Yvonne Rainer - A dancer, choreographer,
and performance artist turned filmmaker, Rainer's films bear the characteristic
imprint of her early career (which is still evident in her latest work, a
juxtaposition of avant-garde theory and dance entitled After
Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid which was shown in the 2003 New York
Video Festival). Influenced in part by Maya Deren's 'dance' films (or more
appropriately, visual studies in the movement of bodies) Rainer's early features,
Lives of Performers and Film
About a Woman Who... are direct extensions of performance art applied
to the expository medium of film.
10-11-03:
Notes from Yasujiro Ozu: International Perspectives Conference - The
Place of Ozu Within Japanese Film History (with panelists Richard
Combs, Keiko McDonald, Tadao Sato, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto).
Keiko McDonald - Professor McDonald cited her favorite Ozu film as Floating
Weeds, and examined several stylistic
aspects of the film that depicted the filmmaker's thematic distillation
and visual economy, specifically: (1) the pausive function of the
isolated, blue lantern shot after Komajuro's departure (a 'nothingness'
that signifies a great weight), and (2) the recurring shot of Komajuro
looking at Oyoshi's compact flower garden that reflects his desire
to establish 'roots' with his family.
Tadao Sato - Professor Sato proposes that Ozu's singular and idiosyncratic
cinema resulted from the culturally indigenous 'problem' of visual
confinement caused by character immobility when seated on tatami mats
for which, he explains, Kenji
Mizoguchi's solution was to use fluid shots and opening shoji screens between rooms in order to create a sense of visual extension.
Ozu's solution - to use low camera angle - retains the correct perspective
(and creates a flattering framing) of a seated human figure, an unavoidably
recurring image in the presentation of a Japanese home environment that
becomes distorted and awkward when shot from a high camera position.
Citing the final family gathering scene in Tokyo Story,
Sato further reinforces Ozu's penchant for duplicated images (both
characters and inanimate objects) and argues that his use of bar-styled
seating does not reflect a deliberate attempt to show intrinsically
Japanese settings (nor his fondness for sake bars) but rather, as an
opportunity to create repeating patterns in the characters' seating
position. Lastly, Sato notes that Ozu's depiction of avoided eye
contact among his characters (except for dramatic moments) is a
reflection of Japanese behavior.
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto - Professor Yoshimoto deconstructs Ozu's postwar
film, Late Spring -
a film that has received some criticism for its elision of the
austerity and depressed economic conditions of Japanese life under
U.S. occupation in order to illustrate that Ozu repeatedly and
effectively subverts and circumvents censorship in order to comment
on contemporary life. One example cited is a conversation on the
correct spelling of economist Friedrich List's name that is otherwise
homonymous to composer Franz Liszt's surname that, as Yoshimoto
proposes, alludes to the interrelation between culture and economy
in postwar Japan. Yoshimoto further cites anomalous, visual cues
that Ozu intersperses throughout the film in order to convey Allied
presence in the country (through a poster for a gallery exhibition)
as well as references to other members of the Axis nations (Germany
and Italy) in order to illustrate that Ozu was, in fact, chronicling
the condition of the times, albeit through inferential - but
blatantly and explicitly - 'coded' images.
10-10-03: A Hen in the Wind, 1948. A somber,
bleak, and uncharacteristically violent Ozu postwar film, A Hen in the Wind follows the plight of a dressmaker named Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka) who
lives meagerly as a boarder in a modest house in a working class
district with her young son Hiroshi. Awaiting her husband's repatriation
from Manchuria, Tokiko subsists through dressmaking and the occasional
sale of household possessions. Despite their continued hardship,
increasing poverty (due to rampant inflation and scarcity of goods),
and uncertainty over her husband's return, Tokiko has resisted the
temptation to work in a brothel in order to earn extra money. However,
when Hiroshi unexpectedly falls ill, Tokiko is compelled to sacrifice
her dignity in order to tender payment for accrued medical expenses.
Paralleling Tokiko's desperate act with the reluctant livelihood of
a young prostitute, Ozu forms an austere perspective of postwar
Japanese life that is harrowing and life-affirming, tragic and
hopeful, compassionate and indicting.
10-09-03: A Straightforward Boy, 1930. A purely fun, entertaining, and lighthearted short film, A Straightforward
Boy follows the (mis) adventures of a kidnapper (Tatsuo Saito)
who, on an idyllic, sunny day (that, as the film comments, is
conducive for such nefarious activities), lures a cherubic,
bespectacled boy (Tomio Aoki) with toys and treats back into the
hideout. However, when the mischievous and precocious boy becomes
too much of a handful, the kidnapper's attempts to get rid of him
proves to be a greater challenge than the abduction itself.
There Was a Father, 1942. A widowed high school teacher named Horikawa (Chishu Ryu) experiences
a 
traumatic
episode during a school field trip and consequently, decides to
abandon his profession and move to a small town where his son,
Ryohei may obtain a good education. However, unable to earn enough
money to pay for Ryohei's boarding school, Horikawa decides to
return to Tokyo to find a better paying job. The separation between
father and son would prove to be permanent and irreversible, as
Ryohei completes his studies and becomes a schoolteacher in a rural
province while his father continues to work in Tokyo. The film is
a more sentimentally subdued - but nevertheless, affecting -
quintessential Ozu home drama on parental obligation and the
inevitable dissolution of family. At this juncture, Ozu's camera is
more static and understated (similar to Brothers
and Sisters of the Toda Family), such as the repeated extended
sequence of father and son fishing in synchrony at a lake: first,
when Ryohei was a young boy, then later, as a grown man vacationing
with his father at a resort.
10-08-03: Walk Cheerfully, 1930. An unusually fast moving, atypically stylized (rather than composed),
and multi-plot Ozu film that bears a hint of noir, Walk Cheerfully is a humorous and affectionate film that is replete with homages to
classic silent films, from a prominently placed, life-sized Clara Bow poster
to a gangster moll sporting a Louise Brooks haircut. The film resembles
a Chaplinesque romantic comedy drama as a petty thief and career criminal
named Kenji (Minoru Takada) - also known through the moniker Ken the Knife
- performs a surveillance of a jewelry store with his accomplice and targets
an honest, kind-hearted office clerk whom he mistakenly believes is a wealthy
woman after she is observed collecting a diamond ring from the jeweler.
The Brothers and Sisters of the
Toda Family, 1941. On the occasion of the family patriarch's 69th birthday, the
noble and privileged Toda family has assembled for a formal commemorative
photograph and a dinner banquet that would prove to be their father's
last. Forced to sell the family home in order to settle their father's
unresolved, business-related debts, Mrs. Toda (Ayako Katsuragi) and
the youngest daughter Setsuko (Mieko Takamino) - with a devoted
domestic servant (Choko Iida) and mynah bird in tow - are sent to
live with the oldest son, Shinichiro (Tatsuo Saito), before being
politely passed off from one sibling to another. Expounding on (and
prefiguring) similar themes of filial duty and respect to elders as Tokyo Story with the social commentary on
the vanishing way of life of the feudal era, socially prominent
merchant class (note the samurai clan armor that decorates the
hallway of the Toda residence), The Brothers
and Sisters of the Toda Family is a poignant and graceful
film that exemplifies Ozu's later, more insular, understated, and
distilled) gendai-geki home dramas.
10-07-03:
Days of Youth, 1929. As the film opens, a gregarious loafer
named Watanabe (Ichiro Yuki) turns away 
a
young man who has inquired about a sign on the window for a room for
rent, explaining that he had just rented the room earlier that day.
Moments later, an attractive young woman inquires about the same
room and, attempting to get into her good graces, Watanabe remarks
that he is in the process of vacating and that the room is available.
With nowhere to go, he moves into the apartment of his meek, bookish
friend Yamamoto (Tatsuo Saito) who, unbeknownst to him, is enamored
with the same young woman. After completing their final examinations,
the two friends decide to bide time waiting for their final grades
by competing for the affection of the young woman at a ski resort,
resulting in a series of misadventures for the novice skier Yamamoto.
The earliest extant film by Ozu, Days of Youth is a whimsical, amusing, and entertaining fusion of physical and
situational comedy. Most noteworthy in the film is the absence of
Ozu's familiar 'pillow' shots that are functionally replaced by
the use a bookend, long panning panorama shots of the city to
convey placement and scenario.
I
Graduated But..., 1929. A ten minute reconstruction of an
otherwise lost film, I Graduated But... follows a trajectory
of enlightenment towards humble acceptance as Ozu's similarly titled, I Was Born But... as a recent college graduate named Tetsuo (Minoru Takada), unable to
find employment at a position that he believes is commensurate with
his education level (his only job offer is as an entry level office
receptionist), is visited by his mother after misrepresenting his
financial circumstances to her. While there is little material
presented, the story does unfold linearly. However, Ozu's development
of plot through quietly observed interactions and situations - the
essence of his cinema - is unavoidably compromised.
I Flunked But..., 1930. A college student's (Tatsuo Saito) underhanded scheme to cheat on
his final examinations backfires when the boarding house matron sends
the shirt on which he has scribbled his notes out for laundry. Now
faced with remaining as a student for another year and bearing the
dubious distinction of being the only student in the household who
did not graduate, he gradually adjusts to the reality of his deferred
professional life, eventually turning his disappointment to optimism
with the support and encouragement of his friends and a young waitress
(Kinuyo Tanaka) who is devoted to him. Similar to the lighthearted
comedy of Days of Youth, I
Flunked But... is a hilarious and effervescent comedy on a
young man's unforeseen (and unintentionally) delayed passage to
maturity and responsibility.
10-06-03: The Only Son, 1936. 
The Only Son is a quintessential
Ozu home drama on the relationship between a
widowed mother (Choko Iida) and her son, Ryosuke. Encouraged by her
son's ambitious elementary school teacher (Chishu Ryu), the mother
slaves at a silk manufacturing factory, sacrificing personal and
financial comfort and security, in order to support Ryosuke's
education so that he may grow up to be a "great man".
Thirteen years later, she travels to Tokyo to visit Ryosuke and
finds that that his once seemingly bright future has become quashed
by limited opportunity and personal obligations. Alternately poignant,
comical, and bittersweet, the film is a thoughtful exposition of Ozu's
familiar themes of familiar estrangement and acceptance of life's
inevitable disappointments.
Kagamijishi, 1935. Kagamijishi is a
short performance film intended to introduce non-native viewers to
Kabuki theater and also to showcase the skill of Kikugoro IV, a
legendary, multi-generation Kabuki artist. Ozu's repeated fixed
position shots (one on center stage, a second to the side of the
stage, and a third from an upper balcony) are evident throughout
the film. Although I'm unfamiliar with the vernacular of Kabuki
theatre, the then middle-aged Kikugoro's ability to transform himself
from delicate maiden to possessed, ferocious beast by donning a
lion mask is remarkable.
What Did the Lady Forget?, 1937. A funny, lighthearted, but nevertheless, astute social satire, What Did the Lady Forget? centers
on a genial college professor who, forced by his stern and domineering
wife to play golf, fabricates an alibi and arranges to spend
the evening at a student's house. However, his plans are compromised
when his assertive and progressive thinking niece decides to
accompany him. Loosely reminiscent of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Master
of the House (without the imposing governess), the film
is a highly engaging comedy on the need for reciprocity and
mutual respect in human relationships.
Notes on
The 2003 New York Video Festival at the Walter Reade.
07-28-03:
Program 5: Mirror Conspiracies: Anthony Goicolea, Shannon Plumb, and
Chris Larson.
An omnibus of several video shorts by three New York gallery artists, Mirror
Conspiracies inherently reflects the aesthetic personalities
of each artist. Goicolea's surreally playful works is the most
diverse in implementation of media technique: monochromatic and
highly textural gothic mood pieces and experiments in split screen
and doppelganger comic compositions. Theater-trained artist Shannon
Plumb's charming and accessible comedic pantomime Super 8, silent
film-inspired works have a distinctive, retro tone that allude to
the deadpan comedies of Buster Keaton, 1950s public service announcements,
and even Stan Brakhage scratch films (in an homage short entitled Tack)
in which the artist is repeatedly goaded into sitting on a disappearing
chair. Chris Larson's attractive, photogenic, and literally slick,
but personally unengaging films recall David Lynch-like gothic visuals
with Matthew Barney's predilection for subliminally erotic structures
and compositions which, in Larson's case, has been combined with a
seeming affinity for photographing the behavioral flow of viscous
fluids (oils and paints) that further illustrate the artist's visual
theme of biological man as primitive machine.
Program 12: Life is a Dream
Robots of Sodom and Every Evening Freedom (Tom Kalin) - Two video
excerpts from a larger work in progress entitled Behold
Goliath or The Boy With the Filthy Laugh based on the experimental
fiction of Alfred Chester, Robots
of Sodom (from In Praise of Vespasian)
and Every Evening Freedom (from Behold
Goliath) are composed primarily of stylized, text-based
sequences narrated through overlaid voice synthesizers (using
standard Macintosh-platform speech recognition, MacinTalk™ voice
personalities like Agnes, Ralph, and Fred), creating a dissociative
and alienated, yet hypnotic, engaging, and sensorally immersive experience.
Beacon (Christophe
Girardet and Matthius Mueller) - Reminiscent of the elegies of
Aleksandr Sokurov, particularly the spectral forms of Elegy
of a Voyage and incorporating evocative, narrated text written
by the accomplished video artist Mike Hoolboom, Beacon is a serene, haunting, and contemplative tone poem on spiritual displacement
and longing.
Security Anthem (Kent Lambert) - Security Anthem is
an idiosyncratic and humorous composition of enunciated random sentences
from circa 1980 (which the video artist obtained from public domain
speech pathology training tapes) set against a low resolution video
of the 'singing senator' John Ashcroft uninhibitedly belting out
a tune.
The Phantom Museum (The
Brothers Quay) - My favorite entry from the program, the brothers
Quay create yet another
beautiful, haunting, atmospheric, and exquisitely tactile composition
of stop-motion animation and live action as an unseen visitor wanders
an empty museum that houses a curious repository of medical school
paraphernalia. Observing and manipulating the antique dolls, prosthetic
limbs and mechanisms, and surgical devices, the video creates an
indelibly poetic meditation on the biological processes of human
existence.
Jungle (Random
Touch) - Jungle is
a passable but unextraordinary serendipity piece that juxtaposes
footage of (undoubtedly inebriated) revelers at an amusement park
against a pulsing tribal-inspired rhythm of an enveloping (if not
overwhelming) musical soundtrack.
Picture-Book (Ed Bowes) - Picture-Book is
a strangely enigmatic and visually gorgeous, but ultimately inscrutable
experiment in Henry James-inspired narrative abstraction. Recalling
the vacuous gloss of a late 1980s Calvin Klein Obsession commercial
dialogue (although less polished) with Eric
Rohmer naturalistic visuals, the frustrating opacity of the
narrative does not lend itself towards a sustained, near
feature-length work - interesting, but becomes tedious in its
nonsensical repetivity after the half hour mark.
Program 13: Shall We Dance?
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid (Yvonne Rainer)
- Juxtaposing a series of narrative text that describe the evolution
of art and culture in fin-de-siècle Vienna (using historically
analytical sources such as Carl Schorske's Fin-de
Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, Volume 1, and
Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin's Wittgenstein's Vienna), commentary
by innovative, turn of the century Viennese artists (Oscar Kokoschka,
Adolf Loos, Arnold Schoenberg, and Ludwig Wittgenstein), and
fragmentary excerpts from the rehearsals and performance of the
Rainer-choreographed dance program, After Many a Summer Dies the
Swan, commissioned by the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation for
the White Oak Dance Project, the video is a philosophically dense
statement on the historical role and function of art in society,
and an inspiring call to action for the restoration of the
avant-garde movement to its original radical vision.
VB51 (Vanessa
Beecroft) - An experiment in tableaux vivants, Vanessa Beecroft
assembles 25 women of different ages formally dressed in predominantly
white evening wear (with the notable exceptions of R.W.
Fassbinder heroines Irm Hermann who is wearing a pink gown and
Hanna Schygulla who is wearing black attire) as spectators line the
walls of the grand hall of a baroque German castle. With an underlying
tenet of the performance art - silence - repeatedly and unexpectedly
violated by the irrepressible Ms. Schygulla as she spontaneously recites
and sings passages from Winterreise in
order to fill the void of the extended silence, the video performance
serves, not only as an idiosyncratic and curious approach to the
proverbial objectification of women through the sublime spectacle
of their literal, formal exhibition as beautiful 'works' of 'living
art', but also as a window to the inimitable personality of the iconic
actress.
07-27-03: Program 10: Pretend
Julie
Talen's feature-length video, Pretend,
is an astonishingly complex experimental visual narrative structure
that nevertheless, sustains a cohesive, inner storytelling logic.
Composed of a series of dynamically arranged, multi-channel screens,
each presenting alternate points of view, imagined scenarios, experiments
in color and textual composition, and fragmentation of chronology,
the video uses a seemingly simple tale - two sisters who fabricate
a plan to feign the younger sister's kidnapping in order to emotionally
manipulate their parents into staying together - to create a compelling,
exquisite, and artistically mature work on perspective, reality,
guilt, and memory.
Program 9: Intimations of Mortality
A Silent Day (Takashi Ito) - A Silent Day is
an appropriately wordless, yet poetic and instinctually cohesive
fictionalized autobiographical journal of a young filmmaker who roams
through the desolate streets of a suburban city, occasionally acting
out her inner demons through a metaphorically soulless, ambiguously
inexpressive marionette.
Suicide (Shelly Silver) - A similarly
themed video journal of a fictional filmmaker contemplating suicide
(albeit superficially), the aimless heroine travels abroad (a theme
reminiscent of Chantal
Akerman's expositions of the artist in exile) in order disconnect
herself from the emotional attachment of her unresolved past. Alternately
humorous, contemplative, and disquieting, Suicide is
a mildly engaging and respectable effort, although I find the video
maker's affinity towards terminally 'cute' shots of Japan - Pikachu
ornaments, Sanrio-inspired window dressing, broadly smiling pop star
billboards, and adorable school girls wearing bright yellow hats
- a bit complicitous in perpetuating this typically Western curiosity
for a particular, idiosyncratic aspect of Japanese culture.
Program 8: Me and My Camera
La Tombola (Ximena
Cuevas) - Cleverly conceived as the titular, cheaply produced, campy
Mexican variety show as the video artist is among an odd assortment
of guests that also include a flamboyant celebrity who owns a gaudy,
ostentatious estate, an uninhibited exhibitionist who is eager to
expose herself at the slightest prompting, and an uptight, conservative
moralist, the artist serves as a reluctant witness to the attention-grubbing
spectacle. In the end, Cuevas implicates the audience for the perpetuation
of the media's tabloid mentality by turning her unassuming DV camera
towards the voyeuristic public.
The Guzzler of Grizzly Manor (George
Kuchar) - A whimsical, lighthearted, but ultimately unremarkable
video journal as the veteran video artist muses and often embellishes
stories on his mundane travels through several states in support
of the presentation of his work at film festivals.
Frozen War (John Smith) - Frozen War is
another tedious, pointless, unneccesarily ponderous, and self-aggrandizing
video journal as the artist speculates on the potential cause of
a frozen, broadcasted image announcing the commencement of war in
Afghanistan.
Voice Off (Donigan Cumming) - Voice Off marks
the first time in this year's NYVF that I actually walked out (although
I do want to note that I was not alone in this sentiment as several
audience members preceded and followed me in leaving), after viewing
approximately two-thirds of the video. Ostensibly a personal chronicle
of the artist's brother - an eccentric, unpredictable, aging man
of diminished mental capacity who had recently lost his voice and
now communicates through handwritten notes and a voice synthesizer
- the video evolves into a self-indulgent and egoistic rumination
of the artist's own smug, disdainful, self-absorbed, and insensitive
observations of the cause and evolution of his brother's disability.
Featuring at least two exploitive, formally posed shots of his brother
in full nudity, I found this particular work visually and thematically
nauseating and morally reprehensible.
Paper Route (Robert
Frank) - Recalling the nomadic films of Abbas
Kiarostami in the organic progression of a deceptively
mundane, yet insightful and life-affirming conversation between a
driver and passenger, video artist Robert Frank accompanies his personable
and disciplined local paper delivery man on his morning paper route
on a brisk winter day through the artist's bucolic hometown in Nova
Scotia. Simple, compassionate, and engaging, the video is a reverent
and indelible portrait of a humble existence and vanishing way of
life that not only serves as the isolated residents' literal source
of information about the world around them, but also their human
connection to the metaphoric 'collective soul' of the rural community.
07-26-03: Program 6: The World at Night
Orange Factory (Seoungho
Cho) - A fusion of the morphing, ghostly entities of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse with
the desolate otherworldliness of Aleksandr Sokurov's nomadic elegies, Orange
Factory is an exquisite and skillfully
constructed composition of sensual (and sensoral) textures.
NYC (Doug
Aitken/Associates in Science) - Although an artful music video (for
an otherwise flaccid song by New York-based band Interpol that sounds
vaguely like a rougher Bring on the Dancing
Horses by Echo and the Bunnymen) that
skillfully integrates digital and video post-production effects,
its inclusion in the program is debatable.
Ri-'pET (Christine
Knoll, Torsten Frank, and Christian Golz) - Proceeding in Koyaanisqatsi-like
(Godfrey Reggio) frenetic pacing of endless motion through city and
provincial roads, punctuated by the intermittent static transmission
from a CB radio, Ri-'pET is
a well articulated and thoughtful portrait of the inherently nomadic
and disconnected life of a truck driver. Unfortunately, the written
epilogue of the film has the cumulative effect of unnecessarily over-explaining
what, up to that moment, had been a subtle and expressive, yet innately
cohesive work on isolation.
Nocturne (Emily
Richardson) - Composed of a series of twilight images of empty streets, Nocturne is
a mesmerizing and tonally expressive video work that similarly recalls
the seminal tone poem Koyaanisqatsi with
the rigorous symmetry and urban desolation of Chantal Akerman's News
from Home.
Night Out (Francis
Gomila) - A grainy, often jittery surveillance-style video that captures
an argument between a couple as the man eventually walks away into
the empty street (to the exploited expressivity of Caetano Veloso's Cucurrucucu
Paloma), Night
Out is an uninspired, insipid, amateurish,
and salaciously (and unamusingly) voyeuristic entry.
Nuclear Train (Daniel
Saul) - Recalling Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker in
the video's post-apocalyptic tone and particularly in the alluded
telekinesis of the (genetically) disabled daughter, Nuclear
Train is an engaging, appropriately
paced, and technically accomplished mood piece that effectively incorporates
a diverse assortment of post-production video effects.
Napoli Centrale (Bouchra
Khalili) - A well crafted and picturesque, but banal and tediously
unoriginal premise of a restless and lonely soul driving through
empty French streets at night articulating his passing thoughts and
fleeting memories into the vast emptiness.
37th and Lex (Leighton
Pierce) - A short and polished tone poem by the video artist who
narrates his thoughts of melancholy and longing through a series
of handwritten notes, interspersed against shots of the empty New
York City intersection.
September 10 2001, Uno nunca muere la
vispera (Monika Bravo) - Textural and
poetic, the video is undoubtedly a personally expurgative (or perhaps,
meditative) composition on 9/11 as images of New York City are presented
in perpetual overcast and rain. However, as a spectator to a seemingly
private video missive (the work is addressed to a particular person),
I could not help but feel that the decision to present the piece
in a public exhibition seems exploitive* (see Addendum)
of the tragedy.
Addendum: I would like to thank Monika
Bravo for contacting me and providing contextual information regarding
her video, September 10 2001, Uno nunca
muere la vispera. To be honest, I don't
remember that 9/10/01 was a rainy day, and so I interpreted the video
to be more of a reflective, elegiac mood piece than an actual recorded
document. The fact that the images in the video were recorded on
that day, and that Ms. Bravo herself is a WTC survivor (and that
the person to whom the video was dedicated, Michael Richards, was
a friend, colleague, and fellow artist who perished on 9/11) makes
me further appreciate the personal nature of her testament. The video
was presented at the NYVF without any background or history provided
by the programmers or the accompanying literature, detaching the
viewer from the video's raison d'être, which I think
proved to be a disservice to the piece. In any case, this web page
provides more information and material on her personal project (which
I do feel should have been included in the program literature): The
Michael Richards Fund.
Program 1: Personal Anthology
Learning Stalls (Torsten
Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin) - A compedium of special effects-type
technical experiments involving rudimentary, morphing, Flash-type
animation superimposed onto human forms and exercises on multiple
exposure, the amateurish video unfortunately overplays the novelty
of wire meshing, image compositing, and dynamic, spirograph-like
digital renderings to the point of abstraction and tedium.
The Chocolate Factory (Steve
Reinke) - An equally uninspired presentation in an overall weak and
unbalanced program, the video consists of a deliberative, monotone
narrator (presumably a serial killer) speaking with a cold impassivity
akin to Lorenzo Music's voice characterization of Carlton the Doorman
(in the television sitcom Rhoda)
and the titular character of the cartoon series Garfield,
as he describes a series of personal encounters to the corresponding
image of a camera languorously (and incomprehensibly) panning up
and down a series of mediocre portrait sketches. The only worthwhile
moment is a silent panning of a portrait sketch with a postscript
that the subject is a deaf mute.
Wasted (Scott
Russell) - Another crude and amateurish entry, the video is a lowbrow
humored, nonsensical compilation of unconnected (and illogical) vignettes,
such as the video 'artist' putting a plastic bag over his head and
creating depressions that project out, then retract upon breathing,
and another segment in which he repeatedly mumbles "I am a monster" with
a mouth deliberately overstuffed with nectarious food. I personally
find this type of pointless, gratuitous, self-congratulatory, and
narcissistic creation rather grating and insulting - the antithesis
of creating personal art.
Lost in Space (Tricia Middleton and Joel
Taylor) - Composed of indelible natural imagery and impersonal
cityscapes set against an engaging soundtrack (that includes The
Carpenters' Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft and New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle), the
video artists create an interesting - if pointedly abstruse - video
essay on despair and alienation.
Single Beds Vol. 1
Desolation (Ximena Cuevas) - Loosely reminiscent of Chantal
Akerman's early films, particularly the restless isolation of Je, tu, il, elle and the ritualistic
housework of Jeanne Dielman,
23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, and further infused with
the disquieting drone of overlapping, indistinguishable sampled
narrations in a similar vein as the ambient repetition of the
perplexing audio composition, Waiting for Bardot (from the idiosyncratic Crass Records compilation entitled Bullsh*t
Detector), the video is a commendable, albeit familiar,
portrait of loneliness and estrangement.
07-05-03:
Notes on Contemporary Film Directors: Abbas Kiarostami by Mehrnaz
Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum.
The
unorthodox presentation of individual criticism by two admirers
of Kiarostami's cinema from different continents in the book Contemporary
Film Directors: Abbas Kiarostami is
a fascinating approach: the first, a more universal, Western 'outsider'
perspective from the venerable American film critic Rosenbaum,
then subsequently, a more culturally rooted, 'insider' perspective
from contemporary Iranian filmmaker Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa. Saeed-Vafa
and Rosenbaum then review each other's critical essays and continue
their appraisal of Kiarostami's oeuvre through a transcripted dialogue
between the two authors. What emerges from the interaction is an
insightful analysis of Kiarostami's cinema as a distinctively native
view of modern-day Iran, but also as a universal, cross-cultural
representation of contemporary society.
Rosenbaum provides an impassioned and compelling defense for the
thematic purpose and essentiality of the often maligned, jarring,
and controversial video epilogue that concludes A
Taste of Cherry. Rosenbaum proposes:
"Though it invites us
into the laboratory from which the film sprang and places us
on an equal footing with the filmmaker, it does this in the spirit
of collective euphoria, suddenly liberating us from the oppressive
solitude of Badii alone in his grave. By harking back to the
soldiers who remind us of the happiest part of Badii's life and
a tree in full bloom that reminds us of the Turkish taxidermist's
own epiphany - though soldiers also signify the wars that made
refugees of both the Kurdish soldier and the Afghan seminarian
and a tree is almost where the Turk almost hanged himself - Kiarostami
is representing life in all its complexity. He reconfigures elements
from the preceding eighty-odd minutes in video to clarify what
in their ingredients is real and what's concocted."
During the discussion of Close-up,
Rosenbaum underscores the social implications of the Makhmalbaf
impersonator Sabzian's Turkish nationality - an ethnic minority
in Iran - as a culturally significant situational subtlety that
is often overlooked in the analysis of the film. Rosenbaum compares
the film to the John Guare play, Six
Degrees of Separation that, like Close-up,
is based on the real-life deception by a socially marginalized
man named Paul, gaining admission into New York society by claiming
to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier. Citing similarities in the
characters' mutual status as social minorities who feign association
with the film industry, the author illustrates the universality
of public perception towards the achievement of celebrity as a
means of attaining power, privilege, and respect. Saeed-Vafa further
expounds on the appropriateness of having self-taught filmmaker Mohsen
Makhmalbaf as the subject of the impersonation,
commenting that his popular appeal in Iran is as much for his films
as it is for the idea of social mobility that he represents: a
poor and undereducated man who has achieved success through filmmaking.
Saeed-Vafa explains:
"When I was a teenager,
everyone was a poet, but now everyone is a filmmaker, especially
after the Revolution. Seeing that [Close-Up] for the first time,
so many [Iranian] filmmakers were not educated in film - and
many were not educated, period. But becoming a filmmaker or artist
originally conferred a status that was only reserved for the
privilege or the educated and then, all of a sudden, it became
something noneducated people could achieve, if they worked hard
to get there."
Notes on Human
Rights Watch International Film Festival at the Walter Reade.
06-21-03:
My Terrorist, 2002 (Yulie Cohen Gerstel,
Israel). Provocative, insightful, passionate, and courageous, My
Terrorist chronicles Ms. Cohen Gerstel's
controversial campaign to win the parole release of a convicted
PLO (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) terrorist Fahad
Mihyi who, in 1978, had boarded and opened fire on a London bus
occupied by Ms. Cohen Gerstel and the rest of the El Al (Israeli
airline) flight crew, resulting in the death of several of her
colleagues and her own severe wounding. A proud Israeli national
and military veteran, the filmmaker nevertheless began to examine
the complex and difficult situation of the Arab-Israeli conflict
from a different perspective after working as a photojournalist
in the occupied territory of the Gaza Strip. Witnessing the profound
economic disparity and inhumane living conditions that contribute
to the cycle of hate, exclusion, and violence, Ms. Cohen Gerstel
sought to help bridge the deep-rooted ideological gulf between
the Israeli and the Palestinians with a symbolic, humanitarian
gesture of interacting with the isolated Fahad, then subsequently,
writing a testimonial letter of support for his release. Inevitably,
despite the (deliberately) inconclusive fate of Fahad, what emerges
is a personal documentary of reconciliation and closure that is
both honest, fearless, and profoundly inspiring. (The film's official
site may be found here.)
Vivisect, 2003 (Marija
Gajicki, Serbia). The incisive short film, Vivisect, captures
the polarized public
reaction in the Serbian city of Novi Sad to a gallery exhibition
of Ron Haviv's war photography, a photojournalist who has chronicled
a decade of divisive and destructive wars that resulted in the breakup
of Yugoslavia. Having intentionally left the photographs uncaptioned
and instead, providing a blank sheet of paper on the side, Haviv
and the museum organizers soon find the papers defaced with impassioned,
often vitriolic comments that reflect the country's unreconciled
sentiment of guilt, intolerance, and chauvinism, but also a regret
for the collective tragedy of war.
The Cuckoo, 2002 (Alexander
Rogozhkin, Russia). The Cuckoo is
an understated, yet enchanting comedy
of errors on the human capacity for empathy and community amidst
the chaos and senselessness of war. Set in September 1944 shortly
before Finland's withdrawal from World War II, the film lyrically
recounts a fateful encounter between an injured, disillusioned Russian
soldier named Ivan and a talkative, escaped Finnish sniper, Veiko
(who was dressed by his unit in a German SS military uniform in order
to discourage dereliction of duty), at the remote farm of a lonely
and attractive young Lapp widow. Unable to communicate with each
other, the three isolated protagonists nevertheless establish a surrogate
and affectionate bond as they cooperate to survive in the harsh frontier.
Capturing an idiosyncratic, incisive, and often amusing tone, Rogozhkin
creates a whimsical, humorous, and acutely observed portrait of man's
ability to transcend divisive cultural barriers to find commonality
of human experience.
Life on the Tracks
(Riles), 2002 (Ditsi Carolino, Philippines). Life
on the Tracks is a charming, graceful,
compassionate, and staggeringly intimate portrait of the everyday
struggles of a poor, but devoted (and playfully bickering) married
couple named Eddie and Pen Renomeron as they eke out a meager existence
for their two daughters and three adopted children (whose parents
were killed by a train) in a squatter village in the district of
Balik-balik, Sampaloc in Manila. According to filmmaker Ditsi Carolino,
there are two social classes that exist in the village: the opportunistic,
often politically connected, permanent squatters who built the crude
shantytowns alongside the railroad tracks for rental, and the migrant
tenants, often from rural provinces, who move to the city in search
of a better life. Capturing the poignancy and affection of the destitute
villagers as they pass idle time through karaoke, alcohol, card games,
and the synchronized dodging of passing trains, and the Renomeron
family's attempt to provide a sense of normalcy for their children
despite profound physical (the film provides an unsettling glimpse
of the inadequacy of health care for the poor through Pen's continued
health problems that also resulted in a crude mastectomy) and economic
hardship (the children, in turn, dream of a better life abroad, such
as a daughter's aspiration to become a singer in Japan), the film
is a humbling and indelible portrait of human dignity, resilience,
and community.
Poison (Sanpeet),
2002 (Giuseppe Petitto, Enrico Pizianti,
and Gianluca Pulcini, Italy/Thailand). In an
attempt to 
curb delinquency and drug use among young people in the
impoverished area known as the 'Golden Triangle' in northeast Thailand,
the government endorsed a policy to promote sports, leading to the
institution of youth kickboxing competitions in the region. Sanpeet,
a small built, seven year-old boy, is the eldest of three children
in the Petnonnoi family. The kickboxing competitions have become
a source of supplementary income for the family, as Sanpeet's unemployed
father uses his son's deceptive physical stature in order to skew
the betting odds in illegal gambling activities that inevitably accompany
the tournaments. Provocative and innately disturbing, Poison is
a compelling examination of the vicious cycle of poverty, vice, and
abuse.
06-20-03: Jiyan (Life), 2002 (Jano
Rosebiani, Iraqi Kurdistan). A Kurdish-American man named Diyari
travels to the village of Halabja, one of the targeted sites of the
1988 chemical and biological bombing of the Iraqi Kurdistan region
by the Iraqi military (acting under Saddam Hussein's Anfal genocide
campaign against the Kurds), on a personal humanitarian effort to
build a facility in order to accommodate the area's high rate of
orphaned children. His first encounter with the proud and determined
villagers is through a shy, yet affable little girl orphaned by the
bombing named Jiyan whose face has been permanently scarred by chemical
burns. As Diyari immerses himself in the daily life and continued
struggle for survival of the Kurdish villagers - witnessing the area's
decimated and poisoned landscape (where the occasional windstorm
inevitably results in a secondary bombardment of the deadly airborne
materials) and increased rates of infertility, genetic anomalies,
and mortality - Jiyan becomes his guide and inspiration to the indefatigable
soul of an oppressed people. Reminiscent of Kaneto Shindo's Children
of Hiroshima in the interweaving of real-life
testimonies of actual survivors from the inhumane bombing campaign
with the fictional narrative of an estranged native witness, Jiyan is
a somber and haunting, yet affectionate, charming, and celebratory
portrait of human courage, community, dignity, and resilience. (The
film's official site may be found here.)
Notes
on Films from Along the Silk Road: Central Asian Cinema at the
Walter Reade.
05-10-03:
The Apple, 2003 (Abay Kulbaev, Kazakhstan). The
Apple is a charming and playfully
ironic short film on a man (played by filmmaker Darezhan Omirbaev)
casually picking berries on a hill who becomes drawn to the amusing
sight of a young boy attempting to reach an apple that is tantalizingly
just out of his reach.
Killer,
1998 (Darezhan Omirbaev, Kazakhstan). Killer is
a visually distilled, acutely observed, and socially relevant film
on moral erosion, marginalization, urban disconnection, and despair.
Inviting vague comparisons to Robert Bresson's L'Argent in
the spare and naturalistic depiction of spiritual corruption in
an increasingly inhumane, callous, and materialistic society, the
film centers on a young married man and doting new father named
Marat, the personal driver of a genial and highly respected mathematics
professor and university director in the large, impersonal city
of Almaty. As the film opens, the professor arrives at the studio
of a radio station for a recorded interview on the uncertain state
of scientific research and the academic community after the collapse
of the Soviet Union. The episode proves to be an applicable reflection
of Marat's tenuous financial circumstances as well when, having
borrowed the car to drive his family home from the hospital, he
attempts to catch a glimpse of his infant son while in transit
and causes a traffic accident. Unable to pay for the repair of
the two automobiles (in an obliquely violent encounter with the
owner of the vehicle in Marat's home that is Pirandellically depicted
in Omirbaev's subsequent film, The
Road, a reflexive film on a filmmaker
seeking creative inspiration to complete his film, Killer),
Marat reluctantly borrows money from a loanshark, and consequently
embarks on a dubious, inescapable alliance with the ruthless mobster.
Tonally muted and understated, yet evocative and poetic, Killer is
perhaps Omirbaev's most accomplished work to date, a film that
combines the intimacy and emotional honesty of Kairat and Kardiogram with
the innately metaphoric personality of environment and natural
landscape that pervade the sublime imagery of The
Road.
The
Mystery of Ferns, 1992 (Rachid Malikov,
Uzbekistan). Fortunately, filmmaker Rachid Malikov was available
for a post-screening Q&A of his film, The
Mystery of Ferns, a narratively opaque,
yet instinctually (and emotionally) resonant film on profound alienation,
spiritual desolation, and obsolescence. The film follows the plight
of a lonely widower, an elderly intellectual alternately ignored
and patronized by his self-consumed daughter and immature granddaughter,
who one day, loses his memory and begins to wander aimlessly through
the impersonal, and often decaying landscape of modern-day Uzbekistan.
Slightly reminiscent of the baroque elements in Raoul Ruiz's stylistic
characterizations (although Malikov's formalized compositions are
quite spare by comparison), the film's challenging narrative approach
lies in its oddly surreal (yet naturalistic) and psychologically
impenetrable point-of-view that reflects the old man's fragmented
and pervasively detached perspective. What results
is an inaccessible, yet innately compelling film.
05-09-03:
The Last Stop (Terminus), 1987 (Serik
Aprimov, Kazakhstan). In an early episode in The
Last Stop, a young man, newly discharged
from the Soviet army visits his relatives and inquires about what
has transpired in the bucolic town during his absence, to which
he receives the reply "Nothing happens here. We live." Considered
to be the first perestroika film, The
Last Stop consists of a series of
reunions with family and friends as he spends an aimless day attempting
to readjust to his former life and assessing his future in his
rural hometown where poverty, unemployment, drunkenness, and interminable
boredom are endemic to the villagers' way of life. Aprimov's use
of languid pacing, spare, natural landscapes, and dialogistic (and
occasionally amusing) encounters invites comparison to the films
of Abbas
Kiarostami, but his sense of cultural
intimacy for village life and affectionate concern for the limited
opportunities of its inhabitants are distinctively native.
The Fly-Up,
2002 (Marat Sarulu, Kyrgyzstan).
Preceding Marat Sarulu's feature film, My
Brother Silk Road,
is the filmmaker's short film, The Fly-Up,
a quiet observation of a factory furnace worker's idyllic afternoon
of rest as he attempts to escape the oppressiveness of his existence
by taking a nap on the rooftop, watching a beautiful young neighbor
as she paints her house, then traveling to the top of a mountain
overlooking the town in order to fly his homemade paraglider. The
Fly-Up is a simple and subtle, yet
understatedly metaphoric film on imagination and transcendence.
The
Watchman (The Guard), 1989 (Beyzhan
Aidkuluev, Kyrgyzstan). Consisting of concentrated, visually striking,
and evocative natural imagery, The Watchman is
an indelible portrait of a robust, elderly, one-legged man as he
traverses the austere, yet beautiful landscape of his quaint Kirghiz
village. Slightly reminiscent of Aleksandr Sokurov's impressionistic
and elegiac tone poems (particularly Oriental
Elegy, but with less opacity and more
instinctual cohesion), the film is a haunting and sublime meditation
on natural communion, transience, and cultural extinction.
My
Brother Silk Road, 2001 (Marat Sarulu,
Kyrgyzstan/Kazakhstan). Incorporating two intersecting 
situational
narratives, My Brother Silk Road is
an exquisite, intelligently constructed, and richly textured snapshot
of a transitional human experience. The film begins with a group
of small children as they follow an older boy on a playful exploration
through the vast forest of their remote agrarian mountain village.
The older boy leads the children to the steppes where he reveals
the romantic history of the train tracks as having been built on
what had formerly been the silk road trade route. The story then
shifts perspective to the occupants of a transnational train: a
middle-aged train employee who once followed a lover aboard the
train and has figuratively been unable to leave ever since; her
daughter, a young woman who has decided to abandon school and join
a group of aimless, Western pop culture-addicted bohemians; a struggling,
pensive, and idealistic artist who offers quick sketch, pencil
portraits to passengers for money. With equal measures of affectionate
whimsy and social realism, the film is an acutely observed composition
of people in emotional transition as they search for community,
reconciliation, and transcendence.
The screening of My
Brother Silk Road was followed by
an extended Q&A session with filmmaker Marat Sarulu, where
he explained that his preferred literal film title is The
Golden Pheasant, a reference to a
sophist tale of the titular birds that were once driven from paradise
and would spend their lifetime attempting to return to it. Within
this allegorical context, the characters in the film fall into
three distinct phases: the innocence of the young children represent
the birds residing in paradise; the train employees are the disillusioned
birds searching for a way back (most notably in the train employee's
encounter with a former classmate - now a shepherd - who was once
in love with her); the artist and the older boy are the birds in
existential transition, having been literally and figuratively
dislocated from paradise.
Revenge,
1987 (Ermek Shinarbaev, Kazakhstan).
A collaboration between famed Korean Kazakhstanian 
novelist, Anatoly Kim and filmmaker Ermek Shinarbaev (who was also
on-hand to present the film and participate in a subsequent Q&A
session), Revenge is
a sumptuous and intricately structured epic tale on the contaminative,
destructive, and overreaching consequences of revenge. Structured
in thematically spiraling, narratively overlapping novellas, the
film's prologue follows the seemingly mythical story of a young
prince who, overpowered by a peasant's son, is mandated by the
king to train in armed combat so that when he comes of age, he
will become the most powerful warrior in the kingdom. Years later,
the prince's ability is tested in a series of challenges that,
although emerging victorious, is tainted with the realization that
an opponent had spared the prince and allowed him to win. Unable
to obtain another competition against the more skillful rival,
and unwilling to accept the compassionate advice of the court poet
- the prince's trusted friend and advisor - the prince orders the
opponent to be beaten to death, an act that causes the poet to
resign his post and leave the palace. The proceeding novella moves
forward to the turn of the 20th century, as a school teacher, angered
by the students' lack of attention, directs his violent rage at
a little girl and kills her. Years later, the girl's half-brother,
a sensitive and thoughtful young boy is entrusted with the responsibility
of exacting revenge on the schoolmaster, and in the process, abandons
his own artistic pursuit and desire to lead a normal life. Although
the film's complex and allegorical composition and atmospherically
dense imagery create an indelible viewing experience, the lack
of cohesion in several narrative threads (the underformed roles
of the teacher's wife and protector, the hero's enlightened teacher
and spiritual guide, the elderly woman) encumber the film with
a sense of situational ambiguity and frustrating incompletion.
Notes on Middle
of the World: Classic and Contemporary Swiss Cinema at the Walter
Reade.
04-12-03:
Romeo and Juliette in the Village (1941). Hans
Trommer and Valerien Schmidely's social realist peasant drama, Romeo
and Juliette in the Village, is a
well-photographed, but ultimately contrived and non-cohesive tale
of the failed romantic destiny of young lovers Vreneli and Sali
who are separated by their families' financially devastating legal
dispute over an interstitial tract of land between their respective
farms. The presentation of the naturalistic landscape as a seeming
character - further embodied in the omnipresent and enigmatic,
though woefully underformed role of the dark fiddler who briefly
attempts to lay claim to the contested land and subsequently officiates
their mock wedding marriage ceremony that concludes with a sinister
group dance through the country (along a similar vein as Ingmar
Bergman's The Seventh Seal)
- is perhaps the film's strongest feature. However, too many convenient
plot devices are introduced then summarily discarded in order to
create narrative progression and tone throughout the film, resulting
in a fragmented, imbalanced, and unfocused work.
Jonah
Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1975). Alain
Tanner's Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the
Year 2000 is a thoughtful, compassionate,
funny, and provocative ensemble drama on the contemporary fate
of several May 68 activists as their post-radical lives converge
on an idyllic suburban organic farm: a proofreader named Max (Jean-Luc
Bideau) who attempts to subvert the actions of an opportunistic
real estate developer; a popular high school teacher named Marco
(Jacques Denis) who implements unorthodox methods for teaching
history; a French cashier named Marie (Miou-Miou) who uses her
job to surreptitiously help the elderly; an unemployed typesetter
named Mathieu (Rufus) who accepts a menial job as a horse manure
collector at the farm in exchange for a modest wage and room and
board at the large farm house to accommodate his ever-growing family.
A thematic hybrid between Claude Sautet's understated examination
of middle-aged bourgeoisie fused with the acuity of Alain Resnais'
innately analytical socio-political cinema, the film perfectly
encapsulates the dilemma of an aging idealistic generation as they
continue to struggle to exist in their imperfect, contemporary
reality.
Les
Petites Couleurs (2002). The ambassador
of Switzerland, Christian Blickenstorfer and filmmaker Patricia 
Plattner were on hand to provide introductory remarks (along with
a subsequent wine and cheese reception at the gallery) to the opening
night feature, Les Petites Couleurs,
a simple, effervescent, and charming comedy that centers on a beautiful
hairdresser named Christelle (Anouk Grinberg) as she rebuilds her
life, independence, and self-esteem after seeking refuge from her
abusive husband at a rural truck stop motel owned by an endearing,
good natured widow named Mona (Bernadette Lafont). Similar to the
playful whimsy of Beeban Kidron's To
Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (sans
drag queens), the film's eccentricity is characteristically evident
in interspersed scenes from a banal and unintentionally amusing
television serial (a literal soap opera where every dialogue is
sung) called The Ranch of Love that
Christelle and Mona religiously watch (a preposterous plot involving
an amnesic cowboy who unwittingly abandons his pregnant lover and
marries a native American woman) to break the monotony of their
bucolic existence. Christelle's attempts to incorporate life lessons
from the insipid television program into her own life - from emulating
the abandoned heroine's alluring hairstyle to finding true love
- reflects the underlying idiosyncratic tone and sweet nature of
the film.
Mutter
(2002). Miklòs Gimes presents
a fascinating, sincere, provocative, but oddly sterile portrait
of his 
parents' political activism and personal relationship during
the turbulent and uncertain landscape of postwar Hungary in Mutter.
The film opens with the 1989 national broadcast of Hungary's official
burial ceremony at the Budapest Heroes Square that included
the filmmaker's father, journalist and resistance fighter Miklòs
Gimes who was executed in 1958 under charges of treason for his
role in the failed 1956 Hungarian uprising that opposed the country's
increasing alliance with the Soviet Union and entry into the Soviet
bloc. Filming the life of Gimes' widow Alice, affectionately called
Lucy, as she alternately resides between her adopted home in Zurich
(after fleeing Hungary with family relatives in 1956 following
the Russian invasion) and Budapest, the film interweaves biographical
information, personal interviews, and archived material to create
a complex portrait of the passionate, independent-minded, and pragmatic
woman still struggling to reconcile with her new public role as
an "official widow", having experienced her husband's
death at a time when the dissolution of their marriage due to his
infidelity seemed inevitable. What is revealed is a poignant and
compelling portrait of an estranged and deeply divided soul unable
to find closure in the haunted memories of her imperfect, but patriotic
and dedicated husband's nationally idealized legacy.
03-30-03:
Notes on BFI Modern Classics: A City of Sadness by Bérénice
Reynaud.
In
the BFI Modern Classics publication, A
City of Sadness, Bérénice
Reynaud provides a comprehensive, articulate, and insightful critical
analysis of Hou Hsiao-hsien's seminal and artistically groundbreaking
film on the once-taboo subject of the 'hidden' history of Taiwan,
providing a compelling examination of the film through the intrinsic
social context of a culturally broader Chinese experience. A
City of Sadness was released in the latter
half of 1989, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square government
crackdown (June 4, 1989) in Beijing, and was based on a nationally
traumatic historic event (the February 28, 1947 incident that ushered
the era of the Kuomintang-imposed White Terror campaign of
the 1950s depicted in Hou's subsequent film, Good
Men, Good Women) that was only was only
made possible to be openly discussed two years earlier with the lifting
of Taiwan's 40-year martial law in 1987. The author explains:
The 'sadness' of the title
alluded to the troubled years between the end of the Japanese
occupation of Taiwan in 1945 and the official takeover by the
Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. Yet
this 'sadness' has even more distant causes - the division of
China and Taiwan's progressive alienation from the mainland since
the nineteenth century. And, as fate would have it, A City of
Sadness reached the world at a moment when, once again, the Chinese
psyche was hurting."
Reynaud further cites Chiao
Hsiung-ping's (Peggy Chiao) article, The
Camera-swept Back Alleys of History: An Interview with Hou Hsiao-hsien,
to expound on the film's theme of loss and sadness:
"As he was working on
the editing in the spring and summer of 1989, Hou 'immediately
sensed the connection between Tiananmen and the massacres alluded
to in the film, wondering "Why do such tragedies keep befalling
the Chinese people?" and hoping that this film would evoke
the same pain and anger in its audience'."
It is this pervasive sentiment
in the film that is reflected in the author's comment:
"Overall, A City defines
a vertiginous elliptical arc, which goes from one feeling of
loss - the loss of Taiwan by the Japanese - to another - the
loss of the mainland by the Kuomintang. "
Reynaud further illustrates
the reflection of the film's essential theme of loss by analyzing
the compositional similarities between Hou's work and that of Japanese
filmmaker, Yasujiro
Ozu, whose uniquely identifiable aesthetic
was unknown to Hou until the late 1980s (Hou's first Ozu film experience
was with I
Was Born But..., which immediately captivated
him, and became his personal favorite), after Hou had already directed
seven feature films.
Reynaud also incorporates Japanese
film historian Shiguehiko Hasumi's comparative evaluation that the "practical
lesson bequeathed [by] Ozu's cinema [to Hou is] the research of a
lost present... One has the feeling that [Hou and Ozu] were two directors
having...found comparable cinematic solutions, one because he was
trapped in the present, and the other because he is trapped in the
past" as a foundation to further propose the idea of the
influence of classical Chinese landscape painting in Hou's visual
style. Specifically, Reynaud cites traditional Chinese artistic imagery
that are characterized by the lack of a master gaze and compositions
that internally reflect a 2/3 spatial Void that can also be
seen in Hou's penchant for framing decentralized action, dead space,
and distanced and alienated shots. By correlating Hou's cinema to
the convergence of both Japanese and Chinese aesthetics, the author
provides an astute observation on the unique cultural history of
Taiwan that, in turn, is innately manifested in Hou's inherently
Chinese, but also distinctively native, Taiwanese cinema.
Notes
from The Elegies of Aleksandr Sokurov program at the National Gallery of Art.
03-16-03: Dolce
(2000). Dolce opens
to a clinical biographical overview of writer and poet Toshio Shimao 
(1917-1986) as the narrator (Aleksandr Sokurov) thumbs through a
family photo album, describing Shimao's privileged life as the heir
of an affluent merchant family, before enlisting in the Japanese
military as a kamikaze pilot during the Pacific War. Stationed
on a remote southern island while awaiting orders to be deployed
for his suicide mission, Shimao falls in love with a local young
woman from a prominent samurai family named Miho and, in a fortuitous
twist of fate, is ordered to abandon his campaign as Japan moves
closer towards conceding defeat. Toshio and Miho adjust to postwar
life by settling in Kobe and starting a family-run business of publishing
Shimao's literary work. It is a seemingly content life until one
day when Miho reads Toshio's diary and learns that he has a mistress:
a devastating revelation that leads to the institutionalization of
Miho and also Toshio, and perhaps may have subsequently contributed
to the grave illness of their daughter, Maya that resulted in a permanent
disability. Attempting to recapture the purity of their relationship
and rehabilitate their wounded spirit, Toshio relocates the family
to Miho's home in the insular island of Amami Oshima, where the Shimao
family has remained since. From this fascinating introductory framework,
Sokurov creates a haunting, sensual, and contemplative portrait of
the intimate and profoundly connected isolated lives of the late
writer's surviving family on the remote island. Sokurov's effective
incorporation of allusive sounds - the abrasion of hands against
a rough textured wall (as Miho longingly reflects on the passing
of her parents decades earlier), the creaking of wood floors (as
Maya traverses the staircase), the matting of sisal rug fibers under
the weight of footsteps, the crashing of waves against the projecting
rocks of the shoreline, the whispered chant of daily prayer, the
gentle drops of water on a koi fish pond - create an understatedly powerful metaphor for the resilient, aging widow's symbiotic, instinctual,
and acutely evolved metaphysical communication with her austere environment.
Oriental Elegy (1996). Visually impressionistic, atmospherically dense, and narratively opaque, Oriental Elegy is the surreal journey of a
displaced spirit (Aleksandr Sokurov) as he wanders in the interminable
darkness through the temporal landscape of a quaint and isolated
feudal-era fishing village. Guided by a series of faintly illuminated
rooms, the wandering spirit comes upon ancient souls who take on
physical forms as they recount their personal stories of daily
existence, loss, and tragedy in the peasant community. Intrigued
by his initial visit to a curiously distracted elderly woman, the
spirit returns to her home in order to ask a fundamental question
- "What is happiness?" - an existential query
that is innocently answered with innate humility and accepted unknowingness.
Through abstractly textured imagery and indelibly hypnotic dreamscapes,
Sokurov composes a metaphoric, sensual, and evocative tone poem
on a soul's search for enlightenment and the essential survival
of human consciousness.
A Humble
Life (1997). A Humble Life is a languidly paced
and serenely patient chronicle of the austere and simple, yet noble
life of an elderly woman (later identified in the end credits as
Umeno Mathuyoshi from the village of Aska in the Nara prefecture)
living a solitary, Zen-like existence in the mountains. Aleksandr
Sokurov's static camera reverently lingers (at times, perhaps too
indulgently) over Umeno's quiet, reserved, and gentle presence
as she goes through her daily ritual: neatly arranging her hair
(more out of practical necessity than vanity), starting a fire
on the stove, hand sewing a funeral kimono for income (and being
briefly interrupted in a subtly humorous episode by a group of
persistent itinerant monks seeking charity), intermittently warming
her hands over a nearby vessel containing her seaming iron, preparing
her meal, dining in complete silence (except for a passing, unarticulated
thought that results in momentary enigmatic laughter), and incanting
a brief after-meal prayer. The film concludes with a series of haiku poems
recited by Umeno that reveal a longing for her late husband, an
accepted separation from her married daughter, a graceful optimism
for a predicted turn in the weather, and the inevitable changing
of seasons in the eternal cycle of life.
03-14-03: Elegy of a Voyage (2001). An obscured,
unnamed narrator journeys across morphing, ethereal landscapes
of frenetic and impersonal European cities before seeking refuge
from the inclement weather at a desolate, neglected museum in an
unidentified European town. Wandering through the austere and soulless
rooms, the narrator's silhouette melancholically hovers over paintings
like a brooding, unreconciled ghost, organically reflecting in
a resigned stream of consciousness on masterpieces from Pieter
the Elder Brueghel's emotionally charged Tower
of Babel to Pieter Saenredam's idyllic Saint
Mary's Square (accompanied by the achingly elegiac sound of
Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder).
Aleksandr Sokurov incorporates somber hues, underlighting, and
visual distortion to create a pervasive atmosphere of transience
that is reflected in the sensorial images of seeming perpetual
motion: bustling cities, street traffic, ocean voyages, and windmills
are contrasted against the stasis and anonymity of the lifeless
museum. In the end, as the narrator rapturously declares, "Above
all is life. Eternal life." before the Saenredam painting even
as his own recollections of the recorded image behind the moment
of creation seems personally irreconcilable, Elegy
of a Voyage becomes an evocative, sensual, and understatedly
ironic meditation on the ephemeral nature of art, spirituality,
existence, and memory.
03-10-03: Sonata for Hitler (1989). Sonata for Hitler is a curious and indelible
montage of dissociative images that intercut historical footage
of wartime Germany and the Soviet Union: a somber Adolf Hitler
habitually wringing his hands; blind or unfocused, distracted factory
workers mechanically assembling military arsenal; fervored crowds
erupting into spontaneous salute as an expression of national solidarity.
Composed of a series of surreal images that depict the parallel
dictatorships of Hitler and Joseph Stalin during World War II,
Aleksandr Sokurov creates an abstract and fragmented, but ultimately
provocative and internally cohesive statement on isolationism,
militarism, fanaticism, and tyranny.
Petersburg Elegy (1989). Ostensibly a documentary on the art, passion, and privileged life of famed
Russian 
actor and singer Fyodor Chaliapin who emigrated to Europe
after the dissolution of the Russian monarchy, and whose surviving
family embarked on a long-awaited homecoming after a 60 year absence
to their home in glasnost-era, market economy Russia, Petersburg Elegy is a fascinating, albeit tediously
belabored chronicle of the transience of history. Interchanging
color and monochromatic film and using organic, long take static
shots reminiscent of Chantal Akerman's 1970s documentaries (particularly Hotel
Monterey and News
from Home), but pushed to near intolerable viewing extremes with
maddeningly hyperextended, lingering dead space sequences of the
now-elderly Chaliapin children sitting motionless in the spiritless,
empty rooms of their St. Petersburg home, Aleksandr Sokurov provides
an early glimpse of what would prove to be a recurring element in
his nonfiction oeuvre: the ethereal imagery of corporeal souls inhabiting real space and time (most recently explored in Russian
Ark). By contrasting the stasis and inertia of the once-vibrant
Chaliapin children in visible physical decline to the chaotic bustle
of urban life in modern-day Russia, Sokurov creates an intriguing
portrait of obsolete, temporal relics left in the wake of a profoundly
changing and turbulent Russian history.
Dmitri Shostakovich:
Viola Sonata (1986). Co-directed by Aleksandr Sokurov and Semen Aranovich, Dmitri Shostakovich: Viola Sonata is an
emotionally lucid, understated, textural, and reverent biography
of the highly influential, Soviet-era composer and pianist, Dmitri
Dmitrievich Shostakovich. Using allusive, recurring imagery of
a photograph of a young, physically fragile Shostakovich resting
on his mother's lap and a delirious shot of an amusement park turntable-like
merry-go-round spinning ever increasingly faster as people struggle
to hold on, the film traces the life of a proud national and complex
artist through personal documents, recorded appearances, and public
performances of his work juxtaposed against historical footage of
everyday existence in the Soviet Union. Embodying a life experience
that evolved from early critical acclaim to political and public
disfavor under Stalinist Russia to re-evaluated celebration of
his body of work in contemporary Soviet Union (culminating in his
acceptance of the second Order of Lenin ever awarded after
Shostakovich graciously removed his name from consideration a year
earlier in order to enable the first Order of Lenin to be
posthumously awarded to Igor Stravinsky), Sokurov and Aranovich
capture the venerated composer's passion and uncompromising creative
integrity as he sought to cultivate art appreciation for the masses
and consequently, elevated the cultural heritage and legacy of the
Russian people.
03-01-03: Evening
Sacrifice (1987). Evening Sacrifice is tonally composed of two indelibly
entrancing and 
hypnotically fluid images: a color sequence that captures the
methodical precision of a military regiment deploying fireworks
over the Neva River to the melancholic serenade of a nostalgic,
old-fashioned ballad, that transitions to a sepia-toned footage
of a crowd indiscriminately dispersing into the street amidst a
frenetic assortment of effervescent pop tunes, most identifiably,
The Beatles' Can't Buy Me Love. As the
sound of canon fire dissipates in the cacophony of ambient street
noise, the solemn oratorio of Boris Khristov's haunting, full-bodied
bass voice rises above the din. Juxtaposing the sound of a
traditional, Russian Orthodox Byzantine chant to the image of a
An
informal and prosaic, yet informed and balanced presentation of critical
arguments and conversations on the state of experimental and avant-garde
film during the early half of the 1980s, 
and
minimalist film to date, 
humanist
portrait of perseverance and family, the film centers on three generations
of women - the inimitable grandmother, Eka (Esther Gorintin) who wistfully
reminisces over life under Stalin, her widowed daughter Marina (Nino
Khomassouridze), and her multilingual, well-educated granddaughter Ada
(Dinara Droukarova) - living under the economic austerity and minor
inconveniences of unreliable utilities in the nascent republic of
post-communist Georgia. Their seemingly only source of hope and comfort
occur in the form of occasional letters and telephone calls from Marina's
brother Otar, a doctor working menial, temporary jobs as an undocumented
laborer in France who, nevertheless, manages to paint a rosy and idyllic
picture of his life abroad. Attempting to shelter the amusingly dotty Eka
from the harsh realities of her children's impoverishment, the family
weaves an ever-increasingly intricate web of deception to spare the old
woman from disappointment and heartbreak in this beautifully understated
and affectionate film.
a roving,
multiple student point-of-view, 
by members of
a terrorist organization known as the Red Brigade in 1978, 
a diluted
respect
as his earlier domestic comedy