CINEQUEST08—Around the Bay

I'm going to date myself. Back when I was a kid there was a popular TV commercial for homemade pizza. It mimicked the Listerine commercials of the period by starting out with a full frontal shot of a woman saying, "You have bad pizza, BAD pizza!" Then the camera pulled back to reveal two matrons sitting on a sofa. The one, critical of her friend's homemade pizza, reaches into her purse and pulls out a large box of some brand of homemade pizza which I can't remember the name of, even as I clearly remember the spoof.

To confirm how brain-damaged I am by childhood television, this is the first thing I thought of when I met Alejandro Adams at a YBCA screening of Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light and he mentioned to me that he was a filmmaker who had just completed his film Around the Bay and might I be interested in taking a look at it? I was just about to offer my mailing address when he quickly turned to his satchel with an "I just happen to have…."

You have to admire Alejandro Adams for knowing how to promote himself and his own work. Young DIY filmmakers should take note. Alejandro's film Around the Bay hasn't even had its world premiere at Cinequest yet and it's already been reviewed by the likes of Phillip Lopate (who describes the film as "a chamber drama in the sunshine"); Nick Rombes of Digital Poetics (who praises the film's stylistic "interplay of diegetic and non-diegetic sound" that serves "to deepen the mood and capture the fragmented relationships"); and Hell on Frisco Bay's Brian Darr (who takes note of the film's "delightful interplay between narrative clarity and ambiguity. It makes for very challenging, almost confrontational, viewing").

Gearing up for its Cinequest premiere, Around the Bay has generated further interest from local press, including a half-hour radio interview with Robert Emmett of KFJC and an in-depth discussion of Around the Bay by Cinema Scene critics Morton Marcus and Richard von Busack followed by an interview and further discussion. Von Busack has likewise reviewed the film for Metroactive, as has Lincoln Spector for Bayflicks and Sara Schieron for Rotten Tomatoes. And I'm aware that Alejandro has taped a segment for SF360 to be broadcast in the near future, as well as an interview with aforementioned Brian Darr.

There's hardly need for me to say anything more. Alejandro has covered his local bases quite consummately. And yet, I can't resist adding praise for Around the Bay, which is quite evocative and lovely. The way Alejandro has blended visual compression with sound design is thoroughly enthralling and technically masterful. There are moments of such spare beauty in this film that they register in the body like pebbles dropping into the deep waters of grief. Is there anything sadder than the fragmentation of the family? In plumbing its psychological depths, Around the Bay reaches the mythopoetic and reminds of the barren kingdoms where wounded monarchs can no longer feel and where a single tear—if it could be achieved—would restore the water of life. Steve Voldseth excels in his sympathetic portrayal of an unsympathetic character: a father who does not know how to communicate, let alone love, his children. As Darren Hughes at Long Pauses has commented, Katherine Celio is fully charismatic; you can't stop watching her. And Connor Maselli delivers one of the most nuanced and natural child performances in recent memory.

In an impressionistic narrative of assembled visual episodes Alejandro Adams articulates the dysfunction of a fractured family with eloquent precision and exact focus. The effect is polished and lapidary, but not without warmth and hope.

Around the Bay will be screening at Cinequest come Saturday evening, March 1, 7:45PM at the San Jose Repertory Theatre, followed by encore screenings on Tuesday, March 4, 4:15PM at Camera 12, and finally on Saturday, March 8, 7:45PM, again at the San Jose Repertory Theatre.

Cross-published on Twitch.

03/03/08 UPDATE: Brian Darr interviews Alejandro Adams for Hell On Frisco Bay.

03/10/08 UPDATE: More press for Around the Bay. Richard von Busack, who unabashedly has emerged as the film's main champion, follows up his review and TV spot with a print interview published in Metroactive. Equally significant, is Charlie Olsky's writeup for indieWIRE.

CINEQUEST08—La Antena / The Aerial (2007)

Argentine director Esteban Sapir's sophomore feature La Antena (The Aerial, 2007) is densely marbled with cinematic citation, juggling freely the silent film conventions gleefully mined by Guy Maddin, with clear tips of the hat to Georges Méliès' La Lune à un mètre (Man in the Moon, 1898) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), and more veiled references to Alex Proyas's Dark City (1998), Higuchinsky's spiraling nightmare Uzumaki (2000), and the numerically confused plot contrivances of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's 6ixtynin9 (1999). Its kinetic and innovative use of intertitles reminds of Timur Bekmambetov's Nochnoy dozor (Nightwatch, 2004) and its criticism of consumerist society and television brainwashing harbors a cautionary touch of John Carpenter's They Live (1988).

Which is not to say La Antena is derivative. It achieves a singularly unique and vibrant synergy through its rampant citations in what Hollywood Reporter's Gregory Valens describes as "a poetic attempt to recreate a world through the sole power of images" and what Gary Miraz at Cinema Without Borders calls "an amazing spectacle of sight and sound." I had as much fun recognizing and identifying these images as enjoying how Sapir has layered them together. Further fueled by an exhilarating tango score by Juan Aguirre and Federico Rotstein, La Antena should be one of the top ticket rides at the Cinequest carnival. It would certainly be a wonder to see on the big screen. Admittedly, I've only seen it on screener.

As Twitch teammate Royalstin synopsized earlier, La Antena shapes its narrative as a fairy tale, placing us in an indeterminate future in a wintry city whose inhabitants have all lost their voice due to the evil machinations of Mr. TV and his mobster henchmen. Having eliminated all competition, Mr. TV has enthralled the populace with his spiraling transmissions, which lull them into buying his TV products, manufactured from their stolen voices. Not content with that, Mr. TV seeks to expand his production line by likewise stealing what is left to them: their words.

The best synopsis and analysis of the film is at Nick's Flick Picks where Nick qualifies that La Antena's "jaunty errand into silent-era surrealism and anti-corporate allegory … should, by all rights, be too obvious in its points and too crammed with fancies to generate the level of charm and light-touch magic that it does." Balancing his enthusiasm for the film with well-argued reservations, Nick concludes: "Sapir also indulges in some appropriations of several sign systems—Communist, Nazi, Judaic, marital, domestic—that he cheekily but indubitably simplifies in pursuit of his homiletic agendas. But all of that said, The Aerial is patently an exercise in formal and stylistic brio, and in breathing witty, creative life into hard-leftist axioms."

La Antena has the added distinction of being the first Argentine film in 36 years chosen for the official competition and opening of last year's Rotterdam Film Festival. Admittedly not a box office success, La Antena will hopefully find a cult following for those who like to think their way through entertainment.

La Antena will be screening thrice at San Jose's Cinequest; first on Saturday, March 1, 9:30PM in the California Theatre; next on Monday, March 3, 5:00PM, and Saturday, March 8, 11:30PM at the Camera 12.

Cross-published on Twitch.

DIE FÄLSCHER / THE COUNTERFEITERS—The Greencine Interview With Stefan Ruzowitzky

As Dave Hudson has prefaced to my Greencine interview with Stefan Ruzowitzky, the director/screenwriter of The Counterfeiters (nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category), the film is based on true events: "the Nazis planned to destabilize the American and British economies by flooding the markets with fake dollars and pounds. And they enlisted prisoners in concentration camps to counterfeit the bills. This presents a dark dilemma to the prisoners: cooperate and survive—or sabotage the project and possibly pay with their lives."

I first reviewed this Mephistophelian dilemma at the Toronto International, skeptical that audiences would digest this bitter fare; but, I've been proven wrong. Dave Hudson has gathered the most recent reviews upon the film's theatrical release, most of which are thoughtfully argued.

Cross-published on Twitch.

SXSW08—Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Filmbud Alan Rode sent me this hilarious and spot-on rant by Harlan Ellison, subject of Erik Nelson's documentary portrait Dreams With Sharp Teeth, which is having its World Premiere at this year's SXSW. Dreams With Sharp Teeth profiles acclaimed author Harlan Ellison, as he looks back on his fabled and influential career as one of the world's top genre writers for television and print.

SFIAAFF08—Pen choo kab pee (The Unseeable)

Effectively (intentionally?) playing the scares for laughs and eschewing the oversaturated confectionary palette of his two previous films—Tears of the Black Tiger and Citizen Dog—Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng's third feature The Unseeable maintains a menacing enough atmosphere, primarily through a fantastic haunted country house and its surrounding compound, the shift to a shadowy grey-green palette, and a cascading "wait there's more!" finale. It seems that every available ghost story trope has been enfolded into the script, written this time not by Sasanatieng himself but by Kongkait Komesiri (Art of the Devil 2).

What redeems what you see coming a mile away in The Unseeable (a title which is only partially apt) is its stylistic inflection through regional Thai folklore. In this, it is a commendable example of what Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien proposed in his 2002 Rouge seminar, which I've quoted before—in conjunction with (in fact) another Thai horror film The Ghost of Mae Nak—but, it bears repeating since Thai filmmakers seem to be paying skillful attention. The crucial element of the success of a horror genre piece like The Unseeable "lies in the use of local elements. The films," Hsiao-hsien argues, "are firmly rooted in local culture." This is confirmed in The Unseeable's attributed inspiration of famed Thai art master, Hem Vejakorn, whose published drawings capture the diversity of Thai culture. The film's lighting design especially was based on Master Hem's style, faithfully bridging canvas and film.

The Twitch team has been all over this one since inception. Todd Brown offered a series of teasing glimpses via a first and second trailer, production stills and posters in early October 2006. Stefan followed through with his own review in February 2007 and Todd announced the DVD release in April 2007.

My favorite character in The Unseeable is the haunted house, which reflects a blend between the popularity of the French Art Nouveau (i.e., the upper class) with the more traditional rural stilt houses of the countryside (i.e., the peasant class); a collision of architectural styles that exemplified the late 1920s-early '30s. The house, in worn disrepair surrounded by overgrown gardens, was found in Pakchong, Nakornratchasima and provides the atmospheric mise en scène for The Unseeable's unsettling weave of class conflict between Nualjan (Siraphan Wattanajinda)—a young pregnant girl from the country searching for her missing husband—and Ranjuan (Supornthip Choungrangsee), the exotically beautiful madam of the compound whose erotic moans at night underscore her mysterious allure. Tassawan Seneewongse does a camp turn as the Thai version of Rebecca's tortured Mrs. Danvers, up to her neck in ghostly goings-on, and Visa Konska as the talkative and superstitious boarder Choy chews up not only the scenery. And I may be mistaken but I believe that's Citizen Dog's Grandma Gekko clinging this time not to the overhead light but to the windowsill. Will someone please give her back her baby?

Final analysis? Not great, but a fun reminder of the greatness to come (hopefully) from the sensuous imagination of Wisit Sasanatieng.

Cross-published on Twitch.

LA CORONA—A Few Questions for Amanda Micheli

Let it be known that I listen to my filmbuds. If Brian Darr—dispatching to The Greencine Daily from the Sundance Film Festival—says a documentary short is a "doozy", my antennae quiver. "Doozy" is not a word you hear levied about every day with regard to documentary shorts; but, La Corona—co-directed by Isabel Vega and Amanda Micheli—deserves that accolade, among many others.

As Brian explains: "Here's the only film I know where you'll see a would-be beauty queen with a disturbing gang tattoo at the base of her thumb. Or one who gives her lesbian lover a smooch just before being paroled."

So thanks to Brian's recommendation, and the generosity of the DOC Film Institute's free screenings of the Oscar-nominated documentaries and documentary shorts at the comfortably refurbished Sundance Kabuki, I've had the chance to watch this doozy of a documentary short. Not only an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Short, La Corona won an Honorable Mention in Short Filmmaking at last month's Sundance. It chronicles a beauty pageant held as part of the celebration of Saint Mercedes in the largest women's penitentiary in Bogota, Colombia. I had the opportunity to ask a question of Amanda Micheli (Double Dare) and to supplement it with a couple of follow-up questions from her Sundance Kabuki audience; this exchange is not for the spoiler-wary.

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Michael Guillén: Thank you for accompanying your film. La Corona has made me reconsider the value of beauty pageants in general; but, what is the value of this particular pageant for you in having filmed it?

Amanda Micheli: It's hard because I'm definitely a feminist. I've never been a fan of beauty pageants either and—especially in American culture—it's such an extreme sideshow to our reality. I've never known anyone who's been in a beauty pageant. I came in with my own preconceived ideas—which is important to try not to do as a filmmaker—but, I definitely saw that [for] these girls this was something to put their minds to and to apply themselves to. They have found their own identity and purpose in this. Now, I would love it if they could find other things to apply themselves to and actually learn skills and get trained so that they can go out into the world and have lives outside of a prison; but, this is the best they've got. So it's kind of hard to knock it when you see people really getting roused up for something and putting their minds to a task. It's complicated. That's one of the things I like about this topic and this film; it's just full of ironies. I don't really like films that are like: "Yay! This is good for women! Or, this is bad for women!" Life is frickin' complicated, y'know? These girls come from really tough backgrounds and they're in prison and this is something that gives them a sense of worth. Is this what I would choose for them? Probably not. But that's life.

Guillén: Have you followed up with Angela and what's happened with her since she won the pageant and was released from prison?

Micheli: That's the bad news. Angela was killed within a year of being released. It's actually weird because I got emotional watching [La Corona tonight]. It's hard to get emotional when you're working on a film and running around; but, tonight it actually struck me more than it has because I'm calmer than I've been. It happened after we were done with the film. No one knows exactly what happened. She got wrapped up with the wrong crowd and some guy shot her in the back of her head. So Angela's dead, [which] really hit home for us how hard it is for [these women] on the outside and how we really captured this brief moment of respite and joy for them.

Guillén: Will the film's ending be amended to reference Angela's death?

Micheli: Hopefully we will be able to add that to the film at some point, although there has been some debate about whether or not it's necessary. It feels a little too quick. I, personally, think it would be important to put it on there; but, the Academy rules forbid it. They don't allow you to change your film once it's been nominated.

My heartfelt thanks to Amanda Micheli and photographer Petr Stepanek for the images of Angela. My best wishes to her and her team in winning the Oscar! She's got my vote! Cross-published on Twitch.

SFIAAFF08—Michael Hawley Anticipates the Lineup

With his thorough insight, Evening Class contributing writer Michael Hawley reviews the lineup for this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival ("SFIAAFF"). Along with Brian Darr's own anticipations over at Hell on Frisco Bay, local audiences should be primed for choice.

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For its 26th edition, SFIAAFF considered eliminating the "International" part of its unwieldy name—that is, until it became clear that this year's festival would be more "international" in scope than ever. At the press conference announcing the line-up, Festival Director Chi-hui Yang and Assistant Director Taro Goto stressed the current interconnectivity between Asian and Asian-American film communities. More Asian-American actors are seeking recognition outside the U.S. (such as Bay Area native/current Hong Kong superstar Daniel Wu), and more Asian-American independent films are securing financing from outside the U.S. (such as the South Korean-financed Never Forever). So for now, the full SFIAAFF acronym remains intact (and is now officially being pronounced "sfee-aahf" by festival staff). Here's a quick look at some of the programs that have me quite excited about this year's event, which takes place throughout the Bay Area from March 13 to 23.

The International Showcase has always been my favorite part of the festival, and it appears this year will be no exception. Of the 15 films selected for that section, nine are by directors whose work has been shown at previous SFIAAFFs. Perched at the top of my list is Hou Hsiao-hsien's Paris-set, Juliette Binoche-starring Flight of the Red Balloon, followed in short order by A Gentle Breeze in the Village (Nobuhiro Yamashita's follow-up to the ebullient Linda, Linda, Linda), Desert Dream (the latest from Grain in Ear director Zhang Lu) and The Unseeable (a ghost story from Wisit Sasanatieng, the visionary Thai director who gave us Tears of the Black Tiger and Citizen Dog).

Every year the festival screens a recent Bollywood movie at the Castro, and this year's selection is Om Shanti Om, a spoof/valentine to the Hindi extravaganzas of the 1970s, starring international demigod Shahrukh Khan. According to Taro Goto, the festival received numerous complaints when they dared to show Bollywood films that did not star Mr. Khan in 2006 and 2007, and have therefore rectified that grievous misstep. Another musical film in this year's International Showcase is Royston Tan's 881. SFIAAFF introduced Tan's work to Bay Area audiences in 2003 with his stunning short 15, and screened the feature-length version of that film a year later. (For whatever reason, the festival passed on Tan's 2006 film, 4:30). 881 is a vibrant, campy tribute to the world of Getai, and was Singapore's Oscar submission for 2007. I caught the film at Palm Springs and will write more about it in a forthcoming SFIAAFF08 preview.

There are several other International Showcase films I'm anticipating as well. I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK is Korean director Park Chan-wook's first feature since the completion of his "revenge trilogy" that included Old Boy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. The film has garnered very mixed reviews since its Berlin 2007 debut, but I'm grateful SFIAFF is giving me the opportunity to judge for myself. Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame looks at the lives of children living in Bamian, Afghanistan (where the Taliban blew up the giant Buddha statues in 2001), and is the directorial debut of Hana Makhmalbaf, the newest member of the prolific Iranian Makhmalbaf filmmaking dynasty. The film was written by mother Marzieh (a director in her own right) and produced by brother Maysam, but sister Samira and father Moshen (both directors) were apparently too busy with their own projects to get into the act. I'm also curious about Blood Brothers (a Daniel Wu-starring gangster flick set in 1930s Shanghai), Three Days to Forever (by Indonesian director Riri Riza, whose Eliana, Eliana was one of the highlights of SFIAAFF03), and a pair of Filipino features, Slingshot and Foster Child (both set in the slums of Manila and directed by Brillante Mendoza).

Looking closer to home, there are nine U.S. and Canadian features that will be contending for the festival's Narrative Competition prize this year (Amyn Kaderali's Kissing Cousins was a late entry and won't be found in the festival mini-guide or catalog). Highlights in this section include Ping Pong Playa, the feature directorial debut of Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu (Breathing Lessons, In the Realms of the Unreal, Protagonist), Gina Kim's Never Forever, which stars Vera Farmiga as a woman who takes a bold path to motherhood when it's discovered that her Korean-American husband is sterile, and Richard Wong's Option 3, a San Francisco-set thriller from the director of Colma: The Musical.

Speaking of which, Colma: The Musical gets the sing-along treatment in one of this year's Special Presentations. SFIAAFF hosted the world premiere of this local little-musical-that-could back in 2006. Buoyed by a rave review in the New York Times, the film went on to have a notable U.S. theatrical release, and this sing-along presentation is a way of celebrating that success. Another Special Presentation that should prove immensely popular is a sneak peak of Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, which doesn't open in theaters until April 25. (Please note there's been a change in time and venue for this film since the mini-guide and catalog went to press). Harold & Kumar lead John Cho also stars in the festival's Centerpiece Presentation, West 32nd. Directed by Michael Kang (who won the festival's Narrative Competition in 2005 for The Motel), this is a contemporary film noir about a lawyer who becomes embroiled in the gangster underworld of New York City's Koreatown.

One of the films I'm most looking forward to is this year's Out of the Vaults screening of Denmei Suzuki's Whispering Sidewalks. This 1936 Japanese jazz musical stars Sacramento native Betty Inada as an American singer who comes to tour Japan. The film was recently restored and given English subtitles, in a collaboration between the National Film Center of Tokyo and our own Pacific Film Archive. Preceding the film, PFA curator Mona Nagai will speak on the film's preservation, and historian George Yoshida will give a presentation on Betty Inada (whose musical numbers in the film are said to include "Blue Moon" and "La Cucaracha").

The life and career of Anna May Wong (who starred in last year's Out of the Vaults presentation of Pavement Butterfly and received a SFIAAFF tribute in 2004) is the subject of Anna May Wong: Frosted Yellow Willows, one of a dozen feature documentaries being shown in the festival's Documentary Competition and Documentary Showcase sections. The film is being paired with Long Story Short, in which director Christine Choy (Who Killed Vincent Chin?) and actress Jodi Long tell the story of Long's parents, '40s and '50s nightclub act, The Leungs. There are also three documentaries which examine aspects of Japan's role in WWII and its aftermath: Anthony Gilmore's Behind Forgotten Eyes, which looks at the "comfort women" forced to serve Japanese soldiers as prostitutes, Wings of Defeat, Risa Morimoto's film about kamikaze pilots, and Li Yang's Yasukuni, which examines the controversial shrine honoring Japan's war dead and consequently, the country's militaristic past. Other documentaries in this year's festival focus on such far-ranging subjects as fortune cookies (The Killing of a Chinese Cookie), the 2004 tsunami (Serambi), Cambodian prostitutes (Paper Can Not Wrap Up Embers) and breakdancing (Planet B-Boy).

This year's opening night film is Wayne Wang's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, which represents the director's return to Asian American storytelling after an eclectic 15 years spent directing everything from Hollywood star vehicles (Maid in Manhattan, Last Holiday, Anywhere But Here) to a wide assortment of American indies (Smoke, Blue in the Face, The Center of the World). The festival will also honor Wang with a Spotlight Series that will include screenings of 1993's The Joy Luck Club, 1989's brash and erratic Life is Cheap…but Toilet Paper is Expensive, and 2007's The Princess of Nebraska, which was originally conceived as a companion piece to A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. An Afternoon with Wayne Wang will find the director hosting a selection of clips and being interviewed onstage by New York Times/ex-Village Voice film critic Dennis Lim.

Rounding out this year's festival is a Tribute to Edward Yang and nine Shorts Programs. Acclaimed Taiwanese director Yang died last year at the age of 59, and the festival is screening three of his works—1986's The Terrorizer, his 1991 masterpiece A Brighter Summer Day (the original four-hour version) and the film for which he is probably best known, YiYi: A One and a Two, which earned Yang a Best Director prize at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Finally, this year's Closing Night film is Tony Ayres' The Home Song Stories, which was Australia's submission for the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and stars Bay Area favorite Joan Chen.