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11/14/2003 Entry:
"The Rest Of CIFF"
Forgoing the day by day thing, I'm just going to put the rest of this out there. The Monday after seeing The Time Of The Wolf was probably the best of the festival. First on the day was Reconstruction, a film from Denmark that won the Golden Camera at Cannes this year. Its a very fractured and manufactured love story, bopping through time and space with a sort of Kieslowski influenced sense of fate. Gorgeous cinematography by Manuel Alberto Claro in a variety of stocks and formats. I really enjoyed this a lot while it was going on, and even though I realize now that its a little much, I would probably still enjoy it quite a bit if I watched it again. Despite all its film-making trickery (and this is a film which at some level is very much about film-making) it is very much alive. I can see how some people would hate this and I would understand perfectly. If this gets a release I can see it getting a lot of play.
Second film of this day was Tasi Ming-Liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn. A small story set in an old run down film house, focusing on the events surrounding its last day in business as it shows King Hu's Dragon Inn. There is not a lot going on here - a young man cruises for gay sex, the theatre's ticket taker struggles through her duties, an older man watches with his child. Yet this had me totally sold and I really enjoyed it. Tsai even actually moves the camera once in a while and in one section has some cuts that are mere seconds long. And people are saying this is boring! I fail to see how anyone who loves movies could not like this, especially during the scene where the two old men meet in the lobby after the film is over. I never thought I would be able to describe a Tsai film as touching. Many people already dislike this, but I don't understand them at all.
Tuesday saw me seeing a shorts program called Moments Of Impact - "Be it birth or death, losing a lover, or having a one night stand, each of these ten short films is defined by one major event with lasting impact." My main reason for seeing this program was to see the Agnes Varda short The Volatile Lion which was fun but nothing special, and Wong Kar-Wai's video for the DJ Shadow song "6 Days" was was stopped in the middle due to projector problems. Fuckers. Of what was left, Cracker Bag was by far the best. An Australian story of a girl going out to set off a bag of firecrackers she has dutifully saved for. Its a story of youth lost and disappointed dreams which was very nicely done, with a somewhat David Gordon Green feel to it. I think we're going to be seeing a lot of that kind of thing down the road, which will probably suck pretty badly alas. This won something at at Cannes too I think. I also enjoyed Seith Mann's Five Deep Breaths, the story of two black men avenging a perceived slight. There was nothing new here in termns of subject matter, but the leads were all very well done and the film was directed with confidence. The program closed with a Swedish shaort called She Is Dead by Henry Moore. Very odd and manufactured, but still enjoyable. Had me thinking of Songs From The Second Floor in terms of its formal style, although not nearly as great.
Wednesday was a second shorts program called Where You Stand - "Location can sometimes be the heaviest influence on a situation. This collection of eight short films examines the great effect that where you are can have on who you are." This program was also driven by two films I really wanted to see. The first was The Last Customer, Nanni Moretti's documentary about the closing of a local pharmacy. You wouldn't think a guy standing around a pahrmacy with a video camera would be so affecting but this is the closest I came to crying in the whole festival. These people had served the neighborhood for decades, they took the time to learn everyone's problems, they knew their customers, and they're going to be replaced by what? A Walgreens? This film had a lot to say about the shifting values of America and what is truly valued here, and its a fucking shame nobody reading this will ever get to see it. By far the best short I saw in the festival. The other short I was really jonesing for was The Skywalk Is Gone, Tsai Ming-Liang's sequel to What Time Is It There? Two people who had met on the skywalk search for each other unsuccsessfully. I liked it very much. I wish I could vocalize what it is about Tsai's films I love, because honestly I really don't know. I always come out of them happy to have seen them though. Some thought needs to be given on this subject. Outside of those two the most notable film was Like Twenty Impossibles, a Palestinian student film directed by Annemarie Jacir. A group of Palestinian youth going to Israel to make a film run into trouble at a checkpoint and attempt to go around, where they run into far worse trouble. It was pretty gutsy of the fest to show a film with such an unabashadly pro-Palestinian viewpoint, as demonstrated by the half dozen walkouts after it played. The film itself is interesting mainly in its pseudo-documentary style which is only believeable for so long, but still interesting to watch play out. I have no doubt shit like this goes down every single day over there.
I had two Iranian films on the agenda after the shorts program - At Five In The Afternoon by Samira Makhmalbaf, and The Joy Of Madness which is a documentary about the casting of At Five In The Afternooon by Samira's 14 year old sister Hana. The film itself was pretty disappointing, I don't remember a lot about it which is telling. It was preceded by a short called Press Any Button which had a really fun visual style I enjoyed a lot, although it didn't really go anywhere. After At Five In The Afternoon I ran next door to see how The Cubs, who were playing Game 7, were doing, and decided to skip Joy Of Madness in order to suffer the agoiny of watching them fucking lose. I don't even care about baseball, I shouldn't have to suffer through this bullshit. I'm a Bears fan, I have enough suffering in my life.
Finally Thursday brought the announcement that My Architect had won the best documentary award and was being brought back for a final showing as one of the Best Of The Fest films. Unfortunately Distant did not get brought back, and thus that one was lost forever. My Architect was kind of a conundrum. The film's subject, architect Louis Kahn, was utterly fascinating and the buildings he built were just magnificent. There is an interview late in the film with an architect in Bangladesh where Kahn built their National Assembly House. This is a phenomenal building. The architect talks about Kahn came to Bangladesh and made this building for basically no money but through a desire to give these people something from himself. It is a very touching moment, which unfortunately is not matched by much else in the film. Kahn's son uses My Architect as a way to try and discover his father, but all these scenes fall completely flat. He has no personality and it all comes off as a bad This American Life piece. However whenever they are showing the gorgeously photographed buildings or talking with just about every major modern day architect in the world about Kahn's influence, this is great. This is still worth seeing just from an informational standpoint, but someone needs to make a cut of this where the son doesn't exist and we can revel in the huge imposing unfinished concrete walls of Kahn's creations.
And that was it, there's the festival for another year. Lots of good stuff still to come though! New Guy Maddin movie in town! Polish film festival! Andrei Rublev at Doc! Will it never end?
Replies: 30 comments
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I would like to know cineblog's thoughts on this list: http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/page/0,11456,1082823,00.html
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Better link to above list
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For the last three years I’ve attended the CIFF, there’s always one film that I’ve missed prior on the fest circuit that, in the calm and civility of the Chicago festival, is a revelation to behold. The first time out it was Jia Zhang-ke’s “Unknown Pleasures"; last year it was Tsai Ming-liang’s “Goodbye Dragon Inn” and this year, my own personal favorite was a last minute addition to the lineup, “Kings and Queen” by Arnaud Despleschin … a lively intellectual tour-de-force that exposes the ties that bind families.The brilliance of Wizard World was that *we* were the freaks: Two normal-looking (well, Sam’s pretty foxy, but I digress) women who were there purely to see Joss Whedon speak.
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