So ends the festival - not the greatest roundup this year, but some gems. The last feature film below was perhaps one of the best for me, along with Turneja and Back Soon.
O Zi Buna de Plaja (A Good Day for a Swim)
Bogdan Mustata - Romania - 10 min.
Romanian, eng. sub.
So violent and nasty that I wanted to leave the theatre. Three teenage males (supposedly escaped juvenile delinquents from the description, but never identified as such in the subtitles), kidnap a van driver and a hooker, and spend a nice day at the beach torturing and killing them. The sarcasm of the title isn’t lost on the audience, with the nihilism of a Clockwork Orange mixed with the randomness of disaffected Romanian youth in the 2000’s.
Svetat E Golyam I Spasenie Debne Otvsyakade (The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner)
Stephan Komandarev - Bulgaria-Germany-Slovenia-Hungary - 105 min.
Bulgarian, eng. sub.
Cinemoo found that this film was too “discursive” and too long. I enjoyed it immensely. A young Bulgarian guy living in Germany is the sole survivor of a car accident that claims the lives of his parents. His grandfather arrives to help him, only to find out his grandson has retrograde amnesia. A bicycle trip on a tandem bike through Germany and Italy on the way back to Bulgaria, and backgammon lessons taught once again, are the grandfather’s way of helping bring back memories, which slowly come back to him. Ah, backgammon, the in game of the late 70’s and 80’s…I used play a lot...I've seen a bunch of very eclectic, well made films from Bulgaria at the festival in the last five years.
Jonathan's list of the festival winners
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Monday, September 1, 2008
Day Twelve - Monday, September 1
Alas, all good things come to an end, and the FFM has been fun. Three films today...
Be Like Others
Tanaz Eshaghian - United States-United Kingdom-Canada-France - 74 min.
Farsi, eng. sub.
To be fair, there are many transgendered people in the world that feel that they were born with the wrong gender, and seek to fix that. This is not a film abou them. This is a documentary about a theocracy that has a solution for the "problem" of homosexuality. Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, by stoning or hanging. There’s immense pressure for gays and lesbians to conform, to go underground, by declaring themselves transsexual. The theocracy that is Iran made allowances for people born with the wrong gender, and what this amazing documentary shows is a few examples of young men so desiring to fit in that they’re willing to submit to sex-change surgery so they can be accepted into society. Historically effeminate gay men (who are but a percentage of all gay men ) have been singled out for abuse in a heterosexualist homophobic society, and in Iran it’s not different. Rather than be perhaps marked for death, they risk family disownment and societal rejection as transgendered women, even though some say to the moment of their operations (and even afterwards) that if they’d had the option not to go through with the sex change, they wouldn’t. A very, very sad commentary on the power of a theocracy to arbitrarily dictate who should act and look like whom.
One more short and a feature length to post!
Be Like Others
Tanaz Eshaghian - United States-United Kingdom-Canada-France - 74 min.
Farsi, eng. sub.
To be fair, there are many transgendered people in the world that feel that they were born with the wrong gender, and seek to fix that. This is not a film abou them. This is a documentary about a theocracy that has a solution for the "problem" of homosexuality. Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, by stoning or hanging. There’s immense pressure for gays and lesbians to conform, to go underground, by declaring themselves transsexual. The theocracy that is Iran made allowances for people born with the wrong gender, and what this amazing documentary shows is a few examples of young men so desiring to fit in that they’re willing to submit to sex-change surgery so they can be accepted into society. Historically effeminate gay men (who are but a percentage of all gay men ) have been singled out for abuse in a heterosexualist homophobic society, and in Iran it’s not different. Rather than be perhaps marked for death, they risk family disownment and societal rejection as transgendered women, even though some say to the moment of their operations (and even afterwards) that if they’d had the option not to go through with the sex change, they wouldn’t. A very, very sad commentary on the power of a theocracy to arbitrarily dictate who should act and look like whom.
One more short and a feature length to post!
Day Eleven - Sunday, August 31st
Lay Down in This World
Pim Braeckevelt - Belgium - 6 min.
English
Animated. A guardian angel tries to dissuade a man ready to jump off the roof of a building.
Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes
Peter Rosen - United States - 86 min.
English
For over thirty years, Keillor’s been doing a live show, the Prairie Home Companion, on NPR (for those who *don’t know, the U.S. public radio network, similar to our Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). [A side note: Stewart McClean and The Vinyl Café is a Canadian writer and show version of Keillor Canada]. Centered around his ongoing stories about characters from Lake Wobegon, a mythical town constructed around his childhood memories growing up Lutheran Norwegian in Minnesota. The show features live radio plays, a concept he gleaned from the great radio shows of the late 1940’s and 50’s, before I Love Lucy grabbed peoples attention away from radio to TV. There’s a complete cast of regulars who travel with him: actors, sound effects people, a band, and the associated production staff. Each show has hand-picked roots style folk music guest performers. He starred in a dramatic film about his show, made by Robert Altman in 2006. This documentary, finished just a few weeks ago, follows Keillor as he travels between shows and his homes in Minneapolis, and New York. Not really a biography, but more of love affair with America, the kindler, gentler one that Keillor seeks out in his audiences across the U.S. I think some of the patriotism rubs my Canadian self-effacing character the wrong way, feeling almost jingoistic, but as Keillor says in the documentary, he feels there’s some good character in the American people, something that’s been lost in the takeover of American politics by “angry people yelling at each other”. I don’t know if Keillor is merely living in the past and choosing to ignore the realities of how social dialogue has changed in the States, or he’s really got a link to a more friendlier side to the American people. 5 million people may tune into his show every Saturday night. How many of those are small town Americans and how many are urban dwellers who find comfort in the stories from the countryside would be an interesting demographic to know. His humour is gentle, witty, and cutting at turns, and regularly turns to the sentimental. Who was it who said that sentimentality is the sediment of emotion? I like Keillor’s work as I’d like a good rhubarb pie (a metaphor that’s in the film), it’s honest, and plain, as a nice change from writing that is all “haute cuisine”. What saves it for me is that he is honestly self-aware of the artifice that he weaves, even in his plain style of story-telling, and he doesn’t hide from it.
El pollo, el pez y el cangrejo real (The Chicken, the Fish, and the King Crab)
José Luis López-Linares - Spain - 86 min.
Spanish, French, eng. sub.
After watching this film (and seeing wonderful homemade paella being made), we went on a quest to find some – I haven’t had a good one in about 25 years, and Jonathan’s never tried it. Montreal is apparently not an easy city to find good paella. Tapas is all the rage now, and is a lot easier to do. A crazy, rollercoaster ride of a documentary that follows the Spanish team entered into the Bocuse d‘Or , the bi-annual French culinary competition that chefs worldwide aspire to win. Named after the legendary Paul Bocuse The title comes from the three ingredients chosen for the 2007 competition – Norwegian halibut and king crab and Bresse chicken (the famous free-range French fowl). I could feel myself getting stressed watching Jesus Alberto Almagro Morales perfecting his timing and technique to deliver exactly identical portions perfectly prepared.
Pim Braeckevelt - Belgium - 6 min.
English
Animated. A guardian angel tries to dissuade a man ready to jump off the roof of a building.
Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes
Peter Rosen - United States - 86 min.
English
For over thirty years, Keillor’s been doing a live show, the Prairie Home Companion, on NPR (for those who *don’t know, the U.S. public radio network, similar to our Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). [A side note: Stewart McClean and The Vinyl Café is a Canadian writer and show version of Keillor Canada]. Centered around his ongoing stories about characters from Lake Wobegon, a mythical town constructed around his childhood memories growing up Lutheran Norwegian in Minnesota. The show features live radio plays, a concept he gleaned from the great radio shows of the late 1940’s and 50’s, before I Love Lucy grabbed peoples attention away from radio to TV. There’s a complete cast of regulars who travel with him: actors, sound effects people, a band, and the associated production staff. Each show has hand-picked roots style folk music guest performers. He starred in a dramatic film about his show, made by Robert Altman in 2006. This documentary, finished just a few weeks ago, follows Keillor as he travels between shows and his homes in Minneapolis, and New York. Not really a biography, but more of love affair with America, the kindler, gentler one that Keillor seeks out in his audiences across the U.S. I think some of the patriotism rubs my Canadian self-effacing character the wrong way, feeling almost jingoistic, but as Keillor says in the documentary, he feels there’s some good character in the American people, something that’s been lost in the takeover of American politics by “angry people yelling at each other”. I don’t know if Keillor is merely living in the past and choosing to ignore the realities of how social dialogue has changed in the States, or he’s really got a link to a more friendlier side to the American people. 5 million people may tune into his show every Saturday night. How many of those are small town Americans and how many are urban dwellers who find comfort in the stories from the countryside would be an interesting demographic to know. His humour is gentle, witty, and cutting at turns, and regularly turns to the sentimental. Who was it who said that sentimentality is the sediment of emotion? I like Keillor’s work as I’d like a good rhubarb pie (a metaphor that’s in the film), it’s honest, and plain, as a nice change from writing that is all “haute cuisine”. What saves it for me is that he is honestly self-aware of the artifice that he weaves, even in his plain style of story-telling, and he doesn’t hide from it.
El pollo, el pez y el cangrejo real (The Chicken, the Fish, and the King Crab)
José Luis López-Linares - Spain - 86 min.
Spanish, French, eng. sub.
After watching this film (and seeing wonderful homemade paella being made), we went on a quest to find some – I haven’t had a good one in about 25 years, and Jonathan’s never tried it. Montreal is apparently not an easy city to find good paella. Tapas is all the rage now, and is a lot easier to do. A crazy, rollercoaster ride of a documentary that follows the Spanish team entered into the Bocuse d‘Or , the bi-annual French culinary competition that chefs worldwide aspire to win. Named after the legendary Paul Bocuse The title comes from the three ingredients chosen for the 2007 competition – Norwegian halibut and king crab and Bresse chicken (the famous free-range French fowl). I could feel myself getting stressed watching Jesus Alberto Almagro Morales perfecting his timing and technique to deliver exactly identical portions perfectly prepared.
Day Ten - Saturday, August 30
The Heart of Amos Klein
Michal Pfeffer Kranot, Uri Kranot - France-Denmark-Israel - 14 min.
No dialogue
Animated. The life of Amos Klein, big business man, heavily involved in the construction of the Wall separating the Occupied Territories and Israel, former celebrated army veteran ,told in flashback reverse chronological order. How being bullied turns one into a bully is the underlying message.
Hakol Methil Bayam (It All Begins at the Sea)
Eitan Green - Israel - 93 min.
Hebrew, fre. & eng. sub.
Three scenes from a family’s life, seen mostly from the perspective of a young boy. The beach, a high school outing near the beach, and the third around the family apt. and the nearby hospital. Still trying to figure out what to say about this one, other than a nicely rendered wistful look at a family's emotional pain.
Deadline
Joseph Bakhash – United States – 15 min.
English.
The story uses the conceit of an imagined future first done in An Incident at Owl Creek Brigde. A prisoner is repeatedly brutally tortured to coerce a confession. Freed and exonerated, he seeks out revenge, but he’s got a deadline...
Turneja (The Tour)
Goran Markovi_ - Serbia–Bosnia-Herzegovina - 106 min.
Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, fre. and eng. sub.
This had to be the best film we’ve seen from a dramatic standpoint, even though it’s a tragic-comedy. A troupe of down on their luck theatre actors, mostly has-beens reliving their former days of glory, decide to travel from Belgrade (Serbia) to Srobrodan, Crotia, unwittingly, just during the siege of that town, on the promise of making some money. Naïve and self-centered, they quickly find themselves in the middle of a war, with hardly anyone interested in what they have to offer. Only by their former fame and complete stupidity do they manage to escape being shot or blown to bits. A wonderful Balkan twisted tale of the inanity of war and hatred. With plenty of swearing in Serbian and Croatian (oh, how that takes me back to when I worked with Yugoslavs, to date myself a bit ;)
Michal Pfeffer Kranot, Uri Kranot - France-Denmark-Israel - 14 min.
No dialogue
Animated. The life of Amos Klein, big business man, heavily involved in the construction of the Wall separating the Occupied Territories and Israel, former celebrated army veteran ,told in flashback reverse chronological order. How being bullied turns one into a bully is the underlying message.
Hakol Methil Bayam (It All Begins at the Sea)
Eitan Green - Israel - 93 min.
Hebrew, fre. & eng. sub.
Three scenes from a family’s life, seen mostly from the perspective of a young boy. The beach, a high school outing near the beach, and the third around the family apt. and the nearby hospital. Still trying to figure out what to say about this one, other than a nicely rendered wistful look at a family's emotional pain.
Deadline
Joseph Bakhash – United States – 15 min.
English.
The story uses the conceit of an imagined future first done in An Incident at Owl Creek Brigde. A prisoner is repeatedly brutally tortured to coerce a confession. Freed and exonerated, he seeks out revenge, but he’s got a deadline...
Turneja (The Tour)
Goran Markovi_ - Serbia–Bosnia-Herzegovina - 106 min.
Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, fre. and eng. sub.
This had to be the best film we’ve seen from a dramatic standpoint, even though it’s a tragic-comedy. A troupe of down on their luck theatre actors, mostly has-beens reliving their former days of glory, decide to travel from Belgrade (Serbia) to Srobrodan, Crotia, unwittingly, just during the siege of that town, on the promise of making some money. Naïve and self-centered, they quickly find themselves in the middle of a war, with hardly anyone interested in what they have to offer. Only by their former fame and complete stupidity do they manage to escape being shot or blown to bits. A wonderful Balkan twisted tale of the inanity of war and hatred. With plenty of swearing in Serbian and Croatian (oh, how that takes me back to when I worked with Yugoslavs, to date myself a bit ;)
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Day Nine - Friday, August 29
Cumbia Callera (Cumbia Connection)
René U. Villarreal - Mexico - 95 min.
Spanish, eng. sub.
Another Mexican film that breaks out of the stereotype of drugs, violence, and corruption. As the director also said, an experimental film about a love triangle. And it is scored with a Columbian popular style of music from the barrios (slums) of Monterey, a retro style of music played by Celso Pino, accordian player and singer. For some Youtube clips featuring his music, both of which were used (among many other songs) in the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e97isb0e5nQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h12wiL359wI&feature=related
With no more than 5 or 10 minutes of dialogue in the whole film, and barely that much more implied, everything is communicated with actions, facial expression, and music. The story (a very simple one, really) revolves around a young videographer, who sees and begins to obsessively video a muchacha from the slums as she goes about her daily routine. He wants to woo her and gets a chance when he tries to return a shoe, one of a pair she had shoplifted, with her boyfriend. The boyfriend, a macho street-attitude type, self-taught artist who paints murals when he isn’t slaving away as a construction worker, isn’t about to let her go, despite her getting involved with the other guy. The story of two young men coming to uneasy terms of sharing a girlfriend who wants them both is actually only a vehicle for the lively music.
Haze
Anthony Chen - Singapore - 14 min.
Eng. sub. (actually, there were none).
A couple of Chinese Singaporean adolescents stuck at home during a heat wave, discover sex. Oh sorry, a boy and a girl. I mean, this IS a Singapore film. There was enough English peppering their narrative to work out what they were saying contextually: too hot - haze (smog?) alert- skip school. Boredom after food and TV, then horseplay around the apartment - arousal. Concerns about (pregnancy? safe sex? both?). A condom. Cigarette afterward (lots of smoking - it's an Asian film, don't be surprised) - will you love me forever? Don't be silly, the boy answers.
Animated American
James Baker, Joe Haidar - United States - 15 min.
English
Hand-drawn classic toons plot revenge on the studio mogul that put them out of work. A la Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Cute.
The Price of Pleasure
Miguel Picker, Chyng Sun - United States - 55 min.
English
A completely negatively biased documentary on the porn industry compared to 9 to 5 days in Porn, this film works from the assumption that (heterosexual) pornography is bad and seeks out to prove its hypothesis, with blatant subjectivity in definitions, interviewed subjects, test criteria, and manipulative editing. All that was missing was the usual religious/moral hypocrisy. Instead the film (and filmmakers) proceed from the standpoint that they are serious academics studying the effect of pornographic media on culture, but if one looks up the Media Education Foundation, their website states their agenda is to challenge mass media assumptions. Draw your own conclusions (pro or con) that their board of advisors include Noam Chomsky,
Susan Faludi, Noami Klein, and others.
Left-wing academics have a history of being anti-erotic, and over the last 30 years shared an uneasy alliance with right-wing Christian fundamentalists in their attemtps to dictate what the populace should be allowed to watch. With the porn industry becoming a $15 billion a year industry, it’s natural that they’d have even more reason to go after it – after all, the left has always been against eroticism as a frivolous pastime of the idle rich (as opposed to an evil design by the devil, as supposed by the religionists), and now there’s the horrific commoditisation of sexuality as well, as they see it. This film sadly is so crude in its attempt to validate itself that it almost seems like a parody of the religious anti-porn diatribes.
Another review (in the Montreal Gazette) that echoes my world view on this film to a large degree :
Gigantes de Valdés (Valdés Giants)
Alex Tossenberger - Argentina - 110 min.
Spanish, eng. sub.
Set in Patagonia in the Valdes Peninsula, amongst the beauty of the land, sea, and all of the flora and fauna, this film could easily be transplanted into Alaska by a U.S. film company, with only minor changes to characters and the story. And maybe that’s what wrong with the film for me. A very conventional story about a business scout sent to convince the locals to sign on to the building of a huge luxury hotel, one that would destroy the pristine beauty and fragile ecosystems. Big business against the locals who cherish the whales, seals, penguins, and so on. There’s the usual conversion from city slicker-must-get-a-job-done to nature lover, the falling in love with the sincere local teacher, the simple, illiterate, but wise fisherman. And the one bad townie, the big man, who runs everything, but who everyone despises. Hrmm…any ideas who the company deals with when newly converted dude sides with the Townies?
René U. Villarreal - Mexico - 95 min.
Spanish, eng. sub.
Another Mexican film that breaks out of the stereotype of drugs, violence, and corruption. As the director also said, an experimental film about a love triangle. And it is scored with a Columbian popular style of music from the barrios (slums) of Monterey, a retro style of music played by Celso Pino, accordian player and singer. For some Youtube clips featuring his music, both of which were used (among many other songs) in the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e97isb0e5nQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h12wiL359wI&feature=related
With no more than 5 or 10 minutes of dialogue in the whole film, and barely that much more implied, everything is communicated with actions, facial expression, and music. The story (a very simple one, really) revolves around a young videographer, who sees and begins to obsessively video a muchacha from the slums as she goes about her daily routine. He wants to woo her and gets a chance when he tries to return a shoe, one of a pair she had shoplifted, with her boyfriend. The boyfriend, a macho street-attitude type, self-taught artist who paints murals when he isn’t slaving away as a construction worker, isn’t about to let her go, despite her getting involved with the other guy. The story of two young men coming to uneasy terms of sharing a girlfriend who wants them both is actually only a vehicle for the lively music.
Haze
Anthony Chen - Singapore - 14 min.
Eng. sub. (actually, there were none).
A couple of Chinese Singaporean adolescents stuck at home during a heat wave, discover sex. Oh sorry, a boy and a girl. I mean, this IS a Singapore film. There was enough English peppering their narrative to work out what they were saying contextually: too hot - haze (smog?) alert- skip school. Boredom after food and TV, then horseplay around the apartment - arousal. Concerns about (pregnancy? safe sex? both?). A condom. Cigarette afterward (lots of smoking - it's an Asian film, don't be surprised) - will you love me forever? Don't be silly, the boy answers.
Animated American
James Baker, Joe Haidar - United States - 15 min.
English
Hand-drawn classic toons plot revenge on the studio mogul that put them out of work. A la Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Cute.
The Price of Pleasure
Miguel Picker, Chyng Sun - United States - 55 min.
English
A completely negatively biased documentary on the porn industry compared to 9 to 5 days in Porn, this film works from the assumption that (heterosexual) pornography is bad and seeks out to prove its hypothesis, with blatant subjectivity in definitions, interviewed subjects, test criteria, and manipulative editing. All that was missing was the usual religious/moral hypocrisy. Instead the film (and filmmakers) proceed from the standpoint that they are serious academics studying the effect of pornographic media on culture, but if one looks up the Media Education Foundation, their website states their agenda is to challenge mass media assumptions. Draw your own conclusions (pro or con) that their board of advisors include Noam Chomsky,
Susan Faludi, Noami Klein, and others.
Left-wing academics have a history of being anti-erotic, and over the last 30 years shared an uneasy alliance with right-wing Christian fundamentalists in their attemtps to dictate what the populace should be allowed to watch. With the porn industry becoming a $15 billion a year industry, it’s natural that they’d have even more reason to go after it – after all, the left has always been against eroticism as a frivolous pastime of the idle rich (as opposed to an evil design by the devil, as supposed by the religionists), and now there’s the horrific commoditisation of sexuality as well, as they see it. This film sadly is so crude in its attempt to validate itself that it almost seems like a parody of the religious anti-porn diatribes.
Another review (in the Montreal Gazette) that echoes my world view on this film to a large degree :
Gigantes de Valdés (Valdés Giants)
Alex Tossenberger - Argentina - 110 min.
Spanish, eng. sub.
Set in Patagonia in the Valdes Peninsula, amongst the beauty of the land, sea, and all of the flora and fauna, this film could easily be transplanted into Alaska by a U.S. film company, with only minor changes to characters and the story. And maybe that’s what wrong with the film for me. A very conventional story about a business scout sent to convince the locals to sign on to the building of a huge luxury hotel, one that would destroy the pristine beauty and fragile ecosystems. Big business against the locals who cherish the whales, seals, penguins, and so on. There’s the usual conversion from city slicker-must-get-a-job-done to nature lover, the falling in love with the sincere local teacher, the simple, illiterate, but wise fisherman. And the one bad townie, the big man, who runs everything, but who everyone despises. Hrmm…any ideas who the company deals with when newly converted dude sides with the Townies?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Day Eight - Thursday, August 28
The Camp at Rivesaltes. The Final Day
Helena Michie (Director, Writer, Producer) - France - 27 mins (Thank you, Helena, for correcting me! The FFM originally incorrectly attributed the director/country and run time!)
English, French, Basque, Catalans, Romani, Arabic, eng. sub.
Wikepedia entry (much more detailed in French)
Set in the scraggy landscape of the French Pyrenees. We had no idea what we were about to see, and normally I steer away from any Holocaust films, documentary or otherwise, since I’ve had my fill back when I was 14, and subjected to a year of social studies on the subject in Jewish school. So Jonathan and I groaned when we realized that this would be yet another film, of a poetic commemoration also reinterpreted in song and dance. And then something happened, at least for me…Helena Michie’s poem, spoken by English by a camp survivor on the eve of its demolition in 2007, is then sung in several languages, with different musical accompaniment, by survivors or family of survivors from the camp’s first two periods, and even interpreted in dance. So there’s Jews, (Bulgarian) Roma, and Arabs all performing and interpreting the same poem in different way and languages. Ultimately it becomes a universal memorial that transcends any particular ethnic group. Rivesaltes was first constructed as lodging center for war-torn indigents, and then became a prestaging concentration camp for Jews and Roma, before shipment to the bigger death camps. After World War II it was used as a POW camp and later a prison, used to house a large group of Harkis, Algerian refugees once the War of Independence was over in 1962. A finally, up until its demolition, the camp was used as an interment camp for illegal Spanish immigrants in France.
Mirages d’un El Dorado
Martin Frigon - Canada - 75 min.
Spanish, eng. sub.
Another expose of corporate doubletalk, broken promises, lies, complicity with corruption of public officials, all as standard business models. Frigon’ s previous film, the 2004 Make Money. Salut, Bonsoir! (co-made with Christian Fournier), documented former Noranda minors from Murdochville, Quebec, fighting for their crumbling town and health, both abandoned by Noranda after they were done stripping the ground of anything valuable. Companies like Noranda, now merged with competitor Falconbridge and bought out by the Swiss company Xstrata, have now been working high in the Chilean highlands for 10 to 15 years, digging for gold. Canadian companies were among the first to open shop in Chile after Pinochet took over. One of the biggest gold deposits in the world being strip (open) mined out of the mountainside, leaving billions of tons of mine tailings full of arsenic, lead and cyanide (low grade ore is “leached” with the cyanide process). Concerns about the water supply, the water table? Environmental regulations paid lip service or simply sidestepped. Surprised? Barrick Gold, Xstrata, and others, all making the poor locals promises they don’t keep, paying off the Chilean Govt. committee that’s supposed to check for environmental impact, sucking all the water out of three small glaciers high in the Chilean mountainside, water that is the lifeblood of the only two rivers supplying the valleys below. Of course, at the annual corporate Toronto meeting of Barrick Gold, the CEO goes on about how they’re social responsible in providing jobs and completely sidesteps the environmental concerns, saying that the Chilean govt. has taken all steps to ensure that regulations are being complied with. Unhuh. The only shill willing to speak so obviously sidesteps critical questions put to him, in the face of the evidence shown the film, that it’s hilariously self-condemning. Sadly, for the vast majority of urban dwellers, even the threat to groups of people and ecosystems far away in some remote plain won’t arise much more than “gee, isn’t that too bad”, while they look for better returns on their gold stocks.
Une année de sable
Director : Eric Liston Grant - Switerzland - 26 min.
French, eng. subtitles
A very conventional story of a 40 year old mother of one, with leukaemia, getting through three courses of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. The usual story is told as narration over footage of what’s called the “toughest footrace on earth” – the Marathon de Sables (Sahara Marathon) held in Morocco. Eight days of punishing daytime heat, cold nights, walking and running across desert - a151 miles (243km) ultra-marathon that typically has 800 participants. The woman’s story of her struggle to survive nicely underscores the amazing effort participants put into completing the race (most are raising money for charities, or in memory of partners, friends, or family, who lived with cancer or other illnesses). I was enthralled, even though I’ve barely started running, having only did my first 5km run of my life a month ago.
Claudette
Director: Sylvie Cachin - Switzerland - 65 min.
French, eng. sub.
What if you were born hermaphrodite (or intersexed), as is the current more correct term)?? What if your folks raised you as a boy and didn’t “assign” a gender surgically as is typically done at 15 days after birth nowadays. This documentary is one of the most interesting gender study films I’ve yet seen. Claudette was born 70 years ago as Claude, to Swiss-French parents living in Morocc , and lived as a boy until 14, when she was introduced to sex by an older woman, and taught to be a prostitute. Fast forward to her twenties, the family back in Switzerland, and she’s back dressing as a boy. She marries a local gal, has children, and eventually reverts to dressing and acting as a woman. But she also when back to being a prostitute, after her successful career as an architect ended (while she dressing/acting as a man). She still lives with her wife, and they still enjoy a close relationship, and maintains her social work championing for the right to legalized and safe working conditions for sex workers everywhere. Jonathan’s review contains more info.
Fal
Hans Van Nuffel - Belgium - 13 min.
Flemish, French, eng. sub.
A former child soldier from an African nation meets the gun-loving adolescent son of a recently dead arms dealer, who supplied both sides of the struggle with that most popular of automatic rifles in the world, the FN FAL (and variants). Is it payback? A chance meeting? Rat a tat, tat! Revenge is truly best served cold...even if it's chance...
(N)iemand (Nowhere Man)
Patrice Toye - Belgium-Norway-Netherlands-Luxembourg - 96 min.
Flemish, fre. & eng. sub.
This goes nowhere, man! An inquiry into middle-class/middle-age angst. A dull civil servant decides to fake his death, abandon his wife, and sail away to a tropical island. Things go rapidly downhill from there. After suffering huge setbacks on his original plan, wounded and now declared dead, his now re-married wife has other ideas about what to do with him when he returns.
Friday and Saturday's films as soon as I can!
Helena Michie (Director, Writer, Producer) - France - 27 mins (Thank you, Helena, for correcting me! The FFM originally incorrectly attributed the director/country and run time!)
English, French, Basque, Catalans, Romani, Arabic, eng. sub.
Wikepedia entry (much more detailed in French)
Set in the scraggy landscape of the French Pyrenees. We had no idea what we were about to see, and normally I steer away from any Holocaust films, documentary or otherwise, since I’ve had my fill back when I was 14, and subjected to a year of social studies on the subject in Jewish school. So Jonathan and I groaned when we realized that this would be yet another film, of a poetic commemoration also reinterpreted in song and dance. And then something happened, at least for me…Helena Michie’s poem, spoken by English by a camp survivor on the eve of its demolition in 2007, is then sung in several languages, with different musical accompaniment, by survivors or family of survivors from the camp’s first two periods, and even interpreted in dance. So there’s Jews, (Bulgarian) Roma, and Arabs all performing and interpreting the same poem in different way and languages. Ultimately it becomes a universal memorial that transcends any particular ethnic group. Rivesaltes was first constructed as lodging center for war-torn indigents, and then became a prestaging concentration camp for Jews and Roma, before shipment to the bigger death camps. After World War II it was used as a POW camp and later a prison, used to house a large group of Harkis, Algerian refugees once the War of Independence was over in 1962. A finally, up until its demolition, the camp was used as an interment camp for illegal Spanish immigrants in France.
Mirages d’un El Dorado
Martin Frigon - Canada - 75 min.
Spanish, eng. sub.
Another expose of corporate doubletalk, broken promises, lies, complicity with corruption of public officials, all as standard business models. Frigon’ s previous film, the 2004 Make Money. Salut, Bonsoir! (co-made with Christian Fournier), documented former Noranda minors from Murdochville, Quebec, fighting for their crumbling town and health, both abandoned by Noranda after they were done stripping the ground of anything valuable. Companies like Noranda, now merged with competitor Falconbridge and bought out by the Swiss company Xstrata, have now been working high in the Chilean highlands for 10 to 15 years, digging for gold. Canadian companies were among the first to open shop in Chile after Pinochet took over. One of the biggest gold deposits in the world being strip (open) mined out of the mountainside, leaving billions of tons of mine tailings full of arsenic, lead and cyanide (low grade ore is “leached” with the cyanide process). Concerns about the water supply, the water table? Environmental regulations paid lip service or simply sidestepped. Surprised? Barrick Gold, Xstrata, and others, all making the poor locals promises they don’t keep, paying off the Chilean Govt. committee that’s supposed to check for environmental impact, sucking all the water out of three small glaciers high in the Chilean mountainside, water that is the lifeblood of the only two rivers supplying the valleys below. Of course, at the annual corporate Toronto meeting of Barrick Gold, the CEO goes on about how they’re social responsible in providing jobs and completely sidesteps the environmental concerns, saying that the Chilean govt. has taken all steps to ensure that regulations are being complied with. Unhuh. The only shill willing to speak so obviously sidesteps critical questions put to him, in the face of the evidence shown the film, that it’s hilariously self-condemning. Sadly, for the vast majority of urban dwellers, even the threat to groups of people and ecosystems far away in some remote plain won’t arise much more than “gee, isn’t that too bad”, while they look for better returns on their gold stocks.
Une année de sable
Director : Eric Liston Grant - Switerzland - 26 min.
French, eng. subtitles
A very conventional story of a 40 year old mother of one, with leukaemia, getting through three courses of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. The usual story is told as narration over footage of what’s called the “toughest footrace on earth” – the Marathon de Sables (Sahara Marathon) held in Morocco. Eight days of punishing daytime heat, cold nights, walking and running across desert - a151 miles (243km) ultra-marathon that typically has 800 participants. The woman’s story of her struggle to survive nicely underscores the amazing effort participants put into completing the race (most are raising money for charities, or in memory of partners, friends, or family, who lived with cancer or other illnesses). I was enthralled, even though I’ve barely started running, having only did my first 5km run of my life a month ago.
Claudette
Director: Sylvie Cachin - Switzerland - 65 min.
French, eng. sub.
What if you were born hermaphrodite (or intersexed), as is the current more correct term)?? What if your folks raised you as a boy and didn’t “assign” a gender surgically as is typically done at 15 days after birth nowadays. This documentary is one of the most interesting gender study films I’ve yet seen. Claudette was born 70 years ago as Claude, to Swiss-French parents living in Morocc , and lived as a boy until 14, when she was introduced to sex by an older woman, and taught to be a prostitute. Fast forward to her twenties, the family back in Switzerland, and she’s back dressing as a boy. She marries a local gal, has children, and eventually reverts to dressing and acting as a woman. But she also when back to being a prostitute, after her successful career as an architect ended (while she dressing/acting as a man). She still lives with her wife, and they still enjoy a close relationship, and maintains her social work championing for the right to legalized and safe working conditions for sex workers everywhere. Jonathan’s review contains more info.
Fal
Hans Van Nuffel - Belgium - 13 min.
Flemish, French, eng. sub.
A former child soldier from an African nation meets the gun-loving adolescent son of a recently dead arms dealer, who supplied both sides of the struggle with that most popular of automatic rifles in the world, the FN FAL (and variants). Is it payback? A chance meeting? Rat a tat, tat! Revenge is truly best served cold...even if it's chance...
(N)iemand (Nowhere Man)
Patrice Toye - Belgium-Norway-Netherlands-Luxembourg - 96 min.
Flemish, fre. & eng. sub.
This goes nowhere, man! An inquiry into middle-class/middle-age angst. A dull civil servant decides to fake his death, abandon his wife, and sail away to a tropical island. Things go rapidly downhill from there. After suffering huge setbacks on his original plan, wounded and now declared dead, his now re-married wife has other ideas about what to do with him when he returns.
Friday and Saturday's films as soon as I can!
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Day Seven - Wednesday August 27
One Shot
Linda Wendel - Denmark - 78 min.
Danish, eng. sub.
FFM website
When the Danish do family drama, they do it very well. I remember Festen (Celebration) which used Dogme 95 rules, which requires use of handheld cameraq, existing lighting, sound, and no props, etc. This film is the first Danish film to use the one-take, no cuts or edits technique, famously done by Hitchcock in Rope (although it was supposedly edited to make it appear so), and more recently with Russian Ark (a great film I bought a copy of). Sally, headstrong and rebellious, returns to her mother’s countryside home to force a confrontation . Lennart, her mother’s married lover, gets caught up in the argument. Intensely close up and personal, the one-shot technique doesn’t let you blink as you follow the action from a handheld camera few feet away. Sally’s got a gun and she's not gonna take it anymore…
Umikaze ni fukarete (Carried on a Sea Breeze)
Toshiki Sato - Japan - 110 min.
Japanese, eng. sub.
FFM website
Little toy boats rocked in a bathtub storm didn’t do it even for Cinemoo. Most viewers can spot crappy 1950’s special effects…maybe done in one shot you could get away with it, but to hammer home repeated bad weather that the protagonist faces on his attempt at circumnavigating the island of Hokkaido (Japan’s big northern island), just makes suspension of disbelief even more unwilling. The acting is about as cheesy, as well. A middle-aged Tokyo businessman, faced with a wife who walked out on him for being at work too much, and a partner skimming the profits, finally makes the time to pay a visit the Buddhist shrine in his hometown, several months after his grandfather’s death. A chance meeting with a former high-school flame, who never left the fishing town, escalates into his desire to return his granfather’s ashes to the family homeland. The solo sailing trip ensues, on a goad that it was his big life goal as a teenager. Yuki follows him around on the trip by car, not really admitting that she’s still in love with him. What’s more interesting than the insipid characterization and plot, lame soundtrack, and semaphored metaphor? The nice views of Hokkaido, perhaps.
Linda Wendel - Denmark - 78 min.
Danish, eng. sub.
FFM website
When the Danish do family drama, they do it very well. I remember Festen (Celebration) which used Dogme 95 rules, which requires use of handheld cameraq, existing lighting, sound, and no props, etc. This film is the first Danish film to use the one-take, no cuts or edits technique, famously done by Hitchcock in Rope (although it was supposedly edited to make it appear so), and more recently with Russian Ark (a great film I bought a copy of). Sally, headstrong and rebellious, returns to her mother’s countryside home to force a confrontation . Lennart, her mother’s married lover, gets caught up in the argument. Intensely close up and personal, the one-shot technique doesn’t let you blink as you follow the action from a handheld camera few feet away. Sally’s got a gun and she's not gonna take it anymore…
Umikaze ni fukarete (Carried on a Sea Breeze)
Toshiki Sato - Japan - 110 min.
Japanese, eng. sub.
FFM website
Little toy boats rocked in a bathtub storm didn’t do it even for Cinemoo. Most viewers can spot crappy 1950’s special effects…maybe done in one shot you could get away with it, but to hammer home repeated bad weather that the protagonist faces on his attempt at circumnavigating the island of Hokkaido (Japan’s big northern island), just makes suspension of disbelief even more unwilling. The acting is about as cheesy, as well. A middle-aged Tokyo businessman, faced with a wife who walked out on him for being at work too much, and a partner skimming the profits, finally makes the time to pay a visit the Buddhist shrine in his hometown, several months after his grandfather’s death. A chance meeting with a former high-school flame, who never left the fishing town, escalates into his desire to return his granfather’s ashes to the family homeland. The solo sailing trip ensues, on a goad that it was his big life goal as a teenager. Yuki follows him around on the trip by car, not really admitting that she’s still in love with him. What’s more interesting than the insipid characterization and plot, lame soundtrack, and semaphored metaphor? The nice views of Hokkaido, perhaps.
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