Archive for June, 2007

Worldwide Short Film Festival 2007

Published
by
James McNally
on June 11, 2007
in Film Festivals
. Closed

Worldwide Short Film Festival

I’ve been fortunate enough to obtain press accreditation for the 13th annual Worldwide Short Film Festival, which is running from June 12-17 here in our fair city. The motto this year is “Shorter is Better” which suits me fine, since I’m on the lower end of the height scale. It will be a particular challenge, though, to actually review these films, since the various programmes often cram ten or more shorts into each screening. But I’m going to do my best. My only confirmed screening so far is the Opening Night Gala being held tomorrow evening. It gathers a number of award-winning shorts into one programme:

This is my first time attending this festival and really my first time attempting to review shorts, so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot.

Viva Cuba

Published
by
James McNally
on June 11, 2007
in DVD, DVD Clubs and Film Movement
. 3 Comments

Viva Cuba

Viva Cuba (Director: Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti, Cuba, 2005): Viva Cuba is a charming fairytale/road movie that submerges its political message in a very personal story of friendship and love. Jorgito and his tomboy friend Malu are on the cusp of adolescence, and their close friendship seems about to morph into something at once more serious and more frightening. It’s evident from the way they can be holding hands one minute and arguing violently the next. To make things worse, their families detest each other. Malu lives with her mother, a bitter woman whose family used to wield influence in the days before Castro’s revolution. Jorgito’s parents have moved to Havana from the countryside and are firm supporters of the government. Each mother admonishes her child for playing with an unsuitable playmate, but that only drives the pair closer together.

This Romeo and Juliet story really takes off when Malu’s mother decides to leave Cuba forever, to join her boyfriend in what we assume is America. In order to get permission to leave the country with Malu, she must get her estranged ex-husband to sign an exit authorization. Knowing this, Malu and Jorgito hatch a plan to appeal to his paternal love (or guilt) by traveling in person to see him. The problem is that Malu hasn’t seen her father since she was six, because he works as a lighthouse keeper at the other end of the country.

The two young protagonists hit the road by train, bus, and oxcart to reach their destination, but their constant squabbling threatens to ruin the plan. In the meantime, their worried families have seemingly reconciled in the desperate search for their missing children.

First and foremost, this is a beautifully-shot film, and the use of colour is often striking. The political message, such as it is, seems to ignore Castro completely; instead, it’s a shamelessly pro-Cuba film, highlighting both the island’s natural beauty as well as the fierce pride of its people in their cultural institutions. It’s not surprising that music plays a big part in the film.

It’s unclear whether the director was attempting to make a film aimed solely at children. There is certainly a sense of naïveté in the dialogue and the basic structure of the film, and there is never any real danger to these two kids on the run, but the ending seemed particularly grown-up and ambiguous, and made me reevaluate my initial impressions. Some critics have seen the film as an allegory depicting two sides to modern Cuban culture, but I don’t believe the intention was that obvious. I think the film gains resonance from refusing to be overt about its political opinions. Instead, it leaves the viewer to untangle his sympathies from the intersection of conflicting desires in a country that is changing, just not fast enough for some.

Note: Film Movement featured this film as their Year 5 Film 5.

8/10(8/10)

Nightclubbing

Published
by
James McNally
on June 11, 2007
in Documentaries and Film Festivals
. Closed

Nightclubbing

Nightclubbing (Directors: Emily Armstrong and Pat Ivers, USA, 1975-1980): After seeing Wasted Orient (review), I’d planned to leave the NFB Cinema to see Kurt Cobain: About A Son, but when I found out what the next screening was, I immediately changed my plans. Directors Emily Armstrong and Pat Ivers have documented more than 100 bands from the New York punk and No Wave scenes from 1975-1980. They videotaped shows for broadcast on a cable access programme called Nightclubbing and the film is a rough assemblage of 25 performances from that archive. They’re working on a documentary which will incorporate present-day interviews with many musicians from the scene, and we got to see a short excerpt from that after their Q&A. Since they’ve been touring this particular collection of clips since at least 2000, I hope we’ll see a DVD release before the end of the decade.

I’ll start by stating the obvious. The video and audio quality of these clips is horrendous. Many were captured on primitive equipment and were never meant to be preserved. That being said, it’s mesmerizing to witness some of these early performances, most of which were filmed at either the late, lamented CBGB’s or at the Danceteria. Here are just a few highlights:

  • a three-piece Talking Heads performing “Psycho Killer” in December 1975, well before the song was recorded.
  • a 1980 clip of Pylon, whom I’d never heard of before. Conservatively-dressed singer Vanessa Ellison’s performance builds from a near-whisper to a sort of twitchy crescendo. Fascinating.
  • a 1979 clip of the Bad Brains covering Wire’s “12XU”.
  • Iggy Pop singing “New Values” in 1979. Unfortunately, the vocals are buried, but Iggy does some of his trademark stage moves.
  • The Dead Boys performing with Divine at a benefit for their drummer, who had been stabbed in a knife fight and who had no medical insurance.
  • a very early Blondie performance of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale” from 1975.
  • there really was quite a bit of saxophone in many of these bands, for better or worse. This brought home the joke behind L.A. hardcore band Fear’s song “New York’s Alright If You Like Saxophones”.
  • a 1980 spoken-word performance by Max Blagg about the evils of heroin, which had ravaged the scene by this time.

Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s book Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk has been one of my favourite books for a long time now, and seeing these clips really added another dimension to that whole fascinating story.

The only drawback to my viewing experience was that I was sitting next to two old rockers who talked loudly thoughout both the film and the Q&A afterward. So, for me it was just like being at a real rock show in that sense.

The directors conducted a very informal Q&A afterward, and you can just tell they have a million stories they want to share. I hope the finished form of this film can pack even a few of them in.

A review of a screening from 2000.

8/10(8/10)

Wasted Orient

Published
by
James McNally
on June 10, 2007
in Documentaries and Film Festivals
. 1 Comment

Wasted Orient

Wasted Orient (Director: Kevin Fritz, USA, 2006): I’d seen the trailer for this on distributor Plexifilm’s site a few weeks ago and was really happy to be able to attend the film’s first Canadian screening. Joyside are a Chinese punk band based in Beijing and the film follows them on their first tour. This being China, the band starts with a 15-hour train ride to Guangzhou in the south of the country, and the long journey gives them plenty of time to drink. Drinking seems to be the constant in the film, and one gets the impression that anything more illicit than beer and gin may be simply out of their financial reach. Despite their constant state of intoxication and their aversion to bathing, the band are actually a likeable bunch of guys who are relatively proficient musicians. They name-check, either in interviews or by playing covers, many of the early punk bands and personalities from New York: The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Johnny Thunders (It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “Chinese Rock”). And these guys are punk in that early, primitive sense: they’re nihilistic, but they’re not mean, or political. They just don’t see the point in pursuing the lives their parents or polite society would prefer for them. In that sense, they’re not much different from their idols. But, of course, this is China.

Other critics (mostly Americans, I suspect) have played up the “Communist” angle, with variations on “Rockin’ in the Unfree World” and that sort of nonsense. The truth is that modern China may be more capitalist than North America, and what Joyside is rejecting seems to be materialism and the appearance of success more than anything else.

The film is very raw, and one or two people in the small audience (maybe 20 people) found it a bit too much and left. But I was riveted. Kevin Fritz has lived in China for several years, and got to know the band very well, so he has really captured a level of intimacy that hardly seems possible for an “outsider.” The beer helps, though, as in scenes where he features each band member in a drunken one-on-one with the camera. A bit surprisingly, each comes across as touchingly earnest and even a bit maudlin.

Despite the endless beer guzzling, the pissing and vomiting, the rude gestures and the poses of despair, these are just four young guys trying to make sense of their circumstances. It doesn’t hurt that they can rock out, too.

Official site for the film

7/10(7/10)

NXNE 2007

Published
by
James McNally
on June 8, 2007
in Documentaries and Film Festivals
. Closed

Sometimes things catch me by surprise. For instance, I had no idea that Toronto’s North by Northeast music festival (patterned after Austin’s South by Southwest) also has a film festival component. The whole thing takes place this weekend, but tomorrow has two very promising screenings that I’m going to try to get to.

A.J. Schnack’s film Kurt Cobain: About A Son has been getting rave reviews all over the place, and this might be the only opportunity to see this film on a big screen for a while. The film features audio interviews with Cobain recorded by writer Michael Azerrad for his biography Come As You Are, and Schnack has combined the audio with footage of Cobain’s three hometowns in Washington state (Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle). It’s said to be powerful stuff. Watch an excerpt from the film here. You can catch it at 7:00 pm tomorrow at the Royal Cinema (608 College Street).

Wasted Orient will be a different but no less memorable experience, if the trailer is anything to go by. Filmmaker Kevin Fritz follows Chinese punk band Joyside around the country as they drink, vomit, play some music, and generally despair over the Chinese music scene and life in general. It’s showing at 3:00pm tomorrow at the National Film Board Theatre (150 John Street).