April 2016
It’s April and that means that the Tribeca Film Festival and the Havana Film Festival have arrived.
Tribeca Film Festival (TFF)
April 13-24
While 9/11 birthed a small festival, the TFF has gone through many changes including selling 50% to a profit driven corporation. But nothing has approached the spectacle it has become this year. A four ring circus with film at the center and side shows that include everything from kid’s features, sports films, tech talk, a hub to host celebrity spotlight chats, and think tank speculations about the impact of new technology on film as we have known it. These speculations include new forms of distribution and the personal theatre promise of virtual reality as well as the traditional street fair … and yes television!
The controversy over the cancelling of one documentary is overshadowing the eclectic and provoking TFF programming.
Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe was scheduled to play the TFF. It purports to expose the role of coverup at the CDC over data that suggests autism is related to vaccine use in children. A whistleblower at the CDC broke silence and spoke with director Andrew Wakefield. A U.S. Congressman was convinced the truth was being told. All hell broke loose when it became public that it had been programmed. Finally, Robert DeNiro held a press conference and defended the selection stating “autism is an issue very personal to my family.” 24 hours later the film was pulled. The Sloan Foundation, a major supporter of the TFF, was rumored to have fiercely objected on scientific terms and demanded it be pulled. It was then suggested co-founder Jane Rosenthal’s husband, a billionaire hedge fund manager with huge pharma holdings and a heavy investor in TFF, raised a huge red flag. It is very hard to get anyone to speak on the record at this stage. Whatever. It put TFF on every front page. A Change.org petition notes 30,000 wanting to see the film. Left TFF officials looking like they have backed away from freedom of expression and the role of a Film Festival to provoke through creative work difficult issues and discussion. Visit http://www.vaxxedthemovie.com/. It contains the actual, original TFF posting and trailer.
Here are ten documentaries and ten narrative films I recommend at TFF. I have concentrated on films that do not have well known actors or directors.
Documentaries
THE BANKSY JOB: Insight into the complicated world of social activist and artist Banksy.
DO NOT RESIST: Powerful exploration into the rapid militarization of police forces in the United States.
EVERYBODY KNOWS…ELIZABETH MURRAY: How the artist balanced success, family and battling cancer.
KEEP QUIET: What happens when you are a leading anti-semitic leader and you find out you are Jewish?
MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART
NATIONAL BIRD: The ethics and history of drones.
PRISON DOGS: Dogs in prison used as therapy with inmates.
SHADOW WORLD: Perpetual war for profit.
SOLITARY: A unique look at solitary confinement.
UNTOUCHABLE: Do sex offender laws work? There are 800,000 in the registry and yet the abuse continues.
Narratives
ADULT LIFE SKILLS: At what age does one stop being a child?
AS I OPEN MY EYES: A Tunisian singer attempts to resist being forced back into traditional women’s roles.
AWOL: A love story between two women set in the military.
CUSTODY: Viola Davis plays a judge in a complicated custody case.
ELVIS & NIXON: Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey are the actors—a must see!
EQUALS: In a sci-fi world where feelings are outlawed, Kristen Stewart begins to have them.
HIGH-RISE: Class loses its privilege when a blackout occurs, based on JG Ballard novel.
KIND OF MURDER: Carol’s author Patricia Highsmith has another book-to-film adaptation—a psychological thriller.
KING COBRA: An inside look at the dangerous (and not glamorous) world of gay porn stardom.
WOMEN WHO KILL: Murder and romance set in queer Brooklyn.
You can go to the online TFF program https://tribecafilm.com/filmguide and learn about the films and purchase tickets.
Havana Film Festival
April 7-15
I am just back from Cuba (whew!) and of course the Havana Film Festival in NYC is on my mind. At this moment of significant change in the U.S. relationship to Cuba, it would be a good time to look at how most of Latin and South America filmmakers see the world. Its programming is in celebration of the diversity of voices found today in Cuban and Latin American cinema and the inspirational stories they tell. A special emphasis this year is on the voices of women directors. 18 films are in competition.
Fiction Competition: La Patota/Paulina (Santiago Mitre, Argentina); Zoom (Pedro Morelli, Brazil); El bosque de Karadima/The Church of Karadima (Matias Lira, Chile); Magallanes (Salvador del Solar, Peru-Colombia), El acompañante/The Companion (Pavel Giroud, Cuba); Bailando con Margot/Dancing with Margot (Arturo Santana, Cuba); Cuba Libre (Jorge Luis Sanchez, Cuba); Eva no duerme/Eva Doesn’t Sleep (Pablo Agüero, Argentina); Mi amiga del parque/My Friend from the Park (Ana Katz, Argentina; La Gunguna (Ernesto Alemany, Dominican Republic) andPresos/Imprisoned (Esteban Ramírez, Costa Rica).
Documentary Competition: Allende, mi abuelo Allende/Beyond my Grandfather Allende (Marcia Tambutti, Chile); El tren de la línea norte/The Train on the Northern Railway (Marcelo Martin, Cuba); Paciente/Patient (Jorge Caballero, Colombia); Made in Bangkok (Flavio Florencio, Mexico);Tiempo suspendido/Time Suspended (Natalia Bruschtein, Mexico); La prenda/The Pawn (Jean-Cosme Delaloye, Guatemala); El cuarto de los huesos/The Room of Bones (Marcela Zamora, El Salvador).
Special presentations will include Paddy Breathnach’s Viva, Ireland’s Oscar submission for best foreign language film; Cuban filmmaker Jessica Rodriguez’s Espejuelos oscuros/Dark Glasses and Ernesto Padrón’s film for children Meñique/Tom Little and the Magic Mirror. Made in Bangkokby Mexican Flavio Florencio, an award-winning documentary about the sex transformation of a Mexican opera singer. All films are subtitled. Go to their website for more information about free showings, music events etc www.hffny.com
When the New York Film Festival announced the day before the first screening of the latest work by Chantal Akerman that she had committed suicide, the U.S. indie film community went into both shock and mourning for a filmmaker who most will cite as second only to Godard in influence on generations of filmmakers that came after her. There are two Akerman film events that I recommend highly you attend. First the Film Forum presents an introduction to the work of Akerman: Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman March 30-April 5. Seeing it will help anyone who has not seen her work to train their eyes as to how to look at her films. Admission is free of charge (first come, first served). Then at BAM a retrospective of her work—Chantal Akerman; Images between Images will be shown April 1-May 1 starting with a week’s run of her last film No Home Movie. The full schedule is available at BAM.
Let’s Go To The Movies
MILES AHEAD
Director: Don Cheadle
Well intended but a bit of a mess when I saw it at NYFF. Cheadle both directed and plays Miles Davis, and that is the problem. I worked at Columbia Records when Clive Davis decided to crossover Miles from Jazz to the rock world and worked with Bill Graham. I was assigned to work with Miles on this crossover, so I have my stories. But Miles is one of the most important musicians of the 20th century, and the music—well the soundtrack alone is worth going to see and hear.
NEON BULL
Director: Gabriel Mascaro
The surprise hit of the New Directors/New Films at MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center was a small film about the ordinary life of a Brazilian cowboy and his dreams and desires. Aesthetically layered with postmodern insights, the cowboy becomes vivid, not by romanticizing his life, but by taking us into his ordinary daily duties of moving bulls and rodeos, the community of men, women, and children, and his quite unexpected dreams. Juliano Cazarré, a well-know novella actor, believably inhabits Inare and exudes a quiet eroticism that is on full display in one of the most beautifully shot sex scenes I have ever seen. Gabriel Mascaro is in his early 30s and has made seven films, five documentaries, and two narratives. The Film Society of Lincoln Center will screen them along with Neon Bull in early April.
The Measure of a Man
Director: Stéphane Brizé
Vincent Lindon gives his finest performance to date as unemployed everyman Thierry, who must submit to a series of quietly humiliating ordeals in his search for work. Futile retraining courses that lead to dead ends, interviews via Skype, an interview-coaching workshop critique of his self-presentation by fellow job seekers, are mechanisms that seek to break him down and strip him of identity and self-respect in the name of reengineering a workforce fit for a neoliberal technocratic system.
This is a universal story of the crisis in capitalism today. Brizé and Lindon concentrate on dignity and human spirit which makes the tragedy more profound.
