Attended this program with Michael Hawley. Oddball Films Director Stephen Parr joined forces with L.A. filmmaker Jesse Lerner to curate a program of films devoted to the Chicano experience. While the audience gathered, Parr played border tech music and screened Kodachrome Mexican home movies from the 1940s involving scenes from Mexico City, Taxco, among others. The surefire winners from this batch were scenes from the floating gardens of Xocimilco and a litter of adorable piglets.
These appetizers were followed by a 1972 Encyclopedia Britannica group portrait: The Mexican American Speaks: Heritage in Bronze. Naïve in its ambition to introduce the average American to mestizaje and the burgeoning social role of Mexican-Americans, the Britannica vehicle took me back to the educational films I used to watch in junior high school. It carried a taint of assimilation even as it suggested parity.
The 1971 documentary Latino: A Cultural Conflict was shot by Brian Lewis on the streets of San Francisco's Mission District over 35 years ago. It charts the alienation of teenager Mauricio from the Anglo community and his descent into drug use and criminal activity due to the cultural conflict between home versus school, and the unrealistic expectations of educators who expect Chicano students to conform to Anglo ways.
Filmmaker Veronica Majano was on hand to screen some of her indie shorts. The first—Calle Chula—was a 16mm portrait of 15-year-old Calle, a mixed Salvadorian and Ohlone girl, who travels through the Mission District seeking her own, rendered in ambulatory fashion with doowop teenage heart throb music, the kind of music Laura Nyro emulated, indicating a street feminine sensibility. Calle is, in fact, the street personified. Majano received a Film Art Foundation grant to create Calle Chula.
She also screened Two Four, an experimental piece that pays tribute to 24th Street in San Francisco's Mission District. This decasiatic short implies the fragile decay of memory via hand-processed super eight color film. Seeping and rich with images that fade in and out of perception and abstraction, Two Four articulates emotional and nostalgic experiences of home and memory. I Reminisce, her tribute to the Mission District of yesteryear, incorporated footage gleaned from Oddball Films' archives, including footage of Mission Street back when the sign of the Mission Theater was painted bright red (it's now weathered and rust orange) and bouncing lowrider car clips. Using these archival images and another golden oldie, I Reminisce is a slow cruise through time, place and the people of San Francisco's Mission District.
Her devotion to the Mission is an admirably personal aesthetic.
I asked Majano if she had music rights and she admitted no, but, that no one had ever harrassed her about it. It's not like her films are going to be shown at the Metreon. Her films are more like diaries she has written to herself describing her self-awareness as a woman of color in the Mission. And after seeing her own films so many times, she admitted to being glad for the music; it's the music she still enjoys when she has tired of her own films.
She has also filmed Remember Los Siete, a short experimental documentary about the seven Central American young men from the Mission District in San Francisco falsely accused of killing a white undercover police officer in 1969.
Majano is an Artist-In-Residence and Consultant for the Proyecto Contra SIDA Por Vida Basta Project, working with lesbians of color to utilize art, writing and film as a means of community activism. She is presently working on a script, Prince Saves, about two queer Latina teenagers.
The crown of the evening was the 1967 Decision at Delano, which portrays a very young Cesar Chavez at a crucial moment in the farmworkers struggle. It thrilled me to see this footage! I was just a kid working in the fields in Southern Idaho unaware of these historic events taking place in Southern California. My awareness came long after the fact. Decision at Delano includes glimpses of El Teatro Campesino in its infancy. One confrontation between a white woman and Chicano strikers amazed me: She shouts at them, "I feel sorry for you people. My kids are going to grow up to be psychotherapists and yours will amount to nothing."
There is also excellent footage of Robert Kennedy taking the local police chief to task for arresting strikers on the supposition that they were going to cause trouble. I recommend, Kennedy quips pointedly, that the police chief and his staff take their lunch hour to read the Constitution of the United States. Thrilling material that made me all the more appreciative of the early work of the Chicano movement.
Wednesday, 15 March 2006
CHINESE CINEMA: Electric Shadows
Most commentary on Xiao Jiang's touching debut feature Electric Shadows likens it unto Cinema Paradiso. The comparison is apt. Like Cinema Paradiso, Electric Shadows is sensually photographed and plaintively scored. It's a sentimental, nostalgic piece that unabashedly forays into tearjerker melodrama. Still, its tears are sincere and accomplished. "[T]his movie is so passionately committed to the notion that favorite films from childhood and adolescence shape our imaginations," writes Stephen Holden for The New York Times, "that it unwittingly portrays an obsession with movies as a kind of pathology."
Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice describes Electric Shadows as "ripe and mushy as an October peach" (but neglects to mention the sensual thrill of juice dripping down the forearms). He likewise notes the movie's "intoxication" with movies, its cinematic reflectivity, and adds, "It's the kind of film in which the hand-rewinding of film reels is an act of courtship." I concur completely in his lavish praise of "the sensational performance of little Wang Zhengjia as a snot-nosed, delinquent abuse-magnet." This child has the most amazing face with his huge ears and gaptoothed grin! His flawless performance steals the screen.
The script is a bit too tidy and coincidental—characters run into each other in the most convenient places—though nowhere near as contrived or forced as the ensemble shenanigans of Crash. The coincidences here serve a poetic justice rather than a rhetorical ideology. In Jungian parlance, it's as if certain psyches are drawn to each other over time to help each other individuate just as certain movies serve as doorways through which we become ourselves. It has been known to happen.
Holden and Atkinson do a fine job of synopsizing the film so I've no need to do so here. And other than for being completely drawn in to the performance of Wang Zhengjia, as noted above, what struck me about Electric Shadows was this sense, as in Tsai Ming-Liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn, that a certain style of watching movies is disappearing throughout the world—in China as much as the United States—and that elements of that style are its shared communality and its larger-than-life projection. Without that we lose the social fabric that dreams are made of.
Interestingly enough, Electric Shadows—which is screening throughout the week at the Balboa along with When The Sea Rises—is a California premiere for Bay Area audiences. In fact, both are first-runs, Electric Shadows from China, and When The Sea Rises from France. It's wonderful that the Balboa is bringing these foreign treats to San Francisco, and yet neither was reviewed in last week's Chronicle. Gary Meyer has expressed his disconsolation regarding that sad practice:
"[W]hat did the Chronicle's critics think? We may never know since they chose not to review either film today. I wonder if they realize how frustrating it is to their readers when new movies aren't covered? The Balboa isn't the only theater whose films don't always get reviewed but with 2 new ones today, the Oscar nominated Documentary shorts, and several movies last year being ignored, it makes it tough for us to continue bringing adventurous premieres to San Francisco. I have some great titles lined up for spring and summer but am having second thoughts. They may never play San Francisco otherwise. I guess we need to start playing 'the worst movies ever made' to get more press coverage."
It was on the basis of that message from Meyer alone that I was determined to get out to the Balboa to watch Electric Shadows and to write about it on The Evening Class in hopes that it will provide even a little more exposure and induce even one more ticket. As my friend Michael Hawley expressed to me, he can understand that space requirements forbid the Chronicle from reviewing all new movies that come to town, but, some consideration should be given to the fact that larger chains like Landmark Theaters or the Metreon can afford to lose a review now and then, their runs are usually longer, but when a theater like the Balboa is shut-out so effectively from the press, the chance is we may lose even that much more of Bay Area cinema culture. I beseech Gary Meyer not to give up the good fight and will send The Chronicle a copy of this post in protest of a negligent and exclusive review policy that really needs to be more fair and conscious of our struggling art houses.
Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice describes Electric Shadows as "ripe and mushy as an October peach" (but neglects to mention the sensual thrill of juice dripping down the forearms). He likewise notes the movie's "intoxication" with movies, its cinematic reflectivity, and adds, "It's the kind of film in which the hand-rewinding of film reels is an act of courtship." I concur completely in his lavish praise of "the sensational performance of little Wang Zhengjia as a snot-nosed, delinquent abuse-magnet." This child has the most amazing face with his huge ears and gaptoothed grin! His flawless performance steals the screen.
The script is a bit too tidy and coincidental—characters run into each other in the most convenient places—though nowhere near as contrived or forced as the ensemble shenanigans of Crash. The coincidences here serve a poetic justice rather than a rhetorical ideology. In Jungian parlance, it's as if certain psyches are drawn to each other over time to help each other individuate just as certain movies serve as doorways through which we become ourselves. It has been known to happen.
Holden and Atkinson do a fine job of synopsizing the film so I've no need to do so here. And other than for being completely drawn in to the performance of Wang Zhengjia, as noted above, what struck me about Electric Shadows was this sense, as in Tsai Ming-Liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn, that a certain style of watching movies is disappearing throughout the world—in China as much as the United States—and that elements of that style are its shared communality and its larger-than-life projection. Without that we lose the social fabric that dreams are made of.
Interestingly enough, Electric Shadows—which is screening throughout the week at the Balboa along with When The Sea Rises—is a California premiere for Bay Area audiences. In fact, both are first-runs, Electric Shadows from China, and When The Sea Rises from France. It's wonderful that the Balboa is bringing these foreign treats to San Francisco, and yet neither was reviewed in last week's Chronicle. Gary Meyer has expressed his disconsolation regarding that sad practice:
"[W]hat did the Chronicle's critics think? We may never know since they chose not to review either film today. I wonder if they realize how frustrating it is to their readers when new movies aren't covered? The Balboa isn't the only theater whose films don't always get reviewed but with 2 new ones today, the Oscar nominated Documentary shorts, and several movies last year being ignored, it makes it tough for us to continue bringing adventurous premieres to San Francisco. I have some great titles lined up for spring and summer but am having second thoughts. They may never play San Francisco otherwise. I guess we need to start playing 'the worst movies ever made' to get more press coverage."
It was on the basis of that message from Meyer alone that I was determined to get out to the Balboa to watch Electric Shadows and to write about it on The Evening Class in hopes that it will provide even a little more exposure and induce even one more ticket. As my friend Michael Hawley expressed to me, he can understand that space requirements forbid the Chronicle from reviewing all new movies that come to town, but, some consideration should be given to the fact that larger chains like Landmark Theaters or the Metreon can afford to lose a review now and then, their runs are usually longer, but when a theater like the Balboa is shut-out so effectively from the press, the chance is we may lose even that much more of Bay Area cinema culture. I beseech Gary Meyer not to give up the good fight and will send The Chronicle a copy of this post in protest of a negligent and exclusive review policy that really needs to be more fair and conscious of our struggling art houses.
ITALIAN CINEMA: La Bestia Nel Cuore (Don't Tell)
Caught an advance screening of La Bestia Nel Cuore (Don't Tell) at the Delancey Street Theater yesterday evening. The film is poised to open here in San Francisco at the Bridge Theater on Friday, March 17. Directed and co-written by Cristina Comencini, Don't Tell won several awards at the 2005 Venice International Film Festival and was an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.
Moira Sullivan, reporting from the 62nd Venice International to the Greencine Daily, advised that Don't Tell won the Prize for Best Italian Film "for having harmonized the stories of every character and managing to soften the dramatic aspects of the plot with elements of irony." Michael Hawley advises me that Italy's original entry to the Academy Awards was Saverio Costanzo's Private—undoubtedly a stronger entry—but it failed to pass the Academy's language criteria. Not enough Italian was spoken in Private for it to qualify.
Privacy remains the theme, however, in Comencini's Don't Tell where Giovanna Mezzogiorno (winner of the Best Actress award at the Venice International), portrays Sabina, an actress who—upon recently becoming pregnant—begins to have haunting dreams about something her father did to her when she was a child. In perhaps one of the film's most arresting and disturbing images, the approach of Sabina's pajama-clad father becomes a child's eye view of his crotch, his open fly, and the shadowy and terrifying mysteries therein; a doorway into repressed abuse. In her nightmares, Sabina watches herself as a child being pulled into this doorway. In horror, she recoils, unable to scream for help, unsure of the image's meaning. The surfacing of these images disturb the seeming successful and calm veneer of Sabina's personal and professional life. Suddenly she begins to have issues with her lover and her child's father, Franco, played by Alessio Boni (of The Best of Youth fame). The very notion of fatherhood becomes suspect as Sabina loses trust in Franco. They decide to take a break from each other and Sabina travels to the United States to visit her brother Daniele (Luigi Lo Cascio, also of The Best of Youth). Considering Don't Tell is the first Italian film I've seen since The Best of Youth, and though delighted to see both Alessio Boni and Luigi Lo Cascio reunited, I have to admit the casting was perhaps not the best thing for this film as it proved distracting, pulling me out of Don't Tell into their previous venture.
During her visit with her brother, Sabina realizes Daniele is having trouble being affectionate with his own children and eventually ascertains that he too was abused by their father while their mother did nothing to intervene. The film's final gesture of affection between parent and child suggests the only possible resolution to the revisited tragedies of the past. All that being said, and rather obviously at that, what strikes me most about Don't Tell is not its feminist and fairly successful dramatization of the lifelong shame and trauma experienced by the victims of childhood incest but its evenhanded treatment of the lesbian love relationship between Sabina's childhood friend Emilia (Stefania Rocca) who has, literally, been blindly in love with Sabina since childhood, and Sabina's employer Maria (Angela Finocchiaro) whose husband has left her behind for a much younger woman.
Who decides what title a foreign film will have in the United States? La Bestia Nel Cuore, which translates The Beast In the Heart, has been rendered as Don't Tell for its American audiences, though I can't shake the suspicion that the translator wanted to rename this movie Don't Ask, Don't Tell. What is Comencini trying to say by creating this parallel love story alongside that of Sabina and Franco? If not for the sensitive treatment of the male characters in this story I would suspect Comencini of ballbusting all men, blaming them for all the personal failures in the world, and I can see the connection between Sabina's abuse at the hands of her father (who sexually desires someone younger) and Maria's abuse at the hands of her husband (who sexually desires someone younger) as a possible template of lesbian desire. Sabina even dalliances with Emilia while she is involved with Franco, even though she kindheartedly arranges for Emilia and Maria to eventually get together. Something else is going on here: something about the misplacement of desire, and the wounds created from that, and that the only true salve or salvation from such wounds is to redirect desire and place it appropriately. In its endorsement of the proper placement of desire between Emilia and Maria, Comencini has achieved a heartfelt and solid portrayal of lesbian relationship via "a well-designed subplot." Angela Finocchiaro's comic talents lend her character Maria a disarming quality as she discovers the potential of this side of herself. In my estimation, Finocchiaro's acting is the best in this film. She lends the "tender humor" that Variety critic Deborah Young feels "lightens the weight of angst." Young summarizes: "There is nothing very unusual or challenging here, just a solid script based on a good grasp of human psychology with the moral lesson clearly spelled out in the final scene."
Having initially received the idea for her novel and film from a newspaper item about a brother and sister trying to recover from the trauma of incest, Comencini included Maria's story line about a woman whose husband has left her for a younger woman. "I knew a lot of men escaping with very young women," Comencini states in one interview, "And in my mind it mixed with the other news (about incest). What's the link between them? These two things are so different because in one case, you have really a crime, and the other case is allowed by the law. But in a human meaning, it's really near. In either case, you are seduced by the youth, by the innocence. And so I tried to think about this."
In a separate interview Comencini explains: "I did not want to make a scandal about something. I wanted to explore the dark places in all of us, to understand how this kind of thing could happen. Every human being has basically a bad side and a good side. It's a contradiction: As adults, we can do the best thing in the world and love our children, or we can have an attraction to young bodies and do a bad thing. If you can see it, you can stop it, and decide to be a human being."
Ray Bennett from The Hollywood Reporter states the film is "laced with incisive wit" and notes that the film's ensemble of characters "deal with their own failings and strengths, helping each other to find a kind of love that is understanding and forgiving."
Not all the critics are so kind, however. Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice reduces the film to an "Italian chick flick" that is "paradigmatically mediocre." But before I raise an eyebrow at any suspicions of anti-feminism, I let Atkinson's review evaporate like the hot steam it is and enjoy Anne Thompson's backstory for The Hollywood Reporter, wherein Comencini is allowed to express herself, her fears, her confidence, her concerns for women filmmakers. John McMurtie furthers her concerns about making headway in a man's world for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Moira Sullivan, reporting from the 62nd Venice International to the Greencine Daily, advised that Don't Tell won the Prize for Best Italian Film "for having harmonized the stories of every character and managing to soften the dramatic aspects of the plot with elements of irony." Michael Hawley advises me that Italy's original entry to the Academy Awards was Saverio Costanzo's Private—undoubtedly a stronger entry—but it failed to pass the Academy's language criteria. Not enough Italian was spoken in Private for it to qualify.
Privacy remains the theme, however, in Comencini's Don't Tell where Giovanna Mezzogiorno (winner of the Best Actress award at the Venice International), portrays Sabina, an actress who—upon recently becoming pregnant—begins to have haunting dreams about something her father did to her when she was a child. In perhaps one of the film's most arresting and disturbing images, the approach of Sabina's pajama-clad father becomes a child's eye view of his crotch, his open fly, and the shadowy and terrifying mysteries therein; a doorway into repressed abuse. In her nightmares, Sabina watches herself as a child being pulled into this doorway. In horror, she recoils, unable to scream for help, unsure of the image's meaning. The surfacing of these images disturb the seeming successful and calm veneer of Sabina's personal and professional life. Suddenly she begins to have issues with her lover and her child's father, Franco, played by Alessio Boni (of The Best of Youth fame). The very notion of fatherhood becomes suspect as Sabina loses trust in Franco. They decide to take a break from each other and Sabina travels to the United States to visit her brother Daniele (Luigi Lo Cascio, also of The Best of Youth). Considering Don't Tell is the first Italian film I've seen since The Best of Youth, and though delighted to see both Alessio Boni and Luigi Lo Cascio reunited, I have to admit the casting was perhaps not the best thing for this film as it proved distracting, pulling me out of Don't Tell into their previous venture.
During her visit with her brother, Sabina realizes Daniele is having trouble being affectionate with his own children and eventually ascertains that he too was abused by their father while their mother did nothing to intervene. The film's final gesture of affection between parent and child suggests the only possible resolution to the revisited tragedies of the past. All that being said, and rather obviously at that, what strikes me most about Don't Tell is not its feminist and fairly successful dramatization of the lifelong shame and trauma experienced by the victims of childhood incest but its evenhanded treatment of the lesbian love relationship between Sabina's childhood friend Emilia (Stefania Rocca) who has, literally, been blindly in love with Sabina since childhood, and Sabina's employer Maria (Angela Finocchiaro) whose husband has left her behind for a much younger woman.
Who decides what title a foreign film will have in the United States? La Bestia Nel Cuore, which translates The Beast In the Heart, has been rendered as Don't Tell for its American audiences, though I can't shake the suspicion that the translator wanted to rename this movie Don't Ask, Don't Tell. What is Comencini trying to say by creating this parallel love story alongside that of Sabina and Franco? If not for the sensitive treatment of the male characters in this story I would suspect Comencini of ballbusting all men, blaming them for all the personal failures in the world, and I can see the connection between Sabina's abuse at the hands of her father (who sexually desires someone younger) and Maria's abuse at the hands of her husband (who sexually desires someone younger) as a possible template of lesbian desire. Sabina even dalliances with Emilia while she is involved with Franco, even though she kindheartedly arranges for Emilia and Maria to eventually get together. Something else is going on here: something about the misplacement of desire, and the wounds created from that, and that the only true salve or salvation from such wounds is to redirect desire and place it appropriately. In its endorsement of the proper placement of desire between Emilia and Maria, Comencini has achieved a heartfelt and solid portrayal of lesbian relationship via "a well-designed subplot." Angela Finocchiaro's comic talents lend her character Maria a disarming quality as she discovers the potential of this side of herself. In my estimation, Finocchiaro's acting is the best in this film. She lends the "tender humor" that Variety critic Deborah Young feels "lightens the weight of angst." Young summarizes: "There is nothing very unusual or challenging here, just a solid script based on a good grasp of human psychology with the moral lesson clearly spelled out in the final scene."
Having initially received the idea for her novel and film from a newspaper item about a brother and sister trying to recover from the trauma of incest, Comencini included Maria's story line about a woman whose husband has left her for a younger woman. "I knew a lot of men escaping with very young women," Comencini states in one interview, "And in my mind it mixed with the other news (about incest). What's the link between them? These two things are so different because in one case, you have really a crime, and the other case is allowed by the law. But in a human meaning, it's really near. In either case, you are seduced by the youth, by the innocence. And so I tried to think about this."
In a separate interview Comencini explains: "I did not want to make a scandal about something. I wanted to explore the dark places in all of us, to understand how this kind of thing could happen. Every human being has basically a bad side and a good side. It's a contradiction: As adults, we can do the best thing in the world and love our children, or we can have an attraction to young bodies and do a bad thing. If you can see it, you can stop it, and decide to be a human being."
Ray Bennett from The Hollywood Reporter states the film is "laced with incisive wit" and notes that the film's ensemble of characters "deal with their own failings and strengths, helping each other to find a kind of love that is understanding and forgiving."
Not all the critics are so kind, however. Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice reduces the film to an "Italian chick flick" that is "paradigmatically mediocre." But before I raise an eyebrow at any suspicions of anti-feminism, I let Atkinson's review evaporate like the hot steam it is and enjoy Anne Thompson's backstory for The Hollywood Reporter, wherein Comencini is allowed to express herself, her fears, her confidence, her concerns for women filmmakers. John McMurtie furthers her concerns about making headway in a man's world for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Tuesday, 14 March 2006
MALAYSIAN CINEMAS—Gubra (Anxiety)
Brian Darr is a great gumshoe!! He has a knack for knowing which movies are coming to the Bay Area and when. Via The Storyteller (Yasmin Ahmad's blog) he determined that Gubra, her follow-up feature to Sepet, will be screening at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival. I appreciate how these young Malaysian filmmakers use their blogs to journalize their projects; it allows a welcome access to their creativity! In her most recent entry, Yasmin shared Ong Sor Fern's review from the Singapore Straits Times.
ADDENDUM: The Great Swifty has spoken!! He's directed me to A Nutshell Review's account of the gala opening of Gubra, accompanied by a heartfelt review, and an enthusiastic diary piece on having dinner with director Yasmin Ahmad. On the basis of his being such an excellent liaison for Malaysian information, I add The Great Swifty to my links. Thanks, Edmund!
Monday, 13 March 2006
A Special "Thank You" to Aquarello
Ten years ago or so I joined The WELL, an online teleconferencing community which was at the head of the pack at the time. One of the heated debates that would keep coming up here and there in various topics was whether or not there could actually be a "virtual community." I queued behind Howard Rheingold, who ended up authoring a book on just that subject, believing that with a healthy balance of online interaction with offline gatherings (the so-called "WOPS", or WELL Office Parties) a community could be achieved. But to that equation I've added my own addendum, which is that it doesn't suffice just to get together with on-line personalities off-line, there has to be a genuine reciprocity and a willingness to befriend that marks the shift into community. Otherwise what's the point?
When the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts opened its doors, I was doing programming for a local arts organization called The Friends of Ethnic Art and, enthused by folks like Howard Rheingold, I put together a program of four lectures in their screening room devoted to the concept of Internet and the Arts. This was before the World Wide Web took off and so the concept seemed suspicious, foreign and, to most folks, highly unlikely. It was probably one of my most prescient moments. Even I had no idea at the time what was about to unfold. I invited Howard to be my first lecturer and to talk about virtual community and he responded enthusiastically and refused payment. He taught me something very important at that time: that when it comes to the virtual, you must give it away. That the underlying tenet of the online life was its democratization. That has stuck with me all these years.
Since that time and with the advent of blogging, I don't think there's any question but that virtual communities have sprung up in various neighborhoods around the net. The blogathons alone prove a healthy discourse between participants where the best of minds is being given away and shared freely. But even there reciprocity is sometimes lacking, as those who love to be read and to receive commentary on what they have written, forget to do the same for their compatriots. Granted that sometimes there is nothing to say and saying nothing is better than saying something stupid or superfluous; but, in my mind, reciprocity remains requisite. It's not enough to hold court at your own site.
Having recently retired due to disability, blogging became a way for me to discover a new persona with which to function socially. I no longer had a job. I no longer had a water cooler. But I have a love for film and a great respect for film commentary and an even greater curiosity in how film affects others. It has been nothing but delight to have the time to sit down and read so much of what has been written by others on film. And, of course, as with any reader, I have my favorites, sites that through their design or the sheer virility of the written word, captured my attention, my imagination, and my respectful imitation. It's been a blast to interact with folks who have been writing about film a lot longer than I have and who have been into self-publishing way ahead of me. All that being said, I have to admit that I am something of a Luddite, and that learning curves are truly rough on an old dog like myself. That's why it is with humble gratitude that I thank Aquarello for teaching me via email how to embed links in text, something so obvious to everyone else, and a point of embarrassment to myself. Now with that skill under my belt, I look forward to one day putting up pictures as well. Imagine!! PICTURES!! So much to learn from such a grand virtual blogging community!! And especially from someone whose site Strictly Film School is one of the first I go to when I want to research auteur directors and their obscure product. On the basis of such a friendly, welcome gesture; I add Strictly Film School to my links! And thank Aquarello from the bottom of my heart.
When the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts opened its doors, I was doing programming for a local arts organization called The Friends of Ethnic Art and, enthused by folks like Howard Rheingold, I put together a program of four lectures in their screening room devoted to the concept of Internet and the Arts. This was before the World Wide Web took off and so the concept seemed suspicious, foreign and, to most folks, highly unlikely. It was probably one of my most prescient moments. Even I had no idea at the time what was about to unfold. I invited Howard to be my first lecturer and to talk about virtual community and he responded enthusiastically and refused payment. He taught me something very important at that time: that when it comes to the virtual, you must give it away. That the underlying tenet of the online life was its democratization. That has stuck with me all these years.
Since that time and with the advent of blogging, I don't think there's any question but that virtual communities have sprung up in various neighborhoods around the net. The blogathons alone prove a healthy discourse between participants where the best of minds is being given away and shared freely. But even there reciprocity is sometimes lacking, as those who love to be read and to receive commentary on what they have written, forget to do the same for their compatriots. Granted that sometimes there is nothing to say and saying nothing is better than saying something stupid or superfluous; but, in my mind, reciprocity remains requisite. It's not enough to hold court at your own site.
Having recently retired due to disability, blogging became a way for me to discover a new persona with which to function socially. I no longer had a job. I no longer had a water cooler. But I have a love for film and a great respect for film commentary and an even greater curiosity in how film affects others. It has been nothing but delight to have the time to sit down and read so much of what has been written by others on film. And, of course, as with any reader, I have my favorites, sites that through their design or the sheer virility of the written word, captured my attention, my imagination, and my respectful imitation. It's been a blast to interact with folks who have been writing about film a lot longer than I have and who have been into self-publishing way ahead of me. All that being said, I have to admit that I am something of a Luddite, and that learning curves are truly rough on an old dog like myself. That's why it is with humble gratitude that I thank Aquarello for teaching me via email how to embed links in text, something so obvious to everyone else, and a point of embarrassment to myself. Now with that skill under my belt, I look forward to one day putting up pictures as well. Imagine!! PICTURES!! So much to learn from such a grand virtual blogging community!! And especially from someone whose site Strictly Film School is one of the first I go to when I want to research auteur directors and their obscure product. On the basis of such a friendly, welcome gesture; I add Strictly Film School to my links! And thank Aquarello from the bottom of my heart.
THE BRONZE SCREEN—Duck Season
Anticipating a series of posts on Latino cinema, I borrow the term "The Bronze Screen" from Rosa Linda Fregoso's 1993 study The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture. Fregoso, in turn, gleaned the term from her friends Nancy de los Santos and Patricia González during a dinner conversation on the hills of Echo Park in Los Angeles. Nancy de Los Santos went on to co-produce and co-direct a 2003 documentary The Bronze Screen: 100 Years of the Latino Image in American Cinema. My reference to the term, however, expands upon their Mexican/Latino-American focus to embrace the cinema of Spain, Portugal, and the many Latin nations of the Americas. As a Chicano myself, it's only evident that my first true love in World Cinema would be Latin American film.
I first saw Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season at the 2005 San Francisco International Film Festival and it was, without question, my fave rave. Though it didn't, I wanted it to win the audience favorite award. Researching the film at the time, it was frustrating to discover that it had picked up a distributor in almost every other country in the world except the United States!
Thus it was welcome news when Warner Independent Pictures teamed up with Alfonso Cuaron's Esperanto Films to give the film a stateside opportunity (even though the film was saddled with an "R" rating; R as in ridiculous!) and I'm certainly looking forward to having another chance to view Duck Season at my local Landmark Theatre in the next month or so.
Dave Hudson at the Greencine Daily and Metacritic.com have pretty much provided an adequate compendium of available reviews, each with their own synopsis, so I won't deal with that here. What I want to write about is one scene which I've not seen mentioned elsewhere and which I find revelatory and of utmost poignance. My discussion is not for the spoiler-wary, so please beware.
Eimbcke presents a sweet friendship between two adolescent boys, 14-year-old Flama (Daniel Miranda), and his curly-headed buddy Moko (Diego Cataño). Their friendship is jeopardized by Flama's parents' marital problems and it appears that Flama and his mother will soon be moving away; Moko is thus poised to lose his best friend. In something of a hothouse though nonetheless tender impulse, Moko makes a sexual advance towards Flama, placing his hand on Flama's leg. Flama looks at him in amused detachment, removes Moko's hand, and refuses the advance. However, he states no moral judgment, expresses no revulsion, and suggests, instead, that they swap t-shirts to remember each other by.
I found Flama's tolerance compassionate and creative. On many levels. Primarily because, as Cuaron himself has expressed in an interview with Rebecca Murray, Eimbcke is "generous" in his respect for his youthful characters and in his respect for his audience's intelligence. In an age when the screen is all too often overtly politicized, it's refreshing to have a message of tolerance delivered in such a humane, indirect gesture. Which suggests that friendship, no matter how youthful, is the ultimate fulcrum for exploring and processing the heatedly debated topics of our times. It's a pity that adolescents who would have an opportunity to witness what is the best in themselves are restricted from seeing the movie. And it's a pity that the potential dialogue between generations that this film could afford, has been reduced to a discussion among adults.
I first saw Fernando Eimbcke's Duck Season at the 2005 San Francisco International Film Festival and it was, without question, my fave rave. Though it didn't, I wanted it to win the audience favorite award. Researching the film at the time, it was frustrating to discover that it had picked up a distributor in almost every other country in the world except the United States!
Thus it was welcome news when Warner Independent Pictures teamed up with Alfonso Cuaron's Esperanto Films to give the film a stateside opportunity (even though the film was saddled with an "R" rating; R as in ridiculous!) and I'm certainly looking forward to having another chance to view Duck Season at my local Landmark Theatre in the next month or so.
Dave Hudson at the Greencine Daily and Metacritic.com have pretty much provided an adequate compendium of available reviews, each with their own synopsis, so I won't deal with that here. What I want to write about is one scene which I've not seen mentioned elsewhere and which I find revelatory and of utmost poignance. My discussion is not for the spoiler-wary, so please beware.
Eimbcke presents a sweet friendship between two adolescent boys, 14-year-old Flama (Daniel Miranda), and his curly-headed buddy Moko (Diego Cataño). Their friendship is jeopardized by Flama's parents' marital problems and it appears that Flama and his mother will soon be moving away; Moko is thus poised to lose his best friend. In something of a hothouse though nonetheless tender impulse, Moko makes a sexual advance towards Flama, placing his hand on Flama's leg. Flama looks at him in amused detachment, removes Moko's hand, and refuses the advance. However, he states no moral judgment, expresses no revulsion, and suggests, instead, that they swap t-shirts to remember each other by.
I found Flama's tolerance compassionate and creative. On many levels. Primarily because, as Cuaron himself has expressed in an interview with Rebecca Murray, Eimbcke is "generous" in his respect for his youthful characters and in his respect for his audience's intelligence. In an age when the screen is all too often overtly politicized, it's refreshing to have a message of tolerance delivered in such a humane, indirect gesture. Which suggests that friendship, no matter how youthful, is the ultimate fulcrum for exploring and processing the heatedly debated topics of our times. It's a pity that adolescents who would have an opportunity to witness what is the best in themselves are restricted from seeing the movie. And it's a pity that the potential dialogue between generations that this film could afford, has been reduced to a discussion among adults.
Saturday, 11 March 2006
SPIKE LEE—The Inside Man
As a San Francisco Film Society member, I caught an advance Metreon screening of Spike Lee's latest joint, The Inside Man. It has a great buzz! Jodie Foster plays a "magnificent cunt", Christopher Plummer a wealthy banker with a dark lining to his overcoat, Denzel Washington a wisecracking detective trying to figure out exactly what the Inside Man is hoping to accomplish through his bank heist; but, only Clive Owen really knows for sure.
The writing is deft and rarely predictable, with enough twists in the tale to help you admire the craft. Haggis could learn a thing or two about how to portray race relations in an urban setting from Russell Gewirtz, whose screenwriting debut is stellar. As Emmanuel Levy writes, "[N]o detail is unimportant, and no clue is a throwaway." Levy also considers The Inside Man to be the best film in Lee's career and adds "that both the master of suspense Hitchcock and prince of New York City police dramas Sidney Lumet would be proud of his work." Homage to Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon is cleverly written into the script itself.
Denzel Washington gives a solid performance though I am beginning to wonder if he should take a step away from cop dramas to broaden his repertoire. Jodie Foster lends crisp intelligence to her powerbroking services, wearing (as Joni Mitchell would put it) the beads of guile. Clive Owen has the most beautiful dilated pupils I've ever seen in a man; they're hypnotic black moons. Although predominantly masked throughout the film, his voice, gestures and occasional unmasked visage register a compassionate vigilance and a steadfast aim. He restores honor to the bad guy you cheer for. This film is more than just a bank heist hostage drama or a police procedural. It reflects on who are the true criminals in society and which crimes should not go unpunished. The final scene is a sparkling touch of class.
Here is the official website with story synopsis, trailer and directorial podcast and Emmanuel Levy's preview with informative directorial excerpts.
03/22/06 ADDENDUM: I neglected to mention in my original write-up on Inside Man that the opening title sequence was stunningly Bollywood! The juxtaposition of Bollywood rhythms and Manhattan canyons was thrilling. For the friend who was watching Inside Man with me, it was his first time to hear this music and had him intrigued. Thanks to a discussion initiated by Michael Dequina over at Cinemarati, the tune is identified as "Chaiyya Chaiyya", performed by Sukwinder Singh and Sapna Awasthi and enacted on top of a chugging train by Shahrukh Khan and Malaika Arora. "Chaiyya Chaiyaa" was composed by A.R. Rahman for Mani Ratnam's 1998 classic Dil Se… Bryant Frazer of Deep Focus remains convinced this scene from Dil Se… was the inspiration for the similar set piece in Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, which seems evident now that he's drawn the comparison. Dequina furthered the discussion by offering a YouTube link to the song.
"The svelte, twisty plotting, complete with concentration camp references and Nazi-era villainy, is almost certainly Gewirtz," J. Hoberman writes for The Village Voice, "but the ethnic vaudeville is pure Spike."
The writing is deft and rarely predictable, with enough twists in the tale to help you admire the craft. Haggis could learn a thing or two about how to portray race relations in an urban setting from Russell Gewirtz, whose screenwriting debut is stellar. As Emmanuel Levy writes, "[N]o detail is unimportant, and no clue is a throwaway." Levy also considers The Inside Man to be the best film in Lee's career and adds "that both the master of suspense Hitchcock and prince of New York City police dramas Sidney Lumet would be proud of his work." Homage to Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon is cleverly written into the script itself.
Denzel Washington gives a solid performance though I am beginning to wonder if he should take a step away from cop dramas to broaden his repertoire. Jodie Foster lends crisp intelligence to her powerbroking services, wearing (as Joni Mitchell would put it) the beads of guile. Clive Owen has the most beautiful dilated pupils I've ever seen in a man; they're hypnotic black moons. Although predominantly masked throughout the film, his voice, gestures and occasional unmasked visage register a compassionate vigilance and a steadfast aim. He restores honor to the bad guy you cheer for. This film is more than just a bank heist hostage drama or a police procedural. It reflects on who are the true criminals in society and which crimes should not go unpunished. The final scene is a sparkling touch of class.
Here is the official website with story synopsis, trailer and directorial podcast and Emmanuel Levy's preview with informative directorial excerpts.
03/22/06 ADDENDUM: I neglected to mention in my original write-up on Inside Man that the opening title sequence was stunningly Bollywood! The juxtaposition of Bollywood rhythms and Manhattan canyons was thrilling. For the friend who was watching Inside Man with me, it was his first time to hear this music and had him intrigued. Thanks to a discussion initiated by Michael Dequina over at Cinemarati, the tune is identified as "Chaiyya Chaiyya", performed by Sukwinder Singh and Sapna Awasthi and enacted on top of a chugging train by Shahrukh Khan and Malaika Arora. "Chaiyya Chaiyaa" was composed by A.R. Rahman for Mani Ratnam's 1998 classic Dil Se… Bryant Frazer of Deep Focus remains convinced this scene from Dil Se… was the inspiration for the similar set piece in Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, which seems evident now that he's drawn the comparison. Dequina furthered the discussion by offering a YouTube link to the song.
"The svelte, twisty plotting, complete with concentration camp references and Nazi-era villainy, is almost certainly Gewirtz," J. Hoberman writes for The Village Voice, "but the ethnic vaudeville is pure Spike."
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