Gasoline Rainbow (2023) First Look Fest 2024

Five high school aged kids set out in a van to travel 500 miles to see the ocean. Along the way life happens.

This is a form over content docudrama that succeeds as a work of art but is less successful as a narrative. This feels like a beautiful documentary, that might have worked had it been obvious by the shot choices and the way that things lay out that this free flowing trip across the Pacific Northwest was constructed by the cast and crew.  I say this in part because it's true and because the film moves the cast across the country in a way that only movies can move people. There is no real sense of danger, nor is there any real questioning when things go on, the kids just keep going.

Sure this a hymn of freedom and of impending lost innocence, but it's a professionally polished one. The result is a film that I admire  a lot more than I like. Its a film I would gladly watch with the sound off for the glorious pictures.

Samsara (2023) First Look 2024

Lois Patiño​ tells two stories, one of a man named Amid in Laos who meets a young monk. And the other of a young girl in Africa who wakes up to find her goat has given birth.

Quiet and meditative this is a film more about what you find in the contemplation of what it is showing you rather than with in what we are told. Actually what we are told isn't much since the film more or less is simply life unfolding. We are left to ponder the spiritual side of everything.

While I am a fan of Patino's, I kind of think he missed the mark with this film. While I know his films can be meditative, this time out I'm not certain there is enough to hold together a feature. My attention drifted off and my eyelids got heavy, and while I made it to the end I'm not certain there was enough here for me.

Worth a look for the interested, but not for the casual film goer.

WHAT DID YOU DREAM LAST NIGHT, PARAJANOV? First Look Fest 2024

 

Filmmaker Faraz Fesharaki mixes some home video footage of when he was child performing in a school pageant with zoom calls between himself and other members of his family who have scattered all over the world after leaving Iran. Over the course of the film we see the state of the family and the country they left behind.

I’m going to be honest this film didn’t work for me. The fact that we are simply listening to family conversations is interesting for a while, but there was a point about a third of the way in where I kind of stopped caring.  The film is much too static with everyone sitting or laying down and simply talking to the camera. While what they are saying is interested there isn’t enough here to keep my interest. My gaze kept drift despite Fesharaki efforts to make it compelling.  Perhaps this will play differently in a darkened theater, but at home watching a review copy I drifted.

Flying Lessons (2024) First Look Festival 2024

This is a chronicle of what happened when director Elizabeth Nichols meet Philly Abe, who was a tenant in her building at a community meeting. The pair were there because they were trying to do something about their evil landlord. The women bonded and Nichols became fascinated by punk Abe who was a performer, director and activist for decades.

Lovely portrait of a friendship and a life that might never have gotten noticed.

Abe was one hell of a figure. She was a woman who took no shit from anyone and changed the lives of the people around her. Nichols warts and all portrait is a fitting memorial to a woman who not so quietly rocked the pillars of heaven.  I am amazed that Nichols got  so much  from Abe since it seems we get to know not only about the life she led but about the woman herself beyond that. Normally we aren't allowed to see this deeply into an individual.

What connected me to the film was she reminds me of my late friend Sally Willis kind of looked like Abe and had her sense of life. I can only imagine what would have happened if they ever met.

This is a good look at a great woman.

Recommended.

 

Limitation (2023) First Look Fest 2024

Elene Asatiani and Soso Dumbadze take video found on the internet and weave together the story of how in 1991 Russian backed forces brought down the  first democratically elected government in the former Soviet republics. Using footage from both sides we are given a look at what happened, why and how it was spun.

Frightening and sad story of how larger forces worked to bring down a democracy for their own gain.  This is a reconstruction of the sort we never see, events from both sides filtered through enough time that we can get a good grasp. 

Watching the film shot by regular people I was frequently struck by the notion that they probably had no idea what they were doing was going to provide such a vital record of what happened. The footage from either side was what it was and was often bent for effected. It was the stuff that wasn't what I was intrigued by.

While I think the film is probably a bit too long at 125 minutes, I have to give the filmmakers kudos for being thorough. I also couldn't tell you what should be removed since it's all important.

Recommended for anyone who wants to see how a democracy falls.

Mimang (2023) First Look 2024

Filmed over four years MIMANG is the story of three chance meetings. First a man gets off a bus at the wrong stop and decides to walk to his destination. Along the way he meets a woman from his past. Jumping ahead the woman and the man meet again several years later and walk the same street. In the final section they meet at a funeral and ponder life.

How you react to the film will be determined by how you react to the nature of the film. There is no narrative, there are just three encounters. It's three conversations had while walking through the same parts of the city. As the characters have changed so has the world around them.

I suspect that some people are going to try and compare the film to Celine Song's film PAST LIVES, in that it's the remeeting of two people over time,  however MIMANG is something different, having been started five years ago. MIMANG is also not really interested in the arc of the characters but of the ideas discussed. We are only given the words of each of three conversations so that as a result be can only get to know the characters up to a certain point. In Song's film we are given a great deal more information.

While I enjoyed the film I was kept distant by the formality of the discussion. You can feel the construction and the hands of the director moving things along. Actually what this feels like is a theater piece that isn't really opened up. I would so absolutely buy this on stage, but on film, in real locations  feels less real and more artificial then it would on stage.

That said the discussions are heady and worth a listen.

Recommended.

The Featherweight (2023) First Look 2024

James Madio give a performance of a life time as boxing champ Willie Pep. Set after Pep retired and was preparing for a comeback in the mid 1960's, the film takes the form of a documentary that is being shot about his return to the ring.

Looking and feeling like a documentary from the time THE FEATHERWEIGHT is a film you fall into. If you have watched any documentaries from the same period of time I think you are going to find yourself thinking that most of this actually a doc. For me the spell was only broken when Stephen Lang was on screen. While Lang was his usual excellent self, his famous face dispelled the illusion of this being real.

THE FEATHERWEIGHT is a truly great film. It's a wonderful look not only at one man, but also into the world he inhabited. I'm not talking just the world of boxing, but hiw private life as well.

This is one of the must sees at this year's First Look Festival.

Solaris Mon Amour (2023) First Look

Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris was published the same year as Hiroshima Mon Amour was released. Using the two works of art as a pivot point, directors Kuba Mikurda and Izabela Zubrycka cut together 70 Eastern European educational films from the period and overlay it with a radio adaption of Solaris in order to create a trip to another world.  

Belt in ladies and gentleman this is a wild ride.

Weaving together a bunch of things that should never go together Mikurda and Zubrycka have created a film that creates its very own world. Watch the film we quickly fall under it spell and go to a planet far away. It's so well done that unless you know it was cut together from various sources, you would never know. (No really, this plays as an off-kilter art film from the period)

I personally love collage films like this because I find that when they are done right the illusion of reality is so much stronger than a regular film. As such, this film got me where I live and took me to some where else.

Highly recommended.

Achilles (2023) plays Saturday at First Look Fest 2024

It has been a over a week since I first saw ACHILLES and I am still haunted. This is a road trip to oppression that forces you to really ponder freedom, personal and artistic.

This is the story of a man named Achilles. Working at a hospital with orthopedics. Late one night  he is called to the psyche It seems a woman has broken  her hand from punching the wall, This is Hedieh, she is a political prisoner who is being held and medicated. Achilles becomes intrigued by her and he decides to take her out.

This is a film you need to just buy a ticket for and just watch, preferably in a theater where the world can be pushed away and the film can just happen. I say that because this is a deliberately made film that uses long takes, silences and intriguing visual cues that you need to really pay attention to. I say that because I got to a certain point and I had a grand "ah ha" moment and I saw how it was all going together before the narrative sucked me back into it.

I was rocked. Partly because the film is so good, and partly because the film has a great deal to say about creatives trapped in an oppressive regime. Knowing that Achilles is a filmmaker who has given up filmmaking one can not help but think of Jafar Panahi who been arrested by Iranian authorities because he will not stop speaking his truth. The film will make you wonder how director Farhad Delaram, himself being a person who was detained by authorities, made the film in Iran.

This is an amazing film you need to see.

Do yourself a favor and buy a ticket and get lost. Give yourself over to it's very deliberate pacing and construction and be moved.

Highly recommended

Sujo (2024) First Look Fest 2024

Father and son

Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez the team behind one of 2020's best films IDENTIFYING FEATURES return with SUJO the story of one young man's potential slide into oblivion.

The plot of the film concerns a young man named Sujo. He is the son of a cartel hit man who is left orphaned when his father is gunned down. He moves in with an aunt who lives like a hermit. However, because Sujo is a growing boy life has its pull and it seems as though he may be headed for a life in the cartels that destroyed his father.

A quiet and haunting film SUJO is a very good follow up to Rondero and Valadez's IDENTIFYING FEATURES. That film, about a mother's search for the son that crossed into the US, was the first film in 2020 to kick my ass. It was a powerful film I desperately tried to get people to see at Sundance and New Directors New Films. With SUJO the  ladies have made a film that is equally haunting.

Mixing a cinematic reality with a hint of something more SUJO is a film very much about life and fate. There is a mystical side to things such as when the deceased father of Sujo appears to his sister in law. We are in a definite place where things beyond the normal can and do happen. This is not to suggest this is a haunted film, rather one where spiritual things do exist.

The cast is across the board wonderful. Watching them there is a very real sense that they are drawing from their lives. As a result we are carried along by their truth no matter what happens.

If I maybe allowed to quibble with SUJO it would be to say that the film meanders a bit. There were a couple of times, in particular in the first half, where the pacing seems slack. My attention drifted. I came back around and the film still kicked my butt, however I still think if the film was a couple minutes shorter it would have had a bigger punch.

Quibble aside, SUJO  is a haunting film.  See it when it plays near you.

Footsteps (2023) First Look 2024

No offense to artist Fiona Tan, I don’t know if this film should be screened as an installation. Watching the film as a straight film I was transported to some place special, some place that isn’t going to be reached by seeing this in a museum with people wandering in and out.

FOOTSTEPS is made up of film shot from 1896 to the 1920'stinted, scored and with occasional letters from the perios being read over the images. It’s a trip back through time and space to a place not so far away.

I was transported. The world fell away and I got lost in the images. It was a magical experience. I’m not certain if being an installation is going to be quite as magical.

That said FOOTSTEPS will be  playing at the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look Festival  so feel free to wander in and take a look

There will be a reception and a Q&A with Fiona Tan on March 15.

Magic Mountain (2023) First Look 2024

Visually arresting portrait of a run down hospital in Georgia (the country) where patients with drug resistant TB are sent.

See this film on a big screen because the images are truly impressive. Beginning with a long drive to the hospital with an impassioned letter (which forms a narrative backbone of the whole film) the film then shifts to images of the people and places inside the hospital. It’s film that starts with us on the outside and an slowly brings us in to this place where we meet these interesting people. I was hooked from the first frame and as the film went I found myself leaning more and more into it.  I wish I was there to wander the halls to get a sense of the spaces and of the people off the edges of the screen.

This is a wonderful little gem that needs to be seen on a truly big screen.

Recommended.

First Look Fest Starts this week

The Museum Of The Moving Image’s annual First Look Fest starts this week and we are better for it.

The festival is New Yorkers first chance to get a look at films that made waves and won awards at other festivals across the globe before they get a regular run in theaters. The festival is a way of seeing a lot of films you may have heard of, or films you should have heard of before they become the talk of everyone in the film community.

This year the big film is SUJO, the award winner from Sundance that many people in my circle were talking up. While the other films on the slate don’t have that high level of visibility they are all films that have rightly gotten noticed.

I have been covering the festival for number of years now and I love that it points me toward a large number of films that delight me. Yes many films are ones that I missed elsewhere, but more often than not they are films that were not on my radar, so I had no idea that they existed.  Several films this year are like that, such as FOOTSTEPS, which is a trippy film about Amsterdam made up of hundred plus year old film. The film is a blast and a trip into another time and place.

I will have a lot of reviews coming in the next few days and it would behoove you to look at the slate and just buy tickets to anything that interests you. I say this because there is so much good stuff you almost certainly can’t go wrong.

While I will have reviews running starting tomorrow, I do want to suggest a couple of titles:

FOOTSTEPS- as I said above it's a trippy film about Amsterdam

ACHILLES is a killer look at two people dealing with the crushing nature of Iranian rule and their attempt to escape.

FEATHERWEIGHT is documentary like historical drama about featherweight boxer Willie Pep on the eve of his return to the ring.

and the opener SUJO which is a deeply moving film about a young man trying not to father's footsteps into life in the cartels.

And with that I leave you to go to the website and buy some tickets. I have more films to watch and review so check back through the festival for more suggestions.