2007 TIFF—Die Fälscher / The Counterfeiters

Just when I think I know all there is to know about the Nazi concentration camps, along comes a film with yet another slice of the historical pie. Though competently served, the question becomes who will have an appetite for this fare? Survivors guilt is more bitter than most palettes prefer. Not an easy film to watch; certainly difficult to digest.

The Counterfeiters, written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, concerns “Operation Bernhard”—possibly the biggest counterfeit money scam of all time engineered by the Nazis in collaboration with select prisoners whose specialized skills afforded them a Mephistophelian choice: in exchange for a temporary reprieve from the gas chambers, and their willingness to create counterfeit currency to help the Third Reich finance its war effort, these select prisoners were offered life in a “golden cage”. Sequestered from their fellow inmates in two isolated barracks (Blocks 18 and 19) at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, with enough to eat and comfortable beds to sleep in, the participants of Operation Bernhard face the ultimate question: Is it possible to save your life and, at the same time, save your conscience? Especially when the pained cries of the tortured can be heard through the walls? Or when news arrives that loved family members have been exterminated at other camps?


The “King of the Counterfeiters” Saloman Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) looks the other way when he cannot face the truths in front of him. August Diehl as Adolf Burger excels as the one who cannot look away and begins to covertly sabotage the enterprise. Sebastian Urzendowsky (last seen in Matthias Luthdart’s Pingpong, which screened earlir this year at San Francisco’s Berlin and Beyond) renders a heartfelt portrait of an inmate weakened by tuberculosis who Sorowitsch struggles to protect; his last connection to what is human within him. Director Ruzowitzky does an admirable job of evoking empathy for these individuals placed in such an ethically-fraught predicament.

Cross-published on Twitch.

Miss Teen USA Gets A Second CHANCE!

My thanks to Susan Weeks-Coulter from the Global Film Initiative for this horrifically hilarious piece:

2007 TIFF—Eastern Promises

Last year I attended the Toronto International Film Festival as a civilian. This year the lines of my hexagram have shifted from "Difficulty at the Beginning" to "Perseverance." Attending pre-festival screenings offered by local Bay Area publicists has not only reduced the must-see quandaries to a (nevertheless) daunting process of choice, but afforded the welcome chance to talk to seasoned press about what I can expect in Toronto (I've heard over and over how well journalists are treated by festival personnel). It's been interesting to note that all over the place more pre-festival screenings are being shown than ever before. That's a welcome trend and so I offer up the first of a series of quick preliminaries of what I've seen from TIFF before even arriving.

I've been watching David Cronenberg's films since my early 20s. At first I was a bit embarrassed that I enjoyed his disturbing visions so much, whether venereal parasites bursting out from beneath the skin, or infectious syringes emerging from the armpits of ex-porno stars, or the body negotiating bizarre interactions with technology; but, I really shouldn't have been embarrassed. Time has confirmed that—though dark—Cronenberg's films exhibit a singularly-unique luster. It's hard not to be hypnotized by their sheen.


Besides, color me perverted, but Cronenberg's understandings of the human body within its social context has been way ahead of the pack for decades now. Especially his awareness of skin as a liminal site of transformation. In recent years he has shifted away from genre manifestations of "horror" or "SF" to examine the truest horror of all lingering underneath the skin: the human propensity for violence. In Eastern Promises he offers the surface, the tattooed skin itself, and the tattoo as the mark of sin. He's not the first, but, he's certainly the most recent to remind that the Mark of Cain is the original tattoo.


Collaborating once more with his History of Violence leading man Viggo Mortensen, I had the chance to talk to both Cronenberg and Mortensen recently when they were in San Francisco on press junket and Greencine will be publishing that interview closer to the film's distribution; but, for now, allow me to say that Eastern Promises delivers all it promises. Mortensen, as Nikolai Luzhin, maneuvers a mesmerizing dance between suave veneer and ruthless interiority and his performance in the bathhouse scene—which will be the scene everyone will be talking about—is downright brave and committed. All the performances are solid, each textured with moral ambiguities, that both distance and engage the audience simultaneously. My only objection—and it's an admittedly half-hearted one at that—is the casting of Armin Meuller-Stahl as Semyon, the head of one of London's most notorious organized crime families. Perhaps because of his brilliant performance in The Music Box, I assume a dark lining to his coat every time and am rarely taken by surprise when Papa becomes the Devil incarnate. Vincent Cassel's performance as Semyon's son Kirill provides the film's Shakespearean shadings. "You play with a prince to do business with a king," Cronenberg reminds us; an intrigue Nikolai woos to advantage.

Another consideration, completely incidental to the film itself, is Cronenberg's admitted ennui with the so-called "horror" genre. He has gone on record as saying that he wants to move on. What I find of interest, however, is that Eastern Promises falls within the realm of horror's earliest manifestations, when horror "came from the East" (i.e., Eastern Europe) to infect and infiltrate the Western world with its threat of miscegenation. Think of the Golden Age of Universal Horror with the tainted blood of its vampires and werewolves. With the advent of horror being registered through the American family, Eastern horror was relegated to the sidelines. Though perhaps not intending to, Cronenberg has restored Eastern horror to its rightful throne, replete with implications of miscegenation.

Cross-published on Twitch.

2007 DEAD CHANNELS: WELCOME HOME, BROTHER CHARLES—The Evening Class Interview With Jamaa Fanaka

Not for the spoiler-wary.

In his Dead Channels Diary, Twitch teammate Collin Armstrong wrote of Jamaa Fanaka's comments after the Friday night screening of Welcome Home, Brother Charles: "Clearly a born storyteller—the tale of his road to UCLA's film program (by way of an aborted auto theft) was priceless—he talked at length about the subtexts at work in Brother Charles and his goal of using it as a way to burst the myth of physical superiority in African Americans. He ended with an inspiring message to up-and-coming filmmakers, and capped things off by embracing Bruce [Fletcher] and thanking him for the opportunity to exhibit Welcome Home, Brother Charles on the big screen again."

I first saw the infamous penis strangulation scene in Welcome Home, Brother Charles earlier this year at an Oddball Cinema program on sex in cinema. Out of context, it proved shocking and I couldn't imagine the movie from which it was excerpted. Finally seeing the film in its entirety did nothing to minimize the shock of its keynote scene. Flawed as it might be in production value, as Collin has indicated, I have to concur that, notwithstanding, it is "something of a marvel."

Jamaa and I met for coffee and conversation the following morning at the Hotel Phoenix.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Jamaa Fanaka is your chosen name. Your birth name is Walter Gordon. Why, when and where did you choose the name Jamaa Fanaka?

Jamaa Fanaka: I was a student at UCLA film school at the time and I went to see a film called Cooley High. I loved that film. It reflected so accurately the Black culture. It reflected the general culture of young people but specifically the culture of young Black people. I'm always sensitive to credits. I watch the credits—especially the directing credit because I was studying to be a director—and I saw that the credit for the director was a guy named Michael Schultz. I thought he was a Jewish gentleman and I said, "How could a Jewish gentleman be that cognizant of the deep aspects of the Black culture?" I checked into it and found out that Michael Schultz is a Black man. So I said, "I want to make sure that—when one of my films come out—that everybody knows that it was made by a Black director." Because most of the "blaxploitation" films were made by White directors—they had Black casts but they had White directors—so I wanted to make sure that the public knew that I was Black.

I went over to the African Studies Department, contacted one of the professors in that department, he pulled down a Swahili dictionary, I go through the Swahili dictionary looking for words that would mean something, be my name but also mean something, and I ran into the word "jamaa." Now, there's a variation of the spelling. They sometimes spell it with a "l", sometimes they spell it with one "a"—j-a-m-a-l—and sometimes they spell it j-a-m-a-a, which is an unusual spelling but it was one of the spellings. It means "family" and "brotherhood" and "togetherness"; the commonality of human-ness. I said, "I like that." So I went further and I ran across the term "fanaka" and it means "progress" and "success." So I said, "Okay, those words together will mean through togetherness we will find progress and succeed." That's how I chose that name Jamaa Fanaka; it means through brotherhood and togetherness, we will progress and succeed.

Guillén: A beautiful choice.

Fanaka: It wasn't a renunciation of Walter Gordon, under which I was born, it was an embracing of a name that had some social significance and significance in terms of how I chose to lead my life. I'm a cosmopolite. A cosmopolite is a person who embraces all cultures, all races, all religions; he just embraces human-ness. He doesn't even put his own culture or his own race up above or before other races. He loves other races and other cultures as much as he loves his own. I'm a true, devout cosmopolite.


Guillén: I'm glad to hear that. From an early age then—because your father was a television repairman in Jackson, Mississippi and your family was one of the first to own a television in Jackson, even before there was a television station—you were brought up with an awareness of the moving image. My understanding is that you became attracted to film through the director William Wyler and his film Ben-Hur.

Fanaka: Right.

Guillén: What was it about Ben-Hur that mobilized a young Black boy in Jackson, Mississippi?

Fanaka: Ben-Hur was a film that had a deep meaning to it; but, it was immensely entertaining. I thought the merging of entertainment with education—you got an education from that film; you got a sense of the human-ness of the people—was so well-done. I saw it as a very young man.

My first acquaintance with film was when I got a Super-8 camera as a birthday present when I was 11 years old. As a matter of fact, I took the footage and on my mother's 80th birthday, I presented her with a dvd copy of an edited version of all the rites of passages of myself and my family—the grammar school graduations, the Christmases, the Easters, the marriages, the Disneyland visits—all the rites of passage we had. I recorded them with my Super8 camera. That's what really got me into liking to shoot film; but, I didn't start really thinking about being a filmmaker or the behind-the-scenes aspects of making films until Ben-Hur. Then I started to research and realized these films did not just materialize out of thin air; they came about like a building does. You don't just start putting bricks together. There's a plan there. I thought about that and said, "Hey…." And then William Wyler—The Best Years of Our Lives, Ben-Hur, Funny Girl, Friendly Persuasion—this guy could direct anything. He became—and still is—my favorite director of all time.

Guillén: At last night's screening, you talked about how you ended up at the UCLA film school and how—for your second school project—you decided instead of a short film, you would just make a full-length feature, which became Welcome Home, Brother Charles. At that time, how was the film received? You said people thought you were crazy to make a full-length feature in the first place. What did they think after they saw it?

Fanaka: They thought I was crazier even more! [Laughs.] There were things in the film that had never been done before. What I wanted to do was take a well-known lie that had saturated our culture to the point where—if you tell a lie long enough, someone said—it becomes a truth.

Guillén: A truth that captures people and robs them of freedom.


Fanaka: Right. It captures them in that falsehood and they accept it as a truth, as a given, and it's not a given; it's pure, unadulterated B.S. At the time—and still—I wanted to make a "moving" picture. I call my films moving pictures not only because the frames move through the projector but because I wanted to move people in the right direction. I wanted to have my films affect people in an entertaining way but also make strong statements. Sometimes, in order to get to people, you got to use some kind of instrument to get their attention. I wanted to debunk that myth of Black sexual superiority based upon the size of the sexual equipment.

I felt that in order to get that attention I had to do something obscene that was so outrageous; that would take the myth and blow it up for the lie that it is. It was so new and so shocking that people didn't know how to take it.

Guillén: It's shocking enough now and we're talking 30 years ago, right?

Fanaka: Yeah, '75. As the years have progressed, it's become a cult classic. It's taught in universities across the country. Take for example, Melville's great masterpiece Moby Dick was a failure when it first came out. It sold very few copies until about 30-35 years later. Then it was "discovered" by a critic, people re-read it, and—of course—it will live forever. That seems to be what's happening with Welcome Home, Brother Charles.

Guillén: It's certainly gained a cult following in recent years. I was impressed and grateful and respectful of the fact that you brought your own print of Brother Charles to Dead Channels to share with San Francisco. I want to thank you personally for that. You seem to want at this time in your life to travel with these films specifically to provide context. Is that true?

Fanaka: Right. Yes. As a matter of fact, I want to travel all over the country and even overseas, screen my films, and give Q&A seminars that inspire young people. I started making films in the covered wagon days of filmmaking. That's why, I guess, they call me a pioneer. When I was making films, what I had to pay for the raw stock to make Welcome Home, Brother Charles, you could make the entire film for now. There were very few people who were able to accomplish the making of a film, especially a feature film. It was so difficult because it was so expensive. It's the most expensive art form extant. If you want to be a writer, you can get a pencil and you can write. If you want to be a painter, you can go and buy you an easel and a canvas and paint. But in order to make a film back in those days, you had to have money and lots of it. With the advent of the computer, it has changed the whole landscape of filmmaking.

Guillén: Speaking of context then, the fact that you made Welcome Home, Brother Charles as a student project is what adds to its being so remarkable. Earlier this year I saw the arthouse revival of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, which was created about the same time, and it's my understanding Burnett was your cameraman on Brother Charles?

Fanaka: He was my cameraman. As a matter of fact, his working as the camera man on Welcome Home, Brother Charles is what inspired him and gave him the idea that he could make a feature. See, it was unknown for a student to make a feature film. My film was like the Holy Grail for filmmakers because I actually wrote, produced, directed and got theatrical distribution for a film. To get theatrical distribution is difficult now but it was even more difficult back then. The distributor had to commit to making a number of prints and prints are expensive. I'm the only person, before and since, in the history of filmmaking to write, produce and direct, and to have gained theatrical distribution for three moving pictures made as part of the academic curriculum. Of course I got A's on them. But these were school assignments.

Guillén: So obviously your films were received favorably by your instructors, but how was the reception by your fellow students?

Fanaka: It was mixed. Some students were obviously jealous that I was able to get grants.

Guillén: Envy's an ugly beast, isn't it?

Fanaka: It sure is. As a matter of fact, the American Film Institute grant that I got? I made history getting that grant. I was the first Black filmmaker to get this independent filmmaker grant. I helped open the door for minority filmmakers with the American Film Institute and other areas. I found out that the judges who made the decisions on who got the grants had all been White. The only non-White had been Cicely Tyson and Cicely Tyson was at the time in a sense a White Negro because she had become a great success. The more successful a minority filmmaker or a minority person gets, the less inclined they are to fight for their own people. They don't want to rock the boat. They've been accepted themselves but they don't want to take those chances to fight for the general purposes of helping other Blacks because they don't want to hurt their own career.

At the time, Alan Cranston was the senator representing California and the American Film Institute independent filmmaker grant was financed by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was a governmental concern. I wrote Alan Cranston a letter and said, "Look, I'm not accusing the American Film Institute of racism—I don't think they are racist—but, the fact that there has never been a Black or minority judging who [gets] the [grants], is important because we are usually drawn to material that reflects our own culture. I'd like for you to look into this because I think there are Black filmmakers—like myself—who deserve serious consideration." [The AFI grant] was the Holy Grail of grants. First of all, the American Film Institute has such cachet to get the grant. Also, it was $10,000 that they just gave you in your hand to go make any kind of film you wanted, whatever. There were no strings attached to it. There was a lot of prestige attached to it.

So Alan Cranston writes the head of the American Film Institute an enquiry-type letter and [it] shook this guy up. He called me up and said, "We get 20,000 projects submitted to us every year and it's inevitable that some great potential filmmakers are sometimes overlooked. But we will give a serious look to minority filmmakers and we will go out of our way to try to find some minority filmmakers that wield the power to make those decisions." I said, "Okay." The very next cycle, I got an American Film Institute grant. [Laughs.] And then on the next cycle, they invited me to be one of the judges.

Guillén: Excellent.

Fanaka: There was four judges. There was 12 grants to be given out. What did we decide to do? Rather than have polemics over who we thought was best, each one of us had a choice of choosing three filmmakers to give grants to. I gave out three; the other three gave out three. I was able on that cycle to get grants for Black filmmakers, just on my rubber stamp. From that point on, they started being very sensitive to the fact that Blacks have a talent too and they need a chance. Just a chance. Nobody owes anybody a grant; but, just a chance at getting it.

Guillén: An opportunity they can seize.

Fanaka: Exactly.

Guillén: So receiving the AFI grant was the green light for Welcome Home, Brother Charles. How did you find your lead actor Marlo Monte?

Fanaka: There was an organization … a group of actors and actresses that would get together to perform skits and to network with each other about roles that they saw that were open and try to help each other out. I went there and saw some of the skits and Marlo was in one of them and I was impressed with him. Afterwards I approached him and said, "I'm making this film. Would you like to read for a role?" He said, "Oh man, would I!" He was just so happy that I would consider him.

Guillén: Did he know the story?

Fanaka: No. He didn't know anything about it. He didn't even know it was a feature. He just knew I was a UCLA student because there were a bunch of UCLA students that were with me. Those were the halcyon days of Black filmmakers at the film school. There's never before or since been that many Black filmmakers. We had about 25 of us, including Charles Burnett and Billy Woodberry and Haile Gerima and Julie Dash; a number of filmmakers that went on to teach film around the country.

Guillén: Let me ask you this then, Welcome Home, Brother Charles—not only is it an incredible achievement that you got it made as a feature during your student days—but, it's almost like three movies. It's part documentary with its street realism that—along with Burnett's Killer of Sheep—has become an important, historical document of Watts in the mid-'70s. Then it's also a socially realistic drama about the plight of Blacks in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Then it shifts into this … I hardly know what to call it. At the time there wasn't the term "blaxploitation" and I don't really think of it in those terms; do you?

Fanaka: No. "Blaxploitation" was a term, ironically, that was coined by a Black man; an angry Black man. This is what happened: this guy was a publicist and he would from time to time get assignments from the studios as a publicist to publicize their films. But he wasn't getting the type of work assignments that he thought he deserved. There was a Black film that was up for release but they didn't call him in as a publicist so he made an appointment to go in to see the head of the [studio's] publicity department and he said, "You never call me. You don't even call me for those blaxploitation films." Exploitation films were a genre of the era of drive-ins, what they call grindhouse. Companies were set up just to make low-budget "exploitation" films on subject matter that the studios wouldn't want to make. If it was low-budget, they called it "exploitation", no matter what. [As far as] "blaxploitation", every Black filmmaker resented it because it was used in the pejorative. Now it has evolved to where "blaxploitation" has assumed the definition of a genre, like film noir.

Guillén: So you don't mind being included within that characterization now?

Fanaka: It's thrust upon me like the color of my eyes. I have no choice in the matter.

Guillén: But I want to give you that choice.

Fanaka: All right, then I don't consider my films "blaxploitation" films.

Guillén: That's what I wanted to know.

Fanaka: But I don't write vicious letters to the editor who refer to [my films] as that. I consider Welcome Home, Brother Charles a work of art of the highest order. The reason I consider it that is because it transcends its subject matter. In other words, it's a story and it has a message; but, the message is so fundamental….

Guillén: Primal.

Fanaka: Primal, yeah, that's a good word. [The film's] going to live forever.

Guillén: I look at it this way. So many movies are made and disappear just about as fast. The fact that Brother Charles is still around and kicking means it's a child that's grown up.

Fanaka: Right. And it's more influential and popular now than it ever was.

Guillén: Can that be attributed to the recent Grindhouse mania?

Fanaka: That too. Also that Tarantino, it's one of his favorite films. He's one of my greatest fans. That has helped. But also, they're teaching it at the universities; not only the quality and the artistic value of the work, but how it was made; how inspirational it can be to young film students—or old film students, everybody wants to be a film student—on how you can accomplish something if you are determined and creative. This film was made off will power.

Guillén: When you started Welcome Home, Brother Charles, did you have a finished script?

Fanaka: Yes.

Guillén: I ask because some criticism I've read imply that the last part of the film was added on later specifically to sell it.

Fanaka: No.

Guillén: That's not true?

Fanaka: No. That's not true. What happened was, there were two drafts of the script. In one draft of the script, and not only the script but one of the cuts, some of the scenes I excised for time reasons and also for artistic reasons. I dealt with the fact of the younger brother getting involved in gang activity and the older brother trying to discourage him and the confrontation between him and N.D. [who] had taken his girlfriend and had her dancing topless. I had him reconcile that. But I didn't want the main story to be predictable. The obvious thing was for him to come by and kick N.D.'s ass and take back his mama or reject her or whatever, or line up with the other woman. But I felt that I wanted to deal with the film in a more universal level, at a more fundamental and primal level. The betrayal that [Charles] suffers from his partner taking his girl and then having him beat up, okay, "I can accept that. I don't want to fight that. Let them go their own business. I'm going to go on with life the way it is." [Charles] tries to go on with a normal life. He finds a job delivering water. But I wanted to make it more fundamental and deal with the fact of how easily we can be railroaded into a situation. Although involved in illegal activities, he didn't deserve to have his penis damn near cut off.

Guillén: Or to be thrown in the slammer simply for running.

Fanaka: Exactly.

Guillén: I kept thinking, "What are they picking him up for?"

Fanaka: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. As a matter of fact, if I wanted to exploit the penis strangulation thing, I would have had him strangle the other people on camera—the cop who tried to castrate him?—you never actually saw the [strangulation there]; I only showed it one time.

Guillén: Once was enough.

Fanaka: Yeah, once was enough. I didn't want people to think I was trying to use that in an exploitive way. I was trying to use that to take a ridiculous situation and just blow it up to such a proportion that you can't miss the ridiculousness of it.

Guillén: Let me ask you this then, Charles's revenge at the injustice of being railroaded, I know that some people have wondered why he didn't kill N.D. for taking away his woman and luring his younger brother into drugs? Why he didn't kill another Black man?

Fanaka: That's what I'm saying. [N.D.] was a victim himself of the whole system.

Guillén: So you're saying that N.D.'s betrayal of Charles was somewhat a consequence bred from their mutual environment?

Fanaka: Right. If [Charles] wants to go along and change his life, he has to forget that. "That is a part of my life. She's chosen him. Let me get on and try." And he falls in love with the other girl and they get into a relationship.

Guillén: I understand the differentiation you're making between the wrongs committed against Charles by N.D., who's in the same boat, and the wrongs committed by a White system that railroads him into prison. It reminds me of that wonderful line in Luis Valdez's Zoot Suit where El Pachuco snaps his fingers, stops the script and says, "That's just what the movie needs now, Ese; one more Mexican killing another fucking Mexican."

Fanaka: Right.

Guillén: The central section of Brother Charles when he's in solitary confinement in the penitentiary is a beautifully-edited montage of his thought process in voiceover mixed with still black and white photographs.

Fanaka: Thank you.

Guillén: What motivated the design of that sequence?

Fanaka: Why I wanted to do it in black and white is [because] black and white is an actor's colors. You don't have the distraction of color. What the audience concentrates heavily on is the actor. It's stark naturalism, as they would refer to it in literature. A naturalistic approach to show in a short period of time the whole three years [of imprisonment] encapsulated in practically one shot. Actually, it's two shots. I go in and then I cut to him. But it's only two shots. I wrote the music too.

Guillén: Speaking of the "music", what is that strange foghorn-like sound?

Fanaka: That's a saxophone.

Guillén: Ah. That sax motif in the score also shows up in the beginning credits where the audience sees the ithyphallic African figurine. How I interpreted that was that it connoted an ancient African power. Is that right?

Fanaka: Yeah, right. Hey man, you are very observant! That's what it was. I was trying to show the primal instincts of Africanism, what they call the natural religion, the humanistic religion, that pervades Africa even now. That music was supposed to convey that type of primal feel, that guttural [quality]. I wrote it by recreating the sound for the saxophone player. He would keep trying it until I got the sound I wanted. For the rest of it, I would tell them how I wanted it: crescendo, diminuendo, I expressed it to them and they were able to recreate it [at] UCLA. UCLA had a four-track recording studio and that's where I did the score.

Guillén: Another thing I wanted to run by you: the film ends with his girlfriend Carmen telling him to jump. The way I took that was that she didn't want him to get railroaded into prison again. Is that right?

Fanaka: Yeah. Let's face it, his life was over. She didn't want him to become a research monkey.

Guillén: I know some reviews described her as not being very loyal; but, no, she loved him completely and knew death was his only real way out.

Fanaka: Yeah. And she loved him enough to see a lot. People don't realize that death is not the worst thing that can happen to you. A lot of things can happen to you that—living through it—is the worst thing that can happen to you.

Guillén: To wrap things up then, you clearly are traveling with the film to inspire young people. As a filmmaker, what has been your greatest joy?

Fanaka: My greatest joy is getting responses like I got last night. I had a guy come up to me and say, "Hey, we have Jamaa Fanaka nights where we get together at each others' houses and show Jamaa Fanaka films."

Guillén: I'm going to lobby for a Jamaa Fanaka retrospective in San Francisco.

Fanaka: They say a perfect place would be the Castro Theatre. I've heard that's a beautiful theater. That's the Gay area, right? I think the Gays would relate to this film too. It's a universal film. It speaks to everyone.

Guillén: Brother Charles spoke to me as a Gay man because—as a Chicano—the process of having your ethnicity fetishized is a troubling hurdle to leap over as you try to individuate and become—first and foremost—a human being. It's disturbing to have your identity usurped and commodified by erotic agendas that are in service to colonial mechanisms of enslavement through effacement. You set out to have Brother Charles be a slap in the face about such matters and you succeeded. The film provokes an embarrassed shade of consciousness and uses prurience to prove its point. It's been a great honor to speak with you today and I thank you for your time.

Fanaka: Thank you, my brother I have a lot of respect for you, my man.

Cross-published on Twitch.

06/28/08 UPDATE: Marc Savlov talks to Jamaa Fanaka for The Austin Chronicle.

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES: LOST & FOUND—The Teddington Studios

Turner Classic Movies ("TCM") is set to premiere the second installment of its remarkable "Lost and Found" series with a collection of films made at London's famed Teddington Studios by Warner Bros.-First National between 1932 and 1943. The collection of 13 films includes the U.S. premieres of two early works from director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes)—the comedy Something Always Happens (1934) starring Ian Hunter, and the crime thriller Crown vs. Stevens (1936) starring Beatrix Thompson. The other premieres are Crime Unlimited (1935) starring Lili Palmer; Man of the Moment (1935) starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Laura La Plante; The Peterville Diamond (1943) starring Anne Crawford and The Dark Tower (1943) starring David Farrar. The Teddington Studios: Lost and Found films premiere on TCM in September.

Charlie Tabesh, senior vice president of programming for TCM, advises, "Similar to the lost RKO films we premiered earlier this year, these six films had also quietly slipped through the cracks of film history. Warner Bros deposited the original nitrate camera negatives at the BFI in 1963 and, over the years, the BFI had restored and preserved them. As curators of film history, TCM is proud to take the lead in showcasing these rare and historically important films and airing them for classic movie fans of all ages."

Known as "quota quickies," these films were shot at a fast pace on low budgets to meet the demands of the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927, created by the United Kingdom Parliament to require a yearly quota of British-made movies and hopefully counter Hollywood's dominance of the cinema world. (Never considered a success, the Act was modified over the years and repealed in 1960.) The films made at Teddington during its Warner Bros. era were strictly for the U.K. market, and most were never seen on this side of the Atlantic. Of more than 100 such films, only 33 are known to survive.


Many distinguished actors worked at Teddington during its Warner Bros. period; also represented in the TCM series are Michael Redgrave in Sons of the Sea (1941), Richard Greene in Flying Fortress (1942) and John Gielgud in The Prime Minister (1942). Among those films believed to be permanently lost, one of the most historically significant is 1934's Murder in Monte Carlo, in which a young actor named Errol Flynn so impressed Warner Bros. executives that they dispatched him to Hollywood.


Teddington Studios has a long and interesting history dating to the 1880s. It became a production center for feature films in 1916 and was leased, then purchased, by Warner Bros. in the early 1930s. In 1944, during the dwindling days of World War II, a German rocket exploded on the property, causing extensive damage. Eventually reconstructed, the studios would become home to Thames Television, and today the facility remains an important media center.

Cross-published on Twitch.

SILENT CINEMA—The Films of Sessue Hayakawa

Daisuke Miyao in his fascinating account Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (London, Duke University Press, 2007:5) claims that Hayakawa's acting style so inspired French intellectuals that they developed the concept of photogenie, "the unique aesthetic qualities that motion picture photography brings to the subject it films."

"The photogenie later became a significant theoretical basis of the French impressionist movement, filmmaking that [quoting Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1994:89)] 'displayed a fascination with pictorial beauty and an interest in intense psychological exploration.' " (2007:5)

New York fans of silent film will have the opportunity to assess for themselves just how photogenic Sessue Hayakawa is when the series "Sessue Hayakawa: East and West, When the Twain Met," opens at the Museum of Modern Art September 5–16. I mention it in passing here because, according to my friend Frako Loden, discussions are already underway to bring the program to the Pacific Film Archives.

Miyao writes at the KineJapan mailing list: "This is the first extensive retrospective of Sessue Hayakawa (1886-1973), Japanese actor and very popular movie star in the period of silent cinema. Most of the surviving prints of his silent films in the American film archives, including Hayakawa's debut film O Mimi San (1914), Thomas H. Ince's The Wrath of the Gods (1914)—a spectacular film with scenes of a volcano eruption—and Cecil B. DeMille's controversial race melodrama The Cheat (1915), will be screened in the series. This is a rare opportunity to witness Hayakawa's acting with "great intelligence and subtlety." The Devils' Claim (1920)—the film produced at Hayakawa's own production company, which has recently become available and has not been seen even by Hayakawa specialists—is also included in the series."

Donald Richie reviews Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom for The Japan Times, as does David Cozy for Google Groups, and Film Stew.

THE CASTRO THEATRE—Adam Hartzell's Five

Touring the cathedrals today with cameras and guidebooks in hand, we may experience something at odds with our practical secularism: a peculiar and embarrassing desire to fall to our knees and worship a being as mighty and sublime as we ourselves are small and inadequate. Such a reaction would not, of course, have surprised the cathedral builders, for it was precisely towards such a surrender of our self-sufficiency that their efforts were directed, the purpose of their ethereal walls and lace-like ceilings being to make metaphysical stirrings not only plausible but irresistible within even the soberest of hearts.—Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness: The Secret Art of Furnishing Your Life (2006:112).

I'm not the first to write it, nor is this the first time I myself have written it, but cinemas are spaces of worship for many of us. My conscious use of the word cinema implies this in a way, saying something more reverential than "multiplex" or "movie house" or even "movie theatre" can convey. The grandeur of cinemas such as the Castro Theatre may not allow for as vast an experience as the cathedrals of Europe in de Botton's passage above, but for me—and I suspect I am not alone here—the space of the Castro Theatre allows for a chill, a physical chill of goosebumps caused by the difficulty (and now environmentally questionable practice) of heating the place, and a spiritual chill that, to borrow from Leonard Cohen (whom I understand borrowed this from another writer as well), enables the lights to seep in through the cracks of our pedestrian existence.


Daniel Gilbert, in his book Stumbling On Happiness, a book not about how to be happy but a book about what studies tell us truly makes us happy, argues that studies show the happiness inspired by religion in our lives may not be about the content as much about the communities the content creates. We are happier when we have connected ourselves to communities. If writing in general is talked about as an isolating pursuit, writing about cinema is often seen as one of the more deserted islands on the lonely archipelago of writers. Yet ironically, the Castro Theatre's vast architectural space leaves me feeling more bonded with my fellow movie-goers than my trips to the more cramped and intimate Opera Plaza theatre. (Please don't take offense, oh little Opera Plaza, I still appreciate all the films you bring to us.) Even large spaces such as the AMC 1000 or the Sony Metreon seem to create distance amongst the anonymous patrons through the comfort of their chairs. The Castro's older, rickety, wooden flip seats with barely a backrest may be hard on the butt and back, but they allow for a greater connection with my fellow seekers, my brothers and sisters of the church of cinema.

So when Michael Guillén flattered me by asking if I'd write about my top five memories of the Castro Theatre in celebration of its 85th Anniversary while suffering through my second typhoon in Manila for work, (in spite of the weather, my trip here nicely coinciding with the CineManila International Film Festival where I got to see Persepolis), I was happy to oblige and focus my response on how connected the Castro has made me feel to my fellow cinephiles.

You Always Remember Your First

My first experience at the Castro Theatre was watching Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'Amour, one of my favorite films. I was told by the woman I was dating at the time, a woman who was about to relinquish my obligations to her, a relinquishment I deserved, that I should see this film alone. This was another subtle hint to me about how she was feeling in Vancouver at the time. I wasn't oblivious to this hint, but was inept at how to respond, so, in that way young men respond to their ineptitude, I didn't respond, closing off from her further. Instead of listening to her completely, I went with my friend Wendy to see this film at the Castro. My friend and I were still both extremely affected by the film. The unconsummated wanting of Tsai's muse, the final scene of our real estate agent walking around the unfinished park, than sitting for a long, tear-drenched cigarette, such is urban ennui at its best. Tsai's film was a wonderful introduction to the Castro Theatre, where I realized through the presence of others in the theatre and through what transpires on screen that, to paraphrase the classic song by The Police, one is not alone in being alone.

The Balcony

If I recall correctly, I've only been up in the balcony of the Castro Theatre twice, both during silent films, one with my friend Sandy and her girlfriend at the time and the other with my good friend Sarah. Sarah, (who has been so gracious as to recently become engaged to a Kiwi so that I can have an excuse to visit New Zealand for a second time), joined me to see Fritz Lang's Metropolis to a packed house, watching a part of history in the present. We were just as mesmerized by the sight of the packed crowd from our roost up above as we were from what was before us on screen. I just remember Sarah and I being giddy during the entire screening. The cliché is to call it "electricity", but it was really what happiness feels like in the moment of feeling connected with your dear friend beside you and the strangers around you.

The Sound of Silence

I've seen more Silent Films at the Castro Theatre than anywhere else, assisted by the Castro Theatre being the venue for the Silent Film Festival. So it makes sense that many of my favorite memories there are associated with Silent Films, such as the ones noted above and the ones noted here. Silent Films all spectacled up with accompanying pianist or orchestra at the Castro are perfect date films. And three years ago I was able to take a woman from Montreal I was dating (yes, I have a thing for Canadians) to the Brazilian film Sangue Mineiro on a Saturday and the U.S. film The Sideshow the next day. She had never experienced the Castro Theatre in this way before. Thanks partly to the energy these moments promoted, these films assisted for a very memorable weekend together. Although at this time in my life I had become adept at what I was previously inept, able to have the conversations that my previous inability to have left me as alone as the real estate agent in Vive L'Amour, this wonderful woman would eventually break my heart. But I'm of the philosophy that I'm happy to have a heart to be broken, appreciating whatever moments of intimacy come my way or that I bring my way, regardless of how brief. As for my relationship with the Castro, I would miss the last two Silent Film Festivals due to work sending me abroad. This year I passed my tickets on to the woman I'm dating presently, (who, if you're wondering, happens to not be Canadian). I was going to take her with me if this recent work trip hadn't come up. It would have been another lovely date, but I took conciliation in hearing that she and her friend were overjoyed with the film they saw together thanks to my initiative. Silent Films never fail, at least not at the Castro.

Movie and a Dinner

My dear friend Dee had never been to the Castro Theatre, nor had she ever seen a film in a language other than the two she knows. So I took her to see Anno Saul's Turkish-German comedy (co-written by Turkish-German film phenom Fatih Akin) Kebab Connection. This comedy was able to cross language and cultural barriers for both of us, and, gauging from the laughter surrounding us, our fellow audience members as well. We followed this enjoyable film with a delicious Turkish meal at Ala Turka at Geary/Larkin. Too full to continue our evening out further with drinks, my South Bay-stationed friend was soon itching to make the trek back up the peninsula to see something, anything, at the Castro again.

Connections Continue

The last screening I saw at the Castro was during the Frameline Film Festival, three installments of the cable TV series The DL Chronicles, studies within the TV drama form of the complex transposing of Black and Gay communities. While in the queue I ran into Michael as he was leaving the earlier screening. Our conversation was brief because he was on his way somewhere, and my line was slowly moving towards the entrance. Still, veterans of these types of run-ins, we both were able to make the brief conversation mean something. The conversation wasn't rushed, it just was simply concise. That pleasant surprise (but perfectly natural since we now run into each other again and again at screenings) was followed by my running into my friend Bill in line, a friend from college whom I hadn't seen in nearly 9 years after he left the Bay Area. We caught up, I discovered he'd returned to the Bay Area a couple years ago, we exchanged memories along with cell numbers, and we sat next to each other as we watched the three installments of the TV show. I'm sure we'll see a lot of each other now since a mutual friend we've both kept in touch with is moving to the Bay Area from Melbourne this Fall. But it's these surprises, the extreme such as that with Bill whom I had no idea was back in San Francisco, or the subtle such as knowing my fellow filmgoer Michael will likely be at the same screenings as I, are part of what embeds the Castro Theatre in my memory.

And that's what the Castro Theatre is to me, as much a place to share with my friends as it is a place to watch great films with strangers.