Mine was the December 2009 selection of
Film Movement Canada, a subscription service that brings the best of independent cinema to your door each month. Though it’s only recently launched here,
Film Movement has operated in the US for several years, and has long been one of my favourite sources of great films.
Mine is screening theatrically around the US until the end of March 2010 (
more information) and will be available through iTunes this month, too.
Mine (Director: Geralyn Pezanoski): Winner of the Audience Award at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, Mine is a gut-wrenching look at some of the forgotten victims of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina: pets and their owners. My wife and I are thinking of becoming dog owners, and after watching this film, I’m more convinced than ever that pets really do become part of the family.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of evacuees were forced to leave their cats and dogs behind. Shelters wouldn’t accept animals, and in some cases, people left their pets thinking they’d be gone just a few days. We all know what happened. Many people still haven’t returned to the city, and those who did had to wait months. In the meantime, more than 150,000 animals died. Thanks to the efforts of volunteers, several thousand were rescued, but many were shipped to other states, and when their owners didn’t claim them within a few days, some were adopted out to new families. This is where the film gets really interesting.
The failure of the government to adequately respond to the catastrophe has been the subject of many fine documentary films, but in this case, ordinary people around the country stepped in to do all they could to rescue these pets who’d been left behind. Unfortunately, there is a political edge to some of these “rescue” organizations, as some of the former owners soon found out. For instance, many dog owners in New Orleans don’t have their dogs spayed or neutered, whether for financial or cultural reasons. Among the rescue community, this is considered irresponsible. As well, many of the rescued animals turned out to have heartworm infections, something that can be prevented with medication. Again, probably due to financial hardship or simply ignorance, many New Orleans residents hadn’t treated their pets for heartworm.
The end result was that many of the rescue organizations saw the original owners as negligent, and after treating the animals for sickness, they would spay or neuter them and then adopt them out to more “suitable” families in their areas. When the original owners were finally able to track their pets down, the rescue organizations would tell them that their pet had a new family, and the new family didn’t want to give it up.
We follow several of these heartbreaking custody battles throughout the course of the film. Though it’s only hinted at, race and class are central to how the stories are played out. Since pets are considered property under the law, it should simply be a matter of having one’s property returned, but in the emotional battlefield of pet ownership, things are rarely that simple. Having already survived the hurricane and the loss of their homes and possessions, the residents of New Orleans have no money to hire lawyers to pursue their missing pets, so a number of volunteers help them to find lawyers who are willing to work pro bono on the cases. It’s an ugly process, and one particular phone conversation (part of which appears in the trailer embedded below) between the owner of a missing dog and the head of the rescue organization who got him out of New Orleans sums up the film in a nutshell. People who love animals can often forget that there is a person attached to that animal. If you care about animals, you cannot pretend that that relationship never existed.
You don’t have to be a dog lover to enjoy Mine. And even if you think you’ve seen all there is to see about Hurricane Katrina, don’t let that keep you away from this insightful film, which has exposed the class divisions of our society more clearly than anything I’ve seen in a long time.
Official site of the film
(8/10)
Tagged as:
class,
hurricanekatrina,
pets,
race
Finally, the DVD subscription service I’ve been mentioning since 2006 is available in Canada! That first link is a tiny bit unfair, since it deals mostly with Ironweed Film Club, another DVD service that has been available in Canada all along. But while Ironweed’s focus has been documentaries, and of late, mostly environmental docs, Film Movement has over the years focused on international cinema, with quite a few festival gems available nowhere else. In fact, just a few months ago I was complaining via Twitter that Film Movement had picked up a number of great films that were not being distributed in Canada, including Munyurangabo, Lake Tahoe, and Somers Town. I haven’t done an exhaustive comparison, and I know that there may still be some titles that won’t be available to Canadian subscribers, but this is a huge win for cinephiles in this country.
For as little as about $10/month (based on a 12-month subscription), you’ll get a new film sent to you, curated by Film Movement’s team of programmers. Part of the fun is just letting them surprise you, and I guarantee you’ll find some gems you would otherwise have missed. Subscribers also get discounts on buying DVDs from their extensive back catalogue, too.
To make the offer even more irresistible, how about a promo code for an additional 5% off? Just enter “hellocanada” in the promo code box before you check out. But the code is only good until November 30th, so don’t hesitate. Let’s show them that Canadians love great cinema, and make them wonder why they took so long to get here!
Film Movement Canada
P.S. The November selection is Uruguayan film Gigante (review), which screened at this year’s TIFF.
Gigante (Director: Adrián Biniez): Fabian Jara (Horacio Camandule) is the titular giant, working as an overnight security guard at a large grocery store in Montevideo. He spends his evening shifts watching security cameras of other night employees doing their jobs, including a crew of female cleaners. He gradually comes to fall in love with one, even though he doesn’t know her name. He begins following her from afar in the mornings, discovering her routines. On the weekends, he works as a bouncer at a nightclub, though he’s far too gentle a giant to really hurt anyone. Although he loves aggressive heavy-metal music, he’s far too shy to actually approach his crush. Instead, his stalker-like behaviour increases, although each time the film steers toward darker territory, Jara’s basic decency surfaces, preserving the light tone. Eventually, he discovers her name is Julia, and by the end a work-related crisis throws them together at last.
It’s the slightest of premises, basically a “nerd gets the girl” story, but the performance of Camandule as the innocent “Jarita” (as his co-workers jokingly call him) is completely endearing. Leonor Svarcas as Julia is just the right combination of dorky and alluring to be believable as a woman Jara believes he might actually have a chance with. The film has the languid pacing and gentle humour that Uruguayan film is becoming known for, and it was a pleasure to recognize Juan Andrés Stoll from Hiroshima (review) in a small role. Though it’s not great cinema, this is a perfect festival film, a crowd-pleasing slice of life that for me personally was a welcome respite from the steady diet of abusive families, suicide, disease and obsession I’ve been watching so far at this festival.
Here is the Q&A with director Adrián Biniez from after the screening:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Duration: 24:40
Here’s a clip from the film, which is available now on DVD in the US through the excellent Film Movement subscription service:
(7/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
uruguay
Kargaran mashghoole karand (Men At Work) (Director: Mani Haghighi, Iran, 2006): Kargaran mashghoole karand (Men At Work) begins with four middle-aged men driving home to catch an important football match on television. Three of them are talking and joking around while the other naps. He wakes up and bugs them until they finally pull over and allow him to make a pit-stop on the side of the road on the edge of a canyon. While they are stopped, they discover a tall, narrow rock formation sticking out of the ground. This film is about their attempts at trying to figure out how it got there, but ultimately how to knock it down.
It doesn’t sound like a very intriguing story, but somehow it is. And funny. The situation these men impose upon themselves can surely be a metaphor for any kind of obstacle that one may face in life, or it could really just be about how difficult it is to dislodge a big rock from the earth.
Through alternating moments of silence, comedic and almost slap-stick antics, emotional outbursts and acts of desperation, we learn of these mens’ relationships with women (two of whom conveniently show up, join the challenge for a while, and then leave) and each other, but mainly we see how differently they each deal with this “problem.”
I have seen a few Iranian films from the past few years, and most of them are about women and their struggles within their culture. This film, however, may focus on the possibly neglected point of view of the men, and perhaps this is why the offensive rock is quite, well, phallic. Is this a commentary on the different attitudes that some Iranian men may have about their male-dominated society? If so, then how does one explain the relatively passive attitudes of the women who show up? (One can make a metaphor of anything, I suppose.)
In the end, after periods of working together and then literally giving up and leaving someone behind, the four friends learn that sometimes problems can solve themselves.
Tagged as:
DVD,
DVD Clubs,
Film Movement,
iran
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)
Tagged as:
adolescence,
children,
cuba,
DVD,
DVD Clubs,
Film Movement,
road-movie
