A collection of reviews of films from off the beaten path; a travel guide for those who love the cinematic world and want more than the mainstream releases.
A woman in a small rown is raised to be midwife, but wants to be a singer in the big city.
With apologies to the filmmakers this is going to be short and sweet. I wasn't going to review this film right now. I am buried with festival coverage of three festivals. There wasn't a slot for this film on my dance card. However I didn't sleep last night so a lot opened up and I decided to give the film a shot.
I had been told by a couple of friends who had seen this film earlier and they were right. This is a lovely little film you should see.
While it may not always seem like real life, there is a kind of formalness to some of this, it feels comfortable and like we are being told a great tale by a master storyteller.
I was moved. And when the end came I had to wipe away a tear.
This is a small gem and recommended.
CONDOR DAUGHTER has been chosen as Bolivia's entry for the 99th Academy Awards.
This is a look at the various groups in Bolivia that are trying to take control of the Lithium deposits in the country. As the old school minerals are beginning to run out, they are being replaced by rare earth metals and other unexpected one- such as lithium which is used in cellphones and batteries.
There is a great deal here, so much in fact that I delayed writing this up in the hope of seeing it again before the end of the festival. However illness during the early days od CPH DOX stepped in and I didn't manage it. I still need to go back but this film is so good that I can't wait any longer.
What I love about this film is thatthe film shows us how the various groups, the government, the business leaders and the indigenious population all try to control the lithium, which is prized by the mega corportation. The filmmakers wonderfully don't do what a lot of other films and focus on just one group. Instead they give us a look at all of the people with skin in the game. While some get more attention to others we get a sense that this is not a simple story.
At a time when everyone is looking to make a financial killing, many not caring who they hurt or what damage they do to the world, MATERIA PRIMA is a vital look at the battle for control of not only natural resources but our destinies.
I’m only able to do a pointer for LA LUCHA. When the request for coverage came in I was in the middle of three festivals. Honestly I was going to decline doing coverage but in a free moment I decided to take a look at the film and I was really impressed by the film so I had to at least take a moment to mention it.
LA LUCHA is the story of a the fight to get the a month payment for those with disabilities in Bolivia. Because many can not work they need assistance and they ask for month stipend which amounts to only $70 American. In order to raise awareness a group of activists decide to travel across the country including trekking across the Andes in their wheel chairs.
This is a hell of tale. It’s a magnificent tale about the fight for what is right. I was moved.
Yes there have been other similar stories, but they haven’t been this story, with this cast of characters. You will fall in love with everyone on screen and want to call them friend.
Very recommended when the film plays on the 3rd at the Black Star Film Festival or when the film eventually hits TV
After serving a stint in prison Humberto goes off to reconnect with his daughter. She is being raised by her grandparents, evangelical ministers who hold sway over the community. Reduced to earning a living by singing at wakes and other religious function Humberto begins to chafe at the restrictions his in laws put on him and his daughter.
Slow building low key drama has a real punch for anyone willing to go along for the ride. The film is a killer look how evangelical religions are shaping communities and not always for the better. I was rocked since this is based on what is happening in Latin America and is currently threatening to happen in America too where far right groups are seeking to take control of the country.
I should mention that if you see the film don't expect large explosions of fireworks. Expect instead to be brought into the lives of the various characters surrounding Humberto, to fall in love with them and then be moved what happened. I was rocked by the end of the film. Its a heartbreaking sequence where choice is truly taken away.
This is a wonderful small gem of a film. Finding magnificent films like this is the reason that every year I make a serious effort to see as many Tribeca films as I can. While it results in many misses and hits, some times, as in the case of THE VISITOR, I discover a film I have to try to sell to anyone who will listen.
COMPANIA
Residents from a small town inn the Andes return home for the festival of the dead.
Ethereal documentary often plays like some of the films of Werner Herzog but something much more it's own thing. Long, often wordless sequences put us into a place we've never been with the result that we leave the theater we are sitting in and travel to a place thousands of miles away. The mood is set with a long opening sequence scored to the music of players that take us from the city to the mountains. Its a brilliant gambit that at first seems like a trick that isn't going to work. But director Miguel Hilari knows what he's doing and it isn't long before the marriage and word and image flip the switch and we are all in.
I am in awe. Rarely has any documentary so perfectly put me in a space of it's choosing.
A must see masterpiece.
COMPANIA plays Saturday at Neighboring Scenes
WAITING FOR THE CARNIVAL
Portrait of the small "factions" that have sprung up in Toritama in Brazil. These are small mom and pop factories that turn out blue jeans night and day. They started to appear when the big factories went broke and the workers started to do the work themselves. They work all year, everyday until the time of Carnival when they head to the shore for vacation.
I was not intending on seeing the film, but ended up seeing it just because. I am so glad a did for a number of reasons. First it showed me a way of working for which I had no idea. I really never expected mom and pop shops could be so successful. Many of the people do the work because they like to and it plays so well. I also loved the film because I genuinely loved the various people we meet. More and more with documentaries like this I am not interested in the "job" but I am interested in the people. If I can meet people I would like to sit and talk to I am in heaven.
This is a wonderful little film and is recommended.
WAITING FOR THE CARNIVAL plays next Tuesday at Neighboring Scenes
For more information and tickets to either of these films go here
I am a sucker for films on food. I love films about chefs. If it’s food porn bring it to me and I am in heaven. I love food films almost as much as cat or otter videos. If you want me to like something give me a half way decent food sequence and I’m happy. Which is why that A Taste of Sky is unheard of, it not only bored me but I walked out of almost an hour in.
The film is nominally a look at Gustu in Bolivia. It is a nonprofit cooking school and fine dining destination that was going to only take in underprivileged people. It was set up by Claus Meyer whose restaurant Noma, had won the award for the best in the world four years running. Wanting to take the idea of a restaurant that served only food produced within the borders of the country in which it was located to another location he decided to open one on Bolivia. Meyer decided on Bolivia because of its rich agricultural bounty and because he thought the country could use a boost from gastronomic tourism. The film is supposed to be about how the restaurant and school are changing the society.
The reality it is a very unfocused film that just seemed all over the place. Beginning with a long sequence of a boat traveling through the night for some unknown purpose (it is revealed to be a crocodile hunt) the film then jumps to the restaurant, a look at Meyer‘s career, a discussion of Meyer by three local chefs and finally two of the restaurants chefs traveling the country collecting ingredients. And running through it all is an interview of Meyer by his young daughter.
Nothing connects up, Nothing is explained.
We never really know anything about the food scene in Bolivia either from a restaurant or the country in general. What foods do they have? What makes them special? We don’t know. What makes Gustu so special other than Meyer opened it? We don’t know. Who are the people who go there? Who are the people who work there? We really don’t know. I’ve seen dozens and dozens of similar films and within the first ten minutes I had answers to all those questions. After almost an hour I knew none of those things.
Most of what we got was long sequences of people wandering around looking for food, a long self-serving interview with Meyer and an endless obsession with listing the altitude of every location as if it means something. For a film nominally about a place we spend almost no time there. It’s so bad that all I can remember about the place is the front, which we see a couple of times, and the dining room which we see once. Any shots of the kitchen are simply a sea of people.
I kept waiting to know be told something wonderful, but there was nothing. So I left.
Maybe it came together in the last half hour or so, but somehow I don’t thinks so.
Still Burn is a film I like more in theory than in execution. The film is director Mauricio Alfredo Ovando‘s look at his grandfather, a general who became President of Bolivia via the official record, and the memory of his family and affected by his grandfather’s actions. When the film works it is an interesting look at the collection of history and memory and how our connections to people color how we see the world.
Unfortunately the film doesn’t always work. Part of the problem is that unless you know Bolivian history you will be a bit adrift as events are discussed. More than a couple of times I found I was just going with things because I didn’t fully understand what the discussion meant.
The bigger problem is the film is a little too full of clips odd sources and home movies that give us some sense of the family (when they aren’t fleeting) but really don’t connect up to anything. I think much of the first 25 minutes is made up of home movies where – and his family talk about the fleeting images (“Oh that must have been someone’s birthday” or “There is cousin…”) There is so much that I kind of tunes out. Once we get about a third or quarter of the way into the film it begins to come together, but there is always a sense of disconnect.
Ultimately this is noble miss. It is a film I like more in principle than in actuality.
Nominated for an IDA Award for Best Short Documentary THE FIGHT tells the story of a group of disabled protesters who traveled over the Andes in Bolivia in order to fight for their right to exist. It seems the government had made no provision to help any of the people and they were largely left to fend for themselves. We watch as the protesters make their trip and prepare to engage with the police who set up lines of riot gear clad men to stop them.
Hard to critique, the film is best just seen for yourself (see below) the film highlights a great social injustice being perpetrated by the Bolivian government on it's people.
The film has resulted in some change in Bolivia for people with disabilities, and has been the subject of international media attention from CNN and The Guardian (who is hosting the film on their website). Hoever the fight isn't over and the filmmakers are also now raising money on GoFundMe for Mickey, one of the leaders of the fight featured in the film for his medical bills for his life-saving surgery.
It is on the face of it nothing new or special. Odds are you've seen many other similar films...
...and yest some how the film wins you over and moves you more than any number of the similar films.
The film is simply the story of three people caught in the web of drug trafficking- Daisy a teenager who is trying to better her life and finish high school, her brother Hernan who is arrested with two kilos of cocaine on a trip to make some fast cash and his best friend Mario, a cocaine worker fighting for freedom. It largely transpires in San Sebastian where hundreds of people , some with their families, wait months and years for a court date in the over crowded Bolivian legal system.
Full credit has to go to director Violeta Ayala who has found three compelling people to anchor her film and who managed to get cameras into the prison so that we can see the day to day existence of prison life. Ayala gives us a truly you are there feel to the film. More importantly she draws us so deeply into the proceedings that by the end of the film we are ready to take everyone home and have dinner with them.
I was quietly amazed.
Actually I was quite moved. Violeta Ayala and her fellow filmmakers set out to pt a human face on part of the drug trade and they have done just that. They have made a film that despite it's familiarity is much more powerful and moving than most similar films because the film never loses sight of wat is important- the people at the center.
Recommended.
COCAINE PRISON plays at Toronto International FIlm Festival September 10, 12 and 15.
Lucero has to talk her father into letting her go with friends to a remote resort. He is worried about her safety. Clearly something happened in the past as Lu pleads with her father to let her start to live a normal life. With great reluctance Lu's father lets her go...he probably shouldn't have let her go since away in the jungle, cut off from phones, the internet and civilization in general the stories of a shape shifting devil called a Tunche prove all too real.
Despite being very low key and in a way rather vanilla, FACE holds your attention for reasons that are frequently over looked by directors interested in shock and awe.
First the film gives us a seven characters we actually like. There are no real jerks here which means there is no one we want to see die. I've seen more than a couple horror films in the last few weeks where you really don't like anyone and you can't wait for them to die. For example a film called INDIGENOUS was released last year introduced all the characters behaving badly and all you could think was "I can't wait to see them die horribly". With FACE that isn't the case. Here I wanted to hang out with all of them and I didn't want them to die.
I appreciate that the film creates not only likable characters, but real characters. You get a sense of who all the people are, they kind of bleed off the screen and aren't one note. I like that they characters are built up in stages, things aren't just plopped at our feet all at once they stories come out in dribs and drabs where they should, The whole back story of why Lu's father wouldn't want her to go is also nicely handled. While Lu's story isn't anything we didn't suspect or know from seeing dozens of similar films, it's brought in so easily that it doesn't seem like a cliche.
And that's the most important thing here, FACE OF THE DEVIL, while dealing with a plot similar to many other films doesn't take the exact same road as everyone else. The story isn't told by the numbers or exactly like other films, here we get real characters, we get plausible changes in the story and most importantly we have a director who is confident enough in his story telling ability to tell the story his own way. He paces it unlike any other film and instead of amping up the blood and gore as many directors would do, he pulls back. yes it's there but its not over done. Additionally he doesn't use loud music and shock cuts to make us jump. When you watch the film enjoy how the killings just happen and aren't over blown- characters are simply pulled off the screen and are gone.
I really liked this film a great deal. I love that this film isn't run of the mill. I love that the film is low key and creepy as opposed to loud and gross. I applaud the fact we have characters that we like and don't want to see die. I love that this is a really special little film.
Is it a scary film? I think it's more creepy than scary. I think the fact that we have been here before in similar films prevents it from generating shout out loud screams, but at the same time when I walked away from the film I wanted to see some daylight because the film created an nasty mood that didn't go away with the end credits.
Definitely recommended, especially for anyone who wants a film that's more than just blood and body parts.
FACE OF TH DEVIL hits DVD and VOD release on February 8th
One of the dullest films ever at any New York Film Festival ever is Carmen Castillo's WE ARE ALIVE a political tract on how the Marxist/Leftist/Communist/ect/ect ideas that fueled the revolutions of the 1960's are finding real world success in various parts of the world.
A cinematic position paper framed around a celebration of Daniel Bensaid who was one of the loudest voices for worker/human rights over the last 50 years. Bensaid kept the fires burning even while all his contemporaries, including Castillo walked away. We visit various groups around the world, from building squatters in Paris, rebels in Mexico and land seizers in Bolivia, all of whom are fighting the good fight and meeting with some success.
The film sounded interesting going in. I thought we'd actually get to know the groups and what they were really doing and the situations around them, and we get that on a cursory level. There are few details and no back stories with the result the discussion of a strike at a ship yard means nothing.
What we get are long winded discussion of the ideas of revolution. This is the language of Marx and Guevara where things like dialectics are discussed as if they are the most exciting things in the world. They aren't, they are boring as all hell. It's over intellectualization of simple ideas. Worse here its ideas with little real world connection.
Its awful and it drones on for over 100 minutes. By the time the ship building union spokesman droned on about whatever the hell he droned on about a good many people at the press screening had fled into the lobby to wait for the next film.
This film will put you to sleep if the inane nature of it doesn't have you throwing things at the screen.
Not to worry the NYFF screening is done so you can simply put this film on your must avoid list and and do something constructive
