Cronenberg 2.0

Antiviral (2012) - Cronenberg

Brandon Cronenberg, the son of David, makes an intriguing debut in a fitting genre - body horror. Antiviral imagines the society where celebrity worship reached its creepiest form, where people willingly pay money to get infected with diseases of celebs (flu, herpes, etc) to be closer to them or eat the lab cultivated meat from the cells of their idols. A ginger lab technician Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) at Lucas Clinic smuggles out such celeb diseases in his body to sell them at the black market, despite tight security measures at the lab. When one of the biggest star Hanna Geist (Sarah Gordon from Cosmopolis) gets seriously ill after a visit to China, it's Syd who gets to collect the blood sample for the clinic. After injecting her blood into his system, he gets gravely ill and also becomes a target of interested parties who see his body as a commodity. Cronenberg makes the most of Jones's physical frailty and creepy stares and has a great visual sense that are quite different from his dad (more antiseptic). Still, Antiviral also features some similar motifs in machine/body argumentation that Cronenberg Sr. is known for. All in all, it's an impressive debut.

The House with a Thousand Windows

 In the House/ Dans La Maison (2012) - Ozon
With In the House, François Ozon, best known for his Hitchcockian, genre-twisting little psychological thrillers (Under the Sand, Swimming Pool), offers up one of his best films in years. It is clear from the beginning, with the title sequence on a school notebook and as Fabrice Luchini's jaded High School Literature teacher cynically commenting on a new rule on school uniforms at the first day of school that something deliciously sinister is brewing.

Germain (Fabrice Luchini) notices Claude (Ernst Umhauer)'s writing while correcting mountains of his students' weekly assignment. It's the 16-year old's description of his friend's mom that catches his eye, "that unmistakable odor of a middle-class woman," which stands out among the sea of mindless scribbles about cell phones and pizzas. He reads on and sees potential. His interest is piqued. After reading more of Claude's 'observations', Germain is hooked. He zeros in on the boy, tutoring and egging him on to go on his writing about his friend's 'perfect family', even if it means the story becoming increasingly, uncomfortably voyeuristic. Claude gains an access to the family and the house in the pretense of tutoring his friend Rafa on math. This 'perfect family' consists of Rafa, an affable, ordinary kid, Rafa Sr. (Denis Ménochet), a macho man obsessed with sports and everything China and Esther (Emmanuelle Seigner), an alluring but bored housewife. Claude strategically advances on and pulls back from the family under Germain's instructions. Is Germain precariously living his desires and unfulfilled ambition through his young pupil? What's his endgame?

As usual, Ozon's layered, sophisticated pulp is impossible to resist. It pulls you right in with the promise of voyeuristic pleasure. But just like Julie in Swimming Pool, it's young Claude who becomes an unreliable narrator. He starts out seemingly as an innocent pupil, writing up everything he sees to please his teacher. The thing is, we know nothing about Claude: we never see his house nor his parents. Ozon teases us with the notion of what's fiction and what's real. As the 'spying' goes along, it's incensed Germain who loses control and helplessly falls victim to the narrative he helps to create.

The acting is superb all around. Luchini's usual self-absorbed upper-class nebbishness is a perfect fit for the role of a failed writer/depressed High School teacher. Kristin Scott Thomas is just as immaculate as Germain's superficial wife who manages an art gallery that displays dictator themed blow-up sex dolls and penis swastikas. The newcomer Ernst Umhauer shines as fresh-faced Claude who can turn the tables on manipulative and overbearing Germain and go mano-a-mano with him on storytelling.

It is very hard to do a comedy about writing well. In the House takes on classic storytelling how Spike Jonze's Adaptation took on screenwriting, without cheeky showmanship or self-referential cleverness. It is seductive, witty and deliciously naughty piece of filmmaking.

In the House opens on April 19 in New York and LA followed by national release.

Tim Hetherington Remembered

Which Way is the Frontline from Here: The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (2013) - Junger

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it is the fantasy of many young men to travel to the hot spots of armed conflict and be a war photographer.

It's that combination of danger, wanderlust, detachment from material world and freedom from daily grind we call life. It's that 'freedom that you can leave your world behind with a drop of a hat' thing. I think in every men there is a sense of longing for that coveted place called solitude that is far deeper and greater than just a misguided machismo. With this in mind, Tim Hetherington, combat photographer, journalist, humanitarian, director of Restrepo, who died in Libya in 2011, is remembered by his fellow combat journalist and co-director of that documentary, Sebastian Junger.

It was the Liberian soccer team that changed Hetherington. They needed someone to document the sport teams from the country still reeling from a civil war. After traveling with the rebel soldiers and experiencing deadly firefights, he went over to neighboring Sierra Leone. There he visited the school for the blind, where thousands of war orphans gave evidence of being victimized by soldiers who seemed to believe in an eye for an eye retaliation quite literally. Everywhere he went, he produced many profound photographs.

With many interviewees in the doc and video footage of him, we get the sense of Hetherington's ease with his subject. He had a good head on his shoulders. He wasn't there just to get the perfect shot. He was there to bear witness. Then came Afghanistan, where he immersed himself with those combat soldiers. As I flip through Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold, his book of photographs, I am certain that he was smart enough to know that moral outrage doesn't equal engagement. He also knew witnessing carried a certain responsibility.

It is ironic that his death came right after he repeatedly said he was done with combat journalism. He was 40 and in a serious relationship. Which Way Is The Front Line From Here? not only pays tribute to Hetherington but gives a real insight into the psyche of combat journalists at large. It's not only a thoughtful tribute to a fallen brother in arms (or rather, brother in camera) but a strong, revealing documentary. Soon after the death of his colleague, Junger launched a program to provide emergency medical training for freelance combat journalists - RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues).

Which Way is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington premieres April 18 at 8 p.m. on HBO and will be playing at IFC Center in New York on April 23. Junger will be at the screening for Q & A.

Sebastian Junger Interview

Which Way Is The Frontline From Here: The Life and Times of Tim Hetherington is a documentary about a well-regarded combat reporter who died in a rocket attack by the Gaddafi troops in Misrata, Libya, in 2011. It is directed by his friend and colleague Sebastian Junger. Few years back, together they made an award-winning documentary, Restrepo, while embedded with a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's deadly Korengal Valley. I got a chance to sit down with Junger past week. Perhaps best known for his best-selling book, The Perfect Storm, Junger exudes masculinity and charisma as he speaks freely about his friend, war and dangers of combat reporting.

Which Way Is The Frontline From Here: The Life and Times of Tim Hetherington airs on HBO on 4/18 and gets a theatrical release in New York.

First of all, I just have to tell you that WHICH WAY IS THE FRONTLINE FROM HERE is a beautiful tribute to your friend Tim.

SEBASTIAN JUNGER: Thank you.

Is being a filmmaker natural progression for you after a best selling author, then an award winning journalist?

You know, I think if you told me that I would be a filmmaker ten years ago, I'd be shocked, really shocked. But then I realized that in war the situations are moving to quickly to take notes but perfect for video. Nobody takes notes during combat in a note book: you write, feel stupid, can't read them afterwords, just ridiculous right?

Right.

But it's perfect for shooting video. So I learned to shoot video and quickly liked its immediacy. I mean it's the whole other way of seeing and recording the world. And so I had this idea of spending a year with a platoon on an assignment for Vanity Fair and writing a book about it. And then I thought, "if I'm going to be out there for a year off and on and spend that much time there, I might as well shoot video. The very least I can give it to ABC, so they can use the footage or maybe I can make a documentary."

To me, it all seem like a part of journalism. I didn't feel like I was switching from a writer to a filmmaker. It all felt like a different facets of journalism, just different way of recording information. They actually compliment each other quite well. Now I don't think I can choose one way or the other and I don't feel like I need to.

Then I brought Tim to the project on the second trip into the Korengal Valley in September 07. And one of the reasons I really wanted to work with him was because he shoots video and said he would be willing to think about participating in the project. As soon as he got out there, he was very interested.

With your book War and Restrepo and this film, there is this shared theme: the attraction to war, not only in the soldiers but in the combat journalists as well. Was Tim's attraction to war: going to the world's hot spots, being dangerous situations the same as that of the soldiers?

Well, they are very different roles. If you are a soldier, you have a gun in your hand and you have some moral responsibility but if you are shooting with your camera, you have a much less responsibility. I am not necessarily against wars. I think there are wars that are unavoidable. I'm not categorically against it, although I still think it's awful. But I do understand that the world is complicated and messy place. And sometimes, using armed forces is better than standing aside and watching something really bad happen.

I think for Tim and for soldiers in a general sense, the attraction of the war is partly because it is incredibly meaningful: the stakes are very high and it's incredibly intense, to the point of being intoxicating. Also, I think, at least out of Restrepo, there was such a deep bond among everyone who was there. The shared emotions, the emotional connection there can't be found anywhere else. I think those two things that make war so weirdly appealing to young men.

I'm not sure about being a soldier but I myself kind of had fantasy growing up traveling the world and going to dangerous places and have those intense experiences that you talk about. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who had those kind of fantasies. How did you get into the war reporting business?

I sort of muddled my way through my twenties, trying to be a writer. I was writing short fictions and articles but not very successfully. When I was thirty I felt my career was kind of languishing, although it wasn't even that much of a career. (Laughs) I grew up in a very affluent suburb and I felt like I've never really been tested as a person. Ultimately, I didn't really feel like a man. There is kind of an idea in our society that war kind of turns boys into men. And there was war in Bosnia and to me, it was seen as sort of ultimate test. 'If you pass it, you will emerge as a man.' It's a bit of a myth but I think there is some truth to that. Going to Bosnia as a war reporter was a professional move but also a personal move that had to do with finding the sense of myself.

It is very ironic that Tim died after he publicly said he will be moving away from combat reporting. He was in a serious relationship and thinking about settling down.

Yes. I think he wanted to believe that he could live a quieter life- which meant two things: it meant not going to war zones and not traveling so much because he was almost never home. Of course you can't have a deep relations if you are not around most of the time.

I think he wanted to believe he was capable of that but also worried that he wasn't capable of settling down. When he died I think he was in the process of figuring that out.

I think in Idil (Idil Ibrahim, filmmaker, Hetherington's girlfriend), in addition to his love for her, he saw a chance to become the person he hoped to become- at home and leading a more stable life.

But war is pretty compelling. And in some ways that war is more compelling than marriage and children and society and everything else. For some people, at some point in their lives it trumps everything else. I think Tim was really in the middle of struggling with that.

I know that he was about ten years younger than you were.

Yeah, he died when he was 40. I'm 51 now.

Did you go through the same thought process when you were about the same age as he was?

When I got together with my wife, I was 40, just the same age as Tim was. But no, I did start war reporting before I met her. But we had conversations about it. I said "There will be a point when I'm going to stop. But it's not now." I told her when I was preparing for Korengal that if I could devote myself for a year to it fully, I might stop doing the war reporting. That's what I've said. I'm not sure if entirely believed it though. But that was what I was trying to believe.

Where do you stand with that belief today?

Well, after Tim got killed, I made an absolute, instantaneous decision not to cover war anymore. I've never regretted it since. I am happy with the decision. There is no ambivalence at all about that.

How did it come about that you didn't go to Libya with Tim?

We were supposed to be on assignment together. At the last minute some personal things that came up in my life and I couldn't do it. It was just the wrong moment. I told him that and he just went on his own.

Was Tim any way a political person?

Yeah. He was.

When you were making Restrepo, what was his reaction on the ground, since the film is very apolitical?

Oh he was very thrilled to have the amazing amount of access to the military. It was an incredible chance to see the US military in a very very intimate, exposed way. He was amazed that there was that much unguarded openness in the US military. He was grateful that there was no censorship at all. And he felt that we were quite lucky.

Can you tell me a little about RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues) for those of us who are not familiar with it?

Sure. Tim's wound was not necessarily mortal. He was hit with Shrapnel and bled out. Yes, it was a very dangerous wound in the femoral artery but he died of blood loss on the way to the Misrata hospital in the back of a pickup truck. And had the journalist around him had a combat medical training, they might have been able to do things to slow down the loss of blood and maybe he would've arrived at the hospital alive and maybe he would've survived. I don't know but it's possible, certainly more possible than what happened which no one could do anything
and he just died.

So I started a group called RISC. It's only for freelancers because freelancers do most of war reporting in the world. It's not for network reporters but for young freelancers.

That's how you began your career as in Bosnia, no?

Yes. It's only for experienced freelancers, not for people who just got of j(ournalism) school. We just don't have enough resources to train those. It's just for people who are already working in the field. They come back from front lines and we train them and send them back out. It's completely free of charge to them. Freelancers typically don't have a lot of money so we pay for the hotel in New York City and pay for the training done by experienced medical instructors, some of whom are former military and medical kit is free. All free except you just need to get here. And there is a long waiting list. We take 24 people at a time. RISC is entirely non-profit and exists solely on people's generosity. I truly believe his kind of training could've saved my friend's life. And hopefully it will save others in the future.

I checked out Sebastian Junger Community website. It's pretty expansive.

It came about when my book War and Restrepo came out. Frankly I haven't frequented for a year or so. I need to revive it a little. I thought in 2010 that what we needed was a place where civilians, military personnel and vets can come and communicate with each other. I felt that there was huge gulf between military population and everybody else. The thing is, we are all same people, all Americans and there should be more dialog among us. I hope that the community helps furthering that.

You think that we are pulling out troops and the war being officially over and now John Kerry, a Vietnam vet, is the Secretary of State, there will be a more positive change in the government to help our returning soldiers?

The thing is that they come home and they are no longer in the military. They disperse into the population. So they can't be dealt as a group. I think military is quite good at dealing with groups -with platoons, companies and battalions and so on. But once these people get absorbed into population, the government has no authority over them. I think they do quite a lot. I mean there is psychological counseling, the VA has a whole medical program and the GI Bill. The problem though, is that the VA is an enormous bureaucracy. It's well funded and well meaning but it's huge, cumbersome and inefficient. I think government should make the VA more effective.

Any advice for the young people who want to be combat journalists?

Mostly, you just have to go. Don't wait around for an assignment cause you won't get one, because there are a lot of people who are already over there. You just have to go. And be careful. It is always possible that you could get killed and your family will really grieve. But the job is for keeps. This isn't a movie. It's an important work and it was an experience that radically changed my life. And I feel quite lucky that I've been able to do it for twenty years. The most important thing you can do is just go.

What's next for you, now that you are not a combat journalist anymore?

Well, there are lots of things to write about that are not combat. And some of them are quite interesting. (laughs) I try to reorient a bit. War is the most dramatic thing but that doesn't mean it's the most interesting thing. Eventually you realize that there is a difference between dramatic and interesting. They are actually two separate categories. There are other meaningful things to write about back home but it is actually harder to write about. But I'm trying to acclimate my head toward that side of life more. I have another documentary project I am working on for HBO and the book that is connected to it. Can't really tell you the details yet because we are not finished shooting but it's a really interesting project.

HBO has been helpful for you?

HBO has been amazing. There has been an incredible support from the first day when Sheila (Sheila Nevins, President of HBO Documentary Films) OK'd the project. Her and Sara Bernstein (producer)- they've been absolutely fantastic partners.

Is your wife happy now that you are not in harms way?

Now she has to deal with me all day! (laughs) So I don't know. We'll see.


For more information about the film, please visit HBO website.
For more information about Junger's RISC, please visit risc.training.org

More Like Cialis Commercial

To the Wonder (2012) - Malick

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In retrospect and in comparison to To the Wonder, Tree of Life, Malick's arduous, ambitious magnum opus was the true masterpiece (that is if you wipe off the memory of ever seeing the meta beach walk). It was an uphill battle to criticize when a film is about, well, life. The theme of To the Wonder is just as intangible, if not all encompassing theme of...love. Then why does it feel like an afterthought, or a bastard stepchild, a true nihilistic camera-movement exercise by Malick and Emmanuel Lubezki?

We are introduced to a couple (Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko) as they coddle each other in picturesque Paris, then Mont Saint-Michel just as the tide is coming in. The girl wispily whispers in French her being in the blissful state of being in love. "open me, enter me, we are one," and so on and so forth for two hours. If this wasn't picture perfect enough, she has a button-nosed, cute preteen daughter. Off they go to Malick's Americana - open vistas, horses, big empty houses, wheat fields, churches and billowing curtains. For a while the couple and the kid are in a blissful state. But the square jawed, archetypal stoic American man is caught looking at other females around him from time to time. You see, he'd been hurt before (by a foxy farm girl Rachel McAdams) and has a hard time committing. So off again the Frenchy and the daughter back to Paris. But she can't forget him. So she comes back after ditching the child to her biological father.

It's all grand and pretty- the camera glides around beautiful leads in the magic hour on the beach, in the field, against the window and behind the curtain. And who doesn't want to see enchanting Kurylenko twirling around like the whirling dervishes licking morning dew off of tree branches for hours? She's adorable in that childish way. But she is not a child. She's not Pocahontas nor one of the children in Tree of Life. Then there is Javier Bardem's doubtful priest, who takes up about 20 minutes of screen time, asking the presence of god.

Let's get to the nitty gritty: If they gave out awards for one's earnestness in films, Malick would've won every time he comes out with a new movie (and more frequently it seems, with 3 new films in post-production). New World was stewing in it, so was ToL. Malick to me, is a quintessential filmmaker of flower power generation- well intentioned, earnest and worst of all, too goddamn naive. His lyrical quasi-meta wise man films work best when it's set in specific time frame or place but falter when it's not. The modern setting of TtW and Paris/Texas has no bearing on it to be taken seriously. It is quite obvious that his idea of love is limited and doesn't get beyond the realm of Judeo-Christian belief. More over, he seems to have a very limited knowledge of women. In his movies, they are always a child, a child trapped in women's body or mother. However adorable Kurylenko in Ttw gets, I can't shake off the dirty feeling that she is and always will be a daddy's girl, never a grown woman. So then, he made a real mess out of the theme of love- by very unceremoniously marrying the idea of god's unrequited love and a silly child woman's infatuation. God is in us, god is in all our fleeting interaction, Malick feebly suggests. A cynic in me almost shouts, what do you make of one night stands? What about our worldly desires? What about Cialis? What about gluttony? This ain't 60s man, bums lost.

I Want Candy

Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) - Rivette






Great Fun! Céline (Juliet Berto) and Julie (Dominique Labourier) go down the rabbit hole laughing all the way. They are dynamic comedy duo, sabotaging each other's love life and career. With the help of some magic candy, they alternately have visions of some stagey murder mystery that has no beginning or end in a grand mansion. After three hours of tomfoolery, they are right back where they started. Rivette is having a grand time here poking fun at the movie as a spectator sport. Céline and Julie Go Boating is a silly, spontaneous, inventive, absurd and brilliant comedy.

I also liked how free the girls are from conventional female buddy movies where they inadvertently get sexualized. Not that Céline and Julie are not sexy, far from it, but they don't subject themselves as sexual beings. There is something fresh about that.

Swimmer

A beautiful short film I came across today, by Lynne Ramsay, director of such films as Rat Catcher, Morvern Callar and We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Americana Up North

Northern Light (2013) - Bentgen



If one must categorize Northern Light, a new documentary from a talented director/producer team Nick Bentgen and Lisa Kjerulff, it could be regarded as a sports movie - the trials and tribulations of two snow mobile racers. Silently following them and their families' daily lives between two racing seasons in economically depressed Northern Michigan, the filmmakers here achieve something more than a mere doc about I-500 (the grueling 500 mile endurance race in the snow and ice which in itself alone can easily be worthy of a cinematic subject). Bentgen possesses a painterly eye and visual grace scarce in documentary filmmaking and zen-like patience and maturity in acutely sketching out this side of Americana- rarely in films, driving through a snow storm, a lone street lamp, a white breath of a silhouetted hunter looked this beautiful. Native to the region, Bentgen understands his subjects and surroundings, and knows when and where to place the camera. What Bentgen accomplishes here is showing that the I-500 is a metaphor for dashed hopes and dreams of not only the enduring inhabitants of Northern Light, but of all of us.

After making a World Premiere at True/False Film Festival in March, Northern Light is making an appearance at Hot Docs in May 1st. Please check for more updates on northernlightfilm.com

Dark Obsession

Pola X (1999) - Carax








As I revisit Pola X for the first time since it's theatrical release in 1999, I realize that my misgivings were solidly based on my expectations of it to be another Lovers on the Bridge. I downright hated it. Didn't even give it a chance to register. So now, years later, after Carax's triumphant return with Holy Motors, after talking to the somehow 'wisen up' artist, I gave it another go. Surprisingly, Pola X is not about self reflection or a bitter misunderstood genius as I initially thought it to be. It's about dark obsession, a love story that is quite similar to his earlier films, but just without whimsical romanticism. It's not the graphic sex scene (albeit tastefully done and very very dark) that differentiate Pola X as a more mature work. Even though it features some beautiful young actors - Guillaume Depardieu at his most dashing and a dangerous beauty, Katherina Golubeva among them, being young is never verbalized or beholden to. For once, it's not about the first love.

Pierre the title character (Depardieu), is a successful writer who is about to get married. He and Lucie are very much in love. Everything is sunny and golden and light. Enter Isabelle (Golubeva), a dark war refugee and claiming to be his half-sister. Pierre is gripped by her magnetism, shuns his wealthy life in the country and his domineering mother (of whom he calls sister, Catherine Deneuve), moves into industrial ghetto in Paris, headed by enigmatic Sharunas Bartas (looking like a Diehard villain here). Now he's seen the darker side of life, he realizes that his past writings are trivial fluff. Things get complicated when sickly Lucie decides to move in, just to get closer to Pierre. Short on money, he makes a disastrous TV appearance where he was supposed to talk about his previous book and gets accused of being an imposter. Then his new dark writings get icy receptions from the publisher. It's all downward spiral.

As the the film unfolds, I realize my penchant for tragedy. I DO LIKE SAD MOVIES! Shot by Carax regular Eric Gautier with some seriously underexposed cinematography, Pola X is a decidedly dark, brooding film. And I liked it a lot more the second time.

Sahara

La Captive du Désert (1990) - Depardon









A white woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) is taken hostage by a caravan of AK-47 wielding soldiers and their families into the Saharan desert. We don't exactly learn what the situation is. There are slight indications of who she is through her belongings- photographs of her teaching African kids, that she is married and so on. For all we know, she is just a pawn in some geo-political war. Not quite ethnological study (although there are a lot of local inhabitants as extras featured), nor political thriller. The main draw here is the desert. Through photographer/documentarian Raymond Depardon's kin eye for composition, the desert turns on a harsher, gritty quality, rather than the mythic beauty usually associated with the Sahara. It is still very beautiful, especially when Bonnaire's character escapes, albeit briefly, after long monotonous routine, to the open, rocky desert. Depardon doesn't idealize or romanticize it. He just lets it play out. A beautiful film.

Dragon Slayer

Le Pont du Nord (1981) - Rivette






Bulle and Pascale Ogier makes perhaps the cutest mother daughter team on screen ever! Rivette sets up two strangers Marie (Bulle) and a girl who calls herself Baptiste (Pascale) in Paris so they can roam all over town doing nonsensical things. It's part noir, part fairytale, part martial arts comedy. Never over the top nor hysterical, nonetheless I find Rivette's drollery charming and chuckle worthy. I can see why people compare Gondry's or Jonze's films to Rivette's. He definitely has his own style. But without any gadgetry or grand production design, Rivette maintains that precious weightlessness like a soap bubble master, never breaking a sweat while sustaining a giant bubble that only seems to grow in size forever.

Family: Far Away, So Close

Archipelago (2010) - Hogg

In the beginning of the film, there is a hole in the big living room wall above the mantel where a picture frame used to hang. A hired cook notices it. It's a family vacation on a windy isle. It's Mum (Kate Pahy) and two grown up children Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and Edward (Tom Hiddleston). Dad is absent. He is only available on the phone. Cynthia is resentful about Mum and Ed's passivity on everything, including absence of Dad. Ed has been doing some kind of volunteer work in Africa, but he doesn't really know if he was making right decisions in life. Cynth is the type who'd send away a plate of food she deems not well done in restaurants. She frowns at Ed's sheepishness around the cook. These are all concerns of the privileged. There are muted emotional fireworks. But Joanna Hogg's austere direction and writing, the characters are all too human. Her astutely observed family dynamics and people around them ring true to me. We all have family members like Cynth. Ed's indecisiveness is not uncommon either (he is told so by a family friend and painter, wonderfully played by soft spoken, non-actor Christopher Baker). Acting is superb all around. It's a nice change of pace for me to dig into this somber family drama.

Happiness

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) - Vasyukov, Herzog





Herzog's narration is always music to my ears. The actual music for the film, not. It almost ruins otherwise a fine doc about the trappers living in a small village in the Taiga. It's not as vigorous or focused as the usual Herzog doc. Basically he edited down mountains of footage the Russian filmmaker Dmitry Vasyukov to a digestible length, spanning the whole year living in Siberia. Many villagers make their income hunting for little furry animals in winter. They have to prepare it all year around- setting traps, getting provisions, move equipment, etc. There are other stuff- fishing, canoe and ski making and some village festivities. But it's all about men's solitude- beautiful nature, trapping the same way your ancestors have been doing for hundreds of years, drinking hot tea after exhausting trek with your companion dog by your side. What more can you ask for in life?

ND/NF Preview 2013

So here is the sneak preview of this year's New Directors New Films. The series is usually a good indication of what's to come in the film world. There are 25 films represented this year and the line-up is pretty strong and diverse. With these 8 films I was able to see below, I am happy to report that cinematic output is still healthy and alive all over the world. Please make sure to check out Blue Caprice, The Act of Killing and Upstream Color upon their future release date if you can't make it to ND/NF 2013. The series runs from March 20 through March 31, at Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA.



BLUE CAPRICE | Alexandre Moors


Amid renewed conviction for gun control in this country after the Connecticut shooting, Blue Caprice timely revisits the Beltway Sniper case, which happened more than a decade ago. The terrifying, indiscriminate killing spree perpetrated by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo left indelible mark in American Psyche, already battered by 9/11 and the Invasion of Iraq. This slim, understated thriller is an impressive debut of Alexandre Moors, a New York based filmmaker. Even though it’s carefully orchestrated - from brooding cinematography and score to deliberately muted act of violence, the film still manages to leave enough breathing room for the audience to connect the dots for themselves. And the acting is superb: Isaiah Washington is mesmerizing as a former army man progressively disgruntled-at-the-unfair-world, and Tequan Richmond is a revelation here as an impressionable 16-year old who desperately wants a father figure. Blue Caprice doesn't give you any satisfying answers. It just accurately reflects on the complicated world we are living in.




EMPEROR VISITS THE HELL | Li Luo


Li Luo freely interprets from the Ming Dynasty classic literature The Way to the West (chapters from 9 to 11). Emperor Visits the Hell is a straight-faced farce that is barest of the bare-bone filmmaking. The setting is transformed into modern day China and all the frumpy actors look and talk like regular people. The story goes like this: The Dragon King upsets the heavens when he bets against the heaven's will. Despite the emperor's intervention, the Dragon King is executed (off screen). Now the ghosts (in no disguises or special effects) including the Dragon King are haunting the emperor, so he has to visit the underworld and pay off each ghost to stop bothering him. Emperor Visits the Hell is loose, playful movie that is reminiscent of the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the recent Miguel Gomes’s winsome film, Tabu.

THE COLOR OF THE CHAMELEON | Emil Hristow

 

Batko (Ruscen Vidinliev) is a compulsive liar and masturbator since young age, no wonder he was recruited by the Bulgarian secret police to spy on the rogue elements in college- so starts this slick, sexy Bulgarian political satire. It has a lot of ins and outs and many laughs. But The Color of Chameleon comes across as too clever for its own good most of the time.

 

 
THE ACT OF KILLING | Joshua Oppenheimer

 

Crazy. The Act of Killing stars former paramilitary gangsters in Indonesia (preman they are called, from English words free man), who carried out killing estimated one million people accused of being Communists in the years 1965-66. It's quite unfathomable by the Western standards: killers are roaming proudly, telling people their grand, detailed stories, even on TV talk shows. It's the winners who write history. For losers, there isn't anyone left to voice their oppositions- as one of the gang members proudly claims, "because we exterminated them all". 

Director Joshua Oppenheimer asks one such gangster, the lean, flamboyant Anwar Congo if he can reenact killings in front of the camera. Without any irony or shame, Anwar goes along with it in detail with his fat sidekick compatriot Herman in tow. But as Anwar goes through garish movie-making business (complete with dancing girls and waterfalls and John Barry's 'Born Free' playing in the background), his conscience starts to catch up with him. He admits having nightmares of haunting ghosts of the people he killed. 

The Act of Killing might be the most powerful and cathartic documentary I've ever seen. It's no wonder Herzog and Errol Morris got involved in executive producing it. The credit sequence of The Act of Killing is still riddled with 'Anonymous' from co-director down: the political situation in Indonesia is still too dangerous for many people who are involved. It’s certainly one of the year's best films. DO NOT MISS THIS FILM.
 
 

 
SOLDATE JEANNETTE | Daniel Hoesl

 

European cinema is very much alive. Daniel Hoesl, a member of A European Film Conspiracy directs a film borne out of casting process without a script and the result is an intriguing, slim film about being free of materialistic world. There is no soldier name Jeannette, only Fanni (Johanna Orsini-Rosenberg), a lightly sketched character who might be a leader of a movement in the making. I'd love to know more about this EFC.

    
UPSTREAM COLOR | Shane Carruth

 

Intricately designed and immaculately executed, Upstream Color is an impressive, seductive film that draws you right in from the first frame. It involves brain washing through some earthy pharmatropix that is reminiscence of early Cronenberg (but non of his cheekiness) and Walden without any socio-political implications. But is there anything more than its slick pictures, hypnotic pacing and decidedly opaque narrative? Only you can decide for yourself and it’s definitely worth the trip.

It is safe to say that Shane Carruth is a real renaissance man: he wrote, directed, co-edited, starred in and composed for Upstream Color. He is distributing it himself as well. 

STORIES WE TELL | Sarah Polley

 

On her third outing as a director, Sarah Polley continues her close examination of human relationships: this time, her own family. It's not a Rashomon-ish tale as they market it to be. Through candid interviews of her extended family and friends, home movie footages and reenactments shot on Super-8, Canadian actor/director Polley tells her family secret that her mother, Diane, took to her grave: who was Polley's biological father? The documentary deconstructs the marriage of her loving but severely mismatched parents (her mother an extreme extrovert and her father the opposite). After Diane's untimely death (cancer), it was always a family dinner table joke how little Sarah didn't look like her father or her siblings. Polley keeps most of the melodrama at bay and gives the film a lot of warmth and humor. It's a lovely documentary if not a little too ordinary. But I guess that's the point.

 
L'INTERVALLO/ THE INTERVAL | Leonardo di Costanzo


Salvatore (Alessio Gallo) is a chubby 17-year old kid who sells lemon ice in the neighborhood. He somehow gets called in by a local gang. His mission is to keep an eye on a spirited, 15-year old girl, Veronica (Francesca Riso), in an abandoned old building compound. She did something wrong and is being imprisoned against her will and is waiting for her fate which will be decided by a local honcho that night. So begins a simple, lovely, one-day-in-the-lives-of, coming-of-age story deeply rooted in the neo-realist filmmaking. Without any music or gimmickry, Leonardo di Costanzo quietly observes two young leads. Gallo and Riso are great- at first putting on air and stand off-ish, then recoiling back to their normal kid selves. The Interval is a beautiful, subtle, touching film.

For the full lineup and tickets, please visit newdirectors.org.