I am not the kind of person who puts much stake in the pomp and circumstance of the Academy Awards, but it's nice to see some of the films that have graced our screen get some well-deserved credit. The nominations for the 78th Annual Academy Awards were announced this morning, and several nominees made stops at the Walker Cinema.
- Brokeback Mountain - 8 nominations
- Good Night, And Good Luck - 6 nominations
- North Country - 2 nominations
- Hustle and Flow - 2 Nominations
- Darwin’s Nightmare - Nominated for Best Documentary Feature
- Paradise Now - Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film
It’s great to see all of these films get the nod, but I am most excited to see Darwin’s Nightmare and Paradise Now make the list. It would be fantastic to see both of those films find a wider audience.
As part of the 13th annual Women with Vision Film Festival, the Walker will be premiering Deepa Mehta’s Water (March 18), the third installment of her elemental trilogy. Mehta, a native of India now residing in Canada, is no stranger to controversy. The first film of the trilogy, Fire (Also playing Women with Vision - March 12. The second film, Earth, will be presented on March 12.), was met with extreme protest, resulting in the first cinema to show the film being burned to the ground. When she returned to India to shoot Water, complications arose immediately. Mehta was burned in effigy by protesters, her life was threatened, and the film’s sets were ripped apart and thrown into the River Ganges. Eventually the production resumed in Sri Lanka and the film was finished. A fascinating account of the events, as well as some images, from the film’s camera assistant can be found at The Bright Lights Film Journal website.
This weekend we are premiering Manderlay, the second film in Lars von Trier’s USA trilogy. We would have loved to have Lars here for a post-screening Q&A, but alas, he does not fly, and has yet to set foot on our shores. The good news is that the film is also premiering at the IFC Center in New York, and for their Noon screenings on Saturday and Sunday, they will project a live video Q&A with the director and Richard Pena, Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Associate Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University. The chat is sponsored by Salon.com, and they will be broadcasting the Q&As from their website next week. You can catch the local premiere of Manderlay here and catch the Q&A online afterwards. In the meantime, Andrew O’Hehir of Salon.com has some interesting things to say about the film and some questions of his own.
Tickets for this Saturday’s Screening are going fast. I would try to arrive a little early to make sure you get yours.
As a loyal blog reader, be the first to email me (by Friday at 4:30) to get a free pair of tickets to the show.
In an ongoing series of interviews with Sundance participants, indieWIRE interviews filmmaker Alan Berliner. A past Walker artist-in-residence, Berliner is introducing his new documentary, Wide Awake. Like the film he screened here, The Sweetest Sound (an obsessive history of naming and, specifically, his own name), this new effort is autobiographical. Only this time it’s about sleep:
Where did the initial idea for your film come from?
I’ve been a poor sleeper my entire life but wasn’t ready to tackle the problem in a film until now. I’m not sure if it had to do with marrying Shari, with having a child, or the fact that my last film “The Sweetest Sound” (a film about “names”) explored “identity” from the outside (looking in), so to speak — that I felt I needed to explore “identity” from the inside (looking out) this time. I’ve known all along that my insomnia is caused by my inability to shut down my brain at night. Making “Wide Awake” allowed me to dive head first into the problem — directly into my thought process, both conscious and unconscious - into the very place that provides fuel for my creative life, but paradoxically, also keeps me up at night and makes me exhausted during the day. I wanted to understand the source and seed of some of my deepest conflicts and contradictions and try to render them in ways both visceral and poetic. And cinematic.
At the same time, I want the film to generate a greater understanding of and empathy with the condition of sleeplessness — at both the personal and societal levels. There’s also a good deal of practical advice in the film that can help others with sleep problems as well.
See documentation of Berliner’s installation, exhibition, and film screenings for The Language of Names, or try out the interactive naming tools developed during his residency here (see how popular your name is, read stories about how people got their names, and more).
In inner-city Baltimore, 76 percent of African-American boys don’t graduate from high school. And, as the school system complained to the president of a philanthropic foundation five years ago, five percent of troublemakers were making learning nearly impossible for the other 95 percent. The solution they came up with was Baraka School, an experimental school in Kenya–yes, Africa–where “at-risk” kids are shipped to get a radical education away from the influences of drugs, violence, and poverty. In the east African language Kiswahili, “baraka” means blessing, and for some of the boys featured in the new documentary Boys of Baraka, it seems a fitting name. Shot over three years, the film focuses on a handful of boys as they face loneliness, discipline, and catharses in Kenya:
Devon, now 15 and a ninth grader at the Academy for College and Career Exploration in Baltimore, recalls a moment that changed him. After he deliberately bumped a teacher, two counselors took him for a “night walk,” far from campus, and left him to find his way back. The chattering of baboons filled the dark skies. “Tears were running down my cheeks,” he says. “That was a lot more scary than Baltimore. I was walking all by myself, thinking about everything [my grandmother and teachers] always told me about doing good. I wasn’t so tough. That was when I started to listen.” Richard struggles with his reading — “something wrong with my brain,” he says with a laugh — but one night, to grand applause, he shares a poem he has written. The title: “I Will Survive.” Devon and Romesh make the honor roll, and Montrey, by now reading books on his own for the first time, earns 95s. “Before Baraka, I always failed math,” says Montrey, now 15 and a Baltimore City College freshman. “I never went [to class]. With all those teachers coming after me, I learned to value my education.”
The Boys of Baraka screens at the Walker on March 16 as part of the 2006 Women with Vision festival of film and video. Watch the trailer here. To hear this morning’s review on NPR by Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan, click here. Look for more Women with Vision preview posts in weeks to come…
In October 2002, artist-in-residence Wang Jian Wei brought to Minneapolis the ingredients for a classic Szechwan dish, Ma Po Tofu. Exploring the cultural differences in the experience of food as it travels around the world, he prepared the dish from his home province beside a local chef who created the American version. Called Moveable Taste, the performance encouraged the audience to sample both versions to discover the differences. On December 20, 2005, Wang revisted the experience by inviting film curator Sheryl Mousley to taste the same dish at a restaurant in Beijing. Mousley was in Beijing to meet with Chinese filmmakers and prepare a new residency project with Wang Jian Wei.
