Film and Video

The question that has been echoed for the past few years at Cannes may very well have a refrain here in the Twin Cities, albeit a quieter refrain. A recent article in the New York Times Magazine (”New Wave on the Black Sea“, A.O. Scott) brings to light two films that made brief appearances in the past, but also three films coming up at the Walker starting next week. The New Romanian Cinema section of the Expanding the Frame program will include Cristian Mungiu’s critically acclaimed 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (2007) and two films from Cristian Nemescu, Marilena From P7 (2006) and California Dreamin’ (2007).

First, let’s do a little local Romanian recap. The film that started this whole critic-coined and director-refuted “New Wave” was Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Mr Lazarescu premiered at Cannes in 2005 and landed in the Twin Cities June 2006 at the Parkway Theater when the theater was in a state that was more dismal than the plot of the film (a two-and-a-half hour film about, well, the death of Mr. Lazarescu .) Locally it was well received but sadly under-attended. A mere ten months later, another high profile Romanian film made an appearance at the 2007 Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival: Corneliu Porumboiu’s hilarious 12:08 East of Bucharest. (Corneliu Porumboiu’s 2005 short entitled Liviu’s Dream played at the 2006 MSPIFF.)

The big story of the three films coming up at the Walker is Mungiu’s 4 Months, 2 Weeks, 2 Days (Wednesday, January 30, 7:30pm) which won the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes and basically showed up on everybody who’s anybody’s list for 2007. The more quiet story, yet perhaps the more important story, is that of director Cristian Nemescu who died at the young age of 27 in 2006. Nemescu was certainly heralded as a rising star, but seems destine to become the forgotten luminary. The Walker will provide the rare opportunity to see two of his films: Marilena From P7 (Thursday, February 7, 7:30) and California Dreamin’ (Friday, February 8, 7:30).

So if I didn’t see you at Cristi or Corneliu’s screenings, maybe I will see you at Cristian or Cristian’s screenings next week. (There will be a test on Romanian director’s names before each screening.) As for Utah, judging from the reports (one and two), I’m starting to wonder if Rob made the wrong decision.

435 minutes. Seven hours and 15 minutes. It’s not a lot of time. It’s less than half our waking hours on any given day, and the approximate time we spend sleeping each night. Ironically this is almost the exact amount of time I spent at work on Sunday. But I spent most of my 435 minutes at work Sunday thinking about the 435 minutes I spent in the Walker Cinema Saturday with Bela Tarr’s exceptional Satantango.

Prior to Satantango, I think the longest film I had seen in a theater was, unfortunately, Gone With the Wind. (If only Kurosawa could have come up with fifteen more minutes for Seven Samurai, I could have had a much better alibi.) At almost half the running time, I think it is fair to say that Gone With the Wind is about as far from Satantango as you can get, and would be little help in preparing me for the experience that Bela had planned for me. We modern movie-goers are trained to expect a two hour narrative, give or take 30 minutes for the proper resolution of conflict du jour. Once films push much beyond that two hour threshold, distributors seem to get twitchy, either demanding cuts or, in the most obscene circumstances, releasing one film in two parts. The industry seems convinced that audiences don’t have the tenacity for films over three hours. Fortunately, I don’t think Bela Tarr had the film industry or the film audience in mind when he crafted Satantango, a film that debunks all standards, and I was more than up to the challenge.

For the record, the Walker’s Saturday screening of Satantango was the third chance to see the film theatrically in the Twin Cities. The Oak Street Cinema hosted two screenings of Satantango earlier this year over a weekend that, coincidentally, I had family in town. (My family might have a base understanding of my obsession with movies, but asking them to accept that I would be busy for nine hours watching a movie would be crossing the line.) As the Facets DVD release of Satantango seemed to be on perpetual hold, I was convinced that I would never get to see this film. But it’s funny how things work out. It wasn’t long before I heard that Bela Tarr was coming to the Walker along with all of his feature films, including his new film than premiered at Cannes, The Man From London, and, of course, Satantango.

The biggest adversary to the screening Saturday was the “not-too-many-more-days-like-this” October weather. In my case, the leaf raking and garden cleaning would just have to wait. Nearly a hundred of us traded sunny and 61 degrees for a dark, rainy dance with the Devil, and, as the lights went down at 1:05pm, you could feel the collective energy of anticipation in the air. Nine hours later that collective energy had evolved into something else entirely (those of you there will have to help me out with this one), as we followed Bela Tarr down a path that was both visually mesmerizing and thematically devastating. Told in twelve sections (a tango, as mentioned in the program notes, six steps forward and six back, although I’m not sure where the going ‘forward’ part is) that weave together a communal story through multiple perspectives, each overlaying the other with cumulative significance. The long takes and extended scenes that Satantango is known for seem to break down that barrier that exists in traditional films between audience and character, and two hours into the film, I felt myself start to get restless in the unnerving physical presence of the doctor…and his writing…and breathing…and drinking. I wouldn’t call the result more intimate, but more tactile and sympathetic. The sustained tone of the film is nothing short of brutal, not unlike Kelemen’s “plodding along and plodding and plodding along” into oblivion.

The last three hours of the film were the hardest, both physically and mentally. I had grown tired of the two positions I could stretch my legs without putting them on the shoulders of the person in front of me, and the narrative thread of the film had taken a turn to something more divisive. With the fate of the villagers looming like an oppressive dark cloud, I struggled to assimilate the facts either into a straight narrative or an allegorical satire. As the credits began to role and the lights came up with most of the audience still intact, we all sat in stunned silence. There was no victorious feeling of crossing the finish line, but only what I can describe as a 435 minute heartache. Almost forty-eight hours later my head is still spinning with the overwhelming scope of the film and the irrepressible images.

The experience itself was emotionally overwhelming, to say the least. As I rode my bike home past the Saturday night revelers on Nicolette Avenue, I felt totally empty, almost outside of my skin. At the time, I had no idea how to answer, “How was the movie?” except to just nod, and say, “Yeah. Good.” (Of course the look I got was, ‘Come on, you just saw an eight hour movie and that is all you’re going to say?’) Collecting my thoughts about the film beyond a gut reaction seemed impossible, let alone trying to come up with a rudimentary analysis. Even comprehending the visual elegance and narrative balance that never seem to wavered in those seven hours is beyond me. I find myself revisiting scenes in my head and mapping exactly how they play out, but then getting confused about how the chapters stacked up and in what order. Was it raining the whole time? Or did it stop raining twice? And by the way, what happened to Kelemen after he picked up the doctor? Was he just a diabolical messenger sent to push us over the edge with his intoxicated rambling? And what exactly were the two officers typing up near the end? Was it simply Irimias proclamations? And what was with all the antagonism towards the bar owner? I really don’t know. In the end, Satantango has left me with one of the most amazing film experiences I’ve ever had and, of course, the inordinate compulsion to revisit the film…second screening anyone?

> Don’t miss the last installment of the retrospective this weekend with the regional premier of The Man From London screening Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm. It’s only 132 minutes.

If Michel Gondry’s recent Regis Dialogue and Retrospective left you wanting more, you only have a few more months left to wait. Gondry’s new film, Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Mia Farrow, Danny Glover, and Melonie Diaz is slated for limited release on December 21, 2007. (Assuming it will be here, a perfect Christmas Day movie!) The trailer just hit the web and it looks nothing short of hilarious. This will be the second film that Gondry has both written and directed after his 2006 Science of Sleep. Where Science of Sleep was a very personal film for Gondry, Be Kind Rewind seems to be more of a traditional comedy, at least as traditional as Gondry can be. The premise is that Jerry (Jack Black) is magnetized, literally, and as a result ends up erasing the all the video tapes in the Mike’s (Mos Def) video store. Instead of replacing the tapes with new ones, Jerry and Mike decide to personally remake the films (replete with special effects, as seen in photo at left.)

Check out the Be Kind Rewind trailer HERE.

Two more film directors die and I raise my ugly blog-head like the grim reaper. However, in light of last week’s local events it seemed trivial to eulogize two directors. As a result this post comes almost a week after the passing of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, (which is, at this point, not news) but only five days after the shocking collapse of the 35W bridge. Like most people that live in the area, I have spent those last five days trying to wrap my head around the bizarre accident and the surreal photos and testimonials. Understanding the full impact of the bridge collapse will take some time. Understanding the death of two elderly film directors is ultimately easier.

Both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni died on Monday, July 30, 2007. Bergman was 89 and Antonioni was 94. Both worked in their later years, but that is where the similarities stop with these two. Ingmar Bergman was possibly one of the most iconic film directors, with his cool Norse intellectualism and preternatural staid symbolism and allegory. Bergman made over forty feature films and over a dozen television productions. Bergman himself admitted that most of his work was autobiographical, drawing upon his own experiences as the son of Lutheran minister. I’m not even going to pretend to understand the impact of his films at the time. Bergman exists to me in the form of VHS tapes, repertory screenings and Criterion Collections. His films have a rare amount of artfulness and unrelenting honesty that make them difficult, even now (or maybe even more so now.) He spent the last ten years of his life living and working in his home on Frö Island in Sweden. An inexhaustible amount of information can be found on the Ingmar Bergman website published by the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

I can just imagine film students of the Sixties and Seventies falling into the Bergman camp or the Antonioni camp of film appreciation. Whether or not there is any truth in that, I have no idea, but these filmmakers could not be farther apart in style. If Bergman’s films were grounded in faith (even though he had proclaimed to had lost his), Michelangelo Antonioni’s were grounded in the lack of faith. More than anyone, Antonioni charted the territory of the arthouse film where “nothing happens.” The majority of his thirty-some films remain shamelessly unavailable in the US, but if there is one thing I have learned from purchasing a bootlegged version his 1970 documentary about China (Chung Kuo), Antonioni was not afraid to try new things. Antonioni had an inquisitiveness about the world and the human condition and this translated into his art. Life’s ambiguity was a stage for Antonioni’s visual poetics. Antonioni suffered a stroke in 1985 that left him partially paralyzed, and limited his work. A very thorough biography on Michelangelo Antonioni can be found here on Senses of Cinema.

One can’t help but wonder what these two men would have thought about a shared date of death. They were contemporaries who would have been unable to ignore each other work. Dan Zak’s article in the Sunday Washington Post looks at where the two director’s paths did and didn’t cross. It is ironic that we are plucking quotes like this out: “Antonioni was suffocated by his own tedium, Bergman wrote in his autobiography.” and “Bergman was solely concerned with the question of God, Antonioni told the London Telegraph, whereas he himself was uninterested in unraveling spiritual mystery.” (from the Post article.) Their thoughts about each other will forever be joined together by fate, or, as Antonioni might have seen it, plain old ordinary chance.

Both will be missed, but their films live on.

Edward Yang, award winning Taiwanese director, died today from complications from colon cancer. Best known for his film Yi Yi (A One and a Two…) 2000, which won best director at the Cannes Film Festival, Yang was a member of the so-called Taiwanese New New Wave film movement along with Ang Lee and Hou Hsiao-hsien. Yang was born in Shanghai, but moved to Taiwan during the civil war and later moved to the US to study and become a citizen. His film career however, was firmly embedded in Taiwan, with many of his films unavailable in the US: In Our Time (1982), That Day on the Beach (1983), Taipei Story (1985), The Terrorist (1986), A Brighter Summer Day (1991), A Confucian Confusion (1994), and Mahjong (1996). He is credited for giving Chang Chen (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Three Times) his start in A Brighter Summer Day. He was planning on working with Jackie Chan on an animated feature entitled The Wind. For me, the news in quite shocking. As a director that I feel the world had yet to discover, Mr. Yang will be sorely missed.

Global Lens 2007 opened last night at the Walker Art Center. While it might have been cold and snowy outside, the Walker Cinema offered refuge with journeys to China and Algeria. From April 11–22 Walker hosts nine feature films from nine countries and a shorts program offering the same variety. Sponsored by the Global Film Initiative, Global Lens serves as a venue to emerging filmmaker and films that have little or no chance beyond the festival circuit. The past two years I have attended the series I have been amazed by the subtle power that these films. To their credit, the films are the complete antithesis of a Hollywood film, but as a result lack the marketability that is so important to distributors these days. The Global Film Initiative obviously plays by different rules, and provides much need support to international films that tend to fall through the cracks. I was curious about the series, so decided to ask Dean Otto, Walker Film/Video Assistant Curator, a few questions about the series:

KS: This is the fourth Global Lens and the third that the Walker has partnered with the Global Film Initiative. Was that first year impeded by the Walker expansion or were we late-comers to the series?

DO: Actually, this is the fourth time that we’ve partnered with the Global Film Initiative. We presented their first touring program in January 2004 and there was the break during the construction of the Walker expansion. We did some catch-up work though after we opened in screening two of the touring programs across one season in September 2005 and May 2006.

The Walker is one of fourteen U.S. partners with the Global Film Initiative. How did you first get in contact with the Global Film Initiative?

While he was still with Cowboy Booking, Noah Cowan (now the Co-Director of the Toronto International Film Festival) asked to meet with Cis Bierinckx and I during the Toronto Film Festival to ask if we would have any interest in being a site for the Global Lens series. As their mission was to support emerging filmmakers from developing countries, provide distribution to those films, and to create curriculum guides for a few of the films to encourage high school students to become engaged with international cinema and the issues raised in the films. We said yes immediately as it fit into our plans to focus on global programming and to screen work from emerging filmmakers and follow their work over the course of their careers. I was really drawn to the educational component as well. I really feel that many Americans can’t or won’t travel abroad and particularly to places outside of Europe . Though cinema, this may be the only way Americans can experience these other cultures and it’s essential to promote cross-cultural understanding.

The list of Board Members is impressive by anyone’s standards: Pedro Almodvar, Béla Tarr, Lars von Trier, and my favorite crazy man Christopher Doyle, just to name a few. How active are the Board members in finding and selecting films?

They are an advisory board who helps the GFI staff to identify emerging filmmakers and projects to consider for funding and distribution. I can find out more details of projects they’ve identified over dinner with GFI’s chair Susan Weeks Coulter who is visiting the Twin Cities today.

If the Global Film Initiative did not exist, what would happen to these films?

Many of the films would have languished unproduced or undistributed. Lately, more film festivals have developed funds to support filmmakers from countries without established national arts councils to help independent filmmakers. The Rotterdam Film Festival has the amazing Hubert Bals Fund which was celebrated in a series at the Walker in April 2003. The Berlin Film Festival has also launched a similar fund and the Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah who was here to introduce a screening of his film MERCEDES in March 2006 was one of the first recipients of a grant from them. I think its fantastic that these festivals are helping to foster production in addition to exhibition.

I’m pretty excited to see Li Yu’s DAM STREET . I saw Li’s first feature FISH AND ELEPHANT a few years back, and thought to myself “this is a very brave filmmaker.”

I agree. Since completing DAM STREET she’s completed a new film LOST IN BEIJING that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February. The screening was controversial as the version she wished to screen was not approved by the Chinese censors.

What are some of the highlights, in your opinion, of Global Lens 2007?

I was really blown away by the cinematography and complex narrative structure of A WONDERFUL NIGHT IN SPLIT. Director Arsen Anton Ostoijic is clearly a director to track. I was surprised by the dark humor in KILOMETRE ZERO and disturbed by the familial tension in THE SACRED FAMILY.

All the films screen at least twice. Will there be any special guests at any of the screenings to take note of?

As in the past we’ve invited the local academic community to introduce a few of the screenings. Jason McGrath from the Asian Literatures and Languages Department at the University of Minnesota introduced the screening of DAM STREET last night. Jolle Vitiello of the French and Francophone Studies department at Macalester College was here to introduce ENOUGH as well. Jolle had just bought the documentaries of Djamila Sahraoui who directed ENOUGH so that was some amazing synergy. Our good friend Fernando Arenas of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at U of M will be here on Sunday, April 15 to introduce the screening of ANOTHER MAN’S GARDEN. Fernando is working on a chapter on films from Mozambique for his new book.

Any idea what might be on the dock for Global Lens 2008?

I wish I knew. The Global Film Initiative staff rarely gives hints about their slate of films until everything is finalized. I didn’t know the selections for this edition until December.

——-

See these films while you can. Check out the full schedule of Global Lens 2007 screenings here.

Friday 4/13 A Wonderful Night in Split 7pm, Fine Dead Girls 9pm

Saturday 4/14 Of Love and Eggs 1pm

Sunday 4/15 Another Man’s Garden Noon, Kilometre Zero 2pm, Dam Street 4pm

Tuesday 4/17 The Sacred Family 7pm, On Each Side 9pm

Thursday 4/19 Global Shorts 7pm, Dam Street 9pm

Friday 4/20 On Each Side 7pm, The Sacred Family 9pm

Saturday 4/21 Dam Street 1pm, Of Love and Eggs 3pm, Fine Dead Girls 7pm, A Wonderful Night in Split 8:30pm

Sunday 4/22 Global Shorts Noon, Enough! 2pm, Dam Street 4pm

Preeminent French magazine Cahiers du cinema went online last week with “issue zero” of their e-Cahiers du cinema. It’s a test issue with only 20 or so pages translated into English, but the next issue, online March 9, will be translated from cover to cover. Started in 1951, the influence that Cahiers du cinema has had on film and film criticism can not be overstated. Given the iconic nature of the print magazine, there will no doubt be a fair share of detractors. The editors had this to say (as posted by Twitch):

“Dear friends,We invite you to discover the ‘issue zero’ of e-Cahiers du cinema. The ‘e’ stands for ‘electronic’ as well as for ‘English’…The March 2007 issue will be the first to be published simultaneously in French on paper and, in its entirety, in English at www.e-cahiersducinema.com. This issue will arrive on newstands on March 7 and on line March 9. The double evolution of Les Cahiers (the paper magazine plus the magazine on line, the French magazine plus the English edition) comes in response to the two great movements of our times, toward digital distribution and toward the globalization of the media… To publish in English, of course, is a way of reaching a larger of new readers, but we hope it will also be a way of making a different voice heard in the world–a way of proposing a fresh, rigorous and contemporary approach to the cinema and its place in present day culture.”

As a magazine-hound and a film fan and a non-French speaker I couldn’t be happier. But purists are already debating the mere possibility of correctly translating the content of Cahiers. (Check comments to Greencine post.) Personally, I think the online edition looks awesome, and if they want to translate “A woman in trouble” to “The story of a woman who has some problems,” so be it. What would Bazin think? When it came to films, he may have been a bit of a formalist, but as a journalist, I think he was a little more pragmatic.

Some hardy individuals helped themselves to a complementary glass of champagne for making it to the finish line at 3:20am this past Monday morning in Berlin. What was this extreme sport of endurance? It was the world premiere of the restored version of Fassbinder’s infamous TV mini-series Berlin Alexanderplatz at the 57th Berlinale. I think it is quite possible that the Walker’s own assistant curator Dean Otto may have partaken in the competition. (We will have to wait and see how he fared.)

The screening started at 10:00am on Sunday morning and drew to a close 17 hours and 20 minutes later – not for the faint of heart film fan. Inevitably a screening like this is just as much of an event as it is a viewing, and perhaps even a competition. We have had our own versions of stamina cinema here in the Twin Cities: Bela Tarr’s 7 hour epic Satantango recently played across town at the Oak Street, and the University of Minnesota’s DocuLens Asia Film Series hosted Wang Bing’s 9 and a half hour underground documentary West of the Tracks. I personally like this idea of pushing your film viewing to the limit. I’ve often been accused of squandering my time in movie theaters, so I’m glad to see my vice gaining some momentum.

Another sign of stamina cinema gaining mass appeal, AMC has announced that it will screen all five of the Best Picture Oscar nominees in a row on Saturday February 24th (locally at Southdale and Arbor Lakes) that adds up to over 12 hours at the multiplex. 30 bucks will get you into all five of the films, starting at 11:00am with Babel and ending at with the plucky Little Miss Sunshine, AND a free popcorn AND a free drink AND free refills! Despite the fact that I have seen four of the five and found them, for the most part, unworthy, I am still very tempted.

Rumor is that Criterion will be handling the restored Berlin Alexanderplatz on DVD in the US, and I look forward to seeing it in all its restored glory. Will I watch it in one sitting? Probably not. Would I spend 17 hours in a cinema to see it? Absolutely!

Spiegel article on the Berlinale screening of Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Wow. Seeing Fireworks, Rabbit’s Moon, Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kammandos restored was like seeing them for the first time. For the people who were at this sold out event, I think there is no denying how special the night was. Listening to his stories left me in awe at the life Dr. Anger has lived. Indeed, at the presentation at the Walker Cinema on Friday night I think the audience was just as enchanted, if not more so, with Dr. Anger’s storytelling as they were with the restored 35mm prints of his films. Thank you Dr. Anger.

It is hard to imagine seeing Fireworks in 1947, which still seems so bold and shocking. To quote Anais Nin who saw the film at the time “At someone’s house I was shown [Anger's] film Fireworks. The sadism and violence revolted me, but the film has power and is artistically perfect. It has a nightmare quality. Everyone had mixed feelings, horror and recognition of Kenneth Anger’s talent.” That talent is still easy to see today.

This Sunday’s New York Times had an interesting article by A. O. Scott (”The World is Watching. Not Americans.“) lamenting the lack of foreign film appreciation here in the U.S. To quote the article: “The movies are out there, more numerous and various than ever before, but the audience – and therefore box-office returns and the willingness of distributors to risk even relatively small sums on North American rights – seems to be dwindling and scattering.” As much as I like to join in on any doomsday proclamation and wax poetically about the way things used to be, I wonder if things are all that bad.

Until I win the lottery and build my own multiplex and start playing films for myself, I don’t think I will ever be satisfied with what sees screen time in the Twin Cities. However, I do think the Twin Cities is blessed with a small group of smart and scrappy (and, yes, somewhat beleaguered) independent film organizations. At the heart of A. O. Scott’s article are the foreign films topping many critic’s lists for 2006 such as The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Pan’s Labyrinth. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu had a two-week stint at the Parkway, and while I’m sure no records were broken for viewership, astute Twin Cities cineastes saw this film. As for Pan’s Labyrinth, look for records to be broken: I stood in line with everyone else this weekend to see this film at the Uptown theater. (When I enquired about their weekend business, the ticket seller said that on opening night they had sold out, which hadn’t happened at the Uptown for three years. Two points for foreign language films!) Once agian, from the article: ” If you have seen Three Times or L’Enfant – to name two other hits of the 2005 Cannes Festival that came and went here in the blink of an eye last year despite choruses of critical praise – then you can perhaps feel the flush of specialness that comes from belonging to an exclusive coterie.” Yes! I do feel that flush! Three Times had four screenings at the Walker in September and L’Enfant played at Landmark’s Edina Theater for a week. Furthermore on the flush of specialness: “All the more if you are familiar with the festival-only titles on some critics’ lists of undistributed movies, like Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century or Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth.” While I am holding out for a screening of Regis alumn Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, I am feeling a particularly exclusive coterie flush about Colossal Youth that screened at the Walker in October.

No, it’s not all that bad, but the reality of the market is pointed out in an IndieWire article: “So far, in 2006, less than 10 films have crossed the $1 million mark, but here’s an even more startling statistic: Of the more than 100 foreign-language films released so far this year, less than a quarter have broken $100,000 in ticket sales. (In 2005, by comparison, about half of the 128 foreign-language titles released made well over $100,000.)” Wow. If nothing else, this is a plea to support those smart and scappy programers, where ever you are. The exclusive coterie is there…waiting for you.