The opener was Little Mazarn feat. Thor Harris, a 3-piece with xylophone, keyboard, banjo, accordion, saw and loop pedals. A Personal Journey movie, gradually revealing the director’s own youthful voyage paralleling his current one. On reaching Bamako, Young Ike decided Morocco and Algeria sound dangerous and diverted to Gambia, but this time he pushes through to Morocco (Thor drumming his feet on the wood theater floor in time to the Moroccan music) and meets two women determined to cross over to Spain. The voiceover is usually plainly descriptive – he aims for poetry and time-collapsing poignancy and doesn’t quite get there.
Tag: 2020s
The Territory (2022, Alex Pritz)
Begonia opened with a big voice and a full band on keyboards and drum pads. An Issues Doc, invaders killing the indigenous people and the rain forest. Brief time is spent with the invaders themselves, poor misunderstood white supremacists who feel entitled to the land because it’s “undeveloped,” very easy to root against them even though they’re victims of the same government/capitalist system that has repressed the others. The main story follows the young new leader of a Brazilian indigenous community, educated and tech savvy, using cameras and drones to document the destruction and fight back, leading missions to peacefully arrest the invaders and destroy their settlements. A woman in the nearby city is a supporter who has fought alongside them for decades. Marvelous extreme close-ups on local creatures. Our screening got a rare burst of mid-film applause: after covid hits, the local media wants to come film the native community, breaking quarantine – but they say we have our own camera equipment, just send us your shot list.
The Balcony Movie (2021, PaweÅ‚ ÅoziÅ„ski)
Saturday began with Starbux breakfast, then we stopped at Shortwave for tea after the movie. Quiet Takes opened the morning screening on solo keyboard, appropriate mood. We could have watched this from the theater balcony but did not, a missed opportunity. Pawel films from his own balcony for months, getting some good one-off reactions from a variety of neighbors and passers-by, and finding some regular characters. His building’s caretaker speaks of the husband who died 20 years before, calls him a useless drunk. Robert gets the most screen time – Pawel gives him clothes when he’s fresh out of jail, we see him trying to get his life together, and he’s still struggling at the end, says he doesn’t want to end up as trash, a drunk, a criminal, but the straight work he’s found is hard and unrewarding. Time also passes via a regular woman showing up with her newborn baby, and Pawel’s own dog having puppies. Some memorable appearances by a very shy woman opening up to the camera, some shitty nationalists stopping during a parade, and a gay man who’d just lost his longtime partner.
Fire of Love (2022, Sara Dosa)
Despite technically being a Sundance premiere, we were the first in-person audience for a movie made to be seen on a big screen with a big soundsystem. I should look up whether the archival footage even had sound, or if this was a foley fest. It puts together a good heroic narrative, the volcanologist couple turning their studies from gently predictable “red” volcanoes to dangerous “gray” volcanoes, and after authorities ignore warnings in Colombia and thousands die, they make a scare film about those deaths, which convinces people to evacuate next time. Filmmaking saves lives. A slick movie, not as personally troubling as others today, despite all the deaths. Kyren Penrose opened, solo acoustic, and we got beer and pretzels at Broadway afterwards.
It Runs in the Family (2022, Victoria Linares Villegas)
The director investigates her Uncle Oscar, her fellow gay filmmaking family rebel, digging up all she can find on him, which isn’t much. Oscar had been repressed by Trujillo, which inevitably brought to mind Oscar Wao. Lots of design and performance in this movie, bringing in more family members for interviews and to adapt Oscar’s screenplays. Sometimes feels slight, but I’m interested in the idea of families erasing their memories, whether on purpose as a destructive act, or accidentally through forgetting. Also sometimes feels awkward, like when two people face each other on a large stage reading aloud emails that they’d sent each other. Some of the less stagy bits outshone these setpieces, like after her tortured attempt to gently bring up to an elder family member the idea that Oscar may not have been entirely straight, when she finally arrives at her point he says “oh yes I knew.”
World premiere by our second punk filmmaker of the day, wearing band t-shirts whenever she’s on camera. Angel Bat Dawid didn’t have time to play all of the 20 instruments she’d brought along, but she made the strongest first impression of any T/F musician, coming out singing from the back of the bar and leading a call/response on her way to the front.
Sirens (2022, Rita Baghdadi)
We arrived late and tired on Thursday, skipping our planned first film (Where Are We Headed), instead opting for beer and food at Broadway Brewing, then apples and sausage and coffee at Cafe Berlin the next morning.
Lilas and Shery lead a metal band in Beirut. Formerly a couple, they still rock out together but Lilas (not out to her family) is with a new girl visiting from Syria. Movie looks good, sensitively made. The director says she didn’t set out to make a “rock doc,” but after the band infighting and breakup and makeup and the one gig with sad attendance at a Glastonbury side stage, that’s what she made. Includes footage of the port explosion, which was the focus of another T/F movie (Octopus). Opening band Living Hour played us some mostly-light slowcore.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021, Radu Jude)
A key document of pandemic-era people being shitty to each other. Last week’s viewing of Happy Valley was well timed, since Jude also roams the streets here, filming construction and advertising billboards and plant life. Altogether too academic, despite all the sex. Chapter two is didactic social horrors. Mostly exasperating – give me Social Hygiene over this any day. At least this had better color than most movies – surprising, since it’s mostly a parent-teacher conference interrupted by documentary street scenes. My first by Radu Jude, whose previous six films have been on my radar.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021, Joel Coen)
Artificial, stagy-looking, stylish, with great transitions between scenes. Everyone has different speaking styles, not flattened into a single form. Kathryn Hunter obviously MVP, good to see Stephen Root and Harry Melling (Julie Taymor’s Puck). Most importantly, there are more birds in this version than in any other.
El Planeta (2021, Amalia Ulman)
Cute low-budget movie, black and white with star wipes, the sound cutting out during close-ups. Leo (played by our director) is an out-of-work stylist, picking up men online for money (guy at a cafe says he wants to be pissed on this tuesday, and won’t pay much) while her mom (played by her mom) stays home and puts curses on her enemies.
When they go out, mom shoplifts and puts meals at the titular restaurant on the tabs of local politicians. Leo flirts with Chen Zhou (The Cloud in Her Room), goes home with him, then finds out he’s married. Both women have their pains and need pampering, seem like fun little frauds though they are in real trouble, basically homeless. Mom doesn’t tell her daughter when the police finally come for her.
Watched this for being Vadim Rizov’s reported highlight of Sundance 2021. That’s the one I “attended” fourteen months ago, tho it seems longer. What would be my highlights… mostly the obvious choices:
Summer of Soul
In the Same Breath
Strawberry Mansion
All Light, Everywhere
Cryptozoo
Faya Dayi
In the Earth
The Sparks Brothers
Passing
Still want to see:
The Pink Cloud
I Was a Simple Man
On the Count of Three
The Cursed / Eight for Silver
Judas and the Black Messiah
The World to Come
Users
Flee