Author: Rick Ouellette

I'm a freelance writer and photographer and the author of the graphic novel in-progress "In a Dream of Strange Cities. My previous non-fiction works include "Rock Docs: A Fifty Year Cinematic Journey" and "Documentary 101: A Viewer's Guide to Non-Fiction Film," was released in 2013. My other activities, like psychogeography, bicycling, and a little urban exploring tie into the content of this blog, which is dedicated to the celebrating the rich history of rock music, film, literature and popular culture.

Man of Aran at 80, plus British Sea Power and the Ostrich Oblivion

aran cover

It will be 80 years ago this August that Robert Flaherty’s docu-fable Man of Aran won the prize for Best Foreign Film at the third Venice Film Festival. In a world where certain market psychologies would have you think that something a year old is passé, a documentary that’s been eight decades in the rearview mirror could be assumed to interest only academics and deep-diving film buffs. But Flaherty’s piece, which vividly evoked (somewhat anachronistically) the rugged lives of Aran Islanders, seems to resonate from around the margins of present popular culture. Daniel Radcliffe is currently starring on Broadway as “The Cripple of Inishman” a drama based around the production of the film, a 2010 feature-length retrospective on Flaherty (“A Boatload of Wild Irishmen”) references Aran in its title and a recent DVD release of this semi-silent film features a new soundtrack by the iconographic indie-rock group British Sea Power. On their regular albums, BSP’s poetical topics often revolve around the natural world and geographical/environmental themes that are simpatico with Flaherty’s work. Samplings of their lyrics are in bold face throughout.

Man_Of_Aran_front_cover

“I headed for the coastalry/Regions of mind, to see what I’d find”

Robert Flaherty had considerable difficulty duplicating the great achievement of Nanook of the North, his 1922 Eskimo epic that is widely considered to be the mother of all narrative documentaries and also helped popularize awareness of indigenous populations. It would not be until 1934, twelve years after Nanook, that Flaherty would recapture his winning formula for success with Man of Aran. It is a film filled with stark beauty and authentic admiration for the stalwart people of these islands off the west coast of Ireland, a place where “the peculiar shelving of the coastline piles up into one of the most gigantic seas in the world”. As in Nanook, Flaherty went beyond straight documentary; he also convinced fishermen and their families to collaborate with him in conjuring up a nearly pre-industrial lost age, making for a unique film experience but one that has come in for a certain amount of criticism over the years.

“Hoopoes and herring gulls over chalky cliffs/It’s all that’s left you know, carbonate and myth”

Initially, Flaherty had mixed results gaining the islanders’ cooperation but eventually recruited enough residents to make the production possible and was assisted at times by members of England’s famed EMB Film Unit, the groundbreaking organization run by John Grierson, the man who coined the term documentary after seeing Nanook of the North. Yet the film was financed as a “real-life drama” by the Gaumont British studio. It was just as well. Flaherty, who was born in 1884, had “one foot in the age of innocence” according to photographer Walker Evans and was a filmmaker who was as enthralled with the spirit of truth as he was with the letter of it. Several recent documentaries, like Surviving Progress or Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, have noted a particular aspect of our current ecological crisis stems from the notion that mankind sees itself as separate and superior from the very planet that it is part of. Man of Aran by contrast is a vivid re-imagination of man as sublimely co-existent with nature and even if this ideal is archaic or unrealistic, it still remains a quiet but powerful corrective.

(Or copy this link in separate tab: http://youtu.be/AjfVmJhkt-s

In this arcadian sequence above, boy protagonist Michael Dillane interrupts his fishing to climb partway down a craggy bluff when he spies a basking shark lolling just below the water’s surface (at the end of the clip which is 5:10 not 1:34 as listed). The song that British Sea Power chose to go along with this scene is a lovely instrumental re-working of the song “North Hanging Rock” from their 2005 album Open Season.

bask shark

The local practice of hunting these whale-like creatures with harpoons died out a half-century earlier but Flaherty’s enthusiasm and persuasion won the day and soon the men, especially his closest Irish collaborator Pat Mullen, were brushing up on the subject and getting new harpoons forged. This centerpiece of the film, and one of the great prototypical scenes Flaherty would ever commit to film, shows Mullen and the “Man” of the title (Colman “Tiger” King) as they lead the crew through the daunting surf in their modest curraghs then meticulously track down and harpoon the beast—but not before it repeatedly slaps at the boat with its tail and nearly tows it out into the open sea. This led to rebukes that his film almost led to the drowning of a “boatload of wild Irishmen.”

“I don’t know what I’m made of or where from I came/Don’t even seem to remember my name or why the ghost’s alive in this cave”

Although Flaherty did not pretend that he was making anything more than a “picture” that used real islanders, Man of Aran can seem disingenuous when the purpose of the hunt is said to be to gain “shark oil for their lamps”. Electricity had been available on the Aran Islands for some time. Contemporary critics pointed out that, in the midst of the Great Depression, the poverty and absentee-landlord system that existed on the Arans at least deserved a mention. The headstrong Flaherty felt entitled to his own agenda and his tribute to his leading man (“In this desperate environment the Man of Aran, because his independence is the most precious privilege he can win from life, fights for his existence, bare though it may be”) can and probably did resonate back then as well as any more literal recognition of economic inequality.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

220px-OpenSeasonCover

British Sea Power is based in Brighton on England’s cliff-lined southern coast and is known for their melodic indie rock and poetic lyrics that veer from personal and romantic concerns into themes that suggest astute ecological and historical awareness and that celebrate the overarching domain of nature. There are not too many bands out there inventing words like “coastalry” and writing a paean to “Larsen B” their “favourite foremost coastal Antartic shelf” that disintegrated in 2002. When the band addresses Larsen with the acknowledgment “you had 12,000 years and now it’s all over” the bittersweet observation seems turned on mankind itself, esp. with the recent escalation of dire warnings about catastrophic climate change and the Ostrich Oblivion of denial and resignation that exists alongside it.

British_Sea_Power_Rock_Music

“Daisy chains of light surround the city now/They glow but never quite illuminate/Hell and high water won’t stop us now/The future’s twisted, righteousness is coming back around/And we fall like sparks from a muzzle”

In Flaherty’s 1948 Louisiana Story, his last major film, benign oil riggers treaded lightly on the primeval Cajun bayou and indulged its inhabitants (the film was commissioned by Standard Oil though R.H. had free creative reign). Flaherty tried to see his way clear to a world where industry and nature could indefinitely co-exist. Were it only so. When British Sea Power advocated “Lights Out for Darker Skies” on their 2008 CD, Do You Like Rock Music?, it reminded me of a couple of things—the ethereal late-night radio ads from a skywatcher’s advocacy group I used to hear in the Eighties and the idea that the true meaning of the word “understanding” is nearly literal with the idea of letting oneself stand under something in order to fully comprehend it. BSP’s brand of bracing anthemic rock comes from that same imperative, devoid of the overly self-conscious type of uplift you get from bands with similar attributes. (Not to mention any names, but one has the initials A.F. and another has the initials U.2.) If you like rock music pick up one of their CDs, you won’t be sorry.

Official video for British Sea Power’s “It Ended on an Oily Stage.”
All rights to video, music and re-printed lyrics go to BSP and their publishers

All the Docs Fit to Watch

tim

I’ve just posted my fourth article on James Curnow’s great film site Curnblog, an article on art world-related documentaries centered around the recently released Penn & Teller film, “Tim’s Vermeer.” You can click on the link below if you’re interested. While you’re there you can also check out some of the many entertaining and enlightening pieces on this Australian-based site.

Art and the Movies: The Shadow of Perfection

Up above in the header, we end National Poetry Month with another dice roll half-haiku from words picked pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey style from a poetry-magnet website. May is right around the corner and hopefully springtime is as well…

img695

The excellent PBS documentary series “Independent Lens” continues with two more notable selections the next two Mondays at 10:00 PM. On May 5th, they’re showing “A Fragile Trust” about the New York Times plagiarism scandal centered around Jayson Blair. Definitely worth watching. Back in March (when it was warm, go figure), I saw it at the Salem Film Fest here in Massachusetts. On May 12th, I greatly anticipate seeing “Let the Fire Burn” which has received a lot of praise on the festival circuit. It examines the still hard-to-believe 1985 Philadelphia Police Dept. bombing of the compound occupied by the black liberation group MOVE, killing all but two of its members and obliterating 60 nearby houses in the process.

img778

Why Burn Books When You Just Can Just Ignore Them? Fahrenheit 451 Revisited

f451

While puttering around in the library a couple of weeks ago, I looked down at the cart where they put the recently-returned DVDs and caught the soulful gaze of Julie Christie on the cover of the recently re-issued 1966 film version of “Fahrenheit 451” directed by Francois Truffaut. So of course I had to check it out. The French auteur’s first English-language movie has always had a mixed reputation at best: the acting and dialogue was deemed too starchy and the themes of Ray Bradbury’s classic speculative novel too flattened out.

But it had been so long since I last watched it (probably on a 13-inch TV) that I figured a new viewing would be like a re-discovery. And how. In this age of restored content and hi-def screens, Truffaut’s “451” looks fantastic with its autocratic iconography, bold primary colors and the retro futurism of its deftly chosen locations. Also, in view of broad societal shifts since it was made 48 years ago, the film seems more prophetic than ever.

img758
The flamethrowing fanatics of “Fahrenheit 451”
Coming soon to a Barnes & Noble near you!

Of course, the central premise of Bradbury’s cautionary tale may seem silly in retrospect. In a world where all literature is banned, the protagonist, Guy Montag (Oskar Werner), is part of a team “firemen” who rely on informants (usually neighbors) to swoop down on the homes of violators and publicly burn their hidden stashes of books. The plot centers on Montag’s crisis of conscience as he starts to read books that he has slipped into his kit bag during raids. Matters are complicated by his budding friendship with the non-conformist Clarisse. Both Clarisse (a student in the novel but a young teacher here) and Linda (Montag’s media-overloaded, pill-popping wife) are played by Christie.

The institutionalized conflagrations of this story can appear far-fetched. Yet when Bradbury wrote this in 1953 the Nazi book burnings were in recent memory and the dirty dealings of the House Un-American Committee were in full swing. The state-sanctioned pyromaniacs of “Fahrenheit 451” were more broadly symbolic of the casting off of all independent knowledge and self-determination.

Behind the visual hyperbole of the black-shirted firemen with their brass kerosene squirters and fascist salutes, Truffaut tweaks some of the book’s subtler messages to great effect. Although this is supposed to be a totalitarian society, there is no overarching Big Brother; the local fire department zipping around in their pyromobile is about the only representation we really see. Instead, the tiresome tirades of some blowhard dictator has been effectively supplanted by ingratiating TV hosts making every one of their “cousins” feel as if they are Special just by tuning in.

This personal neediness, so well evoked by Christie’s nuanced performance as the wife, is all too indicative of an attention-starved 21st century Western population. Instead of Orwell’s 1984-style eternal-boot-in-the-face, the people are kept in place by being incessantly flattered. Instead of widespread state censorship, we get instead access to everything in a completely commodified environment. (The child-less Linda remarks that “when you have a second wall screen put in, it’s like having your family grow around you.”)

But access is a long way from enlightenment. In our own age, ads endlessly hawk Internet speeds “ten times faster” than speeds that are already all but instantaneous, an age of aggressive techno-snobbery where people wait in overnight lines to trade in their “old” I-phones that were state of the art six months before. Relatively recent analog technologies are dismissed and even disdained while we barely bother to shrug at the widespread loss of personal privacy and make no distinction between reasonable progress and a runaway train. Meanwhile, deep-seated problems like income inequality and a ticking environmental time bomb, while not exactly ignored, fight for attention in a 24/7 overflow of content where melting Arctic pack ice and the latest celebrity baby bump are two equal drops of information and bookstores close left and right.

img763
The brutalist architecture of Alton Estate in the London suburbs frames the firemen’s handiwork

Truffaut’s film is an uncanny time-indefinite fable, where such technology, as far as it could be imagined back then, has rendered a population inured to any causes but their hedonism. In the world of “Fahrenheit 451” there are few options left, which make’s Christie’s housewife Linda more sympathetic than her counterpart in the book, who was named the less-appealing Mildred. But Bradbury made clear in the book that the totalitarian state came about in part because the over-abundance of pleasure-delivering technologies sapped the populace of their willpower to challenge authority, and the jackbooted thugs just stepped in to finish the job with flamethrowers. We still have something of a choice left, but it doesn’t appear to stretch out indefinitely. If our own era is the start of an invisible dystopia, then give me the film’s version, where at least you can ride home from work in an awesome monorail (that lets you off in a meadow!) and walk back to your house chatting with a mini-skirted bookworm subversive.

img757

Oskar Werner (who was best known for his role in Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim”) is quietly impressive as the conflicted Montag. The Austrian actor (who was a pacifist) had fled the Nazis in the latter stages of World War II and with his young child and half-Jewish wife, waited out a battle by hiding in the Vienna Woods. This scenario is echoed in the film’s final scenes when Montag, who is found out and forced to take part in a raid on his own house, takes drastic action before fleeing. (Even the clunky process shot of jetpacking policemen in pursuit–the film’s one big visual miscue—-seems endearing in retrospect). He follows an old railroad line to a forest populated by the Book People, each committing one volume to memory so as to carry forth the world’s knowledge while staying within the law. Of course, too-hip critics gagged at the achingly sincere tableau of societal holdouts introducing themselves to Montag as their title. Ray Bradbury may have liked many things about the adaptation, including the decision to not kill off Clarisse and to have one of the Book People introduce himself as “The Martian Chronicles” (a surprise tribute from the director). But the official consensus was that the film was a Disappointment and the monolingual Truffaut would not make another English-language film nor would he attempt another genre movie—although an admirer of the novel he was not a big science fiction fan. Too bad, “Fahrenheit 451” is a great embodiment of the old saying that “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything” and this worthy cinematic complement to the book drives home that ever-salient point even further. Check it out and see if you agree, cousins.

img760

Truffaut and Christie after a day’s shooting in Roehampton, England 1966
Lucky for the director, Julie speaks French

National Poetry Month by default

My psychic antenna doesn’t always pick up on National Poetry Month when April rolls around. Early April is more like the time that we in New England are kept busy searching the weather reports for any viable sign of real springtime. Typical of this seasonal limbo is my current disinclination to put pen to paper even though, as Bobby Dylan once put it, “I have a head full of ideas that are driving me insane.”

img737

I did spend some quality procrastination time this week going over old notes and clippings and perusing photos I took long ago with my first camera, a brown-and-cream colored instamatic that used 126 cartridge film (see above). I also found a torn-out notebook page that I knew would come in handy some day. Back in the late 90s, while living in Cambridge, Mass. the city put up several magnetic poetry boards in Central Square. You know the kind, with hundreds of individual little magnets made up of one word each. I was quite enamored at the beguiling and beautiful poetic snippets that arose from scrambled word combinations and wrote down my favorites. So I’m marking NPM with a celebration of the inner poet that apparently resides in us all. I also got into the spirit yesterday by going to a site that tells you how to make your own magnetic poetry kit. I printed out a page of random words, closed my eyes, and put a pencil down on several words then fashioned them into a half-haiku that uncannily seemed to be saying something to me that I ordinarily wouldn’t have found a voice for (see the header above). I’m sure many of the people that came up with these little gems below felt the same way at the time.

Start to end winter inside; you are born in our desire

Elaborate green garden remember

Some swim like rain forest picture

Listen: all yesterday my fever and fire like moose did sail in liquid star

Every marble which must always shine
Lie like a cat this game this game may die
By sky look at I am joy

Magic perfume went blindly into the night

A girl once flew to get together and out

For the castle the moon, a bare angel
Soft like no boy of sweet summer

Forgive live as magic it may wake up or go

Love grow fast and free girl

Did owl have feline heart?
Round and wet blue, song-fed dinosaur
Stop once in peace

Dad that cried do not get sad
Slowly happy together grow
We were green and are

My bath may smoke up and have sun on the breeze

One silly day you were bleeding and went into my box

Born on yellow farm, summer night glow
Homeless child of night cried “friend!”

Yesterday went away like a slow song of woman’s desire
Joy ran from a friend, she went round slowly
A blue sky whispering yes
Smart rain round my night, moon turn out poison

Knuckleball! — Life in the Slow Lane

knuck dvd

Knuckleball!
Directed by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg—2012—85 minutes

It’s nearly a lost calling, like a shoe repair shop or a pen-and-stationery store hanging on in a world otherwise dominated by Apple and Wal-Mart. A patient craft that is difficult to master in an age of instant gratification and performance-enhancing drugs. The confounding knuckler, like the hidden ball trick or stealing home, is almost gone from baseball. This pitch, delivered at a velocity some 20-30 miles per hour slower than standard-setting fastball, flutters and floats in on the batter. If swung on and missed, he’ll look ridiculous, if he connects he could hit it into the next time zone.

America’s oldest professional team sport may be losing this eccentric part of its legacy, but not many players and managers are mourning the near demise of the knuckleball. The pitch infuriates many habit-obsessed hitters and knuckleball throwers usually require special coaches and catchers. So in celebration of baseball’s opening week, let’s take a look at the recent DVD release of Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg’s winsome 2012 documentary on the small and misunderstood cult of the knuckleball, referred to by non-believers as “fraudulent” or “a freak pitch.” It’s a celebration of non-conformity and persistent humility now fleshed out with almost two hours of featurettes.

As a fan of my hometown Boston Red Sox, I got to see one of the filmmakers’ two primary subjects up close. Tim Wakefield started out as a first baseman in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization but developed the knuckleball pitch after being told he would likely never make the Major Leagues as a position player. After a sensational first season with the Pirates, the knuckleball magic abandoned him (walking ten men in a game at one point) and he was cut loose, surfacing next year in Boston for a 17-year career where fans would become intimately familiar with fickle fortunes of one who depends on such an unusual skill.

Tim Wakefield

Tim Wakefield and the unorthodox fingernail grip

Wakefield was 45 years old and already a member of two World Series champion Red Sox teams when seen here playing in his last year; much of the focus here is on his protracted efforts to secure his 200th career win before the season ends. The only other current knuckleballer, the much younger R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets, is also profiled and the usual slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that come with his craft are compounded with a health issue that threatens his livelihood. The filmmakers cut back and forth between these parallel tracks during the 2011 season, often blending in the players’ personal stories and putting the lie to the easy notion that all pro players are spoiled and overpaid. Dickey, for instance, bounced around the minors for a long time making $1800 a month (summers only) and sometimes moving his young family two or three times a year, trying to keep the faith that his big-league dream would pay off in the end. On the verge of making it to “The Show”, a medical review found a congenital anomaly in Dickey’s pitching elbow, but in a gutsy move he took a drastically reduced contract offer instead of cashing in a million-dollar insurance policy.

RA Dickey

Battle Cry of the Knuckler: R.A. Dickey in action

Elsewhere, Stern and Sundberg review of a bit of the knuckleball’s mystery history (no one’s sure who started it and it’s only had 70 or 80 true practitioners in the last century plus) and emphasizing its true outsider status: Wakefield unpretentiously declares that a knuckler is “on a little island by yourself.” Never has that been truer than in the 2003 American League playoffs. Wakefield had dominated the Red Sox’ age-old rivals, the New York Yankees, in two of the series’ previous games and would have been the hero had the Sox won and gone on to the World Series with a good chance to win it for the first time since World War I. But he was called in from the bullpen late in the deciding seventh game because the Sox manager had left their starting pitcher in too long, allowing the Yankees to tie the game. When Wake gave up a game-winning home run, it was one of the most ignominious defeats in the team’s history and the film makes the viewer live the pain of an athlete (and a person) who has quietly done all that’s been asked of him, including being put into an untenable position. When the Red Sox went on to win a championship the next year they had to beat the Yankees in another epic 7-game series (winning four in a row after losing the first three)along the way. Wakefield played a crucial role in the second of those victories, the winning pitcher in a six-hour game that helped pave the way for Boston’s first World Series win in 86 years (you’re welcome!). Tim’s redemption was almost biblical in it’s serendipity, though the directors curiously underplay it (unlike me).

Tim Wakefield has the Yankees “turning Japanese” as they try in vain to fathom the elliptical flight path of an in-form knuckleball during the 2003 playoffs while the Boston fans eat it up.

The knuckleball pitch, being both unpredictable and easy on the arm, destines these pitchers to be used either too often or too seldom or treated unfairly: being shuttled between a starting role and the bullpen, being brought into games when the score is lopsided, dropped from playoff rosters. Little wonder that one of the more enjoyable parts of “Knuckleball!” is the get together of Wakefield and Dickey with two old-timer practitioners, Charlie Hough and the incomparable Phil Niekro. Hall of Famer Niekro won an amazing 318 games as a knuckleballer and pitched in the pros until the age of 48. The self-deprecating camaraderie of knuckleballers and the way this fraternity helps each other (Niekro tutored Wakfield who in turn offered advice to Dickey) will appeal to viewers jaded by the media over-hype that so often dominates sports coverage.

Maybe it’s not surprising, given their built-in status as sporting underdogs, that many of these guys would be doing good works outside of their profession. Yankee knuckleballer Jim Bouton, best known for his classic expose bestseller “Ball Four”, was also a liberal activist who protested the South Africa’s apartheid government way back at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Both Wakefield and Phil Niekro are past winners of the Roberto Clemente Award, named after the Pirates’ superstar who lost his life in a plane crash on the way to delivering supplies to victims of the 1973 Nicaraguan earthquake. R.A. Dickey is involved in the Bombay Teen Challenge, which aids victims of overseas human trafficking. The good karma seems to be paying off for Dickey the way it did for Wakefield in 2004: the season after this doc was filmed R.A. won twenty games and became the first knuckleballer to win the Cy Young award as his league’s best pitcher.

Documentary 101: the e-book

Happy to announce that my book, “Documentary 101: A Viewer’s Guide to Non-Fiction Film”, previously available only in paperback, has now been released as an e-book in all formats—in most cases selling for the low low price of only $4.99. The list of the various online outlets is below; all of these sites allows you to “look inside”, usually meaning a peek at the first 40 pages that before now was only available on my author page of the publisher BookLocker.com

BookLocker has done a great job on the e-book conversion, allowing readers to land on any of the over 300 reviews by clicking on the title in the table of contents.

In my Catergories list to the right,the “Documentary 101 Samplers” features highlights from a more varied cross-section of the book, along with film stills only seen there.

Cheers, Rick

AMAZON:

BARNES & NOBLE:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/documentary-101-rick-ouellette/1116257055?ean=2940149447824&itm=1&usri=2940149447824

BOOKLOCKER:
http://booklocker.com/books/6965.html

ITUNES:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/documentary-101-viewers-guide/id833794635

KOBO:
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/documentary-101-a-viewer-s-guide-to-non-fiction-film

Salem Film Fest: So many docs, so little time

img695

The weeklong all-documentary Salem Film Fest, running from March 6-13, has a great and remarkably diverse line-up of films, with 37 features and almost as many short subjects. I was able to see several of them last week and even if I can’t get back there in its last two days, will have a sizable checklist for future viewing choices.

I feel a little silly that before this year I was largely unaware of this supercool event that takes place in my hometown of Salem, Mass. and that is barely a half-hour’s drive from where I live now. It’s been gong on for seven years and during that whole time I was writing a book called “Documentary 101.” Actually, considering the 420-page ordeal, maybe it’s not that surprising. In conjunction with the festival I took a “Discovering Documentary” class taught by Erin Trahan, co-editor and publisher of the online film magazine, The Independent. An all-day class (at the Montserrat College of Art in neighboring Beverly) the week before was followed by an inclusive SFF full day pass on a Saturday accompanied by panel discussions etc. Any non-fiction film buffs in my neck of the woods take notice for next year, it was great! And as for the Salem Film Fest, what a first rate program, accompanied by a welcoming vibe, all centered on the town’s historic Essex St. pedestrian mall. Looks like March may be the new October for the Witch City when it comes to attracting attention…

Of the film’s I did see, the opening night presentation of “A Fragile Trust,” profiling the plagiarizing New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, was a treat. Filmmaker Samantha Grant was in attendance (as were most directors of the selected films, it seemed) and during the Q&A, one person compared it to Errol Moris’ Oscar-winning “The Fog of War” as a mea culpa coup of sorts. Robert McNamara’s defensive testimony in “Fog” of his dubious high-level role in escalating the Vietnam War may have more gravity. But Blair’s high-profile case, which caused an erosion of confidence in journalism at a time when traditional news could least afford it, is no small potatoes. Blair’s rampant ego, blended in with lingering mental health issues and substance abuse, led to a prominent scandal and his presence in the film as a less-than-reliable interviewee was fascinating stuff. (“Where does the illness stop and the gaming begin?” wondered one of the talking heads). A show of hands at the Q&A revealed about half thought the film made them at least somewhat sympathetic of Blair, while the other half were left with disdain. Another example of the engaging power of the documentary form, although I have to agree with my sister Pam, who I watched it with it with, Grant should tone down that cue-happy soundtrack music. If you get a chance, check out “A Fragile Trust” when it airs on PBS on May 5th.

On Saturday, I saw the charming “Tokyo Waka” by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson, about the 20,000+ jungle crows that inhabit one of the world’s biggest cities. The poetic flow of this work reflected both the natural world’s interaction with the built environment and the Japanese people’s philosophy of everyday life as seen in relation to this enigmatic, iconic bird. Also got to check out the vibrant “Everybody Street” (directed by photojournalist-filmmaker Cheryl Dunn) about notable photographers who have worked the streets of New York City through the decades. Tellingly, most of the folks behind the camera (like Joel Meyerowitz, Jill Freedman, Bruce Davidson and the Serbian-born Boogie) are as least as fascinating as the diverse multitudes they take pictures of, and that’s saying something. Like “Waka” this is a sidelong portrait of a great city as a whole.

img696

Among the entries I circled in the program for future viewing: “Dear Mr. Watterson” about the creator of the beloved Calvin and Hobbes comic strip; “Rich Hill”, a look at the de-population of large swatches of heartland America thru the example of one Missouri town; and relatedly, “The Human Scale”, Andreas Dalsgaard’s new film on the urban challenges facing a world where 80% of the population will be living in large cities by 2050. And as a fan of music docs, I hope to soon be seeing “Elektro Moskava” (pictured above) and it’s tale of Russia’s vital historical role in the development of electronic music. Sounds like it would make a great double feature with 1995’s “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey” about Russian-born Leon Theremin who invented the self-named first electronic instrument. Theremin, who was the toast of Manhattan in the pre-war years, mysteriously disappeared (and rumored to be a kidnap victim of the KGB) before turning up a half-century later in Moscow, making a trip to NYC in his last years to be re-united with his protégé Clara Rockwell. I always sensed there were other stories where that came from.

You can still see the entire festival line-up at salemfilmfest.com. Happy viewing!

“Documentary 101: A Viewer’s Guide to Non-Fiction Film” is now available as an e-book in all formats for only $4.99, more details in next post.

Two in a Row for Rock Docs in Oscar Category

In the end, it may have been that much-lauded “The Act of Killing” was just a wee bit too radical for the Academy voters (see previous post), so for the second year in a row the statuette for best feature documentary went to a music film. The vivacious and lovable “20 Feet from Stardom” was probably as deserving a winner in what is by its very nature an apples-and-oranges competition. And thanks to the unstoppable Darlene Love, the acceptance “speech” turned into one of the night’s most memorable moments:

Ms. Love was a subject of the film and not one of the actual award winners, but when director Morgan Neville and the producers let her do her thing it could only help the already raised profile of a feelgood film that has connected with over 500,000 people in its theatrical release, great numbers for a documentary.

Exactly one year ago today, I began this blog by mentioning the recent Oscar win of “Searching for Sugar Man”, the second rock doc to win the award, the other being “Woodstock” way back in 1970. Now there are two in a row and there may be more to follow. The redemptive or belated-recognition pop music documentary has really taken off in recent years and will probably only get more popular as rock and roll’s golden age recedes ever into the past.

Sixto “Sugar Man” Rodriguez, whose luckless career as a singer-songwriter was salvaged by the unlikely admiration bestowed upon him decades later by countless South Africans or Darlene Love, whose ace lead vocals went uncredited on a #1 single in 1963 and who (along with many other studio vocalists) had to fight against forced anonymity and industry ill treatment, are just two of the better known examples of this mini-genre. “New York Doll” was when it first came to me as a distinct subset (in 2005) and there’s been many since then, with “Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me” and “Gene Clark: The Byrd Who Flew Alone” next up in my docket.

gravity

“Now it’s time to leave the capsule, if you dare”

I’ll leave the discussion of Hollywood’s big night to the 173 million other media outlets that hash it over. However, I was a tad disappointed that the science fiction genre was once again passed up as a legit contender for Best Picture. It was nice to see the visionary Alfonso Cuaron win for Best Director and in my mind was due one about seven years ago for the masterful “Children of Men.” But in the end “12 Years as a Slave” had more gravitas than “Gravity” (sorry) and already tedious idiomatic arguments about whether his nominated film was even science fiction or just a disaster film shot in outer space have sworn me off the subject for some time to come. Meanwhile, we have in Steve McQueen the first African-American director of a winning picture and how cool is that?

Another good outcome was that “Wolf of Wall Street” came away empty-handed and so depraved felon Jordan Belfort, who somehow got his claws into Martin Scorcese, does not for the moment have any further reason to laugh in the faces of the American citizenry that he ripped off so unrepentantly. Here’s hoping that Marty can re-connect aesthetically with the human race in 2014 while documentarians the world over continue their quest for truth, justice and discovery.

(I found out my choice for best feature documentary Oscar–Jehane Noujaim’s “The Square”–did win that prize at the recent awards show of the International Documentary Association, so congrats. At the same event the great Alex Gibney, who made “Taxi to the Dark Side” and “The Armstrong Lie” among his over two dozen directorial eforts, won the IDA’s annual Lifetime Acheivement award).

Here’s a list of Academy Award-winning feature documentaries starting with Michael Wadleigh’s great Woodstock film 43 years ago:

1970—Woodstock
1971—The Hellstrom Chronicle
1972—Marjoe
1973—The Great American Cowboy
1974—Hearts and Minds
1975—The Man Who Skied Down Everest
1976—Harlan County, USA
1977—Who Are the DeBolts?
1978—Scared Straight
1979—Best Boy
1980—From Mao to Mozart
1981—Genocide
1982—Just Another Missing Kid
1983—He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’
1984—The Times of Harvey Milk
1985—Broken Rainbow
1986—Artie Shaw: Time is All I Got and Down and Out in America (tie)
1987—The Ten Year Lunch
1988—Hotel Terminus
1989—Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt
1990—American Dream
1991—In the Shadow of the Stars
1992—The Panama Deception
1993—I Am a Promise
1994—Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision
1995—Anne Frank Rembered
1996—When We Were Kings
1997—The Long Way Home
1998—The Last Days
1999—One Day in September
2000—Into the Arms of Strangers
2001—Murder on a Sunday Morning
2002—Bowling for Columbine
2003—The Fog of War
2004—Born into Brothels
2005—March of the Penguins
2006—An Inconvenient Truth
2007—Taxi to the Dark Side
2008—Man on Wire
2009—The Cove
2010—Inside Job
2011—Undefeated
2012—Searching for Sugar Man

Documentary Oscar Pool Party Spectacular

Just in case your office Oscar pool doesn’t include the documentary category, Vote Here for what you think will (and/or should be) the winner for Feature Documentary. This could end up being the smallest poll sample in history but why not. Although it hardly rates next to races like Cate Blanchett vs. Amy Adams for best actress, for instance, the fact is that new breeds of non-fiction film have creeped into the public consciousness, esp. when it comes to home viewing and film festivals. Mark your virtual ballot below (by commenting)for one of five nominees:

The Act of Killing
Cutie and the Boxer
The Square
Dirty Wars
20 Feet From Stardom

I’ve seen 3 of 5 so far. Of the ones I haven’t seen, “Cutie and the Boxer” from all I hear is a vibrant bio of painter Ushio Shinohara and his illustrator wife, Noriko. It joins a growing list of fascinating art-related docs in recent years. “Who the @#$% is Jackson Pollock?” “The Art of the Steal”, “Exit through the Gift Shop” and “My Kid Could Paint That” are other recommendations in this mini-genre and the just-released “Tim’s Vermeer” sounds like a must-see as well. Some will favor “Dirty Wars” by Richard Rowley and investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill. But after finally putting out my book “Documentary 101” last year, and writing about the numerous great but sobering films ranging down from the Holocaust to Vietnam to the Iran/Afghan wars, I wasn’t rushing pell mell to see another just to confirm my worst fears. But Scahill is an experienced war correspondent and a stand-up guy not afraid to stir the pot. He has an advocate in Bill Maher, who threw in his vote for “Dirty Wars” on the Feb. 14th edition of his HBO show. He thanked panelist Scahill for all his work, “while we still have you”, joking that there may be a drone out there with the reporter’s name on it.

The real crowd-pleaser of this quintet is “20 Feet From Stardom”, one of the better entries in what could constitute another mini-genre: the belated-recognition rock doc. It gives some of pop and soul’s best back-up singers their day in the sun, while also looking back on backstories of music-biz exploitation and cold-shouldered solo careers. But considering that last year’s winner (“Searching for Sugar Man”), about the long-delayed recognition of forgotten 70s singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez, was in a similar vein, it may be that Academy voters will be looking elsewhere. That is, if it can be said that voters in the Documentary Feature category, long known for their arcane methodology, even think like that.

At any rate, the real buzz in the non-fiction form this year has been about “The Act of Killing.” This is as brilliantly conceived and daring a film that came out last year in any category. First time director Joshua Oppenheimer had set out to film surviving relatives of the approximately 500,000 Indonesian Communists and other perceived enemies killed in a 1965 purge that established long-term authoritarian rule in that country. But anti-leftist sentiment there is still so strong that this concept became unworkable and, reportedly on the suggestion of one of the survivors, hatched the idea of turning his cameras on the aging members of the killing squads, eventually encouraging them to cinematically re-create their ghastly deeds of a half-century ago.
(Below is an interview clip with Oppenheimer that also includes the film’s trailer)

It turns out that this gambit, designed to affect a sort of negative catharsis for sanctioned mass murderers who are still revered as heroes, leads to some fascinating filmic moments. Main subject Anwar Congo and his associates come from a “gangster” culture, a word that has a positive ring for many in the political culture. It also has a lot to do with movie culture as Anwar and his fellow ex-war criminals, as slick and as full of references as Tarantino stock players, readily acquit themselves as filmmakers with results both grisly (a reenactment of a beheading) or downright campy (a musical number by a waterfall featuring Anwar’s stocky male friend (also from the notorious Pemuda Pancasila paramilitaries) in drag. Oppenheimer’s “documentary of the imagination” records this process almost as a beguiling dream/nightmare state that is stylistically brilliant.

The complimentary “gangster” is, to them, the linguistic equivalent of “free man.” Shaking down humble merchants and pining for the good old days before the pesky concept of “human rights”, you wonder why these guys don’t get recruited by Wall St. wolves or the North Korean government. Since Oppenheimer was unable to be openly critical of his subjects (many folks in the end credits are listed as “Anonymous”) don’t expect any to have any conventional sense of justice satisfied. The guilt and remorse is buried so deep it can barely be excavated from Anwar Congo himself in the film’s climatic scene, even though he has taken part in Oppenheimer’s provocative premise. But there is some hope as officials in Indonesia have had to acknowledge the film and even to let it slip that these were war crimes being referred to and not some heroic deed from the past.

Still, in the end my vote has to go to “The Square”, an absolutely riveting and literally street-level look at the mass protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2011 that led to the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. After the unceremonial departure of their autocratic leader, Epypt—an immemorial country with little or no background in democracy—was convulsed by a series of demonstrations, counter-demonstrations, civil resistance, occupations and riots to try and determine what came next. Director Jehane Noujaim (who also made the excellent “Control Room” and “Startup.com”) was there with her camera for as much of the so-called Lotus Revolution and it’s still-unresolved aftermath as she could and still have a release date. Originally released by its producer Netflix in Jan. 2013, she has updated it in later releases throughout the past year. Seldom has a documentary felt this immediate in its impact.
(Below interview clip with Noujaim also includes trailer)

Noujaim had followed the revolution’s affect by focusing in on the participation of several people. In the final film, there are mainly three story arcs: that of the young secular idealist Ahmed; Magdy, a thoughtful member of the Muslim Brotherhood who becomes friends with Ahmed; and actor-activist Khalid Abdalla (star of “The Kite Runner”) who returns to his homeland to help man the barricades. With what’s going on in the world today, most notably in the Ukraine and Thailand, “The Square” is a bracing reminder that for so many the only way to affect change against forces of oppression is to enter into a mortal struggle with forces more powerful than yourself. As in so many places, in Egypt the buck stops with the army and a decision on whether or not to use fatal firepower. (In this case, you also have the organizational power of the Brotherhood who elected the ill-fated Mohamed Morsi in 2012). At present, it looks like the military holds the winning hand but the people power unleashed in Tahrir Square in January of 2011 cannot be held back forever, or at least that’s the hope you take away from Noujaim’s extraordinary film.

*********************

A Forty-Year Oscar Flashback in the Best Documentary Category

The scathing anti-Vietnam War film “Hearts and Minds” won the Academy Award for top Documentary Feature of 1974, and the acceptance speeches by director Peter Davis and producer Bert Schneider touched off one of the more interesting backstage brouhahas in an awards show that has been no stranger to controversy over the years. Schneider got the crowd especially riled up, speaking of Vietnam’s impending “liberation” and reading a telegram from the Viet Cong delegation at the Paris peace talks that recognized the efforts of American anti-war protestors. Offstage, Bob Hope was furious and proceeded to make a big scene. The unctuous comedian had looked bad in a brief scene in “Hearts and Minds” where he spoke appreciatively of his “captive audience”: a roomful of ex-POWS at a White House dinner. Hope got Frank Sinatra, cohosting the show that year with fellow Rat Packers, to read a disavowal, getting the same mixture of boos and cheers that Davis and Schneider earned only minutes earlier, reflecting the polarizing effects of the war. The documentary category would remain a fairly quiet one on the Big Night until 2003 and Michael Moore’s notorious “shame on you!” harangue aimed at President George W. Bush over the recently launched Iraq war.