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8 years ago
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The title of A Stray, a sharply observed and gracefully filmed drama written and directed by Musa Syeed, refers to its teenage protagonist, Adan, a refugee living in Minneapolis’s large Somali community, as well as his canine co-star, Laila, a soulful terrier he reluctantly befriends. Visually, the film is both naturalistic and artful, featuring beautifully framed scenes shot throughout the city. A Stray seems to be a bittersweet valentine to Minneapolis, whose buildings, bridges, and landmarks (such as the iconic Pillsbury Best Flour sign) are featured prominently. In addition to its glimpses into Somali culture and the day-to-day lives of this particular refugee community, the film has a strong undercurrent of spirituality, with several scenes taking place in a mosque, and various prayers discussed and recited.
The story concerns the headstrong Adan (Barkhad Abdirahman, one of the pirates in Captain Phillips), who is thrown out of his mother's place after she suspects him of stealing jewelry, then flees a temporary crash pad after getting on the nerves of his disreputable friends. Adan initially finds sanctuary in a mosque where a kindly imam lets him stay in exchange for cleaning up the place. Adan asks for advice and a prayer to help him stay out of trouble.
He finds work at a restaurant through Faisal, one of the mosque's congregants, but loses the job when his car hits a dog en route to a food delivery. (The zealous Faisal is horrified when Adan brings the po[...]
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8 years ago
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The story of Theo Padnos, an American journalist captured in 2012 by the Nusra Front (Syrian branch of Al Qaeda), Theo Who Lived is not quite like other hostage accounts, of which there have (sadly) been many. Yes, David Schisgall’s documentary concerns an idealistic do-gooder who puts himself in danger and it includes the familiar details of captors who veer from friendly to cruel, as well as the grim specifics of interrogation and torture, of terrible deprivations and conditions. Theo Who Lived, however, consists almost entirely of Padnos reliving his ordeal by revisiting various locales of his 22-month captivity, as he narrates his story with good humor, even wit.
A genial, often rather naïve-seeming sort, Padnos was a struggling writer from Vermont who thought he’d kick-start his journalism career by writing a story about Syrian refugees for The New Republic. In the film, he acknowledges being a lifelong risk taker, but also questions why he ever put himself in such a dangerous situation. He walks us through Antakya (Antioch), Turkey—a city where journalists, fighters and other interested parties gathered before crossing the border into Syria and shows us the house he shared with several roommates as well as the house where his kidnappers lived (and may still live). In Syria Padnos shows us the very room where he interviewed young men he thought we members of the Free Syrian Army, until they suddenly began beating him, declaring him their prisoner. Remarkably, he is ab[...]
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8 years ago
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A documentary that presents one of the most preposterous true-life scenarios ever connected with the movie business (or any business), Rob Cannan and Ross Adam’s The Lovers and The Despot also provides yet more evidence of North Korea's bizarre sociopolitical culture and the oddity that was Kim Jong-il.
In 1978, Kim—then heir apparent to North Korea's leadership and a major film buff—arranged for the kidnap of South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his ex-wife, actress Choi Eun-hee. Kim was envious of South Korean cinema's originality, unlike the stilted fare that was coming out of his artistically backwards nation, and he wanted the renowned couple to be his personal filmmakers. The Lovers and the Despot uses interviews, footage from Shin’s movies, propaganda film clips, and reenactments, underscored by Nathan Halpern’s dramatically ominous music, to show the couple’s plight and their eventual escape. The resulting documentary unfolds like an artsy international crime thriller, albeit one with a few plot holes. It's a striking and effective approach, though just about any film covering this material would be fascinating for the story alone.
The Lovers and the Despot begins with a press conference given by Shin and Choi after their escape. It then travels back to the beginning of their relationship, as Choi recalls their initial meeting on the set of one of his films. (She provides much of the narrative; Shin died in 2006.) Scenes of the couple's subsequent success [...]
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8 years ago
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Demon, Polish director Marcin Wrona’s third feature, is an unlikely but entertaining hybrid between a raucous wedding comedy and a brooding horror film. That he managed to pull it off at all is a testament to his talent and unique artistic sensibility. (Sadly, Wrona died of an apparent suicide at age 42 just before the film was set to premiere in Poland last fall.) Those who like their movie genres rigidly defined may be confused by Demon, which isn’t all that scary (or hilarious, for that matter), but the rest of us can appreciate its gorgeously morose ambience; dark, absurdist humor and strong performances.
Based on Piotr Rowicki’s play Adherence, Demon concerns the laid-back Piotr (Itay Tiran), who has traveled from England to the rural Polish hometown of his fiancée Zaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska), for their wedding. The couple have only known each other for a few weeks, so the groom is meeting her parents for the first time. Piotr already has an easy rapport with Zaneta’s bro-like brother and initially gets along well enough with her jocular father (Andrzej Grabowski). When he begins renovations on the family’s rundown country house where the couple will live, Piotr unearths a pile of human bones and is immediately spooked, especially when he later glimpses what appears to be a female spirit wandering around outside. Soon his sunny personality gives way to sudden dark moods, and his body begins to react (via nosebleeds) to something or someone who is slowly taking him[...]
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8 years ago
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Is That You? and Fatima, both opening on Friday, explore different kinds of love in very different ways. The first film follows a middle-aged man's attempt to rekindle a past relationship; the second is a look at an struggling immigrant's devotion to her children.
“Dear Rachel: Is that you?,” writes Ronnie (a soulful Alon Aboutboul) to an ex-girlfriend he knew 30 years ago. Though they haven’t been in touch since she left their native Israel for the United States, he thinks about her often. So when he’s fired from his projectionist job and is compensated with plane ticket to America, Ronnie’s path is laid out for him.
Is That You?, from Israeli filmmaker Dani Menkin (Dolphin Boy, 39 Pounds of Love), is an off-beat drama that makes up for its somewhat ramshackle quality and quirk overload with genuine warmth and nice performances from its leads. Though its motif about trying to reconnect with the past gets a bit repetitive at times, Is That You? is a poetic, not altogether predictable meditation on the theme, an admirable achievement in itself.
When Ronnie arrives in upstate New York, he stays with his outgoing car salesman brother, Jacob (Rani Bleier). Coincidentally, Jacob has recently run into Rachel (Suzanne Sadler), who asked about Ronnie. With the help of Jacob’s son, they find several women named Rachel Golan on Facebook and narrow down Ronnie's search. The couple once made a pact to be together on her 60th birthday, which happens to be in two days. Jacob g[...]
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8 years ago
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The new documentary Lucha Mexico is an entertaining, enlightening and, ultimately, poignant look at Lucha Libre, the colorful, acrobatic form of professional wrestling that has been popular in Mexico for decades. Filmmakers Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz give us a truly inside view of the sport and its wildly popular superhero personalities, its intense physical demands and its widespread influence throughout the country. Even nonfans of spectacle wrestling can appreciate this in-depth look at the longtime phenomenon and its myriad masked players.
From the get-go, the filmmakers take us right into the ring for up-close scenes of amusing and highly energetic matches featuring dramatic, larger-than-life (in some cases, literally) stars cheered on by thousands of adoring fans. We also see glimpses of life outside of the arena, as the luchadores train, meet fans, and talk about their lives. One of the film’s main spotlights follows the popular and likeable Shocker, who is used as a sort of guide through Lucha Libre, as we see him working out, posing for fan photos, touring the country to compete in matches big and small, and receiving brutal-looking medical treatments for a devastating knee injury (he opens a restaurant during his recovery). Former strength competitor Jon “Strongman” Andersen provides another veteran point of view, as he talks matter-of-factly about the realities of the profession. We also see him in various settings, including home with family and at the[...]
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8 years ago
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Formed in 1978, Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations devoted to defending and protecting human rights. Having long recognized the power of film to educate and bring change, the organization’s New York-based Human Rights Watch Film Festival screens approximately 500 films in 20 cities around the world each year. The 2016 edition of its New York City event is presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center from June 10 through 19, featuring 18 feature films and three interactive programs. Here are some highlights:
Opening Night selection is Hooligan Sparrow, which documents the efforts of filmmaker Nanfu Wang to track Chinese activist Ye Haiyan (aka “Hooligan Sparrow”) in her mission to prosecute a school principal who arranged the rape of schoolgirls by government officials. Sparrow, a women’s rights advocate who first made headlines by speaking up for sex workers, seeks to close a loophole in China’s child prostitution laws that has enabled officials to elude rape charges by claiming that the victims were prostitutes. Hooligan Sparrow shows its protagonist and a small group of fellow protestors being harassed regularly by government-hired thugs, as Wang uses hidden cameras to record interactions with uncooperative police officials. Sparrow avoids arrest by fleeing to several cities during the course of the film, including her home village, as she awaits the verdict in the schoolgirl case. For Hooligan Sparrow, Wang [...]
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The House of Vans sounds more like a lesser family in HBO’s Game of Thrones than a concert venue. At least in Brooklyn. Here, the famed shoe manufacturer is better known for its clothing than its concert space. Vans shoes, snapbacks, backpacks and hoodies can easily be found in just about any corner of the borough, but mention the House of Vans to a passerby and you’re likely to be met with confusion. Other venues like Irving Plaza, Terminal 5, and MSG have risen to the level of the common vernacular, amongst concertgoers and non-concertgoers alike; odds are even your landlord has heard of those. While the House of Vans doesn’t toil away at the level of obscurity of say Cake Shop or Palisades, the name doesn’t carry the weight it normally does. Out on the wider concert circuit, Vans rules supreme as sponsors of the famed Warped Tour. Here, it is just lesser known and that is a mistake.*
Hidden in the far reaches of Greenpoint, tucked up against the water, the venue boosts both an indoor and outdoor stage area, a bar, and enough ramps to qualify it as a skatepark. It’s an incredibly versatile space. Problem is that in order to have that much space in this city you have to be somewhere where there is still space to be had. You need to be able to gather hundreds of people on any given night and be loud until all hours of the morning. You need to be able to pull amps and all manner of equipment through the doors. Most importantly, you need to be able to afford the rent.
Ove[...]
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9 years ago
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Veteran documentarians Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, (The War Room, Startup.com) have teamed up again for a timely film about a subject that has been much in the news lately: animal rights, specifically the issue of humans keeping and imprisoning animals—as pets, for experiments, or for other reasons. Unlocking the Cage follows the efforts by attorney Steven Wise, president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, to change the way animals are regarded in the eyes of the law. As he sees it, “The line between humans and nonhuman animals is at an irrational place.” Specifically, Wise is fighting for great apes, elephants and cetaceans (dolphins and whales)—all acknowledged as cognitively complex beings—to be considered “persons” as opposed to “things,” from a legal standpoint. After all, as he persuasively argues, corporations, ships and other inanimate bodies have achieved legal personhood and its accompanying rights; why not a thinking, feeling chimp? Wise describes his mission early in the film as “a hell of a war,” but one whose time has come.
The film shows how Wise and his legal team (Monica Miller, Natalie Prosin and Liddy Stein) bring several lawsuits before various New York State courts, on behalf of captive chimpanzees. Wise, who possesses a gentle, avuncular personality, tells about his epiphany as a young, idealistic lawyer, upon reading Peter Singer’s seminal 1975 book Animal Liberation. Having always wanted to represent the underdog, he found his ideal special[...]
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9 years ago
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Winner of Best Narrative Feature at the Queens World Film Festival last month, H.O.M.E. is a poignant, beautifully shot film about the importance of human connection. Its director and co-writer, Daniel Maldonado, a lifelong New Yorker, shows us aspects of the city we don’t always see via two interconnected stories: One features Jeremy Ray Valdez as Danny, a young runaway with Asperger’s Syndrome who is living in the subways. The other thread concerns a struggling Ecuadorian cab driver, Gabriel (acclaimed Mexican actor Jesús Ochoa), who helps a distraught Chinese mother (Angela Lin) get home to Chinatown.
Maldonado’s first feature, H.O.M.E. has both a dreamlike, impressionistic quality and realistic characters and scenes, a testament to his unique artistic vision and desire to create something human and relatable. The New York subway system is also a major character in the film; through Danny’s eyes, it is a repository of complex beauty and sometimes overwhelming stimuli.
The film will be screened at 10:45 pm on Friday, April 15, at Cinema Village, as part of the Manhattan Film Festival. Last week I spoke with Maldonado about the making and the meaning of H.O.M.E.:
You studied film at the School of Visual Arts?
I kind of went about it in a roundabout way; instead of trying to get into a 4-year program, I went to night school, because I was pretty much supporting myself. After two years of night classes, I completely fell in love, so I switched into the degree pro[...]
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9 years ago
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The eponymous heroine of Xavier Giannoli’s film Marguerite is a tough sell on paper: a wealthy French socialite who fancies herself a great operatic singer, but who is in fact utterly tone-deaf. Yet, as played (with great sensitivity) by Catherine Frot in this French tragicomedy set in the early 1920s, Marguerite Dumont — at least when she’s not singing — is a warm, sympathetic presence with a true appreciation for music. We’re appalled by the sounds that come out of her mouth, but we can’t help but feel for this woman whose vulnerability and unhappiness is palpable.
The character is based on American socialite Florence Foster Jenkins, who has already inspired several plays as well as a forthcoming Hollywood film starring Meryl Streep. Where Jenkins was merely bad, Mme. Dumont is truly awful; her wild screeching performances are some of the most stunning (literally) moments in the film. This could have been fodder for an out-and-out farce, but though Giannoli’s unconventional movie has many humorous moments, it is also dark, poignant, and visually sumptuous.
The film begins with various people arriving at a benefit recital given in Marguerite’s opulent home. There’s young soprano Hazel (Christa Théret), arch young music critic Lucien (Sylvain Dieuaide) and his friend Kyril, an avant-garde artist (Aubrey Fenoy); we’re also introduced to Marguerite’s husband Georges (André Marcon), who pretends that his car broke down so he can avoid the concert. Several opening acts [...]
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9 years ago
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Documentaries have traditionally fallen into two categories: straightforward accounts that tell their story using photo/video/audio snippets plus interviews (think Ken Burns), and those that use re-enactments and other creative devices. Recently, there have been some very innovative examples of the latter category (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the narrative/doc hybrid A Woman Like Me). Now we have Andrew Shapter’s The Teller and the Truth, a haunting and evocative film about the 1974 disappearance of Francis Wetherbee, a young Texas bank teller whose car was found submerged in a nearby river, but whose body was never found. Though it looks and feels like a real-life chronicle, The Teller and the Truth is something else entirely.
The film starts off like a typical documentary, becomes a sort of true-crime whodunit, and ultimately ends up a highly romantic speculation on what might have happened to the lovely Wetherbee. It’s as intriguing for its unorthodox handling of truth-versus-fantasy as it is for its subject matter.
Apparently Shapter first came upon the long-forgotten story of Wetherbee several years ago when he saw a striking black and white print of a sad-eyed young woman taken by his photographer uncle and mentor. The photo had been shot a week after its subject was briefly taken hostage by a masked bank robber -- she was unhurt but reportedly traumatized -- and two weeks before she mysteriously disappeared. Shapter, who had previously made the documentarie[...]
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