When it comes to body horror, David Cronenberg has long been the king, but since the 2000s, more female filmmakers have been entering the fray, most notably Julia Ducournau (Raw and Cannes Palme d'Or winner Titane) and Coralie Fargeat (Cannes best screenplay winner The Substance).
Not all female-made films have garnered as much acclaim, but the higher profile of these award-winners--including a Golden Globe for The Substance star Demi Moore--has expanded the audience for the kinds of squishy, squirm-inducing concepts once relegated to drive-ins and grindhouses.
It doesn't come as a surprise to see women coming at the subgenre from different angles than their male predecessors, particularly in terms of the way society judges women's looks, the way women judge their own looks, and the more extreme methods some women use to make improvements. (That said, the transformation of the late socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein's face from what it was to what it became played out like real-time horror to me.)
Many of these films use Mary Shelley's Frankenstein--love that a 21-year-old woman created the template for today's body horror over 200 years ago--as a jumping-off point as an antihero puts more faith in science than they should to make things "right," as they see it. To use dead or donor tissue, for instance, to recreate that which has been lost or to prettify perceived imperfections. For what it's worth, my oral surgeon used donor tissue when I had a gum graft several years ago, so I'm a recipient, and I'm grateful.
BAFTA award-winning New Zealand-American filmmaker Sasha Rainbow's antihero is a Chinese biochemistry student with a genetic facial scar. Unlike Moore's 50-year-old Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance, she isn't concerned with the restoration of youth, since she already has youth on her side, but with the eradication of a flaw.
In the prologue, the young girl (played by Mohan Liu) looks to her biochemist father for hope, since he has a scar, too, but his attempt at a scar-erasing skin graft goes awry in a sequence that isn't especially believable, though it's plenty horrifying (there's no mention of a mother).
When Rainbow catches up with Wei (Joyena Sun) as a 21-year-old, she's picked up where her father left off by attempting to perfect a skin graft that will solve her problem--but without creating more--though because of the reddish scar's placement, she can conceal it with her hair or ever-present scarf, so it isn't as noticeable. On her father, it was impossible to miss.
When Wei gets the chance to study in New Zealand, she takes it, since she hasn't had an easy time of it in China.
In Tāmaki Makaurau, aka Aucklund, she stays with her Aunty Ling (Xiao Hu, Taika Waititi's upcoming Klara and the Sun) and her college-age daughter, Angela (3 Body Problem's Jess Hong), in their palatial, if unfinished Remuera manor. The former is a bitter, if well meaning divorcée who sells beauty products--an underexplored angle--while the latter is flashy and outgoing in all the ways Wei is understated and withdrawn.
Angela considers Wei an imposition, not least because she embodies a culture--her mother's culture--she finds off-putting. Though we're meant to sympathize with Wei, there's something odd about her, not because of her culture, but because she eats noisily, peeks through keyholes, and ignores social cues. If Angela and her bottle-blonde friend, Eve (Sweet Tooth's Eden Hart), can be bitchy, Wei mistakes their fake smiles for something real.
In the meantime, she befriends John (Evil Dead Rise's Mark Mitchinson), a scarred vagrant who hangs around the university in an out-of-the-way area. Wei says she wants to help people like them, but he ensures her that she's "already beautiful." She finds another advocate in the biochemistry professor (Jared Turner, another Sweet Tooth actor) who oversees her lab work, not simply because she's a brilliant student, but because he sees her grafting research as an opportunity to secure funding--at her expense.
If Wei is able to build on her father's unfinished work, she makes the foolhardy decision to experiment on herself--precisely what got him in deadly trouble--and when someone in her orbit suffers a grievous facial injury, she experiments on them, too. As in John Woo's Face/Off, an unexpected inspiration, the grafts heal super-fast. Wei removes an upper layer of skin, applies one of her plant-powered grafts, and within seconds, it heals and blends right in. At first. It wouldn't be a body horror film if there wasn't some kind of a catch.
It all leads to a situation I didn't see coming and won't spoil, other than to say that the film splits in two--and then three--akin to Adam Schimberg's A Different Man with Adam Pearson and Sebastian Stan as Before and After, a film also involving facial disfigurement and a miracle cure, except without the horror. In both cases, though, science can't fix a person's psyche.
And Wei's psyche, which was never all that secure to begin with, completely unravels in ways that are never boring, but the further Grafted strays from reality, the less effective it becomes, despite the more serious cultural and sociological elements at play. For what it's worth, though, Wei never completely rejects her cultural heritage--Rainbow wrote the film with horror fiction writer Lee Murray and Filipina filmmaker Mia Maramara, who adapted it from an idea provided by Malaysian producer Hweiling Ow.
In the end, the film's moral is exactly what I expected it to be: 1) don't risk your life to fix a physical imperfection, and 2) don't risk the lives of others in the process. None of this is as affecting or as humorous as I would have hoped, but the entire human (and animal) cast is up to the task, and I can't say I wasn't entertained--there's also a fun reveal during the end credits.
One way or the other: I'm curious to see what Sasha Rainbow does next.
Grafted premieres in the US on Shudder on Fri, Jan 24. Fun fact: Jess Hong and Jared Turner have both appeared on Kiwi detective series The Brokenwood Mysteries. Last year, I streamed the first four seasons via Cascade PBS (my employer). Images from Vilcek Foundation, NZ Herald, and YouTube via Sasha Rainbow/Mister Smith Entertainment (poster image and Joyena Sun as Wei) and MeisterDrucke (Frankenstein book cover).
This review, written for Video Librarian in 2020, fell between the cracks while the publication was in flux, and I believe the release deserves attention, so I've recreated it here with a few minor updates, revisions, and images. THE SOUL OF THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (Stan Harris and Tom Trbovich, 2020, USA, 572 minutes)
The biggest soul, funk, and R&B stars of the 1970s appear on this five-disc Time Life set (condensed from the 10-disc version).
Film and TV producer Burt Sugarman, who created NBC's live music series The Midnight Special (1972 to 1981), had a knack for recognizing emerging artists in addition to masters of the form, like James Brown ("Sex Machine," "The Payback") and Ray Charles ("Georgia on My Mind," and "It Takes Two to Tango," a duet with Aretha Franklin), who were still going strong decades after they launched their careers.
Wolfman Jack served as announcer and host, while Helen Reddy filled the host spot from 1975-1976. The two appear in clips at the top of the show, though artists often introduced other artists, giving them the opportunity to share their thoughts about each other. Paul Williams, for instance, marvels at the height of the black and yellow-clad Stylistics ("Betcha by Golly Wow," "I'm Stone in Love with You"). It's not simply that Williams is short, but that most every man who performed on the show between 1973 and 1976 wore platform heels (Williams also marvels at their dance moves).
It was a different era in other respects, too, since there's no evidence of lip-syncing, though some artists perform to prerecorded backing tracks. Consequently, the strongest voices rise to the top, like Gladys Knight & the Pips ("I Heard It through the Grapevine") and Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers ("Do It Again," "Respect Yourself"). Knight also appears in a bonus interview from 1995 in which she goes into detail about her career. As she notes, "Midnight Train to Georgia" began life as "Midnight Plane to Houston," but the group had no interest in flying and no connection to Texas.
For a few performances, solo singers and vocal groups perform on a bare stage. Barry White, dressed in a rhinestone-studded brocade jacket, takes the opposite tack when he performs several songs, including swirling instrumental "Love's Theme," with the sprawling Love Unlimited Orchestra. It's truly amazing they could all fit on one stage. Bill Withers, by contrast, just needed a guitar for "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" and a piano for "Lean on Me."
When artists, especially less experienced ones, appeared on the show, they knew it might be their only shot, so there isn't an act phoning it in. As interviewee Gerald Alston of the Manhattans (“Shining Star") puts it, "The Midnight Special gave us a time to shine, and boy, did we shine."
Everybody is giving it their all, though some performers have that extra something, like a sensual Al Green ("Tired of Being Alone," "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), rollicking Wilson Pickett ("In the Midnight Hour"), and an impassioned Sly Stone ("I Want to Take You Higher").
In addition to their energetic performances, they benefit from sartorial excellence, from Green's tailored suit to Pickett's leather pants and chiffon shirt to Stone's black jumpsuit and wide-brimmed hat, both covered with rhinestone-studded stars and moons. In addition to Knight and Alston, other interviewees include James Brown and Patti LaBelle. Recommended.
The Soul of the Midnight Special is available through Time Life. Images from Pic Click AU (Sly Stone) and BB Product Reviews (Gladys Knight).
These reviews, written for Video Librarian between 2018-2019, fell between the cracks when the publication was between owners, and I believe that the three documentaries deserve attention, so I've recreated them here with a few minor updates, revisions, and images.
BEI BEI (Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, USA, 2019, 88 minutes)
By 2011, Bei Bei Shuai, a 35-year-old Chinese national, had been living in the United States for 10 years when she attempted to kill herself after a traumatic breakup. Her 53-year-old boyfriend, a married coworker, had promised to help raise their child, but then changed his mind at the last minute. She survived the suicide attempt, but her newborn daughter died shortly after birth, and Indianapolis authorities charged her with feticide.
Co-directors Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt (The Education of Shelby Knox) catch up with Bei Bei after she has served 435 days in jail. Initially, she didn't seek a plea agreement for fear of deportation. With the pro bono assistance of trial attorney Linda Pence, she is released on bail.
Though the filmmakers don't provide any details about Pence's background, it's clear this isn't just another job for the longtime litigator, but a case that could have significant repercussions for other women in similar predicaments.
Pence sees it as the culmination of the personhood laws that sprung up in the wake of Laci Peterson's murder. Republican Senator Mike Murphy explains to the filmmakers why he co-authored such a law, while VP Mike Pence (no relation to Linda) features in archival footage, during his tenure in Congress, arguing that a fetus should have full legal protections.
Upon her release until trial, Bei Bei returns to the restaurant she managed. She says she used to think she was weak, but now realizes she was suffering from depression. There were also cultural factors at play, like the shame in raising a child by herself. With Linda Pence's help, Bei Bei beats the legal odds, but a dispiriting postscript notes that the fight continues as over 1,000 US women have been arrested under fetal harm laws.
THE ISSUE OF MR. O'DELL (Rami Katz, 2018, Canada, 35 minutes)
Jack O’Dell, a 95-year-old civil rights activist, looks back at his momentous life in Canadian filmmaker Rami Katz's illuminating documentary. Katz, who shot the film primarily in black and white, constructs it around an interview with O'Dell, an insightful speaker, now based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
O'Dell recalls that he grew up in Detroit with family members who weren't afraid to speak out about injustice, like his father, uncle, and cousin, who all sued a segregated golf club in Florida. If life in prewar Detroit wasn't perfect, he felt like he was part of a community. Once he left to attend college in the South, however, he experienced segregation for the first time.
From there, he went on to the US Merchant Marine through which he became involved with the NMU (National Maritime Union) and the Communist Party, sparking his interest in non-violent direct action.
While working in New Orleans in 1956, he received a summons to testify at the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. At that point, he decided that he would rather concentrate on activism than politics, since he felt that civil rights had a better chance of catching on in the United States than socialism.
In the 1960s, he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to assist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with his efforts on behalf of voter registration. "We were all working," he says, "for the elimination of the insult of segregation." His communist past, however, caught the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, leading President John F. Kennedy to recommend that King cut ties with O'Dell, which he did.
The documentary ends with a recap of O'Dell's post-SCLC activities in addition to his thoughts about direct action today. This is a short, but potent documentary. According to the Cinema Guild website, "Jack O’Dell passed away in 2019 at the age of 96, after this film was completed."
WARRIOR WOMEN (Christina D. King and Elizabeth A. Castle, 2019, USA, 64 minutes)
Filmmakers and producers Christina D. King and Elizabeth A. Castle profile two generations of Native American activists in Warrior Women, which aired on PBS stations (the documentary draws from Castle's book, Women Were the Backbone and Men Were the Jawbone: Native American Activism During the Red Power Movement).
Throughout the film, the directors alternate between archival footage, present-day appearances, and a round table with Madonna Thunder Hawk, her daughter Marcella, her sister Mabel Ann, and her niece Lakota.
Madonna grew up on a Lakota reservation in South Dakota. When the government built a series of dams along the Missouri River, her family had to move 50 miles away. Their people lost millions of acres of land in the process. She also attended an Indian boarding school, which discouraged cultural traditions, but the experience only served to embolden her.
When the government relocated her to the Bay Area in the 1960s, she learned about organizing from the Black Panthers and the United Farm Workers, and participated in the AIM (American Indian Movement) occupations of Mount Rushmore and Alcatraz before returning to South Dakota to advocate for civil rights, inspiring Marcy to do the same. Since her mother wasn't always there for her emotionally, Marcy reflects, "It's easier for me to think of her as Madonna, the activist, rather than as my mom."
Now Marcy also balances activism with motherhood, while Madonna continues to encourage Native American self-reliance through education, land ownership, and food production.
Just as Madonna oversaw a survival school in the 1970s, Marcy has launched one of her own. Concludes her mother, "That's what we really need; we need the younger generation to pick up the reins." Warrior Women is an encouraging look at a necessary and enduring movement.
Bei Bei is available to stream through Kanopy and Vimeo, The Issue of Mr. O'Dell is available to stream through YouTube and Kanopy and on Blu-ray and DVD for educational use through Cinema Guild, and Warrior Women is available on DVD and streaming for educational use through Good Docs.
Images from DOC NYC (Bei Bei), the IMDb (Bei Bei poster), Cinema Guild (Jack O'Dell), AP / The New York Times (O'Dell in 1956), ITVS (Madonna Thunder Hawk and Marcy Gilbert), and Good Docs (Warrior Women poster).
This is a revived and revised version of a 2007 Amazon film review that dropped off the site over the years. This tends to happen when a home video release keeps appearing in new forms, like a standard release in 2008 or a Blu-ray/DVD edition in 2019.
CONTROL
(Anton Corbijn, UK, 2007, 122 minutes)
In his elegiac directorial debut, photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn combines the music film with the social drama to stunning success.
Adapted by Matt Greenalgh (Sam Taylor-Johnson's early-Lennon portrait Nowhere Boy) from Deborah Curtis's clear-eyed 1995 memoir, Touching from a Distance, Control recounts the tale of a working-class lad about to hit the highest highs only to be waylaid by the lowest lows.
Born and raised in Macclesfield, a suburban community outside Manchester, Ian Curtis (newcomer Sam Riley in a remarkable performance) dreams of fronting a rock band. Just out of high school in the mid-1970s, and besotted by the proto-punk coming out of New York and the art rock coming out of London, he finds three like-minded musicians, Peter Hook (Joe Anderson), Bernard Sumner (James Anthony Pearson), and Stephen Morris (Harry Treadaway), with whom he forms post-punk quartet Warsaw, aka Joy Division. Riley and cast mates ably recreate their somber sound.
All the while, in between shifts at various employment agencies, he falls in love, marries, and fathers a daughter with Deborah (Samantha Morton, turning a thankless role into a triumph). While Curtis should be enjoying parenthood and newfound fame, he's plagued by seizures. A diagnosis of epilepsy leads to powerful medications with unpredictable side effects.
Then, while on tour, Ian falls in love with another woman, Belgian journalist Annik Honoré (Alexandra Maria Lara). His solution to these problems is a matter of public record, but Corbijn concentrates on Curtis's brief, eventful life rather than his tragic death, unlike Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, which also focused on the Manchester music scene of the 1970s and '80s.
Just as Control establishes a link between such disparate black-and-white pictures as fellow photographer Bruce Weber's 1988 Chet Baker elegy Let's Get Lost and kitchen-sink classics like Tony Richardson's 1962 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner with Tom Courtenay, the Dutch-born, UK-based director presents his subject not as some iconic t-shirt image, but as a deeply flawed--if massively talented--human being.
An impressive debut from a filmmaker who knew the band, the geographic and cultural milieu, and most of all: the man at the center of the maelstrom.
Control is available on home video and on numerous streaming platforms, including free services, like Tubi and Plex (with ads). Images from Hanway Films (Sam Riley), The New York Times via The Weinstein Company (Riley with Joe Anderson), and The Guardian (Riley with Samantha Morton).
This is a revived and revised version of a 2007 Amazon film review that dropped off the site over the years. This tends to happen when a home video release keeps appearing in new forms, like a special edition in 2008 or a two-disc collector's edition in 2019.
I'M NOT THERE
(Todd Haynes, 2007, USA, 135 minutes)
Unapologetically audacious, I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' fifth narrative feature, is more postmodern puzzle than by-the-numbers biopic. A title card sets the scene: "Inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan."
The film features no figure by that name. Instead, Haynes, in conjunction with cowriter Oren Moverman, presents six characters, each incarnating different stages in the artist's shape-shifting career. Perfume's Ben Whishaw, cast as black-clad poet Arthur Rimbaud, serves as the slippery narrator.
The action begins with the wanderings of an 11-year-old Black runaway named "Woody Guthrie" (Marcus Carl Franklin)--his raucous duet with Richie Havens on 1965's "Tombstone Blues" is a highlight--and ends with a silver-haired Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) watching the Old West die before his very eyes.
In the interim, there's the folk singer-turned-preacher (Christian Bale), the self-centered actor (Heath Ledger), and the puckish rock star (Cate Blanchett, who has Don't Look Back-era Dylan down to a science).
The chronology is purposefully non-linear, and editor Jay Rabinowitz (8 Mile, Requiem for a Dream) cuts rapidly, Godard-style, between cinéma vérité B&W and saturated color, Richard Lester-like slapstick, and Fellini-inspired surrealism (Haynes regular Ed Lachman served as cinematographer).
What makes the picture fun for adventurous Dylan fans--and potentially frustrating for neophytes--is that every album and movie bears an alternate title. Ledger's Robbie, for instance, stars in "Grain of Sand," either or both a reference to Pete Seeger's lullaby "One Grain of Sand" from 1956 or (more likely) to Dylan's gospel-inspired "Every Grain of Sand" from 1981, a Shot of Love selection championed by admiring artists from Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash--it was performed at his funeral--to Patti Smith and Elvis Costello.
As in Todd Haynes' 1998 glam rock reverie Velvet Goldmine, which also starred Christian Bale, the trickery involves the entire cast. While Julianne Moore plays former lover Alice, a dead ringer for Joan Baez; Michelle Williams embodies elusive scenester Coco, i.e. Edie Sedgwick.
Just as the film brings together experienced actors and newcomers, the soundtrack mixes originals with covers and veterans with younger players, like Jim James's heartfelt "Goin' to Acapulco" from 1975's The Basement Tapes and Willie Nelson's tender "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)" from 1978's Street Legal. In both cases, Calexico provides sympathetic backing.
If I'm Not There is less affecting than Anton Corbijn's cool-headed, chronological Ian Curtis biopic Control, the year's other notable musician portrait, it rewards repeat viewing like few previous biographical features.
I'm Not There is available on numerous streaming platforms, including free services, like Tubi and Plex (with ads). Near as I can tell, the various home video versions are all out of print, though used copies abound, sometimes for ridiculous prices. Images from Ty Burr's Watch List (the six Dylans), SensCritique (Ben Whishaw), and The Metrograph (Cate Blanchett).
SCALA!!! or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits
(Jane Giles and Ali Catterall, UK, 2023 96 minutes)
When I first read a description of Jane Giles' and Ali Catterall's 2023 documentary Scala!!! in last year's Cucalorus Film Festival guide (below), I thought, "That sounds like fun," and I added it to my itinerary. Better yet, Giles, a former Scala Cinema programmer, would be in attendance with Vic Roberts, a former usher at the London movie palace, who had since relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina, where Cucalorus takes place.
During Britain's post-punk Thatcher years, London's legendary Scala cinema offered community refuge with a programme ranging from established classics and offbeat cult hits to sexploitation, horror, Kung Fu and LGBTQIA+ titles. Nudging the boundaries of convention, the cavernous picture palace acted as a source of inspiration for movie lovers and creatives. Featuring a cornucopia of interviews, archive and film clips, this is an engrossing tribute to an indelible legacy.
My biggest fear wasn't that I wouldn't enjoy Scala!!!, since I was certain that a film about a London repertory house that specialized in the odd, the offbeat, and the transgressive would be right up my alley. I mean, what's not to love? In their first go-round as documentarians, Giles, the programmer and former acquisitions head, and Catterall, the cultural critic and author, might have cocked things up, but they would've had to work pretty hard to make something dull out of the materials at their disposal.
No, my biggest fear is that the whole thing would play like a party that I had missed or to which I hadn't been invited. Giles had fun as a programmer, Roberts had fun as an usher, and Catterall had fun as an attendee–though the film doesn't stint on any of the cinema's hilarious and hair-raising challenges–but I never made it to the Scala when I lived in London in the mid-1980s. In fact, I don't remember hearing about it, and I thought I was pretty plugged in by reading NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds.
Notably, NME writer Nick Kent puts in an appearance, mostly to talk about the time David Bowie arranged for Lou Reed and Iggy & the Stooges to play the Scala in 1972, six years before it became a cinema (he goes into detail in the extended interview).
In case you're experiencing FOMO, Kent claims that Lou wasn't all that, but Iggy knocked his socks clean off. Until I watched Scala!!!, I had no idea that Mick Rock's iconic cover shots for Reed's 1972 Transformer and the Stooges' 1973 Raw Power emerged from the two-night London engagement.
During its run from 1978 to 1993, the King's Cross cinema, which started out on Tottenham Street, wasn't exactly a secret--John Waters and other Americans were aware of it--but I was spending so much time immersed in the city's music scene that I missed out on a lot of its cinematic happenings. Before the Cucalorus screening began, I told Giles I regretted that I didn't make it to the Scala when I had the chance, and she assured me the film would make me feel as if I had. It's a bold claim, but she was right.
I'm not sure exactly how she and Catterall pulled it off, but they did. On the surface, they aren't doing anything that hasn't been done before.
They interviewed actors, musicians, and filmmakers who attended screenings, programmed series, like the Shock Around the Clock horror all-nighters, or had their work shown at the Scala, and gathered up all the calendars, photographs, and video clips they could find. All of those things might have been sufficient, except they also hired animator Osbert Parker to recreate incidents that weren't otherwise documented or documentable and musician and graphic designer Luke Insect to add buzzy snap, crackle and pop to the inter-titles.
Then, they hired solo player Barry Adamson, a former member of Magazine and the Bad Seeds, to compose the finger-snapping, Elmer Bernstein-like score (Giles and Adamson also appear in the documentary as subjects).
In writing about Scala!!!, it's hard not to emulate the film's discursive nature, because the interpersonal connections are endless, but filmmakers Ben Wheatley and Peter Strickland, who both put in appearances, were Scala attendees (Wheatley's interview is audio-only). Luke Insect worked on the former's 2013 historical horror A Field in England and Adamson appeared, as an actor, in the latter's 2018 haute couture horror In Fabric.
I've always been drawn to documentaries that don't just depict a person or a phenomenon, but recapture the look or feel of the thing being depicted, and that's what they've done. The breakneck pace and staticky graphics emulate the punk, post punk, and new wave styles of the films screened at the Scala, in addition to the music attendees were buying and/or making and the calendars, which doubled as eye-catching posters for punters to tack up on walls and refrigerators, as I'm sure many did. If you lived in a hip college town or plugged-in metropolis at the time, you probably did something similar.
Five years before Giles became a filmmaker, she compiled all of the two-dimensional artifacts mentioned above plus written text into SCALA CINEMA 1978-1993, a large-format book through FAB Press. The reissue is available through Severin Films, which released a fabulous three-disc version of the film earlier this month, complete with commentary tracks, festival footage, featurettes, extended interviews, outtakes, short films screened at the Scala, and much more. Details on some of the special features below.
Intentionally or otherwise, it's as if Giles and Catterall had been rehearsing for the documentary, since he edited the book, except not all authors, editors, and programmers make a successful transition to filmmaking.
If I haven't said much about the films they cite or subjects they interviewed, it's because I would prefer for viewers to be as surprised and delighted as I was. I'll just say that a few of my favorite film writers, like Kim Newman and Alan Jones, and filmmakers, like Strickland and Mary Harron, put in appearances. Plenty of comedians, too, which adds some laughs.
They also roped in people with whom I was previously unfamiliar, like Roberts, a very engaging raconteur. Since Cucalorus, I've been following her, Giles, and Catterall on Instagram, and Roberts' posts about LGBTQ history, her British heritage, and her years as a London bus mechanic can't be beat. If she wrote a book, I'd read it–and she should. As she says in the film, "For a lot of queers and a lot of weirdos generally this cinema was somewhere to go where we were with our own people." At the Cucalorus screening, she handed me a Scala!!! pin, which I've worn on my jacket ever since. I also learned through her account that Giles makes a mean meat pie.
As for the Scala-screened shorts, all were new to me. I didn't enjoy them equally, though I wouldn't consider that a failing, especially since each one has something of interest or import to offer. Chris Newby's 1991 film Relax, for instance, makes extensive use of textural, high-contrast close-ups to depict the fear of AIDS, while the 41-minute collective-made Divide and Rule - Never! incorporates reggae and post punk music alongside unfiltered commentary from the youth population to reflect on racism in the UK.
The set also includes an exclusive Kier-La Janisse documentary about US rep houses, including the Fox Venice Theater featured in Messiah of Evil, and Michael Clifford's 1990 documentary short Scala from which the filmmakers extracted archival footage of S’Express's Mark Moore in his younger years, in addition to Scala cats Huston and Roy, who would slink around legs in the dark, leading unsuspecting punters to think the place had rats. And maybe it did, based on its location above a rumbling, bustling tube station.
Right: Huston manning the box office
Speaking of which, if I wasn't as thrilled by David Lewis's 1989 B&W Dead Cat, which lives up to its title, at least it eschews any cat torture, thank goodness--unlike Harmony Korine's Gummo eight years later–just a lot of maggot action. Love or loathe it, the inclusion is fitting in light of the participation of musician Genesis P-Orridge and Scala favorite Derek Jarman (Lewis's friend and mentor), an ominous score from GPO's Psychic TV, and Lewis's contextually rich commentary.
Severin Films' home video release comes complete with a classy, semi-gloss dust cover to hold the Blu-ray case, a fold-out Scala calendar-style listing of the special features, and even a numbered membership card.
The low-cost membership model allowed the cinema to screen films other UK cinemas couldn't, though not all kinds as their legal tussle over a screening of the banned-in-Britain A Clockwork Orange would prove. I doubt Stanley Kubrick intended his controversial film to strangle a cinema famed for screening controversial films, but it contributed to that very outcome.
In the end, though, the documentary isn't just about a cinema that flew too close to the sun. It gains in stature as a tribute to all cinemas and all programmers throughout the world who looked beyond the mainstream to entertain, to enlighten, and to shake up open-minded audience members.
In my case, as a Seattle film goer, that meant the University District's Neptune Theatre. Though relatively tame by comparison, it served as a much-loved rep house before transitioning to a music venue in the 2000s–and also produced a fold-out calendar–much as the Scala would in 1999.
Fortunately, eclectic rep houses, like the U District's all-volunteer Grand Illusion Cinema, which is raising funds for an unavoidable move, and Columbia City's Beacon Cinema, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, are still out there, though they're an endangered species due to the rise of home video in the 1980s and 1990s–which now seems almost quaint–and the monopolization of streaming nowadays–which relies on artistically-compromised cost-cutting, rapidly rising prices, and ever-decreasing attention spans. Along with the corporatization of everything that can possibly be corporatized.
If you find yourself reflecting on any of these things, Scala!!! could make you pretty despondent, but probably not while actually watching the documentary, since it's mostly a celebration–to which newcomers have been invited–of the kind of programming that allowed audience members to feel less alone and to find friends and collaborators who were also looking to be scared, to be surprised, to be turned-on, and even to be transformed, especially queer audience members during the height of the Thatcher era.
In other words, it's inspiring. It's inspiring that filmmakers with minimal experience--but invaluable knowledge and connections--made such a fantastic film, but it's also inspiring to hear from those who found the strength to live as their authentic selves from the films and folks they encountered, in addition to those encouraged to make art of their own.
I've lived with the film for two years now, having seen it in a theater last November and having revisited it on home video more recently, though even before I watched it for a second time, or even a third with commentary from the co-directors, I had come to the conclusion that Scala!!! is an all-timer.
I'm thrilled that it played at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, and I'm just as thrilled that it will be playing at The Beacon later this month. I only wish that any of its makers or contributors could be in attendance.
Beyond the pin and the conversation, Giles also set me up with a signed Davey Jones poster, which I had framed. It now hangs on my wall. The Viz artist's full-color poster plays an important part in the film, because he also depicted that which couldn't otherwise be depicted, like the time usher JoAnne Sellar, who would become PT Anderson's longtime producer, stumbled upon the body of an audience member who expired during one of the all-nighters or the time Shane McGowan took a whiz from the stands.
Just as veteran non-fiction filmmaker Thom Anderson's epic, essential 2003 essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself made me want to see every one of the 200 or so films he cites–and I've seen dozens since–Jane Giles and Ali Catterall's clip-filled documentary has made me want to see every one of the films they cite–yes, even the Curt McDowell/George Kuchar 1975 messterpiece Thundercrack!, a scandalous film the Scala screened almost as often as the Neptune screened midnight perennial The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
If inclined, you can now buy Thundercrack! or The Rocky Horror Picture Show on home video–though the former isn't available on streaming–but there's nothing quite like seeing an unhinged film with an unhinged audience. Scala!!! is the next best thing to having that exact experience.
Click here for my shorter 2023 review of the film (with shorter trailer).
Scala!!! plays The Beacon Cinema on Fri, Dec 27, and Sat, Dec 28, at 10pm. The film is available on home video in the UK through BFI and in the US through Severin. Images from me (Quinault wrapped around the Blu-ray set), Wikipedia (By No Swan So Fine - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0), Amazon (Transformer cover), Evening Standard (the Scala lobby), Severin Films (Graham Humphreys' cover design for the collector's edition Scala Book), Londonist (Huston the cat in 1990), The Stranger's EverOut (the Neptune Theatre marquee), and Scalarama (an assortment of programs).
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT (Johan Grimonprez, 2024, Belgium, 150 minutes)
In 1960, the same year the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained its independence from colonial rule and joined the United Nations, thanks largely to newly-elected Premier Patrice Lumumba, Louis Armstrong brought New Orleans-style jazz to the country. Starting in 1956, the US State Department had been flying jazz ambassadors around the world in order to promote diplomacy. That was the claim, at any rate.
If the Congolese appreciated what Louis and his band were putting down, Russian Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev failed to see the appeal of jazz, which he found cacophonous--he went so far as to compare it to gastrointestinal distress. More significantly, though, Belgium wasn't prepared to let the Congo go without a fight--not with all its uranium and other valuable resources--and just after Independence Day on June 30, 1960, when everyone should have been celebrating, things got ugly.
There's nothing quite as volatile as the combination of white supremacy and greed, and the UN and the US, especially the wealthy industrialist sector, sided with Belgium over the people of the Congo, who had democratically elected Lumumba. Systematically, the premier and select associates were ostracized, neutralized, replaced--and eventually killed.
When Louis learned that his concert was arranged as a distraction by anti-Lumumba forces, rather than the goodwill gesture he had been promised, he was so incensed he threatened to renounce his US citizenship and move to Ghana, one of several nations that supported Congolese independence.
Khrushchev, another Congolese supporter, may have been wrong about jazz, but he wasn't wrong about colonialism and imperialism (which makes Putin's recent actions vis-a-vis the Ukraine seem uglier than ever).
Using archival footage combined with interviews and readings and on-screen extracts from several non-fiction texts about the era, including Andrée Blouin's 1983 memoir My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria, Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez examines the politics of Belgium, the Congo, Russia, Ghana, Guinea, Cuba, and the US to show why a coup d'etat took place–and how jazz was involved.
The African and American music in the film, from Louis, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, and others can't be beat. If the leaders of the Western world abandoned the Congo in its hour of need, the jazz world, combined with literary luminaries like Maya Angelou, did everything they could to call out the injustice and show their support.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Grimonprez's highest-profile documentary to date,is one of the year's finest—and fiercest—documentaries.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat opens at Northwest Film Forum on Wed, Dec 4. Images from Kino Lorber (Congo speechwriter/chief of protocol Andrée Blouin) and ABC (Louis Armstrong / Getty Images: Universal Images Group). Kino Lorber releases the film on home video on Jan 7, 2025.
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.
