Film Festival

A Festival of the Absurd, the Perturbed, and the Deliriously Insurgent

Brandon Judell — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 19:26:14 +0000

A Festival of the Absurd, the Perturbed, and the Deliriously Insurgent Brandon Judell June 30, 2024 - 15:26

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The fifth edition of the Los Angeles-based Film Maudit 2.0, which began on June 12th and continued for three more jampacked days, clearly overwhelmed the senses in a manner few other festivals can approach. Having viewed several of the over 100 World and L.A. premieres, I can swear on the life of my first child—luckily, I’m infertile—that only a sprinkling of comparative fests will ever have your neurons bouncing as high.

Sadly, for those not on the West Coast, those who couldn’t get their rumps to the Highways Performance Space & Gallery in Santa Monica, don’t be bummed out. Just go to the Maudit site, scribble down the titles of these oft-bestirring movies, and google them out over the year.

But, you ask, what inspired this event? Well, the literal translation of the film maudit is “cursed film.” Back in 1949, the writer/director/god Jean Cocteau ushered in a jury that assembled a showcase of cinematic offerings that’d been slighted at the time or were deemed “shocking, outré, and bold.” The result: the legendary Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz. Among the showcased were Kenneth Anger’s zipper-exploding “Fireworks” (1947), Josef von Sternberg’s The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934).

Without question, this year’s L.A. offerings would have had Cocteau pirouetting with joie de vivre once again.

Take Mark H. Rapaport’s Hippo, a tale inspired by the myth of Hippolytus. You remember the stunningly handsome lad, right? His stepmother, due to interference by a goddess, falls madly in love with him. When Mr. Hippolytus rejects her advances, she falsely accuses the young man of rape and then hangs herself, causing her husband to arrange for the assassination of his son by a sea monster.

None of the above is necessary to know unless you’re into artistic inspirations. There are no sea monsters in Hippo, just a highly dysfunctional, late 1990s family. Dad is demised. Mom (Eliza Roberts), once institutionalized and off her drugs, is exceedingly cheery. The dependably angry Hippo (Kimball Farley), is a 19-year-old literally raised by Nintendo 64 video games (e.g. Body Harvest). Chronically dour, this teen sleeps with a stuffed toy hippo over his genitalia because the accompanying friction feels so fine. Meanwhile, his adopted Hungarian sister Buttercup (Lilla Kizlinger), whose highly accented vocal intonations are strictly monotone, wants to get impregnated by her bro.

The latter deed will be hard to accomplish since the siblings really have not quite got the hang of what sex really is, and Mom is no help, although she is accomplished at baking birthday cakes.

Please note that the trio lives in an isolated country landscape and only has each other to annoy and learn from. Eventually, water guns and Craig’s List are brought into the scenario to move the action into high gear. Also, add the possibility of an alien attack.

Shot in a mouth-wateringly stark black-and-white by William Tracy Babcock and fetchingly narrated by the Eric Roberts, Hippo is hilariously funny in a sort of Yorgos-Lanthimos-meets Ed-Wood way.

Moving forth from macabre fiction to technological dread, Graeme Arnfield’s unsettling found-footage documentary, Home Invasion, which he created while in bed, recalls a Hunter S. Thompson quote:

“There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.”

The film begins in 1966 when Marie Van Brittan Brown, a Black New York City nurse, woke up from a recurring nightmare that her house was being invaded. Living in a high-crime neighborhood and being a victim of several robberies that were not taken seriously by a racist police force, she invented and patented a video home security system.

Ms. Brown now could see what was occurring outside her door, from dogs on the loose to her fellow man, possibly up to no good. Did this give her peace of mind? Not one bit. She wound up, when home, addictively monitoring life forms in her vicinity. “The future had become her nightmare.”

Then Jamie Siminoff’s video doorbell rang in, a device that can notify you by phone when thieves, vandals, and squirrels are penetrating your home. His company, Ring LLC, was acquired by Amazon for approximately $1 billion in 2018. Has his invention made life more peaceful for you? Not according to Mr. Arnfield.

And what about the demonic telephone? From the safety of his mattress no doubt, the director quotes Freud here, noting how Sigmund “compared the phone’s ability to overcome distances of making inside outside and outside into the magical powers bestowed upon people in fairy tales.” Did Hansel and Gretel really fare that well?

And what about gaslighting? Maybe the Luddites were on the right side of history?

“Powers that seem good on the surface, . . . by the end reveal unforeseen consequences for those who desired them, teaching us to be careful about what we wish for” appears to be Home Invasion’s maxim. Really? Aren’t these inventions really safeguarding us and our kin? Or are we just supplying the powers-that-be instruments to spy on us and eventually exercise total control over our daily lives?

The whole of Home Invasion is screened through a sort of peephole in very short clips, some seconds long, that bombard the senses. The phone segment, about a half-hour in length, includes countless shots of Audrey Hepburn, Mia Farrow, Drew Barrymore, Barbara Stanwyck, and dozens of others portraying femme fatales, all helplessly terrorized, often with a useless phone in hand or worse, a cut phone cord nearby.

By the end of this segment, I felt like A Clockwork Orange’s Alex after his wired-open eyes were subjected to unending clips of the world’s atrocities. I was a-shaking.

Accompanied by an effective electronic soundtrack, Home Invasion might be best viewed in at least three separate sittings. Taken all at once, this absorbing conglomeration of snapshots of modern life, with more than a few treks to the historical past, might just have you locking yourself in your closet for a few weeks.

Vanessa Spencer from My Imaginary Life for Someone

Well, if you are a fan of Andy Cohen’s oeuvre or MILFs in general, come on out. My Imaginary Life for Someone, written and directed by Molly Wurwand and Ryan McGlade, is a rather droll satire of The Real Housewives of . . . phenomenon, which I thought was already a satire.

This mockumentary focuses on a handful of semi-deranged souls who, unaware of their own inanities, are quite content to allow cameras into their McMansions.

For instance, there’s a former Miss February Playboy Centerfold of 1982. She’s wed to a wealthy gent who has several urns containing the ashes of his former wives in the dining room. There are also several empty urns close by in case any of his present or future wives suddenly croak, too.

Another gal attired in a bosom-popping pink designer suit is celebrating her wheel-bound hubby’s 100th birthday only to discover 101 lit candles can cause a nasty little fire. Please get his oxygen tank out of the way.

Then there’s Vanessa Spencer, who has the largest collection of Princess Diana memorabilia in the United States, including the late royal’s favorite perfume. “I’m so happy I can smell like Princess Diana.” But that’s not enough. Her dream is to clone Di from a few hair strands she’s garnered.

Of the other ladies, one has to have replicas of the swan faucets at the Ritz Hotel for her bathtub no matter the cost. Another relates memories of Siegfried and Roy, while yet another has been on a diet of Bagel Bites for nine months. Also appearing are plastic surgery victims whose doctors are hawking screenplays, untalented hard-rocker sons, and purchasers of Chanel №5 by the gallon. These all might be the same person or not. I won’t be rewatching to My Imaginary Life for Someone again to doublecheck, but that isn’t meant to be derogatory.

One viewing, especially with a gang of your cohorts, some above average wine, and loads of buttered popcorn, is a rather delightful way to spend 75 or so minutes with this madcap enterprise. Just for fun don’t let on to your pals that it’s all staged.

Kafkaesque allegory, anyone? If so, the Finnish Anna Eriksson serves one up with W, her second feature. An award-winning artist/director/composer/singer, here is someone you might label “brilliant” with a certain assuredness you won’t be eating your adjective in a year or two.

W opens with a battered Madame Europa (Eriksson) in bed, nude but for some metal straps, and naked she will remain throughout. Bellowing to her Chinese man-machine, the aching world leader yowls: “My sheets need changing. . . .Where is my medicine? . . . You are a heartless bastard. . . . I created you. Don’t forget that.”

Her skin is transparently white, as if the sun had abandoned her at birth. But then all of her nurse-attendants, the man-machine, and her young son all could give Bela Lugosi a run for the money in a pallidness contest. They also all smoke. The boy, too. And there is never a smile among these inhabitants of a barren fortress.

Outside, there is ceaseless snow. Inside, there are endless corridors and an unclothed, aged man who seems to be reliving the French Revolution. While wandering about, he notes: “Your time is over, bitch. It’s never coming back . . . . You sold your children for a good fuck. . . . Revolution isn’t born from the cunt. It’s born in the hearts of the poor and desperate.”

Yes, Europa/Europe is in her/its death throes. There is a war closing in on the mad damsel, and when the enemy arrives she will no doubt be torn apart.

“The future was a smoke screen, after all.”

What might seem unpleasant isn’t. The reason: every frame of W if stilled would be worthy of framing. Matisse once noted that “creativity takes courage,” and Edward Hopper added, “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”

The courageous Ms. Eriksson here seems to be arguing that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Utilizing the screen as a canvas, she seduces you into her vision of a chaotic time cleaved from any hope. Or as Madame Europa insists: “We are born, we live, we die . . . in our imagination.”

(The Best Line of Dialogue Award of June 2024 from W: “Your face reminds me of a eunuch I once loved.”)

Lovely In Latex

If that’s not dystopian enough for you, Fran Gras’s startlingly short from Spain, “Latex Kid,” will push you over the edge into deliciously scintillating despair and then might just rescue you.

In this futuristic world--or more likely the world of now--the populace is slowly enveloping itself in shiny black latex from head to toe, from businessmen to teens to world leaders. Why?

We are told that material’s “flexibility and adhesive properties are so good that latex is the perfect material to be used as a second skin that protects us from the real world.”

No wonder the most influential musician of the time is the Latex Kid, who from his very beginnings in an orphanage was all black and shiny. And no wonder his music is a caterwaul.

“Is there someone under all that ebon glossiness, someone who wants to escape his “protective coating”? his fans ponder.

With an appropriately pulsating, garish soundtrack by Lavenzza and plucky visuals that both seduce and repulse, “Latex Kid” might just be the best ten minutes of soul-searching cinema you’ll see this year.

Black Mirror meets the Muppets in EROS V’s laugh-out-loud 12-minute venture “Meat Puppet.” Here Nathan (David Jonsson), a young man, due to his addiction playing with action figures, misses the first 15-minutes of his graduation ceremony. His disheartened girlfriend (Måiréad Tyers) phones him and tells him in so many words to get his ass to campus. But as Nathan’s about to head out, his doorbell rings.

A package! He wasn’t expecting any deliveries today. What could be in the box? Why it’s an innocent looking hand puppet. Oh my! Well, why not try it out? Famous last thoughts?

Instantly, Nathan’s soul is entombed in the Elmo-lookalike that has grafted itself onto his arm. Nathan’s pupils turn white and his body begins to die, and the puppet comes to life. Maybe if his girlfriend arrives in time, she will be able to save the day without resorting to . . . ? Well, maybe not.

Eros V, whose work has been broadcast on Disney+, has contrived here a bit of a classic romp that hopefully will be available on all platforms. Mankind deserves it.

Sam Fox’s “Fck’n Nuts,” is a 12-minute ode to a teen romance doomed by a misunderstanding. You see Sandy (Mandie Nichols), who dresses in pink and even vomits in pink, is being wooed by the awkwardly lovesick Dan (Vincent Stalba). He’s even insisting on meeting the gal’s parents.

Sandy is a bit unnerved by this request and tries to dissuade Dan but fails. She does warn him that her parents are “nuts.” The young man doesn’t care and enters her home, where almost immediately he starts gasping for air. What he doesn’t comprehend is that Sandy’s folks are really nuts: man-sized peanuts, in fact. To top it off, Dan has a nut allergy that causes ungainly facial pustules. What’s needed here is a man-sized EpiPen. Is one around?

Sweet and ghoulish, with knee-slappingly funny costumes and production design, this one is a fck’n treat whether you like snacks dry-roasted or not.

Day of the Cyclops

Just as salty is Justin Edwards, a Georgia lad who records under the moniker “Saturated” when not directing mind-piercing entertainments. Eye-piercing though would be more accurate. In his “Day of the Cyclops,” Myles (an engaging Kaylah Dixon) is videotaping herself in her garage when she trips on a cord and falls directly upon a replica of the Eiffel Tower, gauging her eye socket. Not a pretty sight.

Time passes, and one morning while considering overdosing on painkillers, an earthquake strikes, and Myle’s tablets scatter. Striding into her front yard to check out the aftermath, she discovers a huge hole at the bottom of which lies a cyclops’ skull.

Intriqued, Myles brings the bonehead inside, places it next to her Apple laptop, and starts googling for cyclops factoids. Suddenly the skull (Adam McCabe) starts chatting with her, revealing that he’s a demigod in need of contacting Zeus on a hilltop.

Up the hill the pair goes where Zeus strikes the duo with lightning, and Mr. Cyclops gets a face. All he needs now is a body. Does Myles know anyone who wouldn’t mind getting murdered so a demigod can walk about after centuries of just lying about?

Seldom less than resoundingly ridiculous, this light-footed entertainment traverses its 17 minutes with just one goal: to make you smile . . . and it unqualifiedly succeeds.

Holly Bates’ “House of Whoreship

As does Melbourne-based Holly Bates’ “House of Whoreship,” which has been labeled by Vice as “a queer short film made for sex workers by sex workers.” This, her graduate film and directorial debut, displays great promise and humanity while breaking new ground on that-time-of-the-month trope.

Violet (Matisse Laida), working in a cheap brothel, discovers she and her cheating ex are on the same shift. That’s depressing. But wait, there’s more. The young woman just got her period, has to barter for dexies from one co-worker and for a sponge tampon from another. If this isn’t enough, the sponge wedges up deep into her privates and she has a client waiting. Hey, Violet wonders, who has short enough fingernails to pull out the tampon without causing injuries? Her former gal pal, of course.

“The hooker gods are looking out for us.”

Well, the sponge is dislodged and all ends well or as Violet intones, “The hooker gods are looking out for us.”

Definitely a good pitch reel to raise cash for a feature effort, “Whoredom” is a well-helmed, solidly acted launching of several new talents.

-----------------------------------------------

These were just a splattering of this year’s offerings, a collection that reminds one of when Man Ray asked: “Isn’t it this perpetual mania of imitation that prevents man from being a god?” If so this highly original group of directors is clearly heading for Mount Olympus.

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Rendez-Vous-ing with the Best of Current French Cinema

Brandon Judell — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 12:35:22 +0000

Rendez-Vous-ing with the Best of Current French Cinema Brandon Judell April 5, 2024 - 08:35

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I could never fathom why some folks in the past didn't take to the French. I, for one, was already a Francophile by my late teens. Locale: the Bronx in the '60s.

Since then, Cocteau, Sartre, Collette, and de Beauvoir, in battered paperback formats, have found permanent residence on my shelves, which have since been shuffled along to another borough. (If you look hard enough, you'll also find a Céline or two. I know. I know. He moved in before the Cancel Culture arrived.)

All of which reminds me of being 20 and finding myself meandering without direction through the arrondissements de Paris, stopping only to imbibe a bit of caffeine at Les Deux Magots, as I awoke to all of the possibilities of l'amour that might one day greet me.

Sadly, one-night stands aside, l'amour has mostly sidestepped me, but that is not France's fault, so I will not forgive D.H. Lawrence for saying of the country that gave us Camembert: "I would have loved it—without the French."

Nor Billy Wilder:" France is the only country where the money falls apart, and you can't tear the toilet paper."

Nor Fran Lebowitz arguing the French are "Germans with good food."

Philistines all.

This brings us to the 29th Rendez-Vous with French Cinema presented by Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center. Twenty-one features that until now were unseen upon our shores. "Is there a theme that unites these descendants of Breathless, 400 Blows, and The Mother and the Whore?" you ask. Why not turn again to Jean Cocteau, who remarked, "Between the life we live and the unlived life is the love we have never formed."

These features often showcase an assemblage of characters fighting to keep their "form" of love alive as the powers-that-be seek to break up their families, beat them into submission, tempt them into selfish immorality, or go bonkers with their genetic makeup.

Take Auction/Le livre des solutions. Pascal Bonitzer, who co-wrote the screenplays for Paul Verhoeven's tongue-in-cheek Sapphic nun-fest Benedetta (2021) and Catherine Breillat's steamy May/December romancer, Last Summer (2023), here delves into a modern art-world dilemma: who is the rightful owner of a work of art when the rightful owner is long deceased?

As director here, Bonitzer fashions a caustic look at a highly regarded auction house's underpinnings, creating a landscape where virtue is not a ready resident.

The tale begins with André Masson (Alex Lutz), a seasoned auctioneer, being made aware an Egon Schiele painting, one missing since 1939, is supposedly hanging in the home of an innocent working-class chap (Arcadi Radeff). Masson's first reaction is disbelief. When the work's authenticity is established, he knows what the sale of such a work can mean to his prestige and his company's bottom line, but can he sign up the owner? Of course, but what happens when it's discovered the work was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish family whose heirs might still be alive in the good ol' U.S. of A?

Engrossing, timely, and with a lead character whose motto is "being hated is good for the job," Auction doesn't exactly argue there's more to life than just cash flow. Nor does the film insist for quite a while that leading a well-balanced life with more than a dollop of romance is ideal. But by the end, Auction does make a rather strong case that there are moral ways of winning, ways that just might take a little more effort on everyone's part.

If you're in the mood for more light-hearted fare, Nathan Ambrosioni's Toni takes a fatherless family of five and reveals how les enfants terribles' growing pains affect their fortyish mom, who's experiencing quite a few aches of her own. What might seem overly familiar plot-wise is really quite entertaining, thanks to the scintillating Camille Cottin as the fretful maternal figure. You'll recognize Ms. Cottin from Netflix's Call My Agent!, the witty cult series that gained extreme popularity on our shores during the Covid era.

Some background: Toni, who became a pop star as a teen due to her manipulative stage parent, happily gave up fame for motherhood. But now, with a dead husband, little cash on hand, two teens readying for university, a Christmas tree dropping all its needles, a coming-out or two, plus the never-ending laundering, dusting, and cooking, Toni realizes she wants more. Maybe the time has come to carve out some me-time. But without any skills, will the workforce welcome her? Maybe she can attend a university herself. How about becoming a teacher? But what can she teach?

Her own mother laughs heartily at the notion. Toni's brood looks dismayed. "What about us?" they question. Oh, no! Has life really bypassed her? Has she paid too high a price for caring too much about everyone else for too long?

With solid comic timing sprinkled with momentary angsts and cosmic tribulations, you wouldn't be surprised if Michelle Obama was an inspiration here. After all, the former First Lady is the one who instructed, "I want [children] to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It's just as much about letting them know . . . that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list." That's Toni in a nutshell.

There's no nutshell, however, that can contain one of France's most highly awarded sci-fi, epidemic-inspired offerings. Boasting more than a twinge of Cocteau's whimsey within its carryings-on, Thomas Cailley's The Animal Kingdom has already garnered 25 nominations and awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Director, and Best Visual Effects from various festivals. Here is, at heart, a love story between father and son that begins and ends in a car with the eating of potato chips.

While stuck in traffic on the way to visit his wife in a hospital, François Marindaze (Romain Duris) berates his son Émile (Paul Kircher) for feasting on the aforementioned salty snack.

François, while lighting a cigarette: "Eating is like talking. It defines you as a human being. Even better, it defines how you exist in the world."

Émile: "And eating chips means I don't exist?"

This chat then melds into the difference between disobedience towards a parent and committing transgressions against a system, but before this philosophical combat can rise to another level, there's an attention-grabbing incident on the road ahead of them. A "man" with giant wings has burst through the back doors of an ambulance and is trying to escape "its" guards.

(Pronouns play an important part here because you must decide whether a human who is turning into a creature loses the humanity engrained in his cis-pronoun.)

For father and son, this event isn't all that shocking because Émile's mom, Lana, has already started transitioning into something rather ursine.

What follows is a rather awe-inspiring adventure that continues in a small French town, where folks who are "infected" are being transferred. Yes, some rather nice souls who have mutated into octopi, praying mantises, lizards, and so forth are suddenly finding themselves the victims of extreme bigotry. Hate speech first, guns next?

And if that isn't enough, what if you are a teen lad ready for romance and discover you are growing claws and fangs? There are matters that breath mints can't resolve.

Beautifully shot while perfectly cast and helmed, Animal Kingdom is an exuberant example of humane cinema at its best. At Cannes, Cailley explained that the idea of the film "spoke to me because it allowed me to touch on subjects that interest me, namely the body, our relationship to difference, the issue of passing on the worlds we want to pass on, but also the relationship we have with everything that's alive including things other than our fellow humans."

Moving on to Michel Gondry's The Book of Solutions, this wackadoodle tale of the world's least-talented director can't help but remind you of the trans-Atlantic furor over the Gallic fondness for a certain comedian. The New York Times' Agnès C. Poirier stated this lack of cultural agreement best in her 2017 article, "Why France Understood Jerry Lewis as America Never Did." She writes: "While some Americans felt embarrassed by this contortionist comic, the French embraced Mr. Lewis's humor as both an abstract art and social satire of American life."

In Solutions, director Marc Becker (Pierre Niney) pilfers his unfinished film from its producers after they decide to cast him off the project. He scuttles to the remote countryside, along with his harried editor and assistants, to create a frighteningly incomprehensible masterwork that spurs on mass slumbering.

The archetypal Jerry-Lewis moment here is when Becker, whose knowledge of music is minimal, tries to record his film's score with a ragtag bunch of musicians without a rehearsal, let alone a score. Physical, reverberant goofiness conquers the moment with low-comedy stylings. Not surprisingly, Mr. Becker might just become a town's mayor before the end credits roll. (Surprise cameos: Sting, and if my notes are correct, George Clooney.)

Other fest highlights spotlight French star Virginie Efira in three roles in two offerings. Is she France's Meryl Streep? She certainly has enough award nominations and winnings to be in the running. Add to them her memorable crucifix manipulations as a nun shocking the crowds during the Black Plague, and you have enough reasons to tack her poster on your bedroom wall.

In Delphine Deloget's emotional wringer of a tale, All to Play For/Rien à perdre, Efira is Sylvie, a late-night bartender with two sons, the youngest of whom burns himself cooking up a batch of fries while she's off maneuvering drunks about. That is a no-no for the Child Welfare folks. So, for the rest of this engaging, no-holds-barred look at the working class and their battles with the State and with themselves, Sylvie tries to regain custody of her child, who has a fondness for a live chicken.

Valérie Donzelli's Just the Two of Us has Efira playing twins Rose and Blanche. Rose, rather strong-willed, doesn't have much of a story arc, but Blanche is a whole other story. This school teacher falls for the attractive, intense Grègoire (Melvil Poupaud), who isolates the naïve gal, slowly trying to control her every move. Extremely jealous, he calls her up every hour to discover her whereabouts. He stalks her, impregnates her, uses the child as leverage, screams, and eventually gets physically abusive. No wonder Britannicus is quoted: "I even loved the teardrops I made her shed."

By the end of the Two of Us, I checked myself for black-and-blue marks. But have no fear; by the end of every Efira feature, the heroine is able to walk down the hall or up the road with her head held high . . and no neck brace on.

Also of note is Robin Campillo's latest feature. You might be familiar with his takes on France's ACT UP movement (BPM: Beats Per Minute (2017)) and the problems that arise with loving a male hustler (Eastern Boys (2013)). With Red Island, he recalls his childhood in Madagascar in 1971 as the French were packing up their final colonial base on the island to the glee of the native inhabitants. As one notes: "Have you noticed whenever a white guy sleeps, we breathe more easily."

Campillo employs a French child's gaze to observe his parents' petty jealousies, the community's racist reactions to interracial coupling, and the anger of the Madagascans: "For twelve years, we have been independent but under France's thumb."

Most memorable scenes: prostitutes in rebellion, a household battles a wasp in its bathroom, and the final shot of a white family's attempt to take a photograph of themselves in a land where they were so "happy."

(The 29th Rendez-Vous with French Cinema was produced by Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center. This is an annual event. To check up on all the offerings of Film at Lincoln Center, check out the organization's website: https://www.filmlinc.org/)

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Gene Wilder, Challah, and Yiddish Mamas

Brandon Judell — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 19:50:09 +0000

Gene Wilder, Challah, and Yiddish Mamas Brandon Judell January 27, 2024 - 14:50

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My Jewish friends, students, relatives, and neighbors are a-quaking in their Crocs nowadays. Well, some of them are anyway. "Why?" you ask.

To be a Jew post-Oct. 7^th certainly feels different than being a Jew pre-Oct. 7^th.

When I lit my two menorahs last month and placed them on my living-room windowsills, my paranoia kicked in. What if the guy across the street owns a Kalashnikov rifle and doesn't like writers of Judaistic film reviews?

I was going to open this piece on the 33rd New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center with: "It's hard being a Jew nowadays," but upon double-checking, I saw I had kicked off last year's review with the same line.

"When was it ever easy?" you might ask.

"But in New York City?"

Nowadays, I wouldn't wear a Golda Meir T-shirt on the subway for all the tea in Williamsburg. A Sandra Bernhard T-shirt maybe.

So, how do you define a Jew in case you are anti-Semitic and don't want to accidentally hate the wrong person? It's getting harder, though not as difficult as defining queer sexuality. If you are a bigot, you might have an easier time picking on Mormons.

Yes, a person's Jewishness will become harder to designate in future decades. According to a 2020 Pew Research Center conducted in the States, "42% of all currently married Jewish respondents indicated they have a non-Jewish spouse. Among those who had married since 2010, 61% were intermarried, and the percent increased to 72% when Orthodox Jews were excluded from the data." No wonder mezuzah sales are plummeting.

In the future, Film at Lincoln Center might have to retitle this annual event, the "New-York-I-think-My-Great-Grandmother-Observed-Passover Film Festival."

"So what is a Jew?" I ask again, no doubt, to delay getting to the gist of this article: the reviews.

Ask Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, who noted in his classic Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews (1992) that "[w]hat makes Jews Jewish is a specific religious culture and historical experience that has shaped their values and strongly influenced how they view the world."

Well, my stepmother Gerda left me a 1940's photo of herself in Berlin sitting on a bench marked "For Jews Only." A month before he expired, my father Walter (pronounced "Vahl-tah") shared how he was once rounded up by the Nazis, and only through his boss's connections did he get to escape to the Big Apple. All of which caused me to have a longish affair in the 1990s with a German film director, who at one time was certain his biological father had been a Nazi. "Oy vey!" Could I be more Jewish? (Happily, two of his films eventually played at the New York Film Festival, and his pop turned out to be just a run-of-the-mill World War II German.)

Which leads us to the National Center for Jewish Film's restoration of the Yiddish feature Hayntige Mames, or as Gentiles like to call it, Mothers of Today. Starring 1930s radio star Esther Field, who was known as the Jewish Kate Smith before the airwaves deified her as the country's "Yiddishe Mama."

Mothers chronicles how two neighbors from the Old World feel a kick in the kishkes when their children are corrupted by the New World ways. What happened to the Fifth Commandment: Honor your mother and Father?

Forget it! Instead, there are jewel robberies, gunshots, kvetching, some terrific crooning (including of "Kol Nidre"), prison scenes, elopements, lots of tears and cooking, and the seduction of a cantor. Once heartbreaking, now far less so, Mothers is still a hoot of entertainment, capturing much of the mishigas many immigrants continue to face today after cruising past Lady Liberty,

Best of all is the beautifully delivered platitudes: "Children only realize their mistakes after they make them,"; "Man plans, God laughs," and the always useful "Love isn't a potato."

This kosher caprice, by the way, was directed by a Mr. Henry Lynn, of whom Variety's critic once wrote concerning another of his features: "The director's name is Henry Lynn. Maybe he's a Jew, and maybe he isn't. If he isn't, he doesn't belong at the helm of a Yiddish film. As a matter of fact, judging from his work here, he doesn't belong at the helm of any kind of film."

Shabbos Goy

No one would say such a thing about either Adam Goott or Alex Szlezinger after viewing their four-minute documentary short "Shabbos Goy." Before we get to what a "Shabbos Goy" actually is, let it be known that the directors are former Cambridge students who, in 2017, at the age of 19, started a popular Facebook site, Your Jewish Dad Talk UK.EU, "a page exclusively reserved for the taking the piss out of nebbish Jewish dads." A photo of Mr. Eugene Levy appropriately greets all who enter the site.

So what is this job all about? According to the Seattle Times' Dion Nissenbaum, "[t]his irregular Shabbos Goy trade grew out of a unique need in Orthodox communities for non-Jewish help on the Sabbath. From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, Jewish law calls on the observant to take a break from life. Cellphones are turned off. No one is allowed to drive. Meals must be cooked in advance. There's no TV. No computer. No shopping." So if a light needs to be switched off, or a fuse changed, or a hotplate needs plugging in, the Shabbos Goy steps in. (Please note that Elvis Presley and Barack Obama are among the Shabbos Goys of note if you are writing up a list.)

This charmingly wry short, though, while sharing that trivia, focuses instead on one Terry Neville, who sometimes sings to himself but has never run for office. A self-proclaimed "complete atheist," this gentle, slightly beefy soul, attired in a black tank top and jeans, has been serving as a caretaker at the Radlett United Synagogue for over a decade. "I do bits and bobs the Jewish people can't do," he explains.

Yes, he thoroughly enjoys his job, even though he's against circumcision. "Why do that?" he exclaims, after which he's shown knifing a carrot.

"Coming in seven days a week to work in a synagogue I would never ever thought would happen," Mr. Neville smilingly shares. "I don't know what it is, but I always ended up working with Jewish people. I talked to my family about my job, but I don't think they really understand."

With a bit of clever animation and shots of Mr. Neville eating a different carrot from opposite ends with Candy the Horse, this film is a perfect antidote to the lengthier offerings such as Oppenheimer and Killing of the Flower Moon that we've been repeatedly subjected to lately.

How to Make Challah

Also brief, clocking in at less than 12 minutes, is Sarah Rosen's "How to Make Challah," a feistily entertaining collage of two home movies: one shot in 1975 and the other in 2022.

Here are the women of the Rosen family trying to keep a Jewish family tradition alive, the Friday baking of challah, which started back in Lithuania. In the earlier footage, Sarah's Aunt Jane is filming her 97-year-old grandmother Ida (Sarah's great-grandma) in her kitchen. Forty-seven years later, Sara is shooting her Aunt Jane at the same task. Gleefully, for us, neither of the sardonic bakers is that joyful about their chores.

Immediately, Ida is kvetching while kneading: "The women of today, they want everything readymade. They want to bother for nothing. They wouldn't bother with baking anything. They think you're crazy!"

Jump ahead, and we're with Aunt Jane, who has never before been intimate with a challah in its early stages. She has only agreed to try her hand in the kitchen after her niece got a grant to make this short. "I am not a baker. Gar nicht. This is going to be immortalized, but I am not a baker. . . . If this turns into a challah, it'll be some type of miracle."

Well, miracles occur now and then. So yes, indeed, the challahs arise. And with the addition of some archival photos of neighborhoods long gone, a little chatter about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, plus shots of Aunt Jane's creative plant watering, the result is never less than pleasurable, making you want to be around for 47 more years to see Sarah's offspring shooting her in the kitchen.

Sadly, there's no Gene Wilder Jr. to carry on his family's tradition. Only a Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, a Willy Wonka, a Leo Bloom, and a Jim in Blazing Saddles (1974) to remember Gene Wilder by. Oh, and don't forget there's his film debut in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and his infamous love affair with a sheep in Woody Allen's Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972). But now, thanks to Ron Frank's disarmingly loveable documentary, Remembering Gene Wilder (to be released by Kino Lorber on March 15th), the actor appears so alive on the big screen that you can't believe he actually departed us in 2016.

Utilizing the star's audio-book reading of his autobiography as the film's narrative voice, Frank intercuts scenes from Wilder's classics with recollections from Mel Brooks, Carol Kane, Alan Alda, plus his relatives and friends. Then there's, of course, footage of his tragically short yet tinged-with-happiness marriage to Gilda Radner.

"Acting is so much easier than life," the man who started out as Jerome Silverman in Milwaukee insists, and who could argue with that?

Also showcased was the exemplary Hitler documentary, The Books He Didn't Burn, a look at how the printed word shaped or misshaped der Führer. James Hawes' tear-inducing Holocaust biopic, One Life, stars Anthony Hopkins in more than fine form as Sir Nicholas Winton, who, as a young man, spearheaded the rescue of over 600 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, a venture forgotten for too many a decade.

Also not to be overlooked is Yuval Shapira's short, "The Speed of the Distance Between Us," a collection of interviews with parents of Israeli soldiers who have died in service over the years and the shrines of sorts they have set up for their sons and daughters in their homes. As one mother notes, "Today, I have learned to live with absence."

(The 33rd New York Jewish Film Festival began January 10th and ran until the 24th. This year, Film at Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum presented 28 features, documentaries, and shorts examining Jewish life past and present as conceived by international filmmakers.)

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Sweatshop Dolls, a Fashionista's Love Story, and So Much More: The New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) Struck Again

Brandon Judell — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 22:39:42 +0000

Sweatshop Dolls, a Fashionista's Love Story, and So Much More: The New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) Struck Again Brandon Judell August 3, 2023 - 18:39

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Image from "Borderline"

With Mad Hatter Kennedy Jr. stirring up racism with some rather odd theories about Covid; with Oppenheimer A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki once more; and with Simu Liu wooing Barbie, one might forget that USA Today reported a new national survey by Stop AAPI Hate suggests "more than ten million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have experienced acts of discrimination."

Fortunately again, in fact for the 22^nd time, NYAFF supplied a solid, cultural one-two punch to the jaw of rampant bigotry.

With over 60 offerings, including eight world premieres, from 15 countries including Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, voices seldom reaching our shores, except sporadically on Netflix or more often on Criterion, were heard. And what majestic voices, especially that of director Zhang Wei, whose past and present works were showcased at the fest.

Clearly, Wei's Factory Boss (2014) supplies adequate proof why he deserved such an honor with this unflinching view of capitalism gone awry. Here Yao Anlian portrays one of cinema's more complex capitalists, Lin Dalin, a role that won him numerous Best Actor accolades.

Boss opens with a bit of contexting: "The global financial storm hasn't come to an end yet in 2010, resulting in bankruptcy of thousands of toy factories in China's Guangdong province. Only several have survived."

So be prepared for speedy assembly lines of dismembered doll parts getting readied for the States, an accurate visual metaphor for the workers at Lin’s factory. His laborers haven’t been paid for over two months. Additionally, their lunchbreaks have been cut in half; they are forced to live in elfin dormitory rooms shoehorned with fellow toilers; and when paid, their salaries are below the designated minimum wage. Forget health concerns.

Yes, Lin refuses to have a broken ventilation system repaired causing his employees to breath in toxic fumes throughout their forced-overtime days. One elderly long-time employee even comes down with leukemia. No wonder a company truck is set on fire in protest. Then a strike. Signs read: "Stop exploitation! Pay us!"

Yet Lin claims he's a friend to all who work for him. He's only financially strapped at the moment because the American mega-corporations he deals with drive such hard bargains. And if he closes his factory or moves it to another country such as Burma, where workers rights are said not to be an issue, his 1000 employees will be forced back to their small villages only to live in dire poverty anew.

Along with last year's remarkable Oscar-nominated documentary Ascension, helmed by Jessica Kingdon, that explored nearly all aspects of China's socio-economic carryings-on, even venturing into a life-sized-sex-doll factory, these films display how little we know about our competitor for world power, and how alike we are in so many arenas. That's not totally complementary.

About now, a love story would be a nice change of pace, and Daishi Matysunaga's nigh perfect Egoist fills the bill. Here a wealthy fashion editor, Kosuke (Ryohei Suzuki), who's very friendly with mirrors, decides he needs a trainer to get his body back in prime shape. Why? To garner tender passion and more, of course. The young, cute Ryuta (Hio Miyazawa) is immediately recommended to him at a dinner one night by a pal. He's hired.

After much weightlifting and many sit-ups, the two sweaty souls fall in love on the mattress and off. There's a problem though: Ryuta reveals he dropped out of high school at age 14 to support his mother, and his main current vocation is copulating with the male populace for cash.

Oh, no! Won't working nights and some afternoons with a condom on derail a romance? Well, what if Kosuke becomes Ryuta's lone client and pays him monthly? "I'll buy you," he offers.

What follows is both surprising and beautifully wrought. With a solid script and direction, plus first-rate thesping . . . and with a whole lot of teary Mother-Love incorporated, The Egoist is one of the top queer offerings out so far this year.

Then there's a Quark Henares' Where Is the Lie? This Filipino export is accompanied by the following program note: "You may be thinking that life's too short for another film about catfishing, ghosting and cancel culture. But think again." I have. I have. But my life expectancy, and maybe yours, really seems too brief for this so-called comedy.

I might be erring with my verdict because I only lasted 20 minutes. Feeling guilty I hung around for another seven minutes. So in the odd chance that the next 58 minutes are scintillating, let me add the rest of NYAFF’s notes:

"Where Is the Lie? is that rare work that transforms the genre into something far deeper and more moving, with a humorous and hard-hitting script based on a real-life incident in the Philippines, as well as a star-making performance by luminous trans woman EJ Jallorina."

"But why, oh, why," I ask, “are so many trans folks depicted on cable and on screen as shallow twits?” The performers here are mainly screaming with unvaried intonations. The lead trans character, after being rejected early on by a beau, screams into her phone in a packed café with a child present: "I hope someone slices your penis off, fucker."

The plot has Janzen, a transwoman, being cat-fished by director in the modeling industry named Beanie (a highly intolerable Maris Racal). This Beanie hires a sweet young man (the ingratiating Royce Carera) to seduce Janzen online, even having him pose nude for photos.

Now 26 people on IMDB have so far hammered Where's the Lie? with a 3.1 out of a 10.0 rating, but there are two positive critical reviews on the site that note the venture's political correctness and importance for the Philippines, where transphobia runs rampant. So if your life's not too short, you might just want to decide for yourself where the critical truth lies.

*****

Other highlights of NYAFF include the brutally hard-hitting In Broad Daylight, a suspenseful undercover look at disabled care a la Spotlight.

The devastating but quite marvelous animated short "Borderline" imagines the afterlife of a young girl from her deathbed onward with the simplest of line drawings.

A young gay man returns home to China after ten years away to visit his homophobic mom in this at-times funny and always wise documentary short "Will You Look at Me?"

If you are seeking unbridled menstrual-cycle silliness about teens who gain super powers, including the ability to fly, all due to that time of the month, Mayhem Girls is for you. Yes, they start robbing banks.

From Iran, in the incisive short "Pufferfish," Ava, a young girl, has to start wearing a hijab and weighing all the rules and guilt that accompany her new identity that began just that morning. Can she still play with her male friend? And what if she must go against her teachings to save a life? As with most of NYAFF offerings, wisdom and humanity win out.

(The Festival, presented by the New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center, ran from July 14th until July 30th. Please note that many of these films will not gain American distributorship so this would have been your one chance to see them unless you are traveling East, clearly a persuasive reason to become a member of Film at Lincoln Center: https://www.filmlinc.org/membership/)

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Turtles, Hummingbirds, Saints, and a Marxist Oscar Wilde: New Italian Cinema Is Alive and Percolating at Lincoln Center

Brandon Judell — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 12:59:24 +0000

Turtles, Hummingbirds, Saints, and a Marxist Oscar Wilde: New Italian Cinema Is Alive and Percolating at Lincoln Center Brandon Judell June 14, 2023 - 08:59

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From the film Chiara. Saint Clare all alone.

Last week was the 22^nd year that Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center showcased the descendants of Fellini, Pasolini, and Antonioni. Yes, each year "Open Roads: New Italian Cinema" spotlights the best or most promising works of contemporary filmmakers from the Boot: a reflection of sorts to what’s occurring on screen and off. Indeed, here’s an annual visualization of a country’s past, present, and future.

Or as a journalist notes in Gianni Amelio's Lord of the Ants, a recreation of the demonization of the homosexual Marxist playwright/poet Aldo Braibanti in the late 1960s: "This trial is a mirror of our country in its backward, narrow-minded, criminal aspect. That's why you must fight." And the directors featured here do fight, taking on ecological disasters, political corruption, the misogyny of the Church, therapy, and the challenges of being an ophthalmologist in love, often doing so with more than a sliver of absurdist humor.

Not so funny is Lord of the Ants, a hard-hitting look at Fascism's veiled attacks on Queerdom. Here alone is reason enough to celebrate this festival. Amelio, who's come out late in life, has been helming since 1967 (e.g. the Oscar-nominated Open Doors (1990); the mesmerizing Lamerica (1994)). In the past, he's addressed Italian terrorism, physicists such as Enrico Fermi, and a mother's prostitution of her daughter. Now he focuses on Briabanti (Luigi Lo Cascio) who besides his artistic endeavors is also a myrmecologist, a studier of ants. Why ants? "Ants put the collective good before self-interest."

Briabanti also noted that "love is the greatest cruelty," yet in his mid-40s, he still falls for the innocent Ettore (Leonardo Maltese), a 23-year-old wide-eyed disciple. Well, the romance incites Ettore's highly Christian family to kidnap the young man and place him in a mental institution. Let the electroshock begin. Of course, that's not enough. Soon Briabanti is arrested, but not for homosexuality, but for "plagiarism of the mind."

You see laws against same-sex love were not on the books according to a reporter covering the case because "Mussolini reasoned this way. 'If I condemn the faggots, I admit they exist in Italy, something which is impossible because in Italy, we're all males for pity's sake.'"

The dictator was not alone. A gent in Lord asserts: "As I see it, inverts have two choices: either they get treatment or they kill themselves." But what can cause some to become queer: "One doctor said books less than 100 years old are dangerous."

Lord of the Ants is a recounting of the trial that could end up with Briabanti being imprisoned for up to 15 years. With a first-rate script that refuses to depict the poet as totally sympathetic, plus a solid cast and picturesque scenery, here’s an offering that in earlier decades would be an art-house smash.

Apparently, you don't have to be gay to find life a bit challenging, at least according to Like Turtles (Come le tartarughe). This, the charming directorial debut of actress Monica Dugo, in which she also stars, tells of a happy housewife, Lisa, who has her daily routine down pat. In her lovely new apartment, her doctor-spouse (Angelo Libri), her sexually awakening teen daughter, Sveva, and her young son, Paolo, know Mom is always looking out for them. Clothes on the floor magically wind up on hangers, dinners are always on time, and there’s a kiss for all as the brood leaves for work and school. Then a major disruption occurs in her life cycle.

Dad, suffering from a slight case of conjugal repugnance, packs up and leaves, breaking the news in a note.

Lisa in disbelief gasps: "I really believed he couldn’t live without my smile, without my habits."

Despondent, her response is to situate herself in the apartment's newly built wardrobe. She'll sleep, eat, and give maternal advice now and then through the closet's doors. She's not crazy she insists, but as her boy recalls from a school lesson, "Tortoises go into hibernation in winter because they are cold and tired."

So can a chilled wife, whose career has been catering to others, learn to come out of hiding and regroup? Well, you already know the answer. As for bearing malice towards her spouse, Lisa tells Sveva: "Hate is like drinking poison and waiting for the other to die." No deaths here, only a well-scripted, finely cast feature that spills over with simplistic yet satisfactory wisdom.

Then there's the opening night offering, Francesca Archibugi's not-so-simple adaptation of Francesca Archibugi's much acclaimed 2019 novel The Hummingbird (Il colibri).

Please note for the first 25 minutes or so, this filmgoer had quite a bit of trouble IDing who was who and what was going on, having not read the book as of yet. (It's now on my Kindle.) Well, you might blame this lack of comprehension on not-yet-diagnosed mental disabilities, but please take in that Publishers Weekly stated in its review of the text that it was "cleverly structured like a jigsaw puzzle." The New Yorker added that the non-linear novel's "temporal leaps, though sometimes disorienting, cunningly mimic the eddying, insistent nature of memory itself."

But the big difference between the book, which is rather addictive, and the not unformidable film is that in the former, each short entry is labeled with the year in which its action is occurring, jumping from 1999 to 1960 to 1974 to 2013 and so forth.

In constructing the film, Archibugi has shared: "I gambled on removing any date and any reference that would unravel the question: what era are we in? I wanted the flow of time to be narrated only the actors."

The result is one scene flows into another with different actors portraying the same characters but at different ages as the camera moves from one room to another. Then, for example, you wonder where did that woman and crying baby come from? Have we met them before when they were younger and unborn? No, this mom you'll eventually learn is a fibbing employee of Lufthansa. Don't worry though. Eventually, you will make sense of it all, although a few dramatic arcs do beg believability.

I almost forgot to tell you this is the rather complete fictional bio of a Dr. Marco Carrera (a quite fine Pierfrancesco Favino), an ophthalmologist, who at times treats old ladies for ciliary blepharitis. Near the beginning of this narrative, the good medic is confronted in his office by his wife’s highly unprofessional therapist, who warns Marco his life might be in immense danger. Add to this suspenseful interlude, sibling rivalry, a decades' long platonic relationship, suicides, jinxes, high-stakes gambling, picturesque locales, deadly accidents, sword lessons, plus hugs and kisses, and you do have a riveting life, sort of a low-keyed Roman Odyssey. For best results: Just read the book first or watch the film twice.

Hey, isn't some cinematic religiosity expected from the home-country of the Supreme Pontiff? Susana Nicchiarelli's Chiara, a biopic of St. Clare of Assisi (the prayer-worthy Margherita Mazzucco), easily fills the bill.

Winner of the Best Italian Film at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, this at-times-seemingly-tongue-in-cheek/at-times highly-serious offering delves into life of the patron saint of eye disease, goldsmiths, laundry, and television. TV? Are you going to second-guess the website Catholic Online?

Chiara, with its Biblical folk dancing and constant breaking into song, isn't exactly Jesus Christ Superstar, but it's nonetheless a fun trip back to the 13^th century.

After being seductively inducted into taking a strict vow of poverty by Saint Francis (Andrea Carpenzano), Clare happily gives up brocade dresses, shoes, family, lengthy tresses, and often edibles, other than breadcrumbs.

Soon, the Lord is rewarding the young lass with miracles. Clare can suddenly make bodies so heavy they can't be lifted, can cause villains to have nonfatal heart attacks, can cure the dying, and can remove pebbles from boys' noses. I won't even mention her concocting olive oil out of thin air.

After becoming the "talk of Rome," Clare also fights misogyny among the Church's powerbrokers and converts women across Europe, including princesses, to take on her vows: "I, Clare, promise to respect the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to live in obedience, poverty, and chastity."

As for the very comely Saint Francis, he eventually transforms into a major hypocrite, although an exceedingly nice one. Really, so please don't condemn him. Consider if you knew beforehand that when you die, your body'll be chopped into pieces and sold to the churches as artifacts. Wouldn't that inspire you break a few vows, too?

Then for those of you in the mood for a first-rate ecological/political/end-of-civilized-behavior satire in the vein of Adam McKay's Don't Look Up, search no further than Paolo Virzi's Dry (Siccità). Just imagine what what would happen if Italy had no rain for three years. Adultery, scuttling cockroaches, tropical pandemics, right-wing teenage hooliganism, murder, exploitation by the rich, and podcast lunacy are just some elements that pepper an antipasto platter of top stars such as Monica Bellucci and Silvio Orlando, plus an engaging cast of up-and-comers. Clearly, Dry proves dehydration can be exceedingly droll.

Also quite timely is Michele Vannucci's visual stunner Delta. Here cinematographer Matteo Vieille Rivara amazes the eye repeatedly with the natural beauty he captures, especially with several overhead compositions. Yes, dead-eyed fish afloating have their appeal.

There is a story, too.

Based along the Po Delta in Northern Italy, a battle is born. One gaggle of native-born souls are upset over local industries dumping waste into their river. These locals' angst is, however, more focused on the impoverished immigrant poachers who are overfishing, using electrical charges to fatally execute many more carp than they can possibly smuggle over the border.

Rancor expectedly grows, voices rise, and pleas for sanity fail. Consequently, guns are loaded.

Eventually, though, after several skirmishes, Delta becomes a one-on-one war between the peace-oriented wildlife warden Osso (Luigi Lo Cascio) and the ruggedly handsome Elia (Alessandro Borghi), a relentless relationship where the upper hand constantly flips. Add an edge-of-your-seat finale with dedicated performances and polished direction, and you’ll have nothing to carp about.

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(Open Roads: New Italian Cinema ran at Lincoln Center for eight days beginning June 1, 2023. The event was organized by Dan Sullivan of Film at Lincoln Center and by Monique Catalino, Carla Cattani, Griselda Guerrasio, and Rossella Rinaldi if Cinecittà, Rome.)

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A Celebration of the Outrageous, the Overlooked, and the Accidentally Uplifting

Brandon Judell — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 02:36:34 +0000

A Celebration of the Outrageous, the Overlooked, and the Accidentally Uplifting Brandon Judell January 16, 2022 - 21:36

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Scene from the movie Jancinto

The literal translation of the term film maudit is "cursed film." Well, back in 1949, the writer/director/god Jean Cocteau headed a jury that pulled together a showcase of cinematic offerings that'd been overlooked at the time or were deemed "shocking, outré, and bold." The result: the apparently legendary Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz. Included were Kenneth Anger's zipper-exploding "Fireworks" (1947) and Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934).

Sixty years later, the Harvard Film Archive saluted the Festival with a program that presented among others John Waters' Pink Flamingos (1972), Robert Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George (1968), and Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).

A highlight of my early reviewing life occurred when the latter Pasolini adaptation of the Marquis de Sade novel was screened at the New York Film Festival just before its American release. Sitting in the mezzanine, leaning over the railing, I was able to watch over two-thirds of the sold-out screening running out in heels during the infamous poop-dinner scene.

Pink Flamingos also included a poop-ingestion moment that immediately bestowed stardom on the actor Divine. Audiences at its midnight screenings, however, never ran out. They were too stoned.

Now carrying on this tribute to unappreciated, experimental, and sidelined films is the Third Annual Film Maudit 2.0. Presented by the L.A. Performance Space and Gallery Highways from January 12-23, daring cinephiles will now be able to envelope their minds in over 100 works from 23 countries both virtually and in person. Thanks to Festival Artistic Director Patrick Kennelly, you can expect both the new and a few classics from the vault such as Russ Meyer's singular paean to man-killers with massive bosoms, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Kill! (1965).

Once considered porn-ish, the flick has now gained quite a few feminist credentials. Just ask revered critic B. Ruby Rich who, after 50 years, has revised her initial stance. She now insists that Faster Pussycat is no longer "a prehistoric relic of a film, steeped in misogyny and outdated values."

John Waters adds that Faster Pussycat is "beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future." And who can argue when the screenplay offers dialogue that includes: "Women! They let 'em vote, smoke and drive -- even put 'em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president!"?

Moving on to current fare, there’s Johannes Grenzfurthner’s deliriously witty, yet highly discomforting, Masking Threshold (2021), a feature that brought me immense joy when I finally realized it was not a documentary. The chance that I could have ever actually run into its deranged IT worker, P.T. Alcorn, on the street would have made me quite agoraphobic.

(The locale of Threshold, by the way, is Apopka, Florida. Population: 51,800 as of 2019.)

Mr. Alcorn, who we never get to see in totality, is a polymathic nerd of a man suffering from extreme tinnitus in his little, unkempt house. "Tinnitus," he explains, "is the hearing of the sound that has no external source." The resulting unending attack on his eardrums has upended his gay relationship, his ability to go to work, and his sanity. He is now searching for a cure employing various devices and creatures such as a Blackmagic camera, a polyester shirt, purchases from Best Buy, worms, ants, and lots of fungi. "I want a chance at a normal life," he insists. His mother suggests gingko might restore him to normality. Otherwise, her boyfriend, an Asian, alcoholic acupuncturist who works as a dishwasher at the Olive Garden, might be the answer.

The film is a detailed chronicle of Alcorn's increasingly mad experimentations, his phone calls and email, and his hatred of barking dogs. Then there's the added bonus of closeup shots of his clipping his toenails and removing his earwax with Q-tips. (You just might never want to look at a Q-tip again.)

There're also loads of quotable dialogue you'll surely want to share with your loved ones: "Many people die at 25 and aren't buried until they are 75"; "Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people"; and "If life gives you lemonade, inspect it closely. It might be piss."

With one of the best screenplays of recent years (preferable to Licorice Pizza's), with the superb cinematography of Florian Hofer, and the awe-inducing editing by both Grenzfurthner and Hofer, Masking Threshold is a wry, dissective look at modern society's derangement. It might get a little too Grand Guignol for some in its closing moments, but if you can embrace a character that's equal parts Woody Allen, Norman Bates, and the Cartoon Network's Dexter, has Festival Maudit got a film for you!

Jean-Christophe Meurisse's Bloody Oranges (2021) is probably the closest we'll get this year to a first-rate, off-the-wall French satire on the governing and the governed, one reminiscent of Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Brazen hypocrisy is seemingly king here among the ruling Gauls. The Finance Minster is squirreling away hundreds of thousands of Euros across the boarder while his sycophants are dreaming of ways to do away with the citizens' pensions and benefits. "What if we tax abortions?" one asks.

Then there's the onion-burping female gynecologist whose advice to a 16-year-old virgin about men, first-time-sex, and aging vaginas might be too-in-your face. Oh, and let's not forget the elderly couple competing in a rock 'n' roll dance contest to pay off their debts; the lawyer who believes males are a superior breed and that truth should be overlooked by his guilty clients; the rather insane leftist who feeds his gigantic pig sausages; and the extremely abusive taxi driver who . . . . Well, some things should remain a surprise.

Giddily witty, shocking now and then, while consistently entertaining, Bloody Oranges exposes the inanities of both the privileged and underprivileged classes, sexism, and passion, while showcasing an amazing example of true love and a horrifying new use for microwave ovens. Meurisse claims this quick-paced offering, one you'll want to rewatch, was inspired by actual news stories. Now that is more than a bit discomforting.

For those of you with an extreme fondness for British bus drivers, amateur theater groups, and Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), your prayers are answered by the documentary Alien on Stage. The directors, two long time friends, Danielle Kummer and Lucy Harvey, accidentally came upon a "serious" dramatic production of the cult sci-fi film enacted by a company of mostly middle-aged bus drivers in Dorset. The group's goal: to raise money for charity, I believe, and have fun.

With wobbly sets, well-intentioned costumes, dedicated "would-be" actors, and some sincerely meant direction, the play attracted an audience of 20 and was considered an unassailable flop. A flop until it wasn't one. Or as someone notes, when "the right piece of art [is] met by the right audience, you get magic."

Brought to London, to the Leicester Square Theatre, the very same stage that regularly hosts the likes of Joan Collins, the one-night, under-rehearsed production was quickly sold out and greeted like it was the rebirth of The Rocky Horror Show. "Crikey!"

“We're bus drivers. We're allowed to cock things up. We always do," one star noted.

There were cheers, unrestrained laughter, lengthy applause, and, of course, a standing ovation. Just wait until you see the alien creature break out of the character Kane's stomach. Who needs millions of dollars of special effects? Or as one ticket buyer asserted: "I've been at the National and ENO and Convent Garden. I predominantly work in opera, but Alien, Live on Stage . . . was one of the greatest moments I think I've ever had in the theater." This doc captures that glee in spades.

Moving to another genre -- tongue-in-cheek horror -- writer/director Javi Camino's Jacinto is billed in its press notes as what occurs when "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets Forrest Gump." There's a good chance that the creator of that allusion never saw either film.

Jacinto (Pedro Brandariz), the anti-hero here, is sort of mentally disabled, even muter version of Nicolas Cage's character in last year's acclaimed Pig, except he can't cook. Living with his parents and his pet hog Martino in Mallou, a semi-impoverished village in the Galician mountains, Jacinto lumbers about, sometimes wearing huge paper-mâché masks and often being bullied about by local teens for online videos. When alone in his bedroom, he watches decades-old vampire flicks on VHS tapes supplied to him by his coke-sniffing, heavily indebted brother. To Jacinto, the bloodsucking ghouls on his TV screen are not figures of fantasy, but actual beings debauching the world.

The Old-World priest with his fiery rants at the local church increases Jacinto's belief in this evil possibility every Sunday: "The Pope spoke about the Devil as I have spoken to you many times. He said the Devil isn't something vague. He is a person. The Devil might be your neighbor."

Oh, no! Two leather-clad females, members of a heavy metal group, have just moved next door to Jacinto's family, and they are pounding out the Devil's music while at times wearing facial makeup à la Kiss. Lucifer and his ilk have no doubt arrived causing Jacinto immediately to get out the garlic. And the spikes!

Will discordant electric guitar strumming barraging his eardrums and the possibility of Martino being turned into sausages further unhinge the already unhinged gent? Of course!

With a sense of the macabre not unlike that of the William Castle films of the late 1950s/early 1960s; a dash of class-struggle realities; some group folk singing around the dinner table; and superb cinematography, here's quite an enjoyable offering that was a Jury Award Winner at last year's Austin Film Festival.

Then there's Austrian director Norbert Pfaffenbichler's 2551.01, subtitled "The Child."

Consider the following raves from a handful of top critics: "One of cinema's most unsettling nightmares." "A singular work of the imagination, a harrowing, heartbreaking plunge into the darkest recesses of the soul." And "a film that [takes] elements that one might have encountered in other movies in the past -- black humor, gore, surrealism, erotic imagery, gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and oddball performances -- and presents them in such a unique and deeply personal manner that the end result [is] something that literally looks, sounds and feels like nothing that had ever come before it."

The above praise is all for David Lynch's 1977 debut feature Eraserhead, yet it all applies equally, and if not more, to 2551.01, a tale of an underground dystopia patrolled by a militaristic, white-clad police force. Said to be spiritually inspired by Charlie Chaplin's classic The Kid (1921), the story begins with a man (Erber Stefan) with the head of an ape saving a child (Ionescu David) with a sack over his. The lad, to the apeman's chagrin, won't leave his side.

This is a chronicle of the duo's survival in a world where maybe enduring another day is not always the best choice. What if life was a continued nightmare, one where there was no escape into a dreamworld? Hey! Is that a deranged recreation of Alice in Wonderland's dinner party? Is that moment a bow to the Kafkaesque. A paean to Hieronymus Bosch? That's what this fantasy invokes.

Every head here is grotesquely masked, yet oddly beautiful, too. Inarguably, if you were streaming 2551.01 and continually halting the film, you'd notice every image is worthy of being framed. Yes, this might just one of the most completely realized artistic visions that's reflective of what we're all living through. And Pfaffenbichler promises a sequel. That will be quite a double bill.

(For Film Maudit 2.0's schedule: https://filmmaudit.eventive.org/schedule . Individual tickets are $5; live performances are $10; all-access pass is $65. The Festival web site: https://watch.filmmaudit.org/filmmaudit )

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Biting Angels, Praying Robots, Adulterous Sensei and More

Brandon Judell — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 20:39:44 +0000

Biting Angels, Praying Robots, Adulterous Sensei and More Brandon Judell August 15, 2021 - 16:39

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"No film is an island," Stephen Teo notes in The Asian Cinema Experience, and nowhere is that sentiment more apparent than at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. This showcasing of over 70 offerings from such countries as Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, plus the U.S. upends any notion you might have of any country's singular national identity. There’s an interplay here sometimes between cultures within a film (The Asian Angel) or the universal handling of a social challenge such as the current pandemic (All U Need Is Love).

This signature festival, now in its twentieth year, is needed for so many reasons, not just for spotlighting important auteurs who would otherwise not gain exposure upon our shores. NYAFF can also serve as a salve to counter the attacks on Asian-Americans within our 16 largest cities that have risen by 164% during just the first quarter of 2021. Never underestimate the power of cinema. If Birth of a Nation could rebirth the Ku Klux Klan, why can't the continuing efforts of the New York Asian Film Association and Film at Lincoln Center accomplish the opposite?

One offering that might add fuel to that thought is Yuya Ishii's The Asian Angel, a dramedy with a dash of the fantastic. Here a young widowed Japanese novelist, Takeshi, arrives in Seoul with his 8-year-old son on the promise of new beginnings detailed in a letter from his ex-patriate brother Toru. The pair's first hours, however, in a country with a language they don't speak are a bit unnerving. First, their taxi driver from the airport curses a lot and won’t take them all the way to their destination. Secondly, a news site on Takeshi's cellphone reports: "Japanese-Korean relations are at a post-war low." Finally, the man who greets them in Toru's apartment immediately manhandles the dad and is about to throw him down a staircase just when the dear brother finally arrives home.

Ah, all is good, Toru promises, even though he was joking in the letter he sent his bro. There's certainly no need to worry. Takeshi can join his smuggling operation, sneaking Korean cosmetics over the border to women worldwide so they can have smooth skin

Meanwhile, across town, the lovely Sol, a singer in a department store, is discovering her dream of stardom is quickly going down the escalator. The president of her management company, who’s also her lover, fires her post-coitus. This Weinstein-esque chap certainly has no regrets, after all he has at least five other gals on his cellphone to turn to. But how is Sol going to now support her two adult siblings who are both in need of major succor? No easy remedy is in sight.

Well, look to the heavens. Eventually our Romeo meets our Juliet, but the two can barely converse in broken English. That might be just enough after circumstances cause Takeshi and his brood to share a car with Sol's clan. The former threesome is in search of exportable seaweed by the ocean, and the second grouping is trekking to the countryside to honor their mother on the anniversary of her death. Add the fact, that both Takeshi and Sol have had run-ins in the past with the same unattractive angel who bites, and you know love is in the air. Clearly, even when nations might not get along, their citizens certainly can, and they even might achieve a pocket-sized, deliriously touching utopia in the end.

Before you criticize Vincent Kok's All U Need Is Love as a less than utopian entertainment, please note that this coronavirus slapstick comedy with its all-star ensemble cast (e.g Louis Koo, Tony Leung) is said to be a "benefit effort for Hong Kong industry workers affected by the COVID-19 epidemic" that has been shepherded along by the Hong Kong Performing Artistes Guild, the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, and numerous local studios.

Love opens at an airport with an invigorating James-Bond action segment where a handsomely stoic but unmasked gent is chased every which way though aghast crowds by dozens of masked pursuers. Oh no! He’s caught and arrested for having been exposed to the virus.

Jump to the Grande Hotel, where it's been discovered many positive carriers of the virus have last been situated. Suddenly, the whole hotel is quarantined for two weeks. Thus begin the crazed antics of the booked guests who are forced to entertain themselves while the president of the hotel is trying to escape this enforced lockdown while his brother is repeatedly trying to kill him.

Imagine three poorly written, overacted episodes of The Love Boat possibly starring Charo, Phyllis Diller, and Ernest Borgnine and you might have a sense of what you are getting into. At 47 minutes into Love, I was ready to bang my head against the wall. However, at 49 minutes, I sort of settled down and began enjoying the whole shebang. Especially fine are Julian Cheung and Louis Cheung as two rival triad leaders, who, when forced to share the same room, discover they are homoerotically turned on by each other.

The other subplots seem to have sprung from a time when no one could envision the #MeToo movement. Most of the gals depicted here are either prostitutes or whiny wenches. The guys fare little better, being depicted as inept, dominated spouses, sex-starved loonies, or bungling boobies. There are exceptions, but far less than a handful.

Yet the title tells all. Yes, in the end, humanity, with thanks to L-O-V-E) wins out. (Sadly, the filmmakers couldn't get the rights to the Beatles' song.) And if you are looking for some analytical depth here, you might see the Grande Hotel as a stand-in for Hong Kong society with the hotel president as a metaphor for corrupt political leadership. However, probably no one involved was intending that. They just wanted some good, broad laughs.

Takahiro Horie's Sensei, Would You Sit Beside Me? is definitely ready for a Stateside remake. Sort of a Japanese Marriage Story, Sensei tells of a pair of wed manga authors who have lately been distant from each other. Sawako suspects her spouse, Toshio, of having an affair. He tells her to get driving lessons. She agrees, even though she decides he wants her to leave her self-sufficient when he dumps her,

One day, while searching her room at her mother's house, Toshio discovers Suwako's latest project, a manga about a woman who discovers her husband is having an affair so she conveniently falls in love with her driving instructor. Is this truth or fiction? Suwako’s real-life instructor is handsome but . . .?????

Spirited, touching, and droll, Sensei is one of the many must-sees at the NYAFF. After all, in what other film, can the following line be one of seduction? "With you sitting beside me, I can press the gas pedal."

Min Kyu-dong's The Prayer, could easily be mistaken for an episode of Black Mirror. Hey, wait! I thought I was being astute. It says as much in the Festival's notes.

Well, anyway, in a future home for the infirm, all of the nurses are robots imported to Korea from Germany. One, a higher-priced model, has been taking care of the same comatose patient for over a decade. Programmed not only to take care of the noncommunicative being on the bed, she/it is also programmed to be responsible for the woman’s daughter, who relays that her life is no longer worth living while her mom lives.

Uh-oh! What is a robot to do? This one phones up the nun, who left her calling card behind earlier in the week. The nun not knowing her caller isn’t human, initiates the nurse into an awareness of God and prayer. But is God open to a mechanical creature’s worship? The final haunting fifteen minutes make the whole episode worthwhile viewing, clearly a finale that worth writing home about.

The above are just a sprinkling of the often-dynamic films being showcased by the NYAFF, entertainment that you can experience both virtually or in-person. The Festival which began on August 6^th runs until August 22^nd. There really isn't a better way for a cinephile to spend the next two weeks.

-------------------------------------------------------------

(NYAFF TICKET PRICING AND INFO:
Tickets for the 20th New York Asian Film Festival go on sale Friday, July 23 at noon.
Virtual tickets & passes:
$12 each for general public, $9.60 for FLC members (discounted ticket) for all virtual titles.
$150 discounted FLC All-Access Pass for all virtual titles.

In-person tickets & passes:
In-person single tickets (for both FLC and SVA):
$15 each for general public, $12 for students / seniors (62+) /persons with disabilities; $10 for FLC members (discounted tickets).
In-person Passes:
$60 for 6 films at FLC only (six-film FLC All-Access Pass).
$250 for an in-person pass for screenings at the SVA Theatre (29 films).)

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The 27th NYAFF Showcases the Best in African Cinema

Brandon Judell — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 03:34:00 +0000

The 27th NYAFF Showcases the Best in African Cinema Brandon Judell December 7, 2020 - 22:34

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From the film Hunting Party

Google "best African films" and what shows up first is a top ten list featuring Out of Africa with Streep and Redford, Blood Diamond with DiCaprio, and Black Panther with Boseman. Not exactly what I was searching for.

So where do you go to find homeborn African films with directors and actors and crew who don't have U.S. passports and who aren’t signed up with CAA, William Morris, or Gersh?

If you had attended the the 27^th New York African Film Festival this past week, your cinematic thirst for such product no doubt would have been satisfied. (Thanks to the folks at Film at Lincoln Center and AFF, Inc., this year’s offerings went virtual.)

Six full-length features and eight shorts, both new and old, were chosen to spotlight Sudan and Nigeria, two countries whose film industries were once upended by economic decline and a 30-year-reign of a dictator, respectively. Both have seeming recovered, even to the point where The New York Times is said to have coined the term Nollywood to write about Nigeria’s successful comeback.

Still from the film Coffee Colored Children

One of the must-sees here was Ngozi Onwurah's semi-autobiographical short, "Coffee Colored Children" (1988). Onwurah, born in Nigeria in 1966 to a white mother and a black father, was forced to escape to England with her brother and Mum because of the Civil War then occurring.

With handheld camera footage creating the rawness of home movies, the film commences at a street fair where a batch of celebrants representing every race are partying.

On the soundtrack, appropriately, is Blue Mink's catchy 1966 hit, "Melting Pot":

"Take a pinch of white man

Wrap him up in black skin

Add a touch of blue blood

And a little bitty-bit of red Indian boy

Curly Latin kinkies

Mixed with yellow Chinkees*

You know you lump it all together

And you get a recipe for a get-along scene.

Oh, what a beautiful dream

If it could only come true."

(*Note that by the time Boyzone recorded the tune in the 1990s, the lyrics were slightly more politically correct (e.g. "Curly black and kinky, Oriental and sexy.")

Next shot: a young white man scoops up dog waste, which he carries to an apartment building. Wearing rubber gloves, he smushes some of the feces all over a door and pushes the rest through the mail slot before quickly sauntering off. This is Onwurah's family's door.

Jump to the visual of Mum sponging away the mess without complaint. Onwurah, in a voiceover, recalls how she felt after this act of hate: "It was our fault because mothers with nice white children never had to wash dog poo off their doors."

She and her sibling were in fact the only dark-skinned children in the neighborhood at that time.

Her classmates "thought they could catch it. Blackness. If you touched us, you'd go black."

The camera then hurdles to scenes of her brother and herself at various ages trying to scrub their blackness away, even abusing scouring powders to try to reach their goal. "Sometimes I scrubbed until I bled."

Her brother adds: "Teacher wanted me to color my face with a brown crayon. I couldn't. I was nearly 14 when I could, and then it was without any pride."

The pair do eventually achieve a sense of self-respect, but in doing so they are compelled to ask, "So is Great Britain a great Melting Pot or just an incinerator?" In an unforgettable 16 minutes, Onwurah answers that question.

Visually impressive is the restoration of Sudanese director/playwright Ibrahim Shaddad's Hunting Party (1964). In startlingly crisp black-and-white, Shaddad shot this 41-minute short at a German film school as his treatise on racism.

Open shot: Joe, a parched young black man emerges seemingly from inside a tree. He is being chased through a forest by a posse of armed white men in an unnamed country. His transgression: falling in love with a white woman and she with him.

Desperate, barely able to move on, after hours on the run, Joe comes across a lone house inhabited by a very blond white couple, who supply him with both food and water. Joe, apparently forgetting he’s being pursued, decides to hang around and do some chores for the affable couple. But how affable are they? When the Hunting Party closes in, will Joe discover he was being fed by his savior or by his executioner?

Over a half century ago, the film's simplicity no doubt didn’t mar the power of its message ("Sometimes a white man feels he just has to play racist, even against his better instincts."), especially for German audiences that could still remember firsthand their relatives chasing down Jews.

Feminist Sudanese filmmaker/writer Marwa Zein's prize-wining short film "A Game" (2009) is based on the Alberto Moravia short story "Let's Play a Game." Here, Rana, a young girl, is distraught after her beloved "uncle" walks out of her life after a fight with her mum, Hala.

"Where is Uncle Ibrahim?" Rana asks.

"I don’t want to hear the name of this bastard anymore. Do you understand?" Hala screams back. She then goes into the bathroom to take her pills.

A little time passes, and Rama suggests the two play a game:

Rana: “Look, Mom. I will be you and you will be me. . . . We are going to talk and tell each other everything."

Hala agrees and soon starts imitating her precocious daughter while Rana (as Hala) begins nagging, smoking, and screaming. Suddenly, she, still as her Mum, runs into the bathroom and takes her mother’s pill container and threatens to kill herself.

Hala (as herself) shouts: "What are you doing? Did you lose your mind?"

Rana: "What's wrong, Mum? Aren't we playing?"

Within the six-minute running time, a mother learns a whole lot about her mothering skills and herself.

The other films strike home, too, dealing with a failed gay romance, adultery in a Muslim household, a troublesome teen who accidentally stirs up his grandfather’s horrific war memories. and even a group of women bravely fighting against the authorities to become Sudan’s National Women’s Team.

But what these and the other NYAFF offerings not referred to here have in common was expressed in an interview the late Senegalese film director Djibril Diop Mambéty gave for his film Hyenas (1992): "I . . . wanted to pay homage to the beauty of Africa when I made the film. . . . Africa is rich in cinema, in images. Hollywood could not have made this film, no matter how much money they spent. The future belongs to images. Making a film is a matter of love, not money."

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Kosher Lesbians, Sad Hasidim, and Ethiopians in Love

Brandon Judell — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 20:20:53 +0000

Kosher Lesbians, Sad Hasidim, and Ethiopians in Love Brandon Judell June 11, 2019 - 16:20

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You might not know it but you've just missed out on the seventh year of the Israel Film Center Festival. The Center's goal obviously is to promote Israeli films year-round, showcasing offerings both new and some not so new. Based at the Marlene Meyerson JCC on Manhattan's Upper West Side, there's also a streaming site, so even if you're living in Omaha, you don't have to lack in gefiltered culture.

(And if you are in Omaha, immediately catch up on Haim Tabakman's tale of Orthodox men in love, Eyes Wide Open (2008); the wry comedy TV series Arab Labor; and Amos Gitai’s riveting look at the plight of Orthodox Jewish women forced into and out of marriage, Kadosh (1999).)

As for the IFC screenings this year, imploding universes with engaging dramatis personae, most of whom were bathed in a sort of existentialist miserabilism, were showcased.

Avigayil Koevary as Benny in Tisivia Barkai Yacov's Red Cow.

In Tisivia Barkai Yacov’s Red Cow, 17-year-old Benny (Avigayil Koevary) with her ginger locks is not unlike the holier-than-holy calf that her devout, widowed father, Yehoshua (Gal Toren), has recently discovered. This is a special find because a rare red heifer is used for sacrifices in a ritual that is believed to usher in a new age for Jews. (Check out the Book of Numbers.)

While the calf is isolated within a wire fence -- it’ll be slaughtered in two years -- Benny is penned in by her right-wing, pro-settler dad's extreme religiosity and by his involvement in the politics of East Jerusalem. Yehoshua and his followers clearly have no qualms about killing a few souls, whether Muslim or pro-peace Israeli, if it comes to that:

"We need to get up on the rooftops with guns and refuse to be evacuated. . . . Israel is a Jewish state."

In response, Benny admits, "Sometimes I feel like a complete gentile." She's not a happy camper, not until the lovely Yael enters her life and sets her body on "fire." They kiss . . . they make love . . . they are discovered by Dad. "You disgust me," he notes.

What are Benny’s options? Not many.

Well acted and helmed, the power of this troubled coming-out story stems mainly from its setting and its contemporariness. Red Calf's a fine addition to the growing genre of kosher lesbianism that includes Avi Nesher's The Secrets (2007) and Sebastián Lelio’s Disobedience (2017).

The men in the band reunite in Redemption.

Co-directed and co-written by Joseph Madmony and Boaz Yehonatan Yacov, Redemption could also have been titled The Book of Job. Yet another devoutly religious dad with a daughter to raise holds center stage here.

Fifteen years ago, Menachem (Moshe Folkenflik) was a singer of a semi-well-known band, but he gave up music to study the Torah. That didn't work out too well so now he works in a small grocery store, sticking the prices on you name it. No wonder he's walks about depressed. To top matters off, his wife has died from cancer and his 6-year-old child, Geula (a terrific Emily Granin), is now suffering from the Big C and needs experimental, costly treatments that he can't afford.

What's a guy to do? Why not go to a matchmaker to get a wife and then talk his former band members to reunite and play at weddings so he can make a living? The matchmaking doesn't exactly go so well because such a catch Menachem isn't, but the band does get together and surprisingly they are quite good. Only at these musical moments do you see how charismatic this man once was; otherwise, you might mistake him for a basset hound. Even his best friend Avi calls him "a regular stick in the mud."

Happily, not to spoil it for you, Menachem winds up better off than Job, but still Redemption and Red Cow are not exactly advertisements for becoming a highly religious Jew. This might be one suspects because very few Israeli directors or screenwriters are of the Orthodox persuasion. Now if God had only given Moses a camera and some film, who knows?

Trying to keep love alive in Aalam-Warqe Davidian's Fig Tree.

The best feature though, and possibly one of the better films of the year, is Aalam-Warqe Davidian's Fig Tree. Here Betalehem Asmamawe, as a 16-year-old Mina, a young Jewish, impoverished Ethiopian girl stuck in the war-torn Ethiopia of 1989, gives a startling, vulnerable performance. She rummages through her soul to unearth a Juliet who must guard her Romeo, Eli (Yohanes Muse), from being torn away from her.

As the film instructs during its opening footage, "In the midst of the civil war, young men are hunted down and forced to join the army of tyrant Mengistu Haile Mariam." Mina sees her male peers pulled out of classrooms and kidnapped off the unpaved streets of Addis Ababa. Her own brother has already lost his arm in this conflict.

One mother notes of her son: "I wish I could put him back in my womb."

To survive, Eli hides in a fig tree. Mina visits him daily, supplying food and company, and although they have not yet made love, the couple’s dancing hormones have found more childish outlets to express themselves.

Meanwhile, Mina's grandmother is going black market to get the proper papers for the family to emigrate to Israel. If she succeeds, will Eli get to go, too? Or will he be lost to quirks of his country's history?

"Life is hell, but we have to beat hell, don't we?" it is stated.

Masterful cinematography by Daniel Miller and a sterling cast help recreate Davidian's childhood memories, having emigrated at age eleven near the end of the war herself. So with an unforgettable finale and all that has come before, one can only pray that Fig Tree garners the international attention it richly deserves.

For more information on Israeli film and the Center's offerings. Check out: http://www.israelfilmcenter.org/

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James Franco on Adderall, Lily Tomlin as a Grandma, Jason Schwartzman with a Huge Penis, and the Wolfpack Are Coming to Your Local Theatre

Brandon Judell — Sun, 31 May 2015 17:00:30 +0000

James Franco on Adderall, Lily Tomlin as a Grandma, Jason Schwartzman with a Huge Penis, and the Wolfpack Are Coming to Your Local Theatre Brandon Judell May 31, 2015 - 13:00

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Of the hundreds of films screened at festivals across the nation only a handful will wind up at your local theaters, and that goes for those lucky enough to have been viewed at the growingly prestigious Tribeca Film Festival (TFF).

A month has passed, and the media has already unremembered the 14th edition of Tribeca, which had an overall attendance of 467,000 -- and now it's beginning to forget Cannes and its offerings, such as Todd Haynes' Carol, which already has a 2016 Oscar buzz surrounding it. And by tomorrow, anticipation will start growing for the Telluride, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals, and so forth. A sisyphean cycle if there ever was one. But thanks to some wise studios distributing several of Tribeca's offerings, this year's Fest's imprint might last a little longer.

There's the hauntingly exuberant documentary The Wolfpack (opening June 12th) that, pre-TFF, started garnering plaudits at Sundance. Here a group of brothers and one sister are kept locked away in their Lower East Side apartment by their dad for most of their lives until one intrepidly ventures outside and tastes freedom. How did these sheltered siblings pass their time? Reenacting action films such as Reservoir Dogs.

The Overnight (June 19th) might just be the best American sex comedy since Paul Mazursky's Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice (1969). Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation) and Taylor Schilling (Orange Is the New Black) star as a couple with a child that's new to Los Angeles. The duo immediately makes friends with a seemingly sane father (Jason Schwartzman) and his son at a playground. An invitation for dinner is foisted tout de suite on the naïve newbies and more than a kale salad will be served. Let the seduction games begin. Let the hot tub be entered. Jumping from extreme silliness to unbridled outrageousness to a truth most dramas do not achieve, The Overnight might just duplicate the success of There's Something About Mary of 2015 if there is a comedy god in the vicinity.

And let's not forget Lily Tomlin's Grandma (August 21st), directed by American Pie's Paul Weitz. This wry, moving family tale stars Lily as a hard-as-nails lesbian academic who's not yet over the death of her lover of 40 years. Well, she wakes up crotchety one morning but her witchy mood will get worse. First, she ousts her much younger girlfriend/former student from her home and then her granddaughter shows up needing cash for an abortion. Grammy's broke so she and her kin visit old friends, lovers, and enemies in hope of garnering some dough. Yes, this is a sublime, comic journey, and a superb Lily has seldom been better.

Which brings us to the fierce adaptation of Stephen Elliott's hard-hitting The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder (2009). That Elliott, an author of seven books, survived to write this cult autobiography is a wonder in itself. This once-addicted author's mother for most of his childhood was slowly dying from an illness that immobilized her, and his dad was a lying, sadistic, self-involved loser who might just have cut down a man in an act of revenge. To say Pops was not paternal is an understatement. To survive this upbringing, our anti-hero took drugs, committed minor crimes, hustled, and searched for ladies who didn't mind belting him.

Here's an outtake from one of his Elliott's encounters with an older woman who looked like "Jessica Rabbit if Jessica Rabbit starred in Venus in Furs":

"I don't like giving people pleasure,' she said. Then she sat on the sofa and I kneeled in front of her and she slapped me several times. She held her cigarette near my face and I could feel its heat about to burn my eyelids. She laughed loudly. Then she pressed the cigarette into the back of both my hands. 'Those are going to blister.'"

Happily, that scene is not in the film nor numerous other equally flinch-causing moments, or this venture might have come off as a sequel to Pasolini's Salo.

The Diaries is an engrossing saga of one man's battle against his own physical and mental dissolution while he's reporting on the trial of a wife killer and communing with his pal who claims to be a serial murderer. It is also an exploration of what it is to be a writer. After pondering on Sylvia Plath's struggles and Susan Sontag's insistence that audiences of her time valued "the enormous self-indulgence in suffering" of their artists, Elliott responds that today, "we're living in the most medicated era humanity has ever known. The artist is no longer expected to play chicken with her creation. Doctors monitor our intake. We live in the age of Goethe on Zoloft."

No wonder James Franco bought the rights and stars in The Diaries along with Ed Harris, Christian Slater, Amber Heard, and Cynthia Nixon. Franco, throughout his recent career, has often sought out works, whether as a director or actor, that depict men who are often trying to feel something through a societal and sometimes self-imposed numbness (e.g. Child of God; Leather Bar; As I Lay Dying).

In this case, Franco handed over the directorial duties to Pamela Romanowsky, a fellow student at New York University, where they were both enrolled in the MFA Film Program. Romanowsky, a cross between Joni Mitchell and Mod Squad's Peggy Lipton (blonde and lyrical with a punch), has immaculately captured the essence of Elliott's life story, while slicing away numerous subplots. The performances she elicits from her cast are often devastating.

In a room not that far from the World Trade Center Memorial, she noted that seeing her film screened for audiences "was simultaneously very exciting and also very intimidating. I was certainly nervous at the premiere [at TFF], but also totally thrilled. You know I've been sitting with this story in my own apartment and in an editing room and in a color correct room and in all kinds of places by myself for three years now, so having it out in the world and seeing it with an audience is a really exciting thing."

"As far as figuring out how to adapt it," she continued, "it just took a long time and a lot of drafts both in the writing and editing stages. So figuring out what the heart of the story was and which pieces of the book best supported my intentions with it was a process of paring away. You know, trial and error, and getting a lot of feedback. I had the good fortune to develop the script at the Sundance Institute . . . and that process afforded me a lot of time to be able to hone the script into what I wanted it to be. It still really was a balancing act figuring out how to work with the interplay of past and present, how they affect each in the movie. That again was a long process of trying things, many of which didn't work."

As for her connection with Franco?

"James and I loved working together," Romanowsky smiles. "I think we really clicked really creatively. He's one of my favorite people, one of my favorite collaborators. I loved working with him. He's been with me every second of the way. And it was a great moment of synchronicity [when he offered me the project] because it was a book I had just read and loved. It feels like I met one of my long collaborators and creative partners.

"He inspired me so much. There are very few people in the world who are so willing to follow their passion and who are so fearless in their creative decisions," she added with another smile.

As for her next project, it is again with Mr. Franco (her third if you count the group project (The Color of Time) and it's an adaptation of Chuck (Fight Club) Palahniuk's Rant. According to Wikipedia, this novel deals with a dead central character who played with animal organs as child, an act that made folks vomit. There are also car crashes, a nationwide rabies epidemic, plus incest. Disney will definitely not distribute, but Romanowsky's not worried. She's telling tales.

As is Stephen Elliott who quotes in his bio an iota of wisdom from Joan Didion's The White Album: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Elliott adds that this act of narration, according to a forensic psychologist he met, is a way of regaining some of the power that was taken away from us in our youth. That's probably the reason we go to the cinema, too. - Brandon Judell