Coverage of the Seattle International Film Festival and year-round art house programming in the Pacific Northwest.
Kathy Fennessy is President of the Seattle Film Critics Society, a Northwest Film Forum board member, and a Tomatometer-approved critic. She writes or has written for Amazon, Minneapolis's City Pages, Resonance, Rock and Roll Globe, Seattle Sound, and The Stranger.
WHOSE STREETS?(Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis, US, 104 mins)
South Central Los Angeles filmmaker Sabaah Folayan dedicates her directorial debut to Michael Brown Jr., which only makes sense since her documentary serves as a long-form response to his killing.
Folayan and St. Louis-based co-director Damon Davis start by recount- ing Brown's 2014 death at the hands of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson before plunging into the state of the streets in the aftermath.
Shaky camcorder and cellphone footage provide the on-the-scene visuals to which they inter-cut interviews with young men and women of color. Speakers include Brittany Farrell, a nursing student-turned-activist and single mother, and David Whitt, a father of two who diligently documents every potential act of police misconduct that he witnesses. Both face arrest and eviction as a result of their actions, though Farrell, more happily, also marries fellow activist Alexis during the film. Context comes by way of tweets, inter-titles, and television news reports.
Throughout, Folayan and Davis capture marches, rioting, looting, tear gas, rubber bullets, and the non-Obama-sanctioned deployment of the National Guard before proceeding to the protests following the grand jury decision, the Ferguson October march, and the Department of Justice finding of racial bias on the part of the Ferguson Police Department.
If Michael Brown never received the justice he deserved, his murder galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement. Though the camera work may prove challenging for some, Whose Streets allows protesters to speak for themselves free from the narratives imposed on them by media outlets who can't possibly know their lives the way they do.
By May 29,
SIFF '17 was
well into its
second week
when I caught
a screening of The Work, an
intimate, in-
tense docu-
mentary Indie- Wire's Eric Kohn praised
when it pre-
miered at this year's SXSW Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize. The screening featured appearances from brothers Jairus (co-director) and Miles McLeary (producer).
McLeary's first feature (made with Gethin Aldous) is an atypical prison film in that it focuses more on therapy as it applies to men--in or out of prison--than on statistics or back stories, though they come into play, as well. Instead of spending their time exclusively with prisoners, the filmmakers documented a group therapy program at Folsom Prison that brings civi-
lians and inmates together--with no guards to supervise the proceedings.
The film made me angry at all the fathers who've taught their sons to hide their emotions, since all that fear and frustration is bound to come out in other ways, like the commission of violent crimes. One incarcerated participant who grew up in that sort of environment, cries for the first time in 15 years, an emotional breakthrough that's difficult, if cathartic to watch. Not surprisingly, the McLearys' father is a clinical psychologist.
S.J. Chiro and Clane Hayward with cast and crew.
For more information, check out the SIFFcast interview with Jairus McLeary at this link.
On June 2, I
caught local
filmmaker S.J.
Chiro's years-
in-the-making
directorial de-
but, Lane 1974. Chiro
based the film on Clane Hayward's The Hypocrisy of Disco combined with recollections of her own communal living experiences. I firmly believe that
if she hadn't found the right actress to play Lane, it wouldn't work, so it's
fortunate that she found Sophia Mitri Schloss, who wears the role of ob-
servant, resilient 13-year-old with ease. In the Q&A, Chiro noted that
Sophia was too young when they first met, so the long pre-production
process paid off by allowing her to grow into the part. SIFF awarded Lane 1974 the New American Cinema Competition Grand Jury Prize. The next
screening takes place during the Best of SIFF at the Uptown on June 17. Fun fact: KEXP DJ Kevin Cole plays an instructor at Lane's village school.
David Lowery at the Uptown.
A Ghost Story
would prove to
be one of the
hottest tickets
of the festival.
I attended the
June 9 screen-
ing with direc-
tor David Lowery in
attendance. His
follow-up to
the well re-
ceived family film Pete's Dragon is an an odd, circular meditation on grief and place that features Rooney Mara
and Casey Affleck as a couple living in a haunted house. At the Q&A,
Lowery said that he recruited the actors via text message. They took him
by surprise when both agreed to participate before they had even read the
script (Mara and Affleck previously appeared in his western-melodrama Ain't Them Bodies Saints). If anything, Lowery says, Affleck was perfectly happy to spend the bulk of the shoot under a sheet since he plays the ghost of the title (lest this seem like a spoiler, Affleck plays both haunted man and haunting man; the spoiler is in the way Lowery pulls it off).
And that's a wrap! I'm sorry I didn't get more of a chance to write about all of the films I saw, not counting capsule reviews for The Stranger, a program note for the festival guide, and two previous blog posts. These are the other titles: After the Storm, Bad Black, Endless Poetry, The Fabulous Allan Carr, The Farthest, The Fixer, Handsome Devil, Lady Macbeth, The Landing, Landline, The Last Family, Manifesto, My Journey Through French Cinema, Nocturama, The Oath, Sami Blood, Step, and Weirdos. If I had to pick one favorite, it would probably be Bertrand Tavernier's documentary about French film. Here's hoping the proposed sequel comes to pass, because it would be great to hear what he has to say about Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer, Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Leos Carax, François Ozon, and so many of the other filmmakers that slipped beyond the borders of his 190-minute frame.
Endnote: SIFF '17 came to an end with the announcement of the Golden Space Needle Awards and the closing night film, Raoul Peck's The Young Karl Marx. I found no release dates listed yet, but the Orchard is handling distribution, so a theatrical release seems likely, particularly since Peck is coming off an Oscar nomination for I Am Not Your Negro. The Orchard will also be handling distribution duties for The Work and Lane 1974.
I'm not certain why the great Hirokazu Koreeda (After Life) chose this year to grace Seattle with his presence, but I'm grateful that he did. If I'm not mistaken, he's never done so before (I caught a screening of Nobody Knows at the 2004 London Film Festival, but he was not in attendance).
I attended the second and final screening of After the Storm on May 20 at which Koreeda was accompanied by a translator and SIFF programming director Stan Shields. The roof-raising volume of the applause that greeted Shields' introduction appeared to truly humble the soft-spoken filmmaker.
In some ways, his new film plays like a companion piece to 2008's Still Walking, which I recently picked up on Criterion, not least because it also features small, sly performer Kirin Kiki as the family matriarch and lanky, sad-eyed Hiroshi Abe as her son--but a lot funnier (Kiki has appeared in every Koreeda film to date). In fact, it almost qualifies as a comedy, something that couldn't said of Still Walking, in which the two generations never quite come together.
During the Q&A, Koreeda says he drew from his own family--in addition to their typhoon-plagued Kiyose hometown--which surprised some audience members, since he's a successful film director, while the divorced father in the film, a gambling-addicted novelist struggling to maintain a relationship with his son, can't quite get his shit together, but there may be elements of Koreeda in Abe's character, Ryôta, that we don't know about, whereas Kiki's character, Yoshiko, was explicitly inspired by his widowed mother.
McIntyre, Giraldo, Grainger, Solomon, and Lipitz.
Compared to his other films, After the Storm feels smaller and looser, but it's definitely worth seeing--like everything he's ever done. His last film, Our Little Sister(SIFF '16) was among my favorites of the year. After the Storm, a Film Movement release, has finished its run of film festivals, but I was unable to find any US release dates. I'll update this post once I do.
I was initially skeptical of Step, because it received funding from Paul Allen's Vulcan Productions, so it's been getting a disproportionate amount of local attention. Like many midsize cities, Seattle tends to overpraise anything with ties to the local economy, but sincere praise from audience members and critics, like Mike Ward, encouraged me to leave work early to catch the final screening on May 22. It was a wise decision, not just because it's a fine film, but because director Amanda Lipitz was joined by Gari "Coach G" McIntyre and the Baltimore high school seniors featured in the film: Blessin Giraldo, Cori Grainger, and Tayla Solomon.
In the film, a sure bet for 2017's Oscar long list, Lipitz isn't doing anything that hasn't been done before, but that doesn't make it any less effective. Rousing, but free of false uplift, the documentary resides on a continuum with The Wire and Hoop Dreams (inner-city blues) to one side and Our Song and The Fits (youth steppers) to the other. I was also reminded of 20 Feet from Stardom, a SIFF Centerpiece selection focused on underappreciated women of color, and Precious, in which education gives a neglected teenager everything her parents have been unable (or unwilling) to provide. The former would end up winning the Academy Award for best documentary. Step, which seems likely to appeal to many of the same viewers, opens nationwide on 8/4. Don't miss it.
Endnote: Click here for my first dispatch, a write-up of Jeffrey Schwarz's The Fabulous Allan Carr. SIFF '17 runs through Sunday, June 11.
I caught the first screening of The Fabulous Allan Carr on May 19 with director Jeffrey Schwarz in attendance. It was also my first screening of the 43rd Seattle International Film Festival, since I missed the opening night film, Michael Showalter's The Big Sick, which screened the night before (it opens in Seattle on July 7). Schwarz's latest film focuses on the extravagant producer of the monster-hit musical Grease and, most notoriously, the disco bomb Can't Stop the Music (of which more than a few fans were in the house). Schwarz knows this Tinseltown territory well, since he also directed 2013's I Am Divine and 2015's Tab Hunter Confidential, and although he didn't mention it during the intro or the Q&A after the screening, he directed 2008's Wrangler, too.
With Clinton McClung.
In reviewing Wranger for Video Librarian, I wrote that it "isn't just a story about one man's life in and out of the porn business, but about popular conceptions of masculinity since the 1950s." It's a theme running though Schwarz's work, especially since subjects like Divine (née Harris Milstead) and Carr (née Allan Solomon) didn't fit popular conceptions of masculinity, yet still found ways to thrive in the make-it-up-as-you-go-along 1970s and beyond by charting their own unique courses. On Facebook, SIFF programmer Clinton McClung noted that Schwarz's "doc on William Castle [2007's Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story] is also one on my faves, but I didn't mention it because it is sadly underseen."
With producing partners Larry Spitler and John Boccardo.
Allan Carr screened again on May 20 with Schwarz making a second appearance (and he's no stranger to SIFF, since he was last in town with Tab Hunter, the film and the man). It's a good documentary, but Schwarz is better as a storyteller than a visual stylist, and it will probably play better on the small screen. There are no more SIFF screenings, but it's continuing to make the festival rounds. For more on the film, my friend Chris Burlingame interviewed Schwarz for The Sunbreak.
Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. [Sony Pictures Classics]
TONI ERD- MANN (Maren Ade, Ger- many, 2016, 162 mins.)
Toni Erdmann, the character, is a death clown, a life coach, and a big, hairy Bulgarian monster. Toni Erdmann, the Oscar-nominated film from German filmmaker Maren Ade, is a farce, a tearjerker, and a bonkers take on globalization and its discontents.
It begins with a shaggy German music teacher, Winfried (Austrian theater veteran Peter Simonischek, simultaneously soulful and impish), who likes to play practical jokes that no one appreciates. His mother is an ungrateful grump, his ex-wife has moved on with her life, and his daughter, an oil industry consultant, is based in Romania. He's a lonely man with no one but his blind mutt, Willy, to keep him company.
When his daughter, Ines (the wondrous Sandra Hüller, who first caught my eye as a Belle de Jour-inspired sex surrogate in 2010's Brownian Move- ment) drops by for a short visit, Winfried tries to connect with her, but she spends most of the time making work calls. Later, after a couple of per-
sonal setbacks, Winfried decides to visit Ines in Bucharest where his at-
tempts to make her laugh--involving a set of false teeth and a cheese grater--fall flat, so he pretends to leave only to re-emerge as Toni Erd-
mann, a goofy gent who pops up at the most inopportune times, like when Ines is with friends, coworkers, or the CEO she's desperate to impress.
At first, she plays along, but her discomfort grows as she starts to see her life through Toni's eyes: the casual sexism she tolerates on a daily basis, the snobbishness of her social set, and the real-world consequences of her boardroom decisions. Director Ade (Everyone Else) combines several films in one, and Toni Erdmann shouldn't work as well as it does, but it flows smoothly from comic set-pieces to humiliating encounters to Buñuel-like surrealism as a birthday party takes a turn for the transcendently strange. If the 162-minute film threatens to wear out its welcome, Ade brings everything home with a humanist's light, loving touch.
