Al Yaoum (2003)
Akram Zaatari
viewed 02.07.06

I just walked out of another world.

Few things are as fascinating to me than how people view and express themselves. The past few days parts of the world have been engulfed in violence and outrage over the depiction of Arabs in the Danish press. The issue of representation has cost people their lives.

I understood less than 25% of the video I saw tonight. Akram Zaatari's exploration images of Arabs from Bedouin past to embattled urban existence was personal and indigenous. It was contemplation without explanation. My ignorance of history and culture were never judged but they were also not accommodated. Few attempts were made to make the material plain for a western understanding. Instead beautiful images of every sort and medium were synthesize to hold my attention and reshaped my understanding.

Zaatari career has explored the relationship between dubious histories and personal experience.

"Zaatari has consistently challenged the self-evident quality and immediacy of the documents he found or ran into. As we follow his works, it is clear that the Lebanon of the past thirty years, especially the Lebanon of the Lebanese wars, continues to produce documents that shed light on what it meant and means to experience the physical, social, political and psychic dimensions of wars. The continued manifestation of these documents today bring with them questions abouthow to see and listen to these documents, about how to unpack their meanings."
(Walid Raad)

These questions are increasingly important not only for those who's culture they sprang from, so they may learn about their past, but also for us if we are to have any hope for a peaceful future together. I encourage spending some time at the Arab Image Foundation, which he co-founded (you will have to register to see the collection). You will see things that are beautiful and things that are funny, things that are common and things that are surprising. At the very least you will see how people across the globe see themselves which can only help us represent them with dignity and respect.

Brodeuses (2004)
Éléonore Faucher
viewed 02.04.06

A foreign industry film that has a lot of great images but not a lot of reasons for them. The story about a young girl who is hiding a pregnancy and bonds with an embroiderer who recently lost her son is interesting and handled delicately. It's strange that while the story avoids cliches, the shots do not.

Still, its touching, well acted, and good introduction to world cinema.

Deathsport (1978)
Allen Arkush,
Nicholas Niciphor,
and Roger Corman
viewed 02.02.06

The first installment of the Underground Cinema (I missed the first part of the double feature) got off to a hilariously exploitative start (You should have seen the 5 minute trailer that came before the movie. WOW). Plastic swords and "Death-machines", aka motorcycles with silly metal frames and synthesizer sound effects, do battle in a very hippy apocalyptic future. Line after line tested the boundaries of ridiculousness. If you ever hear me use "Be Powerful!" as a farewell, you'll know why.

Can't wait for next Thursday.

Le Fantôme d'Henri Langlois (2004)
Jacques Richard
viewed 02.01.06

Henri Langlois got it.

The beloved founder of the Cinémathèque Française exhausted himself preserving and presenting the greatest film art in the world. While studios were destroying movies no longer in circulation Langlois bought or stole every can of film he encountered. He once sold his return plane ticket from the US to buy a film, knowing the embassy would have to repatriate him eventually.

He died loved and penniless. When the cultural minister had him replaced in a political maneuveruver, film lovers rioted until he was reinstated (God bless the French). When he died, the power, gas, and water in his apartment had been turned off from overdue bills.

Without him countless film would have been lost forever, many were anyway. Because of him countless filmmakers in France and across the world were able to create the cinema we know today.

¡Viva la Cinema et viva Henri Langlois!

Innocence (2004)
Lucile Hadzihalilovic
viewed 01.29.06

"Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure in perception" -Stan Brakhage

Of all the things I am most grateful to have learned during my time at UWM it is how to resign yourself to a piece of work. Confronting a film without expectations as to what is should look like or how it should operate allows for the possibility of first understanding it on the level of experience. What are you drawn to? How is it making you feel? Many (including Hadzihalilovic) identify this as a process of immersion; permitting images and sounds to wash over one's-self with out attempting to identify, understand, and interpret.

Innocence is an extraordinary film that brings the audience to a time and world before these interpretative instincts dominated experience. We return to the dark nights and playful days filled with happiness, fear, excitement, and discovery that characterize early childhood. In the film we follow three young girls at a strange boarding school governed by cryptic rules and rituals. In this very real but otherworldly environment the girls and us experience all the anxieties of pre-adolescence (I can't remember the last time I was afraid of the dark for no good reason). There are a million things to say about this film; a million moments to relate. It's probably a hard movie to find playing anywhere but I hope you can see it and experience them for yourself. This film does not provide answers - it has no moral or lesson to impart. It is an opportunity to experience wonder once again.

As an aside, a bit of noise has been made concerning "art-house exploitation" of the school-girls. While I wouldn't be inviting your neighborhood registered sex offender to the film, much of Hadzihalilovic's brilliance is her combination of innocent playfulness and dark mystery. These create a void in which the viewer's perversion becomes the objects of fear. When no answer is given why the eldest girl has to leave every night at nine our minds race with the sordid things we have seen, heard, or thought. I understand the motives of those who seek to protect children and worry about fueling the imaginations of those might to harm. The confusions surrounding youth and sexuality in our culture are intense, but films that explore them should be celebrated, not marginalized.

Lonesome Cowboys (1969)
Andy Warhol
viewed 01.26.06

This was a special screening of the LGBT film fest. Kind of a gayer Brokeback Mountain. This is the second film by Warhol I've seen (The other was Restaurant, and both feature highly annoying women). I know a number of people were turned off and walked out during a few violent scenes (between this and Naked I've reached my rape scene quota for the year), many more were turned on by its randiness.

The most compelling aspect of both works, and why they are brilliant, is how they force us to look. In Restaurant Warhol achieves new vision by letting the camera run and slowly zooming out and then panning around the room. We sit for almost ten minutes looking at nothing but the glassware on a table, while listening to the chaos surrounding it. In Lonesome Cowboys a different method of examination is created through editing and beautifully composed, typically mute, portrait shots.

A couple of people I've talked to about the films complain that it's only art because Warhol did it and therefore not "real art". Few things are more basic to discovering the world of film, let alone the world around us, than teaching ourselves how to see. Warhol's use of repetition and duration break us out of our every-day habit of merely glancing at the environment we inhabit. That is his art and is altogether real (and often very funny).

Wild Zero (2000)
Tetsuro Takeuchi
Viewed 01.22.06

This tape was courtesy of my friend Ryan who does weekly screening where you have to mop up the little pile of mush from under your seat that used to be your brain before you leave. Easily the best gender-bending, rock 'n roll, zombie movie I have ever seen. The scary part is, I'm sure Ryan has more.

LOVE KNOWS NO BOARDERS, NATIONALITIES, OR GENDERS!!!!! DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ROCK 'N ROLL !!!!

Bleak Moments (1971)
viewed 01.13.06
Hard Labour (1973)
Naked (1993)
viewed 01.14.06
Grown-Ups (1980)
viewed 01.15.06
Mike Leigh

The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Noah Baumbach
viewed 01.11.06

I almost saw this movie four times before actually seeing it (twice I literally turned around at the theater door). I was afraid. Afraid that producer Wes Anderson (who I love) was franchising himself . Afraid that it was upperclass angst set to a trendy soundtrack. Afraid that it was going to be two hours of spastic editing by a director who can't compose a shot.

More than that though, I was annoyed. I had listened to or read a few comments Mr. Baumbach made about his film being "no-budget", an "underdog". Hollywood marketing has already stolen the terms "independent" and "low-budget". A low-budget independent movie can now cost $10-15 million, star the biggest names in Hollywood, and be financed by a company owned by Disney. The "outsider" Independent Spirit Awards recently capped eligible budgets at $20 million (Independence is now a state of mind, aka "spirit", rather than an economic condition. People with money always seem to think money doesn't mean anything). "No budget" has typically referred to innovative filmmakers like Jon Jost who makes feature films for less than $10,000, not the 1.5 million it took to make The Squid and the Whale.

True, in comparison, Baumbach's movie was lower-budget, but lets inject a bit of reality into how we talk about things. If he's an "underdog" making movies for "almost nothing", then what am I and the people I know who work regular jobs while trying to scrape up the extra cash to buy a few hundred feet of film stock. People who enlist the acting talents of complete strangers walking by because they'll work for free, and rely on creativity to solve the problems even a $20,000 budget could solve with money. Many will never get the film made, and most of those that do will be ignored. Baumbach and the like get nearly everything they need, can't they at least leave us a word that accurately describes our situation?

By the way, the movies was decent. None of my fears proved legitimate. It had more life, more edge, and more visual appeal than its trailer gave it credit for.

King Kong (2005)
Peter Jackson
viewed 01.03.06

2006 can only get better.

I have been spending much of the last two days trying to come up with an effective metaphor to communicate how bad this film is. Something that can combine (1) the boredom of watching Jackson bang out his two notes of CGI absurdity and Karo syrup sentimentality over and over and over again, (2) the fascination of watching one ridiculous concept after another appear on the screen (30's era sailors quoting Heart of Darkness from memory; Kong and Ann "skating" in Central Park; Ann teaching Kong the word "beautiful"; pretty much anything involving Kong and Ann), (3) the confusion of watching story lines evaporate, and (4) the blank, empty feeling of not being asked to have a single meaningful thought for over two hours. No luck so far.

Since this isn't a review I'll share a realization this experience has provided. Everyday I find it harder and harder to identify with much of the world around me.

I scanned a number of viewer and critic reviews and the vast majority were positive if not gushing. Phrases like "master filmmaker", "this is what cinema was made for", "classic storytelling" were used. Used by critics I consider quite good. I realize most people think divergent opinions in film are matters of taste and not to be take seriously. Perhaps, but these "tastes" also seem to indicate a difference in approach, not just to film but life (I often have trouble with the distinction).

The desire for distraction over and above revelation is a disturbing characteristic of our time. We are a people that go though our day attending to one meaningless and fleeting social, economic, and professional task after another. We take on stress-laden responsibilities that prevent us from thinking any further than the matter at hand, and when we are finally able to carve out a few hours to ourselves, we feed our souls another meaningless and fleeting bit of film or TV. How are we not starving for more? Why aren't upset when our time, money, and attention are spend on things that lack any significance?

I'm currently reading The Anchor Book of Short Stories edited my one of my favorite authors, Ben Marcus. In his introduction he describes how the stories in the collection "conspire not to be forgotten".

"If we are made by what we read, if language truly builds people into what they are, how they think, the depth with which they feel, then these stories are, to me, premium material for that construction project. You could build a civilization with them. They are toolkits for the future. They could be projected by megaphone onto an empty field and people would grow there. These stories reveal that many stylistic literary traditions...can produce colossal feeling and manage to be true, deep, memorable, and brilliant."

Every time I walk into a theater or put in a DVD this is the experience I am aching for. I understand that sometimes people want to be entertained, they want to escape. What they miss is how extraordinary it is to escape with something more, and upon returning finding their world made new. I refuse to believe cinema is made for the pleasing but vacuous, for the dazzling but empty. I've seen work that has improved me, taught me, films that change the way I think and see. I am troubled by less than that, and confused by those who aren't.