NBFF 2015: ART HOUSE By: Faiz No comments

The Wharton Esherick House in Art House.

Space by de/sign

By Miranda Inganni

Many artists strive to construct a safe and stimulating space in which they can freely create. Director Don Freeman captures nearly a dozen of such places in his film, Art House.

Based on the book Artist’s Handmade Houses by Michael Gotkin, Freeman travels through the US -- and through the past 100 or so years -- documenting places like Byrdclife Arts Colony in New York (the oldest arts colony in the States), to Eliphante, Michael Khan and Leda Livant’s home built over the course of nearly 30 years in Cornville, Arizona. Some of these residences have been lovingly preserved and/or are still being used as workshops. Meanwhile others, like the Wharton Esherick Museum in Pensylvania with its seemingly living staircase, have been converted into museums. Whether open to the public or gifted with National Historic Landmark status, Art Housegives viewers a glimpse into these infrequently-viewed locales.

Freeman uses vintage photographs throughout, as well as interviews with surviving relatives or disciples of the artists and commentary by writer Alastair Gordon. So many of these artists were looking to bring other artists back to nature and to integrate nature into everyday life. And so many of their abodes seem to do just that very successfully!

Unfortunately, the music is a distraction to the images more often than not, and the cross fades from one still shot to the next happen too quickly for the viewer to fully realize what object or scene she or he is seeing.

As Gordon states in the beginning of the film, “It’s about making a perfect life.” Exploring these eleven dwellings all in one film, despite its distractions, allows one to imagine for a moment that perfection each of the designers were trying to create.

 

 

Art House screens at the Newport Beach Film Festival April 29, 5 p.m., Edwards Big Newport. For more information: Art House.

 

 

 

NBFF 2015: BLOOD, SWEAT, AND BEER By: Faiz No comments

Danny Robinson in Blood, Sweat, and Beer.

Thirsting for the American dream

By John Esther

Films, TV, YouTube, and other media focusing on beer are usually not about serious stuff. Unless it has to do with drunk driving, dometic violence or alcohol poisoning, one tends to associate beer with the fun -- and often the stupid.

That is not the case with Chip Hiden and Alexis Irvin's documentary, Blood, Sweat, and Beer.

A very entertaining documentary, Blood, Sweat, and Beer looks at the serious rising tide of American craft beer brewing. While other American jobs have been outsourced out of the country, craft beer production, brewing and distribution has doubled in growth over the past ten years. Currently there are approximately 2,700 breweries in the United States. Ninety-eight percent of them are small and craft.

Set with this rise in American entrepreneurship, the filmmakers travel to various parts of the country. They make a stop in Colorado where they talk to former brewmeister and current Governor John Hickenlooper -- who has been pivotal and influential in Colorado's brewing successes.

In Pennsylvania, three young men in their 20s are opening up a brewery in the dilapidated borough of Braddock. Once a mighty steel town, and site of America's first library, Braddock has fallen on serious times. But, with the support of Braddock Mayor John Fetterman, they might just pull it off.

Over in Ocean View, Maryland, the story of Danny Robinson is quite different. Already somewhat successful in the food and beverage business, Robinson runs into a nasty expensive, litigious battle when he sells t-shirts with the name "Shorebilly" on them.

In addition to these brewing business highs and lows, wholesalers, brewers and others in the beer business weigh in on the brouhaha facing current brewers as the market becomes more inundated with additional brewers. For most brewers, profits are slim. But they love what they do.

It was also interesting to note the sobering fact that over 90 percent of brewers are male and almost all of them are white (frequently with a beard).

Having written this, it is time for some delicious craft beer.

LAAPFF 2015: THE CHINESE MAYOR By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Chinese Mayor.

A different cultural revolution

By Miranda Inganni

Geng Yanbo, the newly-elected mayor of Datong, China wants to transform the city into a tourist-attracting cultural center. Datong, the most polluted city in China, thanks to its coal mining history, has a massive ancient city wall that Geng envisions containing museums and meeting spaces. The problem is that at least 30 percent of the residents of Datong, many of them poor and their housing illegal, live around that city wall. These residents must be relocated and their dwellings demolished in order for Geng’s reconstruction of the city to take place.

Despite the fact that demolition and construction are very slow and behind schedule, the government wants the residents out. But there is no place for many of them to go. People who cannot afford to move are told that they can apply for low-rent housing, but they know the reality is that there is a long waiting period. Some residents protest by simply not leaving their abodes or by blocking the heavy machinery. A few residents who refuse to move face forcible demolition and threaten suicide.

We follow Geng, in Zhou Hao’s The Chinese Mayor, as he inspects the progress of destruction and construction throughout the city, as he attends meetings in his official capacity, and as he is scolded by his wife who thinks he is working himself to death. He appears tough when he deals with contractors who have put in sub-par paving, taken other shortcuts or are not performing their jobs to his satisfaction. But when the affected residents appeal directly to Geng, he is sympathetic and tries to right the wrongs -- helping folks find housing, ensuring the children of rural residents who gave up their farmland for development have access to the city schools, and even trying to move a woman from her 6^th floor apartment to one on the ground floor as she can no longer walk up the stairs (what the hell happened to the elevator anyway?).

Geng wants to leave the reinvented and revitalized Datong as his legacy. Will he be able to oversee all of the construction through to completion before his mayoral term is up? Is he simply a megalomaniac bankrupting a city for his own status? Director Zhou does a masterful job of not getting in the way of the story. Clearly the residents are the one’s suffering in this scenario, but Geng is not without sympathetic sensibilities. He believes so strongly in “cultural industry” that even if he cannot bring his vision to fruition in Datong, the viewer gets the sense that that will not stop him. He will give this city, or any other, his masterful cultural makeover. Even if it kills him.

The Chinese Mayor screens at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival April 26, 4 p.m., CGV Cinemas. For more information: Mayor.

 

NBFF 2015: CALAMITY JANE By: Faiz No comments

Martha Canary/Calamity Jane (Kay Campbell) in Calamity Jane: Wild West Legend.

Martha, thy dreary

By Miranda Inganni

Calamity Jane, nee Martha Canary, was born in 1852 (most likely) in Missouri. According to Greg Monro’s film, her unstable childhood included the 8 year-old Martha traveling the Oregon Trail with her family, her parents’ subsequent deaths and Martha and her siblings being sent to an orphanage. First adopted at age 12, Martha was soon sent away for bad behavior. Where she went and/or what she did is not fully known. What historians do know is that Martha joined the Newton-Jenney Party into the Black Hills in 1875. Dressed in men’s attire, when reporters found out that Martha was a she, the public’s interest grew, leading to many articles, dime novels and even an autobiographical pamphlet Martha dictated (as she had no formal education) for publication. We also know that in 1876 she travelled to Deadwood, South Dakota, along with Wild Bill Hickock, though the full extent of their relationship is unknown.

Martha was daring and caring (as long as we are not talking about Native Americans). Not only was she a professional scout in the Wild West, she helped nurse smallpox sufferers back to health in Deadwood in the late 1870s. She was also, by all accounts, a raging alcoholic. She had two children, who were placed in foster care, and despite her infamy, died destitute in 1903 at the age of 51.

Told with reenactments -- with Kay Campbell playing the titular character, vintage photographs and lots of moving shots of pastoral and pristine rolling hills, wind-swept plains, and mountain ranges, director Monro’s film also employs many “experts,” most of whom rely heavily on hypothetical phrases such as, “I imagine… ,” or “it was possible… .” They make many suppositions about Martha and her family.

Martha was known for her colorful stories, but many of the tales about her life are unsubstantiated. Historical facts have disproved many of the musings about Calamity Jane. Unfortunately, Monro’s Calamity Jane is just as colorful yet unreliable as Martha’s own history. Monro tries to straddle the line between fact and fiction, but just can’t seem to ride it out.

 

 

Calamity Jane: Wild West Legend screens at the Newport Beach Film Festival April 26, 2:45 p.m. For more information: Calamity Jane.

SXSW 2015: BIKES VS. CARS By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Bikes vs. Cars.

Roads to ruin or rejection

By Miranda Inganni

Director Fredrik Gertten’s latest documentary, Bikes vs Cars, travels to various cities around the world to examine the issues and some of the causes surrounding the titular feud. In Sao Paulo, Brazil we meet Aline Cavalcante, a bike activist, who wonders why the city’s public transportation is so expensive and terrible, and if the city really has the worst traffic jams in the world. Another city vying for that unfortunate award is Los Angeles, CA, where Dan Koeppel is trying to make a difference for bike riders, while delving into the city’s history and exposing the ugly truth about the ever expanding freeway system.

These two cities used to have fantastic infrastructure for bicycling enthusiasts, but now they stink (literally and figuratively) thanks to the oil, construction and auto industries. The car-centric cultures that these industries have created, have stripped away bikes lanes, increasing the risks bicyclist face each time they ride.

The facts are terrifying. From how often bicyclists are killed in various cities, to the amount of people suffering from air pollution around the world, to the expected increase in automobile sales in the next five years (double what it is today). But people love their cars. There is, of course, the socioeconomic status that car ownership bestows upon the driver. But why cannot the same be afforded to lovers of the environmentally friendly bicycle? And beyond the bourgeois status of car ownership, what is the point of being able to buy a car if all you can do is sit in traffic?

However, there is some good news beyond the smog. As exemplified in Copenhagen, Denmark and The Netherlands, biking in a big city can work! And everyone breathes a little better because of it.

A call to action, Bikes vs. Cars is not so much about two wheels vs. four wheels, per se, the real battle here is between the status quo versus the possibility of a better future.

SXSW 2015: A WOMAN LIKE ME By: Faiz 1 comment

A scene from A Woman Like Me.

Alternative reality

By Miranda Inganni

In 2011 director Alex Sichel (All Over Me) was informed she had a terminal disease. As a way of facing her fears and processing the information, she, along with A Woman Like Me co-director Elizabeth Giamatti, decided to make a film about a woman who is given the same prognosis. She also decided to direct a documentary about her life post-diagnosis, including the making of the movie. It’s not exactly a movie-within-a-movie, or a movie about a movie, but rather a hybrid thereof.

As Sichel described it when she got her diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, she felt like she was watching a movie about a woman with cancer. And so she set about making that movie with (the fantastic) Lili Taylor playing the lead role of Anna Seashell in hopes that Anna’s reactions would be more optimistic that Sichel’s real life ones. The movie gives Sichel the chance to control the outcome: direct the disease or redo “scenes” that she thought she should have performed differently in real life. Sichel practices her reactions to the grim news (even her own death scene) and gets a chance to recreate chapters from her life via Anna. But both the fictionalized character’s life and the life Sichel presents in the documentary are manipulated by Sichel and at times A Woman Like Me feels selfish. But it also feels tender.  (I cannot imagine making a movie, let alone while undergoing cancer treatments and reconciling one’s own end of life.

Sichel’s life in A Woman Like Me is hectic with her family. Erich, her husband, and Anastasia, her daughter, are both featured heavily, as are other family members. She undergoes holistic treatments and explores non-Western ways of dealing with the disease, exploring a “Buddhist experience of cancer.”  She coaches Taylor through scenes and rehearsals. Faced with a death that she knows will come too soon, Sichel often presents a surprisingly upbeat persona in A Woman Like Me, her legacy.

FILM REVIEW: THE LIFE AND MIND OF MARK DEFRIEST By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest.

The thin screwed line

By Miranda Inganni

When Mark DeFriest was on the verge of adulthood, his father unexpectedly died. In response, DeFriest ran off with his father's tools (which his dad had willed him) while the will was still in probate and his stepmother called the cops and pressed charges against DeFriest. He was sentenced to four years in prison for theft. A lifetime later, DeFriest still sits in prison.

While he initially was sent to jail for taking his father's tools, DeFriest's ability to escape has kept him there for a long time. Stating that, "Nobody here has a sense of humor," DeFriest breaks out (the first of many times) of the first prison in which he is serving time. However, his survival skills combined with raw ingenuity and hotwiring ability allow him to elude the cops for only so long.

Back in prison, this time he is given a psychological evaluation and deemed incompetent. DeFriest is sent to Florida State Hospital's mental ward.

After an initial unsuccessful escape attempt from the hospital involving spiking the staff's coffee with hallucinogens (told with comedic effect), DeFriest manages to break free. Again, he is caught and sent to Bay County Jail. Undettered, each time DeFriest is imprisoned he reacts with an almost animalistic urge to escape.

These repeated escapes anger authorities. In response, DeFriest is locked in solitary confinement and tortured. In order to get out of "that hellhole" DeFriest pleads guilty to a third felony that includes a life sentence.

Mark is sent to the notorious Florida State Prison.

Over the years, DeFriest has racked up a long list of disciplinary write-ups and escaped seven times. But his wiliness and inventiveness -- this extremely resourceful man is clearly endowed with a level of intelligence -- has worked to his detriment. Additionally, it is unclear if DeFriest suffers from mental illness. DeFriest admits that he "made [the people who work in the system] look like idiots."

Gabriel London's documentary delves into Defriest's story, highlighting many of the injustices he has faced in prison and the broken system that has kept him there for so long. Using a wide range of interviews and gothic animation (plus an unfortunate score and soundtrack) The Life and Mind of Mark Defriest paints quite a horroric life, which could and should have turned out so much better (at least to those who know DeFriest best).  

DeFriest is portrayed as a bit of a loner, but one who is a mechanical prodigy. From rewiring phones, to dismantling and reassembling clocks, to being taught the world of warfare and survival skills by his dad (an ex-Marine rabidly scared of "the reds") at a young age, he was always able to create something out of seemingly nothing. This skill both helps and hurts DeFriest, who can (and does) escape like a modern-day criminal Houdini.

The primry point here is that although he certainly played a part in being bad, DeFriest is excessively punished -- unlike the "goon squad" at Floriday State Prison. For over 40 years DeFriest has endured numerous horrors of abuse, rape and torture. Fortunately, somebody came along and cared enough to tell his story.

Having made changes to the film's ending, based on events that happened after filming on the movie wrapped, The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest clearly illustrates what influence this documentary has had on DeFriest's life and those who perceive DeFriest has some rabid criminal unworthy of sympathy.

Here's hoping that more documentarians can shine a light on the US's troubled prison system and how society and the "justice"system deals with mental health issues.

FILM REVIEW: AN HONEST LIAR By: Faiz No comments

A scene from An Honest Liar.

The hoaxest with moxiest

By John Esther

Last year writer-director Woody Allen released the feature film, Magic in the Moonlight. The film tells the story of Stanley (Colin Firth), a master illusionist who sets out to debunk the psychic powers of Sophie (Emma Stone), only to become duped himself in the process -- yet fall in love with the considerably younger woman (typical), and presumably live happily ever after.

While the film has its moments, Magic in the Moonlight is ultimately predictable, reactionary and incredulous. And, like every single Allen film since his 1992 Husbands and Wives (one of his five masterpieces -- along with Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, and Crimes and Misdemeanors), does not merit a second viewing. (Some of the recent films by Allen -- once one of America's greatest "auteurs" -- did not even merit a first viewing.)

Considerably more liberating, engaging, entertaining and less predictable (unless you already know the film's subject well), yet similar in content, comes Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein's documentary, An Honest Liar.

A story begging to be purchased by a Hollywood studio and "fictionalized" for some future awards season, An Honest Liar chronicles the life of James Randi. AKA "The Amazing Randi," Randi is one of the greatest magicians of all time who later went on to debunk many various forms of crackpot science and spiritual chicanery -- even when some skeptics (a la Magic in the Moonlight's Stanley, eventually) had a change of mind/heart and wanted to believe in paranormal phenomena.

Born August 7, 1928, as Randall James Hamilton Zwinge, Randi knew from a very young age he was different and, like most very smart LGBTQ people growing up during the 1930s and 1940s, felt very uncomfortable with his difference(s). His father sensed his son's difference, too.

"I only had two conversations with my father," Randi recalls in the documentary while discussing his awareness as a child and the effects it had on his childhood life.

Basically exiled to do his own thing, Randi grew up alienated and self-educated.  Looking for a purpose, one day Randi witnessed a magic show by Harry Blackstone, Sr. He was monumentally impressed. Suddenly, he was filled with purpose. Randi read everything on the subject he could find. At the age of 17 he dropped out of high school and joined the circus as a conjurer.

Randi rose quickly to the echelons of magic, quickly drawing comparisons to his hero, Harry Houdini (who died two years before Randi was born). For Randi, Houdini had set the records to be broken.

Randi was not only a great magician, he also had a wonderful, charming personality. Together they earned him a guest spot on major television shows. In particular, Randi appeared numerous times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

As Randi rose to fame, he always made it clear, in practice and in theory, that magic/illusions/trickery should only be used to entertain folks. It should not be used to depart fools from his or her money by deceptive means.

After a near-death experience Randi retired at the age of 60. Henceforth, he would use his own power of perceptions and deceptions to expose the charlatans.

His retirement coincided with the rise of such showmen as New Age psychic Uri Geller and "faith healer" Peter Popoff and company. These two men pretended to possess supernatural powers. They were effective. Thousands of people were only too willing to be duped out of his or her money. Fortunately, Randi had an ally in Carson, whose show gave national exposure to a few of Randi's exposes on these deceivers.

How Randi, with the help of others, exposes psychics, televangelists, and the media makes for riveting investigative drama. These guys (basically, it is only guys in this documentary) go deep undercover to expose some of the greater mental deceptions ever created. As a result, a few of them sometimes got lost in the process themselves. As An Honest Liar reiterates numerously, "There are layers and layers of deception."

If this were not enough to make for a riveting documentary,  toward the end of the film An Honest Liar adds another dimension to Randi's life on a personal level. Thanks to his own need for deception, Randi may lose the love of his life.

Bold, beautiful and exceptionally blistering in its critique of human cowardice in the form of duplicity, An Honest Liar illustrates a rare phenomenon in documentary: what it means to think, to believe and to challenge what our very own eyes see, and more to the point, do not see. The illusion is out there...and inside here. Hear.  

FILM REVIEW: MY LIFE DIRECTED BY NICHOLAS WINDING REFN By: Faiz No comments

A scene from My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn.

Cohabitation fixation

By Don Simpson

 

A filmmaker’s significant other not only has unbridled access to their personal life, but they also have a unique perspective on the filmmaker’s personality and psyche; so, as we watch Liv Corfixen’s My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, we learn that the title of the “behind-the-scenes” documentary by Refn’s wife has a multitude of meanings. Though My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn may seem like an everyday documentary about a filmmaker contending with the pressures following a critical and commercial success, that description surely does not do Corfixen’s film the justice it deserves.

 

Refn’s critical and commercial success, of course, was Drive, which obviously makes My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn “about” the film which followed Drive, Only God Forgives. We all know the fate of Only God Forgives — only a handful of critics recognized the auteurial genius, while everyone else trashed it with reckless abandon. Judging from Corfixen’s documentary, the fate of Only God Forgives was essentially predetermined. Utterly terrified of failure, Refn is deathly nervous about his new production; his Kubrickian obsession with perfection certainly does not help.

 

In one of the infinite risks that Refn takes throughout Only God Forgives‘ production, Refn drags his family to Bangkok for six months. As it turns out, this is just the tip of the iceberg of Refn’s domineering tendencies. Sure, My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn reveals Refn as a committed family man who dedicates time to entertain his children and speak lovingly with his wife, but the unblinking eye of Corfixen’s ever-vigilant camera also reveals a more menacing side to Refn’s persona. Do not worry, Refn is never abusive, yet he does become overly fixated on success, leaving his family by the waste side. This is precisely where Corfixen’s oh-so-personal view of her subject really takes hold.

 

Although Refn is the one who initially directs Corfixen to reveal herself (via a mirror image) as the person behind the camera, Corfixen’s presence becomes increasingly apparent as their marriage is impacted by Refn’s behavior. With telling facial expressions aimed directly at the eye of Corfixen’s lens, Ryan Gosling has no qualms about slyly criticizing Refn as he rambles on about how Only God Forgives‘ build up of violence relates to sex. Gosling presumably knows that Refn is clearly off his rocker, he just wants to make sure that Corfixen understands this as well.

 

Corfixen becomes the innocent victim of her husband’s creative risks and egotistical desire; all the while, My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn showcases Corfixen as the obliging and supportive wife, who heroically contends with her husband’s depression and violent outbursts…because that it is precisely what the wives of artists do, right? In the end, Corfixen serves as Refn’s voice of reason.

 

That is not to say that Refn is a total bad guy. My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refnalso provides a more forgiving perspective in which to view Only God Forgives. It is hard to deny that the hope of this documentary is to shed a light upon Refn’s genius, no matter how flawed it is. The aforementioned comparison to Kubrick’s drive for perfection is by no means an exaggeration. Refn himself deems Only God Forgives to be a failure, but only because it is not absolutely perfect. Maybe Refn has not learned that absolute perfection is a very rare commodity in the realm of cinema?  

SUNDANCE 2015: CHUCK NORRIS VS. COMMUNISM By: Faiz No comments



A scene from Chuck Norris vs. Communism.

 Lone Wolf Nistor

By Don Simpson
 
By the year 1985, Nicolae Ceausescu had been the dictator of Romania for 20 years. Ceausescu controlled all media and entertainment, reducing television access to one channel that only broadcasted for a couple hours per day. The masses could only endure so much oppression, so a secret underground movement was established to illegally import and distribute bootlegged VHS recordings of movies from the Western world. Amazingly enough, a majority of the bootlegs were overdubbed with the voice of one person, Irina Nistor; she was the person everyone associated with the bootleg VHS tapes and became a mysterious savior to the Romanian public.
 
Combining talking head interviews with reenactment footage, first-time director Ilinca Calugareanu reveals the inner workings of an elaborate VHS smuggling ring that arguably might have prompted the eventual overthrow of Calugareanu’s tyranny in 1989. Oddly enough, there were plenty of Romanian officials and members of the secret police who helped out the VHS bootleggers (in exchange for free bootlegs, of course). In other words, Calugareanu’s government may have contributed to its own demise.
 
Through th title, Chuck Norris vs Communism, suggests that Chuck Norris was Romania’s savior, it was an entire catalog of films, mostly from Hollywood, spanning the gauntlet from action films to romantic comedies. These films taught Romanians about the many wonders of the Western world — specifically 1980s pop culture, free enterprise and materialism, but the films also served as an escape from the grim reality of their daily existence. While we can certainly debate the educational merit and the sociopolitical messages that most of these films communicated, it is quite invigorating to think that cinema might have been the root cause of a working class uprising.

 

 

 

SUNDANCE 2015: THE BLACK PANTHERS VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.



Bringing sexy back (those cops do not know how to act)

 

By Don Simpson

 

Stanley Nelson's The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution opens with the story of the three blind men and an elephant to illustrate that the Black Panther Party meant something different to everyone. When the organization was formed in 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale's goal was to put an end to police brutality against Blacks in Oakland, California with legally militarized patrols. The Panthers enjoyed a meteoric rise to the national consciousness due to the media appeal of black men clad in black leather jackets and berets, brandishing guns in public places like the State Capitol grounds in Sacramento. With this free publicity, their membership grew exponentially and chapters began to pop up around the country.

 

Totally unprepared for all of the attention that they gained, the Panthers seemed destined to self-destruct from the very beginning, especially once they became targeted as a threat by the United States government. Making certain that the Panthers would never become a unified entity with a single, well-respected leader (a "messiah"), J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI's top secret counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) to destroy the Panthers from the inside. The FBI also knew that if Panther leaders were trapped in prison, the organization would grow increasingly fragmented. This is when the aforementioned analogy to the blind men and the elephant really makes the most sense.

 

Nelson's documentary relies heavily upon talking head interviews to capture the multitude of perspectives (Seale is strangely missing from the interviewees). The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution takes a very black and white perspective when chronicling the Panthers' interactions with the police; though in most cases the Panthers were probably right and the police were probably wrong, Nelson seems afraid to question the legitimacy of the Panthers' actions. For example, Nelson does not care if Newton actually killed Oakland police officer John Frey or not, he merely focuses on the media attention that the "Free Huey!" protests received. That said, Nelson has no qualms about revealing the warts of the Panther leadership -- Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, specifically, are shown in fairly unfavorable light.

 

The timing of The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution could not be more perfect, with police brutality against black populations once again getting media attention across the United States. We are approaching the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Black Panther Party, there is a black President in the White House, but otherwise it seems like very little has changed. Well, okay, the mainstream media's perspective has changed; black militant groups would never be glamorized in the same way that Panthers were in the late 1960s. Now when the media covers protests of police brutality, they focus solely on the supposed violent and destructive acts of the "unruly mob" rather than the purpose of the protest itself. Maybe -- just maybe -- The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution will remind the media that revolution is incredibly sexy and it should be televised. 



FILM REVIEW: THE CIRCLE By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Circle.

 

Round and round history blows

By Ed Rampell

Switzerland's Official Submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87^th Academy Awards, Swiss co-writer/director Stefan Haupt’s The Circle (Der Kreis) is a fact-based, strong drama about the struggle for gay rights in Switzerland.

The film’s title refers to an actual gay self-help organization that arose in 1930s Zurich, founded by the renowned St. Gallen-born actor Karl Meir (who used the pseudonym “Rolf” and is portrayed onscreen by an avuncular Stephan Witschi). The group’s activities included publishing a multi-lingual magazine called The Circle and operating a gay bar which provided a regular meeting place and venue for annual costume balls which took place during the 1950s (when most of the story is set), attended by up to 800 gay men who traveled from all around Europe to dress up and dance.

At the heart of The Circle is a true life love story between teacher Ernest Ostertag (Matthias Hungerbuhler) and cross dressing performer Robi Rapp (Sven Schelker). Throughout Haupt’s film the narrative is intercut (or, some might say, “disrupted”) by contemporary interviews with the actual Ostertag and Rapp, talking heads who are now elderly gentlemen. The departure from feature format to documentary style was due to financial constraints, according to helmer Haupt. Some may find Haupt’s mixture of techniques to be jarring while other viewers will presumably think it enhances this gay liberation saga’s veracity.

During The Circle the organization experiences ups and downs, as do Ostertag and Rapp and their relationship. The long term romance of the educator and drag artist, through thick and thin, appears to be admirable and is reminiscent of the love between John Lithgow and Alfred Molina’s characters in the recent feature, Love is Strange, as well as 1978’s La Cage aux Follesand its 1996 Hollywood version The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, Nathan Lane and Gene Hackman.

The Circle also calls to mind a great pro-gay play presented in 2011 at L.A.’s Blank Theatre called The Temperamentals. In that drama American gay rights pioneer Harry Hay is also shown to have been a card carrying, dues paying Communist Party member. Similarly, in The Circle motorcycle riding Felix (played by Anatole Taubman, who has matinee idol looks) is a hothead pushing for equality and a Marxist, whose confrontational tactics clash with those of the more moderate, older Rolf.

As The Circle was “the Mother of European gay organizations," why did it thrive for decades in Switzerland? Because this Alpine nation is a bastion of neutrality and democracy that was never conquered by Hitler’s hordes. Of course, that doesn’t mean this Swiss pro-gay group didn’t run into its fair share of, shall we say, circle jerks.

The people of The Circle endured many hardships, including a few homophobic-inspired murders that went unpunished (sound familiar?). But, at least, history went on to be kinder to our star couple when Ostertag and Rapp became the first gay married couple in Switzerland.

             

 

FILM REVIEW: A WILL FOR THE WOODS By: Faiz No comments

Clark Wang in A Will for the Woods. 

Back to nature

By John Esther

Faced with a terminal illness, Clark Wang decides to eschew America's typical burial methods and take the green way out and under. 

At most a slight deviation from the way most humans have been buried since time memorial, and continue to do so in much of the world, a green burial is the eco-friendly, formalized ritual where the deceased is laid to rest in a natural setting using biodegradable materials. There is no embalming or concrete involved. Often a simple stone is used as the marking spot. 

Not only does this ritual allow one to "return to the earth" in an environmentally responsible way, it also allows natural land to remain free from development since the land is now a burial site. 

While the "green burial movement" does play a notable role in A Will for the Woods, the documentary's other strength is how it captures Clark and his partner, Jane Ezzard, coming to grips with his impending death. Clark may not be very old, but this psychiatrist, musician, dancer, and overall very nice guy has been very sick for many years. We are here to witness Clark's last days

Credited with four film directors -- Amy Browne, Jeremy Kaplan, Tony Hale and Brian Wilson -- A Will for the Woods offers a unique and unflinching examination of how Clark lost the ultimate battle (as we all will) yet in the process won over many hearts and minds of those who came to know him both off and on screen (as only some will). Writing of which, A Will for the Woods is a worthy companion to Life Itself, Steve James' recent documentary on the late film writer, Roger Ebert. 

FILM REVIEW: THE KILL TEAM By: Faiz No comments

Adam Winfield in The Kill Team. Photo by David Krauss.

Stryke the truth down

By Ed Rampell

If Chelsea/Bradley Manning is the whistleblower best known for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq, another Army Specialist, Adam Winfield, is arguably the most famous truth teller who revealed American atrocities in Afghanistan. But like Private First Class Justin Stoner, Winfield found out the hard way that not only is it tough times for those who dare to blow the whistle, but the first casualty of war is still truth.

The 21-year-old infantryman came forward to reveal that soldiers of the Fifth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, who were deployed near Kandahar, executed Afghans for sport and then planted weapons beside their corpses to “prove” the casualties were “terrorists.” (They also captured these chilling Kodak moments with a series of photos.) Winfield’s “reward” for trying to report these crimes against humanity was, the moment he stepped off a plane when he returned to America, to be arrested and charged with committing premeditated murder. He found himself to be in the Kafka-esque, Catch-22 trap of becoming a target of a major investigation into war crimes he himself had tried to expose.

Winfield’s wartime experiences and subsequent court-martial disillusioned the young volunteer, who undergoes an epiphany and tells a probing camera lens: “War is dirty. It’s not how they portray it in the movies.” But it is how Dan Krauss depicts combat in The Kill Team, a hard hitting, award winning documentary where the fog of war mingles with the haze of hashish. Krauss’ take-no-prisoners doc, which takes its title from the nickname for the Stryker troops gone wild, also demonstrates why military justice is to justice what military music is to music, as the film focuses on Winfield’s “Alice In Wonderland-like” trial and tribulations.

The Kill Team is also very much a moving family drama. Backing him up every step of the way are Winfield’s Cape Coral, Florida parents, Emma and Christopher, an ex-Marine. In 2010 Adam tells his father via instant messenger about the dogfaces’ wrongdoing in Afghanistan and asks him to inform the Army inspector general. Christopher attempts to alert the military, but to no avail. As Adam confronts the ordeals of death threats, his own death wish and court case, Emma and Christopher stand by their son. Even after he receives a three-year sentence and bad conduct discharge his mom and dad unwaveringly believe Adam be not only innocent, but courageous for standing up for what’s right and trying to tell the truth, against all odds.

Although the jury is still out for some as to whether or not Adam -- who did not try to stop the killing of Allah Dad and pled guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter -- is a whistleblower or murderer, Krauss’ nonfiction film paints a sympathetic portrait of its protagonist. The Kill Team also interviews other members of Winfield’s platoon, such as the conflicted Corporal Jeremy Morlock and Private First Class Andrew Holmes, who were both charged with the premeditated murder of 15-year-old Gul Mudin on Jan. 15, 2010. In the course of their horrifying odyssey both become bolder and wiser than they were when they volunteered to become cannon fodder after Uncle Sam got himself in a terrible jam, way down yonder in Afghan land. As part of a plea agreement Morlock, who hails from Sarah Palin’s home town of Wasilla, Alaska, received a 24-year sentence, while Holmes, who is from Boise, Idaho, is serving seven years behind bars. Both were dishonorably discharged.

Pfc. Justin Stoner, from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was assaulted by fellow soldiers after he reported their drug use. Along with the apparently decent Winfield, Stoner is the film’s conscience and hero and considered to be an informant on this F-Troop’s out of control reign of terror. Questioning the military’s dehumanization of recruits, the philosophical Stoner ruminates: “Your job is to kill. Then why the hell are you pissed off when we do it?” Stoner alleged that he was shown human fingers -- which triggered the murder investigation of the Afghans -- by Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs.

The highest ranking soldier charged in this sordid, sorry, scandalous affair is The Kill Team’s bête noir. Staff Sgt. Gibbs of Billings, Montana was found guilty of, among other things, three counts of murder. Gibbs, who declined to be interviewed for the documentary and is mainly glimpsed in pictures shot by a photojournalist, looms as a cross between two classic characters from Hollywood’s Vietnam War epics: Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Apocalypse Now and Tom Berenger as Sgt. Barnes in Oliver Stone’s 1986 Platoon. Like them, the gung ho Gibbs reportedly goes rogue, instigates the Stryker Brigaders’ renegade mayhem and cuts fingers off of Afghan cadavers so he can use these bones for a creepy trophy -- a skeletal necklace. Much to his surprise, Gibbs’ running amok on the warpath landed him a life sentence at Fort Leavenworth (where he might have some illuminating tête-à-têtes with fellow inmate Manning).         

Krauss, who directed, co-wrote, produced and shot The Kill Team, pulls no punches as he tells his saga, which won the Tribeca Film Festival’s Best Documentary Feature and the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate awards. Unlike most war films The Kill Team unspools slowly, deliberately and is told mostly via a series of talking heads. But it serves as a reminder that far from being a noble endeavor fought, as Winfield ironically muses, by “a bunch of honorable men with unshakeable patriotism,” war is, as Jean Renoir put it in the title of his 1937 pacifist masterpiece, The Grand Illusion. The Kill Team demystifies the mythos epitomized by John Wayne militaristic movies, which starred an actor who never actually served in the U.S. armed forces and whom Garry Wills alleges in his 1998 book John Wayne’s America avoided military service during World War II.

While politically aware audiences will appreciate Krauss’ war-is-hell message, this documentary’s real target market are those young people who -- like an impressionable Adam -- have bought into military madness. After seeing for himself in Afghanistan’s version of “the big muddy” the harsh reality of what the apocalyptic Col. Kurtz calls “the horror," Adam wised up. Perhaps, by seeing The Kill Team, would-be volunteers for Washington’s endless imperial misadventures will wake up and stay home instead.

  

      

FILM REVIEW: CITIZEN KOCH By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Citizen Koch.

To divide they spend

By John Esther

Since the birth of this nation, the rich have held great sway over our government. If it were not for the people participating in the democratic process, namely voting, there would be no stopping the rich from infiltrating every aspect of government – starting with the campaign process. 

However, that changed in 2010 with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens vs. United. A backhanded ruling engineered by the rich neoconservatives, the ruling essentially diluted the influence of working classes in the political process by equating unlimited and often undisclosed campaign contributions with free speech. 

Embolden by the new ruling, billionaires such as Charles and David Koch (AKA the Koch bros.) started this new weapon in class warfare against the working classes in Wisconsin with the 2010 election of Governor Scott Walker, a staunch Republican fixing to dismantle the unions in his state. As a result, a recall movement is born in 2011. People realize the importance of unions. 

Then the Americans for Prosperity from Virginia steps in, becoming Walker’s biggest donor while recruiting Teabagger dupes to back a policy clearly against their best self-interests. Meanwhile Republican members of public unions begin to question his and her longstanding beliefs regarding the GOP just like former Louisiana governor and US Congressman Buddy Roemer did as he ran a different kind of campaign during last year’s Republican primaries. 

Capturing this whirlwind of activity leading up to the historical failure in 2012 to recall Walker, co-directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water) cohesively illustrate what happens when the bad financial powers-that-be cannot be stopped. 

FILM REVIEW: THE INTERNET'S OWN BOY THE STORY OF AARON SWARTZ By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. Photo by Quinn Norton.

A real transformer 

By Ed Rampell

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is required viewing for anyone who values free speech and justice. Brian Knappenberger’s riveting documentary is also a case study in Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department’s selective prosecution. As liberal commentator/columnist/radio talk show host David Sirota points out in an onscreen interview, the Obama administration has not prosecuted the financial sector for basically wrecking much of the world economy.

While Big Brother and the Holder Company gave the Wall Street banksters (and Bush mass murderers a pass), at the same time, as Matt Taibbi points out in The Divide, American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, “Our prison population, in fact, is now the biggest in the history of human civilization.” But who does the Department of Justice (DOJ) decide to throw the book at? Internet whiz kid Aaron Swartz, who in 2000, at the age of 14, helped develop RSS, which has been called “Really Simple Syndication,” as it enables automatic summarization of online information, among other things. The Chicago-born child prodigy went on to cofound the social networking and news website Reddit, a platform for Net communities.

Swartz attended (but did not graduate from) Stanford and became a fellow at Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics. The passionate advocate of Internet freedom and free access to information became an off- and online activist, harnessing the power of the Web to monitor the powers that be. In 2008 he founded Watchdog.net to aggregate data about politicians and helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. In 2010, Swartz founded the nonprofit Demand Progress, which spearheaded Net roots resistance that helped defeat Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Like a sort of Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden of academia, from September 2010 to January 2011 Swartz is believed to have mass downloaded documents from MIT’s JSTOR database, a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Although it’s not certain what Swartz’s motivation was for allegedly doing so, it appears that the hacktivist was attempting to thwart efforts to profiteer off of human knowledge by making this information available free of charge to the general public, which is a recurring theme of The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.

In early 2011 the Secret Service and Cambridge Police Department starting investigating and the US Attorney’s office opened a criminal investigation into the hacking of MIT’s network. By the end of January Swartz’s office and home were raided and grand jury and subpoena actions commenced. As the documentary meticulously reveals, although JSTOR declined to press charges and MIT proclaimed its “neutrality” in the legal matter (while Jamie Dimon and Dick Cheney skated) federal prosecutor Stephen P. Heymann, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, who had a background in prosecuting computer hacking, pursued the case with Inspector Javert-like intensity, and on July 14, 2011 Swartz was charged with four felony counts, including theft of computer information. The 24-year-old was arrested days later.

It was the bulldog versus the watchdog, and during the zigzagging trajectory of Swartz’s case, the number of felony counts against him rose to 13, and Aaron pled not guilty. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange may have been beyond Washington’s long arm of the law and members of the underground collective Anonymous (Knappenberger previously directed the 2012 doc We Are Legion: The Story of the Hactivists) too cagey to be caught, but Swartz was within the U.S. judicial system’s grasp, and it appears that the DOJ was determined to make an example of him. Faced with economic ruin and imprisonment for years by a vengeful administration -- the Obama regime has been extraordinarily vindictive towards whistleblowers, charging more people with the Espionage Act than all previous U.S. administrations combined -- the free spirited Swartz appears to have been pushed over the edge on Jan. 11, 2013.

The 26-year-old’s death prompted protest, including from Congress -- within days California’s U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren announced she’d introduce “Aaron’s Law” to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But on March 6, 2013 an unrepentant Attorney General Holder defended Swartz’s prosecution before a Senate committee.

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is a compelling, powerful, well put together work, combining archival footage and original interviews with notables such as academic/activist Lawrence Lessig, Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Lofgren, as well as with Aaron’s relatives, friends, lovers, etc., who provide an intimate look into the personal side of the film’s subject.  This gripping, must-see documentary -- especially relevant as the struggle for Net neutrality continues and the Snowden case unfolds -- is being released theatrically and on Amazon and Hulu.

R.I.P. Aaron Swartz -- aloha oe (farewell to thee): Your bulb burned briefly, but brightly.