by ·Comments Off on Fata Morgana (1970, Werner Herzog)

Opens with multiple plane landings from the same angle, almost some Same Player Shoots Again repetition but you can tell they’re different flights from the changing patterns of birds on the ground. The heat-haze over runway connects this to the desert scenes that follow, featuring some beautiful dune photography. Desert cities and very dead animals. A voiceover sometimes breaks in to read some biblical-sounding earth-formation text, which I could do without.

Part two, new narrator and text, not as archaic, plus some nice Leonard Cohen songs, and German researchers with sync audio. And part three, I don’t even know what to tell you. This all starts out as a photography demo, then becomes a collection of eccentricities and natural phenomena – Herzog in a nutshell. Dave Kehr: “Every shot has a double edge of harsh reality and surrealist fantasy.”

Christoph Huber in Cinema Scope 94:

Initially conceived as a sort of science-fiction film, Fata Morgana ended up closer to what today is labelled as an essay film, although it still seems to be rooted firmly in the realm of the fantastic, or even psychedelic. The film’s title is a perfect encapsulation of Herzog’s filmic universe, conjuring a desert mirage that can be filmed, although it does not exist – a reflection of reality, like cinema itself … There’s both a strange beauty and a barren, seemingly eternal sadness to Fata Morgana that bespeaks the ineffable, metaphysical qualities and intensity of experience Herzog tries to wrestle from visible reality.

by ·Comments Off on Pictures of Ghosts (2023, Kleber Mendonca Filho)

Vital viewing for fans of Neighbouring Sounds, showing the history of Kleber’s family in their apartment where that movie was filmed. Funny, I mentioned Chris Marker in my writeup of his Green Vinyl, and the first thing I notice in his apartment is Marker’s book “Staring Back” – and I referenced Do The Right Thing in the same post, and here’s Kleber wearing a Do The Right Thing shirt. As Tsui Hark says, we all have the same references so we all make the same films. “Fiction films are the best documentaries” he says in part two, about the disappeared cinemas of Recife, Brazil, while reviewing the only known footage of certain destroyed landmarks in the backgrounds of features. The third part is the shortest, literally turning the locals into ghosts.

The director in Cinema Scope, on shooting digital:

At the end of the day it’s not the celluloid that makes a film, it’s the attitude that goes into each and every move … It’s quite perverse. I remember in the ’80s when CDs were introduced, the industry sold the idea that vinyl was nothing and you should get rid of it. It was part of the strategy to get CDs into people’s homes. In my family we kept the vinyl and also bought CDs. I like the idea of adding new ideas and experiences. I don’t understand why the industry always has to sell subtraction. With 35mm and digital, the best thing would be for me to have more options. But capitalism always finds a way to fuck everything up.

by ·Comments Off on Sublime Frequencies double-feature

The James River Film Society, a mysterious organization which never emails me no matter how many times I submit my address to their subscription link, counterintuitively programmed a pair of hour-long Sublime Frequencies documentaries from director Hisham Mayet at a lovely large theater at noon on a beautiful Saturday, so I came out, along with as many as nine other people.

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The Divine River: Ceremonial Pageantry in the Sahel (2012)

Short riverboat setup, then it gets right into rocking and boogies down for forty minutes or so, each scene in a new location with a new musician or group. Apparently shot in Mali and Niger, there’s much dance, some cool structures and landscapes, and per the Sublime mission, no English translations or narration or titles. I figured the epic animal slaughter scene would be a good time to hit the restrooms – it’s also weirdly where the movie ended.

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Oulaya’s Wedding (2017)

More of a straight doc about a particular event, clearly explained to us. Group Doueh is a famed wedding band in Dakhla, a town on a coastline peninsula in Western Sahara, an area bordered by Mauritania and Morocco. The Doueh musicians’ own daughter is getting married, so they’re throwing the biggest party ever and inviting everyone. We get a behind-the-scenes look at the setup and prep in the first few days, then the event itself under a massive tent. Interviews with family and guests (spotlight on the gay male dancers). Plenty of music, so I could keep on bopping in my seat. We’ve long heard that Mdou Moctar and Tinariwen started as wedding bands, so the main attraction here was to see what these weddings are like.

by ·Comments Off on The Suspended Vocation & Of Great Events (1978, Raoul Ruiz)

The Suspended Vocation

Very nice photography of a monk in a black-and-white film crosscut with his counterpart in a color film. Unfortunately “interchurch quarrels over dogma and religious practice” is not a topic that keeps me alert and engaged. The lead monk is played by Cahiers critic Pascal Bonitzer in color, and Didier Flamand (one of the Dalis in the new Dupieux) in b/w. Based on a novel from Pierre Klossowski, a biographer of Nietzsche and de Sade.

Ruiz in Rouge:

This book talks about all the quarrels inside the church, of different factions in the Catholic church. This was not very different from the discussions and quarrels inside the Left movement in Latin America. Which is not so strange when you think that this movement was composed of ex-Catholics. They transposed old Catholic quarrels into the Left; this is one of the ways you can read the political movements in Latin America.

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Of Great Events and Ordinary People

That’s more like it – the truefalsiest movie. It announces itself as a doc on Paris’s 12th during election season, but it’s really a doc about making that doc, then a doc about making docs in general, as it gradually swallows itself.

I think Ruiz has seen News From Home, since he opens a slow 360+ degree pan on its poster, and Adrian Martin points out the movie’s closing Le Joli Mai parody.

Martin:

Ruiz increasingly spices up this cubist lesson in documentary deconstruction with surreal elaborations – such as progressively shorter re-edits of the entire film, avant-garde decentrings of image and sound, and crazy runs of ‘secondary elements’ such as particular colours, angles, gestures and camera movements (collect all shots that pan to the right …). The critical agenda tends to merrily lose itself – which is a mercy in our remorseless age of rigidly theory-driven essay-films.

by ·Comments Off on The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974, Werner Herzog)

Werner as sports announcer, not comfortable in his onscreen role. I just “read” (listened to) his autobiography, which helped greatly with the ski-jumping context of this movie, and left me wanting to watch more Herzog films. Good music with big crashing drums by Popul Vuh.

by ·Comments Off on Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018, Pamela Green)

A pure info-dump doc – I took no pleasure in watching, though I instantly flagged the narrator as Jodie Foster. Very busy visuals, the audio chopped half to death. I noted one interview with especially yucky sound editing: Pamela Green… the movie’s own director! Just re-record! Motion graphics, desktop cinema stuff and zoom calls. I learned what I needed to know about Alice, anyway – she hired both Lois Weber and Louis Feuillade. She had her own studio until Edison’s patent racket drove the filmmaking world from NJ to CA. Studio fire, divorce, and investment problems all hit at once in 1918, ending her cinema career. Gotta give it up for the outstanding location scout sequence where they superimpose her films onto their present day locations, and good work weaving her post-career 1920s-40s correspondences with the filmmaker digging up a 1957 interview.

Then I attempted to enjoy some Alice Guy films…

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Falling Leaves (1912)

String music by Tamar Muskal was far more engaging than the movie, a standard-looking drama with its one famous plot point, young girl tying leaves onto the trees after hearing her sister will be dead of consumption before the leaves have fallen. A passerby sees this behavior and announces the following.

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Cupid and the Comet (1911)

A silly crossdressing comedy, everyone gesticulating wildly. The doc got its title from Alice Guy’s studio motto: “Be Natural” – but there’s none of that here.

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The Consequences of Feminism (1906)

Comedy portraying a woke society where women hang out and drink and are sexual predators while the men iron and watch the children and make themselves pretty. Big modern music by Max Knoth, I liked it.

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A Story Well Spun (1906)

Dude crawls into a barrel and a prankster pushes it downhill, causing much chaos. Later remade as 2000 Maniacs. Hope the editor got in trouble for leaving in those couple frames of the stagehand crouching behind the barrel.

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On the Barricade (1907)

The barricade doesn’t hold for two seconds before the military run right over it and execute its constructors. Some kid who excitedly joined the battle claims he’s not a combatant, the soldiers let him go home, then he guiltily returns ands demands to be executed, but his mom protests and he’s spared a second time, how embarrassing. Somewhat shorter than the other movie I’ve seen about the Paris Commune.

by ·Comments Off on Look Into My Eyes (2024, Lana Wilson)

Rae Fitzgerald again, solo this time, and better suited for the Globe venue. No music during the psychic/medium sessions – was there any music at all? Some false leads and wrong guesses during the sessions, some spot-on apparent knowledge of strangers’ lives, and lots of affirmation – it’s posed as a form of counseling/therapy, for the mediums as well as their customers. Present, but uncaptured by DP Stephen Maing (who was down the street introducing Union) were the ghosts of beloved partners, children, a great(x5) grandfather, and a bearded dragon. Some humor but the crowd never laughing at the film’s participants, and breaking scenes to talk to the director/crew is left in, the cameras welcomed to the mystery. An A24 release so hopefully this will play out, and all the Everything Everwhere / Past Lives fans will watch it.

Scott Tobias in The Reveal:

Most admit that they’re improvising through uncertainty, working from an intuition that often betrays them. A cynic might consider them con artists. Wilson’s film frames them as seekers.

by ·Comments Off on Daughters (2024, Angela Patton & Natalie Rae)

I’d read a little about this movie beforehand, and didn’t bring any kleenex, so stood outside the Missouri Theater staring up at its walls thinking “I am the brick, I am the mortar, I will not cry at the movie,” and this pretty much worked. Slyly highlights the broken horrors of the prison system through personal stories from inside and outside, the two sides meeting at the father-daughter dance, an invention of activist and co-director Patton. The dads are told to use the dance as a promise to change and be present for their families, and soon some are getting out but others are being shut away for decades (the movie never says why any of them are inside). A particular five year-old is so open, talking lovingly and often of her feather, then in postscript she’s eight, acting completely distant on a phone call with him. Older jaded kids have trouble with the concept, but give in when it’s dance time. A lovely movie that will go far unless it’s immediately dumped onto streaming and lost in the content ocean. At least twenty producers, and a production company that did Faya Dayi and The Territory. Opener Good Looks was a noisy four-piece rock group.

by ·Comments Off on Girls State (2024, Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine)

More wide-ranging than Boys State, the governor race not the only thing going. Conservative girl Emily is the star (has she mentioned she’s conservative?), decisively losing the governor race then quickly putting together an article about the differences in funding, prestige, and programming between Girls and Boys State, and winning a scholarship. Complaints in the air that the boys have triple the budget, participation from elected officials, and more discussion of real issues. Nisha doesn’t get a supreme court seat, so becomes the judge of a lower court that sends a case on forced pre-abortion counseling to the supreme, where Tochi is the DA arguing the state’s opinion while believing the opposite. It’s all super slick and heartwarming – they had so many cameras running. Production company Concordia worked on some of the big T/F titles: Time, Bisbee 17, Bloody Nose. We stayed for the Q&A, with three Missouri-based subjects in attendance. Rae Fitzgerald played too softly for a noisy noontime crowd, even with her rhythm section.

David Ehrlich in Indiewire:

The closer Girls State gets toward its climactic elections, the more it confronts the same patriarchal bias and performative empowerment that might have girl-bossed the life out of a lesser film (although this one still plays a particular Taylor Swift song over its end credits). And the more it confronts the role those phenomena manage to play on the university campus where the Boys and Girls State programs are being held at the same time for the first time in Missouri history (but still completely separate from one another in order to avoid sins of the flesh and whatnot), the more frighteningly it reflects a near-future — or now present — in which political agency is just something young women get to pretend they have if there’s room in the budget for a bit of make-believe.