Jim Fouratt’s REEL DEAL: Movies that Matter

JUNE 2016
June is the busiest month for major film festivals in New York City. Each one deserves your attention. I highlight them because in many cases the only time you will be able to see a film of merit is at these festivals. They are the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and the BAMcinemaFest 2016.
Because of space limitations, you can find my thoughts on OPEN ROAD and BAMcinemaFest 2016 online at westviewnews.org
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival
June 10th -19th
Eighteen topical and provocative feature films and three special interactive programs grapple with the challenges of defending
human rights around the world today. Now in its 27th edition, the festival is co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center. Most screenings will be followed by in-depth Q&A discussions with filmmakers and Human Rights Watch experts. What is remarkable for U.S. viewers is that it transports us out of the “we are the center to the rest of the world” attitude, and takes us to places most of our media does not cover.
Let me highlight films that I have seen. To view the Festival’s full world schedule, visit http://ff.hrw.org/
DO NOT RESIST
Filmmaker: Craig Atkinson
This is an essential film that will and should frighten the bejesus out of anyone who thinks it’s not worth thinking about as long as one feels safe. But what you may not know is that over the last 10 years a paramilitary armed force has silently been put in place by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal government agencies. This is what DO NOT RESIST documents. Local police stations, though now independent, make up this paramilitary force. They are armed to the gills with discarded and sometimes never-used military equipment from the Bush and Obama interventions in the Middle East including Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, under the guise of building democracy. Police departments now have military equipment such as tanks and missile launchers. In his directorial debut, Atkinson seems to have been on location with his camera whenever a city blew up in the U.S. From the riots in Ferguson to disagreements on Capitol Hill, whether he is following a heavily armored SWAT team as they issue a no-call warrant or sitting in on a meeting during which the town council of Concord, New Hampshire votes to utilize a U.S. Homeland Security grant to purchase a tank, Atkinson delivers a unique and powerful image of the stories and characters surrounding an issue that has billions of dollars—and lives—hanging in the balance. Using footage shot over two years in 11 states, DO NOT RESIST reveals a rare and surprising look into the increasingly disturbing realities of American police culture.
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
Filmmakers: Heidi Brandenburg
Sierralta and Matthew Orzel
This is a heart-stopping look at how indigenous people organize to fight a land grab to sell foreign investors their communally owned land. Following the approval of the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement, concluded between the government of President Alan Garcia and the George W. Bush administration in 2006, the Peruvian congress modified existing national laws safeguarding indigenous rainforest territory, opening the region to logging and oil exploration. Native

communities protested the new legislation through their national organization AIDESEP, led by the group’s chairman Alberto Pizango. AIDESEP asserted that the laws violated indigenous rights enshrined in the Peruvian constitution and demanded that they be withdrawn. Yes, it is the Amazon again under environmental attack by the destructive forces of multinational capital. Albert Garcia has a vision for the future of Peru. He sees the capitalization and exportation of Peruvian natural resources, including oil, as the way to bring Peru forward. His complete disregard for the indigenous people and the land they have communally lived on for hundreds of years blows up into militant resistance and repressive response. It is a horrible story filmed in breathtakingly beautiful color, with passionate direction and brilliant editing. This kind of resistance is not seen in the U.S., but as we see in the Human Rights Watch Festival, it exists around the world. The film will open at the Film Forum(NYC) in August.
Finally, we have four very different films on gender.
HOOLIGAN SPARROW
Filmmaker: Nanfu Wang
We follow a group of activists protesting the alleged rape of six girls by a school headmaster and a government official who quickly become fugitives. Filmmaker Nanfu Wang and super-activist Ye Haiyan (aka Hooligan Sparrow) must avoid government thugs and arrest in a country where media and public speech is very government-controlled and a video camera is considered a weapon against stability. With activist fearlessness and despite every attempt to silence her, Ye Haiyan refuses to shut up and go away. Her remarkable in-your-face courage is riveting to watch. How this affects her daughter and her boyfriend makes the personal political. Catching government officials doing wrong and pursuing them until justice is achieved is a universal political drive. But to see these women stand up to the Chinese patriarchal government and refuse to shut up until the girl’s story is brought to the public and the officials charged is thrilling and inspiring to watch.
GROWING UP COY
Filmmaker: Eric Juhola
This may be the most controversial film at the festival. It follows a landmark transgender rights case in Colorado where a 6-year-old “transgender” girl named Coy has been banned from the girls’ bathroom at school and v parents fight back.

A very serious question lies at the core of this film. Is a child born transgender (a term that is best described as a feeling-based identity) or is the environment in which the child grows up a contributing factor to gender confusion? Have the parents layered on their child, who may be different than the norm, an identity that is more political than not? Coy is born an anatomically correct boy but identifies with being a girl. What role do the parents play is the loadstone. Are they being protective and supportive of their child or are they being abusive by laying on a six-year-old an identity that is not based in biology? What is the difference between the religious right identifying homosexuality in children based on gender expression and this family’s imposing a trans-identity on a six-year-old? I expect sparks to fly at the Q&A.
INSIDE THE CHINESE CLOSET
Filmmaker: Sophia Luvara
Are there homosexuals in China? Is there a gay and lesbian population and culture? 20 years ago the official answer would have been NO. But this charming film not only says YES but explores how gay and lesbian people navigate respect for family and their parent’s desire to have grandchildren and to have respect for themselves. Fake marriage seems to be the answer…the Mr. Right gay man or the Ms. Right lesbian fake partner is the question that centers the film. Here we see an old-fashioned solution, a secret to dealing with being out to yourself and not to your family. It is what they do in Hollywood and all around the world where homophobia is still deeply rooted. In a subtle way this film is full of hope for moving forward to personhood through the Chinese tradition of respect for elders.
SONITA
Filmmaker: Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami
Winner of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary, SONITA is about a determined and animated Afghan teen living in Tehran. SONITA wants to be a rap singer so she can tell the story of what it means to be a teenager who is literally a commodity to her family to sell to the highest bidder Not a new custom, but one SONITA rebels against. She runs away to Iran from an arranged marriage, where she is safe until her mother comes to take her back home. But in Iran a woman cannot sing in public except under official (government-approved and religious traditions respected) sanction. Male or female rapping is not acceptable. Sonita is a spunky, captivating teenager who the filmmaker follows while trying to resist becoming subjective about her subject. I love the film and especially the willingness of the filmmaker to address the contradictions of trying to be objective with a subject in trouble. Oh yes, SONITA gets to record, becomes a youtube breakout star, and gets a scholarship to the U.S. But the real story is how she kept her eye on the prize of wanting to sing…no matter what.
Let’s Go To The Movies
GENIUS
Director: Michael Grandage
Oh my. Seeing GENIUS reminded me of the time when publications and publishers had full-time editors that actually helped writers. They still exist but are a very endangered species. Director Michael Grandage creates a bio-drama about Maxwell Perkins, a legendary book editor from the 30s, 40s and 50s who worked with great American fiction writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. GENIUS centers around the relationship between Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) and Max Perkins (Colin Firth). Wolf has fallen out of style today but hopefully GENIUS will return him to his justly deserved literary visibility. He wrote too many words and each and every one was like a raw diamond to him. “Shine it yes, but keep it.” Perkins was brilliant at taking raw material and shaping it to perfection, while keeping in context the author’s vision. That was Max’s genius. As difficult as Wolfe was, Perkins, with patience and often silence, helped him to edit literary masterpieces like Look Homeward Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again. We get vignettes from Fitzgerald and Hemingway, but GENIUS is all Wolfe. Firth and Law have cinematic friction between them on screen. It is as if we are watching a tai chi match of wills played out. While they are very present, Laura Linney as Mrs. Perkins and Nicole Kidman as Wolf’s paramour (knockout performance), it is what happens creatively and emotionally between these two characters—and the actors playing them —that had me riveted to the screen. Sparks of all kinds fly.
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