Andrew James is one of the co-directors of Cleanflix (review), an interesting exploration of copyright issues in the context of Mormon culture. I had the good fortune of meeting Andrew and co-director Josh Ligairi at TIFF last year and conducted what I think was a pretty good interview.

Since then, I’ve kept track of their separate projects, and was excited to learn that not only was Andrew working on a new film, but that he was using Kickstarter to help fund it. The brainchild of internet brainiac Andy Baio, Kickstarter is an amazing way for creative professionals to raise funds for their projects by reaching out to their audiences before or during the production process, rather than figuring out a way to reach them afterward. And you’re not donating; rather, you’re pre-buying something, whether it’s just a thank-you note or a DVD of the finished film. It’s beautiful in its simplicity and it’s a joy for me to browse the site regularly, looking for interesting projects to support. Andrew’s is definitely worthy.

Street Fighting Man is a documentary premise that sounds like fiction. In the economically-ravaged landscape of Detroit, a retired cop feels the need to take the law into his own hands after local police abandon his community. Even in the research phase, I think you’ll agree that Andrew has captured some great footage and found a really interesting subject. Check out the teaser trailer and then click on the nifty widget to lend your support.

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Help Kick Start Andrew James’ New Doc Street Fighting Man

A Place Called Los Pereyra (Director: Andrés Livov-Macklin): In the 19th century, several native societies in the south Pacific began to develop unusual religious practices after contact with the technologically-advanced people of Western societies. When the Westerners had provided them with advanced material goods and then departed, they would attempt to lure the Westerners back with rituals. Over time, they began to worship these white men and women as deities. Such was the gulf in understanding between the two cultures that they could only conceive of their visitors as supreme beings. These “cargo cults” persist in some parts of Polynesia even up to the present day.

It didn’t take long for the phrase “cargo cult” to pop into my head once I began to watch the behaviour of the remote villagers of Los Pereyras, Argentina. Located in “El Impenetrable,” a huge forested region nearly 1,500 kilometres from the capital of Buenos Aires, Los Pereyra lacks electricity and telephone lines, and so is essentially cut off from the rest of the country. That is, except for five days each year, when they are visited by “Las Madrinas” (“The Godmothers”), a charitable organization from Buenos Aires.

In Livov-Macklin’s verité-style portrait of the village, we learn next to nothing about these “god” mothers, or even about the villagers themselves. Instead, we join in their languid pace, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Las Madrinas. The focus of the film is the village school, which we learn is financially supported by the faraway charity. The children are put to work cleaning and painting before their benefactors’ arrival, and we even witness them composing songs and letters to welcome them. It’s all a little bit creepy.

It only gets creepier when the Godmothers finally arrive, nearly half an hour into the film. As it turns out, they are much younger than I imagined. In fact, it’s a group of high school girls and their teacher. While they’re suitably motherly with the younger children, they also flirt with the older boys of the village. Over the course of their short stay, they conduct public health clinics and spend time teaching and playing games with the schoolchildren. They also take them to a zoo, where I got the impression that the city girls were more interested than their rural charges. For them, the trip seemed just as much an exotic summer getaway as a charity mission.

And then, just as quickly as they arrive, they’re leaving. Being teenaged girls, they’re emotional, shedding more tears than the children. In the days that follow, life quickly returns to normal. The goods they’ve left behind, and the small scraps of hope for a better future, get used up pretty fast.

The film brings up many interesting questions about the value of charity. Does this type of work help the privileged girls more than the recipients of their largesse? Is it just an intense emotional high for sensitive adolescents or will it really change them? Will it have any lasting positive effect on the village? Because of its strictly observational perspective, it doesn’t attempt to answer any of these questions, but it certainly allows you to feel the sense of anticipation and then abandonment that the village children and their parents and teachers feel. It may even be a little bit unfair in that it doesn’t really give any time to the Godmothers or their leaders to explain their own motivations and goals for their involvement.

And although I love the fact that the film makes us wait nearly half an hour to meet the fabled Madrinas, overall, the languid pace may lose some viewers. For the patient, though, A Place Called Los Pereyra delivers an emotional punch that will leave you wondering whether most types of charity exist only to soothe the consciences of the privileged.

Official site of the film

(8/10)

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

A Place Called Los Pereyra

Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage (Directors: Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen): Toronto directors Dunn and McFadyen’s previous efforts Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Global Metal, and Iron Maiden: Flight 666 were solid, if unspectacular, examinations of various aspects of the world of heavy music. With Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, they’ve taken their game to a new level, presenting a fascinating portrait of the Canadian rock icons that will please fans and non-fans alike.

Fresh off winning the audience appreciation award at the previous week’s Tribeca Film Festival, Rush: BTLS made its Canadian debut at Hot Docs, which only seemed appropriate considering the number of Toronto and Southern Ontario references and amounts of local footage used in the film. Dunn and McFadyen were granted unprecedented access to the band and their archives, unearthing previously unseen pictorial gems and old videotaped performances of some of the band’s earliest performances, including one showing them playing a high school gig with original drummer John Rutsey.

Extensive interviews with bassist/lead vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and notoriously press-shy drummer Neil Peart (pronounced “peert”, not the commonly mispronounced “pert”) are spread throughout the film, providing a revealing glimpse into what makes the band tick and how they’ve managed to stay together for more than 40 years and achieve a level of success that places them third behind The Beatles and The Rolling Stones for the most consecutive number of gold or platinum albums. Chew on that fact for a few seconds. The early history of the band is nicely chronicled, laying out how Lee and Lifeson, childhood friends, bonded over their misfit status and love of music, which eventually made Peart a perfect fit for the duo. Interviews with the band members’ parents add additional insight, including one particularly fortuitous clip taken from Allan King’s 1973 documentary Come On Children, where Lifeson (then in his late teens and known as Alex Zivojinovich) is shown arguing with his parents over the pointlessness of finishing high school, which he asserts will have no impact on his career goal of being a musician. It’s a compelling moment in the film, not for its unique viewpoint (how many times have we heard some variation of this story from artists?), but for the fact it was actually captured indirectly by one of these artists for posterity.

Mid to later periods of the band’s history are also given impressively in-depth exploration, with specific subjects and time periods fitting neatly into the thirteen chapters the film employs to tell its story. Two of the more notable ones look back at the band’s 80s deviation into more of a synth-heavy sound, which alienated many fans and led to creative tension between Lee and Lifeson, as well as the dark years that nearly saw the band pack it in, brought on by the dual tragedies that befell Peart in 1997 and 1998 (Peart’s daughter died in a car accident and his wife succumbed to cancer just ten months later). Peart’s willingness to address the period and even just his participation in the film is a testament to the directors’ ability to put their subjects at ease, given his reluctance to do interviews, especially on-camera sit-downs. The drummer, easily among the most legendary in the annals of rock and roll history, comes across as pleasant, shy, and a little guarded. He discusses his history of walking softly and carrying a big stick (or two), which, along with additional enlightening input from Lifeson and Lee on the subject, turns out is the result of being extremely introverted and having a major aversion to the concept of fan worship. An interesting aside: for someone so reluctant to be in the spotlight it’s fascinating to me that Peart has put so much of himself out there via his lyrics (he writes all of the band’s words) and numerous books, including Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, which was a remarkably honest chronicle of his struggles following the deaths of his wife and daughter.

Lee and Lifeson similarly come across as very humble, nice people. The film also does a good job at showing the closeness of the band, which is as much attributable to their fiercely loyal friendships as it is their comfort level on a musical level. One doesn’t get the sense that there’s any trace of the jealousies and grievances that plague many long-time band members, which often results in separate plane or bus journeys and zero verbal contact until the moment they hit the stage. Another quality of the trio that might surprise non-fans is their sense of humour, which certainly doesn’t come across in their music. For anyone who has seen or read any number of interviews with Lee or Lifeson over the years this won’t be a surprise, though. Don’t forget that Lee sang with Bob and Doug McKenzie, and appeared on SCTV almost 30 years ago. Some of the more questionable fashion styles the band has adopted over the years (particularly the unfortunate kimono period) become comic fodder for the group to have a laugh at their own expense.

Fan testimonials get a surprisingly spare amount of screen time, which was a wise decision by the filmmakers. Too many band docs that include such content rarely deviate from the uninteresting “man, this is my 79th time seeing them!” variety, although the conservative usage of it here still didn’t disappoint someone a few rows in front of me, who let out a huge “whoo!” when either himself or a Rush fan he knew was interviewed on screen. What elevates the film even more are the wealth of entertaining testimonials from the band’s peers and celebrity fans. Jack Black gets the biggest laugh with his description of Rush as “a band with a deep reservoir of rocket sauce.” Sebastian Bach also delivers some comic relief with recollections of how, as a 13-year-old metalhead, he felt obligated to read the work of Ayn Rand because it was a large influence on Rush’s 2112 album, and how he was further confused by what the hell this band was doing when they released some songs in French. Gene Simmons weighs in with his bewilderment at the band’s lack of interest in groupies when KISS took them out on an early tour. Some of the other notable names who talk about Rush’s influence on their careers are Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, and Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, who staunchly praises the band’s influence on music and their place in its history and bristles at their lack of respect from the music establishment. The inclusion of CNN anchor John Roberts, connected to the band through his Toronto music journalist past as “J.D.” Roberts, is a nice touch.

Dunn and McFadyen continue to demonstrate an admirable talent for taking a subject they’re clearly passionate about and skirting around the margins of fanboy adulation to deliver a substantive, insightful work that also manages to entertain. In this case they’ve shown clear growth in their craft, producing an engrossing biography of Canada’s biggest musical export.

Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage will receive a limited theatrical release on June 10th, make its television premiere on VH1 on June 26th, and receive a DVD release on June 29th

Official site of the film

(9/10)

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Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage

Life With Murder (Director: John Kastner): 20-year-old Mason Jenkins murdered his 18-year-old sister with multiple shotgun blasts to the head on January 6, 1998. The crime occurred in the home he resided in with his only sibling and parents, in the small town of Chatham, Ontario, and Mason was convicted of first-degree-murder after his shaky alibi was deemed not credible. Mason maintained his innocence until 2007, when he finally relented and provided a strange, irrational reason for having shot his sister, with whom he’d apparently always been close. Despite the hell their son put them through, the parents, Leslie and Brian, still choose to keep him in their lives, making regular visits to Mason at Warkworth Institution, a medium-security correctional facility.

Director/writer/producer John Kastner, a three-time Emmy winner, has a veritable goldmine of bizarre, intriguing details to work with in Life With Murder, with a fairly equal balance given to both a dissection of the crime, and its consequences and aftermath. Neither side is easy to watch, especially the latter. Kastner presents a thorough probing of the case, having gained access to police interrogation videos, the 911 call, crime scene documentation, and interviews with detectives from the case. The interrogation videos are quite fascinating to watch, but the interviews with the grieving parents, some from just mere hours after the murder occurred, are disturbing and uncomfortable viewing. The fact that the mother herself made repeated requests to the Chatham police to release the tapes for inclusion in the film doesn’t make the experience of watching them feel any less invasive or wrong.

Credit Kastner with digging deep to uncover previously unheard details about the case, including an exploration of Mason’s belated confession, not to mention a blindsiding bombshell about the crime that ratchets up the creep factor by several notches. Despite the rich ingredients with which it has to work, Kastner’s movie left me feeling unfulfilled and empty, like it should have had much more of an impact. Leslie’s statement that “you don’t throw a kid away” and the unconditional love she and Brian have for Mason, even after what he did (and especially after that bombshell, which I won’t spoil) just seem totally at odds with logic and reason, and only added to my frustration with the movie. Another mystery: the parents never moved out of the home where the murder took place. The film also ends up playing as something less cinematic and more suited to television, like an extended version of the CBC’s “The Fifth Estate” (which isn’t a knock on that program, as they do a lot of excellent work).

Official site of the film

(5/10)

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Life With Murder

Shadow Play: The Making of Anton Corbijn (Director: Josh Whiteman): “Having your picture taken is like intimacy, it’s like having sex…I’ve been having sex with Anton for nearly 20 years now, since I was a boy.”

That provocative line comes courtesy of Bono, who has worked with famed Dutch visualist Anton Corbijn numerous times over the years and is featured prominently in Shadow Play: The Making Of Anton Corbijn. Aside from providing some voiceovers, the U2 vocalist also gives several interviews and is featured in a clever riff on Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video. The documentary flips the camera around 180 degrees to present a portrait of the photographer/film director/music video director and his work, motivation, inspiration, and background. Director Josh Whiteman has assembled an impressive roster of celebrities to sing Corbijn’s praises — along with Bono, we also get testimonials from Michael Stipe, Kurt Cobain, Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode), Brandon Flowers (The Killers), Chris Martin (Coldplay), writer William Gibson, actress Samantha Morton, and model Helena Christensen. These names represent only a fraction of the talent Corbijn has collaborated with over his career, though. Others include Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Miles Davis, Metallica, Stephen Hawking, Robert De Niro, and The Rolling Stones.

Much of the acclaim in Shadow Play from Corbijn’s subjects centres on his ability to “go to that dark area that most other lensers can’t reach”, or that “he truly captures one’s soul” with his work, to paraphrase their words. Such platitudes get repetitive and overstated if, like me, you feel Corbijn’s still photography work is highly overrated. I’ve seen more than enough of it over the years, especially as a devout U2 fan, and the accolades and critical reinforcement he receives have always eluded me. The common criticism, with which I concur, is a propensity for dark, murky shots that succeed in alienating the viewer as much as captivating them. Flowers talks about this very issue, in an interesting anecdote about his record company’s reluctance to have Corbijn work with the band. Stipe mentions the fact that Metallica employed Corbijn to assist in their image rebranding after a lengthy hiatus (in 1996 to shoot the CD and promotional photos for their Load album). What Stipe fails to mention is that the rebranding was not received well at all by the media and, especially, by their fans.

Corbijn’s work, expectedly, gets the bulk of the screen time in Shadow Play; what Whiteman fails to uncover, however, are the layers to him that exist outside of that work. Several interviews with him reveal little about his upbringing and make virtually no mention of his private life. Corbijn isn’t exactly a dynamic interview subject, either. Whiteman also errs in spending so much time focusing on Corbijn’s feature film debut Control (review), a biopic of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. Control distractingly becomes a running narrative throughout Shadow Play, with seemingly little rhyme or reason as to why we’re getting yet another look at an interview with the cast, behind-the-scenes footage, or coverage of the Cannes film festival premiere, none of which would even stand out as noteworthy DVD extras.

If Corbijn’s supposed stock-in-trade is visually getting to the soul of his subjects then this film, ironically, fails to do just that.

Official site of the film

(6/10)

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Shadow Play: The Making of Anton Corbijn