whom have encountered the same difficulties with drug addiction & the law as their mother. Although each of her kids have very different personalities, they all seem to have inherited their mother's charm, spunk & smarts. The film touches on subjects that are acutely familiar to Seattle (& many other cities)--the vicious cycles of homelessness, addiction & racism. Although we are left with no solid answers as to how to combat these problems for future generations, in the eyes of some of her youngest children we are left with a twinkle of hope for their futures.
Der Vampir auf der Couch (2014)
Sucking the life out of every vampire joke ever
THERAPY FOR A VAMPIRE is an Austrian vampire comedy that involves two vampires, two humans & Sigmund Freud in a kind of slapstick love-quadrilateral. The jokes were a bit corny (vampire to Freud: "I no longer have a thirst for life") & I wish the film had actually focused on the THERAPY part, rather than the silliness of vampires falling in love (or lust) with humans. Why even get Freud involved if psychoanalysis isn't going to play a central plot point? The costuming & ambience were nice to look at, although the lighting was a little soap opera-esque (was that on purpose?). Meh.
Cameraperson (2016)
An intimate portrait from behind the camera
Kirsten Johnson's CAMERAPERSON is a documentary collage lovingly pieced together from outtakes of the many documentaries she's worked on in her long career as, well, a cameraperson. Intermingled with these outtakes are snippets from Johnson's personal life: playing with her twin toddlers, poignant flashes of her mother succumbing to Alzheimer's, sweet moments with her father & the twins at her parents' home in Beaux Arts, WA. In the vein of Koyaanisqatsi or Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, the seemingly unrelated clips are woven together until patterns begin to emerge. In the Q&A afterward, Ms. Johnson said that in most every Q&A an audience member discovers a new pattern or theme--pointing to an editing process that is both intentional & subconscious. The pacing & structure of the movie invokes the essence of fleeting memories. As an audience, we are given a behind the scenes look at what it takes to make documentaries. In a clip that illustrates the difficult balance between objective observer & compassionate storyteller, we watch a Bosnian toddler attempting to play with an axe. As his tiny fingers come perilously close to the blade, the audience cringes & we hear an off-camera exclamation of "Oh, Jesus!" from Johnson. An intimate portrait of a cameraperson, illustrating the delicate balance between the personal & the professional.
Tower (2016)
Timely telling of the UT Tower terror
As timely as ever (tragically so), TOWER recounts stories of a few individuals whose lives were forever changed by the fateful events of August 1st, 1966 on the campus of University of Texas, Austin. Narrated by some of the survivors of the first mass shooting on a U.S. college campus, the recreations are presented in beautifully animated rotoscoping. The animation brings a surreal dream-like quality, similar (I can only imagine) to how the survivors, heroes & bystanders must have felt on such a hot, nightmarish summer's day. Like a thunderclap out of the blue, the crack of the first bullet sent shockwaves through the audience, as it took down a pregnant Claire Wilson. 50 years later, you can still hear the heartache in her voice as she narrates not only being shot (which caused the loss of her unborn child), but also witnessing the death of her fiancé, who was fatally shot as he bent over to help her up. Throughout the movie, we are introduced to a handful of the players in the day's events & we are shown the terror as seen through their eyes. While many of the stories were about brave acts of heroism, there were also honest moments of fear, confusion, hesitation & self-preservation. As the story unfolds, you can't help but wonder how you'd react in a situation like this. Would you stand behind a pillar, waiting for it all to end? Would you run into the shooter's sight to comfort a bleeding pregnant woman, trying to keep her conscious until she can be moved to safety? Would you slink closer to the tower, attempting to remain unseen by the sniper & assist the police? I don't think anyone can know until they've been in this situation (something I hope none of us experience), so we certainly cannot judge the many who chose security over bravery that day. However, the truly brave are to be admired for their boldness, selflessness & quick-thinking. The movie does a good job focusing on the victims, survivors & heroes, instead of the story gravitating around the shooter, as is often played out in the media. This was a very deliberate choice on the part of director Keith Maitland, who said in the Q&A that there are plenty of websites, movies & articles devoted to the shooter, so he didn't feel that perspective was warranted in this film. Once the final stand-off comes to an end, the interviews shift from rotoscoped reenactments to live footage of the survivors, who still carry the weight of this heavy day on their countenances. Maitland said he couldn't speak directly on gun-control policy, and would leave that to those "smarter than him" who are expert in the area of policy-making, but he hoped it would spark important conversations with all who watch this film. A truly poignant & unique piece of documentary cinema.
Women He's Undressed (2015)
A unique doc on one of Hollywood's prolific costume designers
In WOMEN HE'S UNDRESSED, director Gillian Armstrong attempts to uncover the man behind some of cinema's most iconic looks, costume designer Orry-Kelly. Theatrical reenactments & monologues from Orry-Kelly & his mother (played by Darren Gilshenan & Deborah Kennedy), guide us through his life--from his childhood in the small Australian seaside town of Kiama, around the world to New York City (where his roommate is fellow immigrant, Archibald Leach, later known as Cary Grant), to his career in Hollywood, in which he garnered 3 Academy Awards. Interspersed with these staged scenes are interviews with those who knew & worked with Orry-Kelly (Ann Roth, Angela Lansbury, Jane Fonda, to name a few), as well as costume designers, film critics & biographers who have been influenced by his work. Unlike many Hollywood homosexuals of the day, Orry-Kelly refused to hide behind a lavender marriage or staged identity, as his old flame Cary Grant would hardly acknowledge their past together. Being his authentic self may have fueled a drinking problem, but it also allowed stars like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman & Marilyn Monroe to fully trust his talent for making them shine in his designs. Even Tony Curtis & Jack Lemmon petitioned Billy Wilder to let Orry design their costumes in Some Like It Hot. While Orry-Kelly is not a household name in today's world, the looks he created for movies like Jezebel, Casablaca, Irma la Douce & Auntie Mame are unforgettable.