Seen Anything Good? Tales from the film festivals ...
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>"what is the answer if you believe that something is going on that is so horrific that it must be stopped, and every reasonable legal and illegal means for stopping it has been tried? What do you do?"
Which is more or less the question that most radicals ask themselves, consciously or unconsciously.
You could also add:
1) Seeing the situation (whatever that may be) in black and white, and not acknowledging shades of grey in human behaviour and motivation.
2) An ability to dehumanise your targets (they're not 'people', they are just a cog in The Machine built by The Man).
3) A belief that the end justifies the means, however violent and destructive that means may be.
4) A lack of patience and a belief that radical action will produce radical results.
5) A belief that 'the people' will, once properly informed and shaken out of their ignorant apathy, flock to your cause.
All of which are behavioural and thought traits that younger people tend to demonstrate more than older (and bitterly experienced) people do.
The 'dehumanisation' thing is addressed slightly tangentially in the film. At one point, Ulrike Meinhoff asks a cop about his family and kids, just before her 'comrades' burst in and start spraying the place with bullets.
there is always a significant proportion of true-believer revolutionaries who are either douchebags or assholes, and although these tendencies may initially be latent, the douchebaggery or assholery comes to the fore eventually, thereby undermining the movement's original goals.
And I'd tend to agree with this, too. If 10,000 people are part of a protest movement, then you can pretty much bet that 10 of those 10,000 are going to be radical, angry and violent.
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Rich:
Interesting analysis, but I can understand why there was enormous sensitivity in Germany that the would, not to put too fine a point on it, be an exercise in radical chic that rationalised, or even treated as glamourous, the actions of killers. I know its not a perfect analogy, but I don't think I'd get a universally warm reception if I went to the Film Commission and said I wanted to make a film about the Rainbow Warrior bombers entirely from their point of view.
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an exercise in radical chic that rationalised, or even treated as glamourous, the actions of killers
I don't know whether it was the filmmakers' intent, or if it's just my inherent bourgeois conformity expressing itself, but I started thinking the RAF were completely horrid about fifteen minutes into the film. They didn't appeal to me (apart from aesthetically) *at all*.
an arena where political prisoners had been housed under the stands
Yes. That made watching the Soul Power scenes dealing with the erection of the stage quite a weird experience.
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Craig - your post implies that there was controversy around the making of this film in Germany. I'm not at all up to speed on the background. Could you please elaborate?
My comments relating to radical mentaility were intended in a general sense. The mentality of far-left and far-right organisations is something that I have a little (a very little) personal experience with, at one remove. It's also an area I've done a bit of reading and research around. I was attempting to relate my more general experience and knowledge to the more specific situation covered by the film.
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3) A belief that the end justifies the means, however violent and destructive that means may be.
Also the complete lack of realism about the means getting to the end. A campaign of terror was never going to stop American involvement in the war. It was, if anything, counter-productive.
5) A belief that 'the people' will, once properly informed and shaken out of their ignorant apathy, flock to your cause.
The WU used to raid school classrooms, tie up the teachers or lock them in an office, and 'rap' to the kids about the war, revolution, Maoism, and 'the man' in the belief that the youth would flock to them and join the revolution.
It was spectacularly unsuccessful. Some kids armed themselves and ran the WU activists off they disliked it so much.
There's another question about the links between hard-line ideology and the shift. SDS was not a very ideological group, they fought battles with Progressive Left, a Trotskyist group that was using their popularity to try and increase their own membership, but most SDS members didn't have any traditional leftist ideology - hence the 'new' left. The leaders of WU however became ideological - most a perverted form of Maoism - shortly before they split and went underground. They turned their strengths and successes on their head and made them weaknesses and failures.
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Craig - your post implies that there was controversy around the making of this film in Germany. I'm not at all up to speed on the background. Could you please elaborate?
Will do -- but I've got to hook off to Newmarket in about quarter of an hour, so I'm not blowing you off if I do it tonight. But I think its fair to say a large part of it is the hardly surprising notion that the survivors of people killed by the RAF were hyper-sensitive about any possibility that they'd get a sympathetic treatment. Just as, though the analogy is again not exact, that Robert Sarkies was extremely sensitive to the fact that there were people for whom Out of the Blue was treading across an emotional minefield.
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OK - I see where you're coming from now. And that does actually raise quite a thought-provoking point.
There are several degrees of separation between me and the events this film portrays. I am able to view it at least somewhat dispassionately. Similarly 'out of the blue'. I wasn't living here then and I have no immediate visceral emotional response to the events of that film - I am a step removed from it.
But I certainly don't feel the same way about, for example, Steve McQueens 'hunger' (which I'll admit I've not seen). Now, on an intellectual level, I can accept that it's a story that should be told, that neither side comes out smelling of roses in Northern Ireland, and I can read reviews that indicate the film is well-made, engaging and deals with the subject matter in a fair and balanced way.
But I can't help but have a reaction on a gut level, too. The PIRA are not something I can be completely dispassionate about. I read those reviews and I can feel my blood getting angried up.
Similarly, I can watch 'The Wire' with a degree of detachment, but have a rather more immediate gut reaction when presented with for example, 'Essex boys', 'rise of the footsoldier', or any one of the dozens of books and films that have been released in the UK which deal with that sort of 'laddy' hooligan/gangster/organised crime culture, whether or not they glorify it, or try to present it in a more balanced way.
Food for thought.
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I have just realised that I may combine all of my Film-Festival-going themes - douchebag, asshole, *and* batshit - in one film this afternoon, and that film is: Tyson.
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I have just realised that I may combine all of my Film-Festival-going themes - douchebag, asshole, *and* batshit - in one film this afternoon, and that film is: Tyson.
Heh. Definitely Westie.
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Bright Star is basically dreadful - nice to look at though, with lots of gorgeous, static slow focus close-ups and beautiful landscapes in between the terrible dialog, constant voiceovers and endless, pointless scenes. That's four terrible films in a row for our Jane which is a bit of a worry.
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That's four terrible films in a row for our Jane which is a bit of a worry.
I think all her films are terrible -- but some are terrible in an interesting way (The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady), others not so much.
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Saw Big Man River, for the first 60mins I thought Martin Strel - endurance swimmer - was gloriously, exuberantly, unashamedly mad, then for the last 20mins I thought OMG he IS mad, it is a train wreck and I cant pull my eyes away. Great doco, disturbing, enlightening, slightly manipulative, strangely disconnected narration by his son but well worth the time.
Kisses, Irish fairy tale, some contrivance - rolling behind car and the Bob Dylan lookalike (Stephen Rea uncredited) but saved by the utter charm, whimsy and worldly innocence of the delightful leads. Small critique I needed subtitles, esp for Dylan the young lad, I really had trouble picking up his dialogue.
Louise Michel - dedicated to French anarchist - a romp, a gag a minute, some that work, some that don't. Lampoons environmentalists, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, illegal migrants and the prime target capitalism. Cheered me up from the funk that BRM had caused me.
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Anyone of a certain age (say, 30s, early 40s), who liked Freaks and Geeks and who has a penchant for good 80s music (of the Replacements and Husker Du variety, although some 70s Nick Lowe and Big Star make appearances too) will probably like Adventureland. Very sweet, very funny.
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Sky City Cinemas on Queen Street are what Hell would be like if Satan had a bad case of ADHD.
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Although, Craig, they're so horrible that they're like a kind of grand folly of the old school. It's as if the Earl of Crack designed them. Everywhere you look is something ridiculous, inconvenient, or dangerous on a massive scale. Heh.
Last night I saw Every Little Step, a documentary about A Chorus Line. So it was a documentary about people trying out for a Broadway show... about people trying out for a Broadway show. Meta! If you don't mind a lot of Jazz Hands, even the rejects were quite amazing dancers. (When I saw the original choreographer had died in 1987, I thought how horrendous HIV was in the USA's creative communities during that period. It must have been terrifying, and so sad.)
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Although, Craig, they're so horrible that they're like a kind of grand folly of the old school. It's as if the Earl of Crack designed them.
Or Prince Charles in one of his more puckish moods -- but, seriously, the next time I'm in a place where it takes five minutes to find a toilet I'm going to piss in my seat.
Last night I saw Every Little Step, a documentary about A Chorus Line. So it was a documentary about people trying out for a Broadway show... about people trying out for a Broadway show.
Shame its such a horrible show -- I'm still sore that back in 1976 A Chorus Line totally locked out of the Tonys Bob Fosse's infinitely superior Chicago. But after 33 years, I really need to get over it.
(When I saw the original choreographer had died in 1987, I thought how horrendous HIV was in the USA's creative communities during that period. It must have been terrifying, and so sad.)
Too true -- and if you look up "Show Queen" in the dictionary, you'll find Michael Bennett's picture: A feather boa with a core of piano wire. Now him, Fosse and Stephen Sondheim would be very interesting doco subjects in their own right, not only because they were pretty formidable personalities but because Broadway (and the society it existed in) totally changed around them.
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A small grump about the film festival ticketing.
The programme notes that at two cinema's (LIDO and Bridgeway), tickets can't be bought in advance. The wording in the programme is phrased in such as way as to suggest that tickets can't be brought in advance for screening at these shows at all .
However, tickets can be brought in advance for screenings at these two cinemas via ticketek, just not at the box offices, for those two screens. The programme doesn't make this clear.
I found this out the hard way on Saturday.
Anyhoo, back to the 'remix manifesto'. Some more coherent thoughts than 'it's rilly good, and you should, like, see it' (it is, though).
As a salesjob for a particular point of view (the 4-point remix manifesto), and a particular artist (girl talk), it was excellent. I'm certainly on the hunt for some of 'girl talk' back catalogue now.
But it skated over, and didn't really engage with, the central point of the doco - what exactly constitutes fair use, and when do you start infringing copyright? That is, exactly how restrictive are these laws?
There is only one point in the film when the makers try to answer this, and this is by going to the USPTO and asking the woman who does the copyright filings what she thinks. Now, without wanting to do this woman down, and in the gentlest possible way, she ain't much more than a glorified rubber stamp driver - she's certainly not an expert in US intellectual property law.
So I went and looked it up so you don't have to. For those who are interested, wiki has some reasonably comprehensive stuff.
General article on 'fair use' here.
The important stuff wrt music and sampling are these two decisions: here and here.
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Samson and Delilah. They were showing it on my Qantas flight, and even on that tiny screen, with the tinny earphones, it was stunning. It's absolutely heart-breaking, beautifully shot, and the performances by the young leads are phenomenal.
It's also one of the slowest-moving films I think I've ever seen, almost painfully so, and it's virtually dialogue-free, but I just could not look away. I literally jumped out of my seat twice, as "real life" broke into the exquisitely slow pace of the film. And the occasional glimmers of humour are all the more bittersweet.
If anyone else has seen it, were you startled by the ending? I was... it's almost as if the film-maker couldn't bear to follow the inexorable momentum of the plot all the way to its logical ending. Even so, it was devastating in its own way.
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Would thoroughly recommend Looking for Eric even for non-Manchester United fans.
Probably the closest thing Ken Loach will ever make to a feel-good crowd pleasing confection, with some wonderful comic moments (apparently much of the supporting cast were Manchester stand-up comedians) alongside the usual social commentary.
And Eric Cantona - who despite some dodgy acting has screen presence in spades - has some delicious fun poking at his own iconic image and tendency towards portentious aphorisms.
Not so sure about Disgrace. Loved the book, but just couldn't imagine John Malkovich in the key role - he's a difficult actor to warm to, which made the character a bit one-dimensionally bastard. But the themes of new South Africa colliding violently with old South Africa still came across well - with the sub-plot of Petrus and the land coming across a bit Jean de Florette.
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Disgrace. Loved the book
I could see its worth, but at the same time, the whole 'this woman symbolises white South Africa and she therefore shall be gang-raped to make up for apartheid' thing didn't sit particularly well with me. (Or did I have the wrong end of the stick there?)
Whining: I missed Coco Avant Chanel because the idiots in the Civic car park kept letting people in when the place was full, causing a giant half-hour-long traffic jam, and by the time we got out the film had already started. To which I say: bah!
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Or did I have the wrong end of the stick there?
No, I don't think so Danielle, I thought that was what the book was largely about as well, the guilt of white South Africa against the aspirations and casual violence of new South Africa, set around two disgraceful (one of them horrific) incidents, and the (almost deliberately) extreme reaction to those incidents, one of the daughter, and one of the father. Its not a particularly happy or enjoyable book (or film), so maybe loved was completely the wrong word, but it certainly stuck with me for awhile.
And on the subject of organisation I don't quite get why the Civic lets the incoming film-goers meet the outgoing film goers at exactly the same time.
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Anyone of a certain age (say, 30s, early 40s), who liked Freaks and Geeks
Loved that show. Will check out Adventureland.
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I'm taking the film festival day by day, checking out the programme and then deciding if there's anything I want to see.
I'm also taking some advice from Dan Slevin and only seeing films that aren't going to be available later on general release. It seems much more fun that way.
This weekend I saw...
Best Worst Movie
A documentary looking at the 1990 film Troll 2, which, after languishing in VCR obscurity, gradually found an cult audience. The doco is made by Troll 2's former child star, and takes a good-hearted look at the fans of the films and the actors who are embracing (sometimes reluctantly) their newfound fame.The Camera on the Shore
Graeme Tuckett's documentary on the work of NZ film-maker Barry Barclay. Barry's life as a film-maker is allowed to be told in a fairly organic way. Rather than having a narrative thrust as us, we learn about the life and work of Baz from his friend and colleagues, and through interviews from the man himself. Moving, inspiring, and a great tribute to a significant NZer.Tangata Whenua 1
A selection of Barry Barclay's films are being played in the film festival. Tangata Whenua was a 1974 documentary series with Michael King, talking to Maori and hearing their stories. The two episodes screened in this session looked at some kuia with moko (there were only about 30 left in NZ at the time), and the people of the Waikato (Tainui, I guess?) and their relationship with the river. Despite being as old as I am, the documentary didn't feel too dated, and had a real beauty to it, which is a hallmark of Barclay's direction. -
My favourite had to be Moon, perhaps tied things up a little too cleanly for my liking, but it was a great story that defeated my expectations and prejudice time and again - and was made for stuff all money, all things considered. (i.e. you could only make ~20 NZ directors' first features with the budget, rather than the regular 200-400.)
Also really enjoyed Dead Snow. That sex scene. Oh my. (Surely she isn't going to... Eeee! NO NO NO NO NOOOOOO!)
Best Worst Movie was very good as well. I'm not really a fan of "movies so bad they're good" as generally they turn out to be "movies so bad they're, well, really bad", but enjoyed the doco for what it was, and have maintained my resistance to actually watching Troll 2.
It Might Get Loud was bloody good too - but only in parts, there was a whole artificial thing at its core which I didn't enjoy, but the more natural bits around the fringe were great. Jack White came across really bloody well to me, but some of the people I was with couldn't get past his creepiness.
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'Dead Snow' gets five BRAAAAAIIINS out of five from me.
Zombies and nazis - together at last.
A sure fire nominee for many Zombie Oscars, including 'best use of intestines', 'most imaginative use of fishing line and gaffer tape', and, yes 'BRAAAAIIINS'.
Hat tips from the makers to many films, including 'Bad Taste' and other early stuff from Peter Jackson.
The first film I've been to for a long time where there was a spontaneous round of applause at the end from the audience. So if you're into that sort of thing ('normal people', etc), definitely worth a look.
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