This is a revived version of a Line Out post about Demdike Stare's live score for Jean Rollin's La Vampire Nue (these posts were purged from the internet after The Stranger pulled the plug on their music blog).
Earlier this year, in advance of their triple CD Tryptych, Segal described the British duo (Miles Whittaker of Suum Cuique and Sean Canty of Finders Keepers Records) as "English hauntological-post-techno illuminati," so who better to provide the musical accompaniment for 1970's La Vampire Nue from horror-kink master Jean Rollin? (Demdike made their Seattle debut at May's Psychic Circle Fest.)
Even if Whittaker rejects the term "hauntological," Demdike Stare's music isn't worlds away from the unsettling, cinematic sounds of Julian House's Focus Group or Leyland Kirby's Caretaker (and I couldn't recommend the Focus Group's collaboration with Broadcast, Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, and the Caretaker's An Empty Bliss Beyond This World more highly). Though Kirby was originally scheduled to attend Decibel, as V/Vm, he's no longer part of the bill.
The best known Rollin feature film remains his first, 1968's The Rape of the Vampire.
As for Rollin (1938-2010), the French author, director, and porn auteur worked under his own name, as well as the aliases Michel Gentil, Robert Xavier, and Michel Gand. His specialties included vampires and naked ladies. Best title: Vicious Penetrations (four of his X-rated films feature the word "penetration" in the title).
Just as Whittaker rejects a term frequently associated with his work, Rollin rejected the term "horror," possibly because he wasn't as interested in scaring audiences as in seducing them by any means necessary (lesbian vampires were a particular favorite). He also rejected comparisons to equally prolific Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco, though they sometimes worked on the same projects.
Redemption-Kino Lorber / La Vampire Nue
Here's Rollin's own description of La Vampire Nue (The Nude Vampire):
By the time my second film rolled around I was a little wiser. I again succeeded in including certain images that were important to me: the men with animal heads; the curious drawing room-library I had rented on the Cours Perimony check, where I had a harp brought in. And a fantastic labyrinthine castle, where the naked vampire with orange veils, a candelabra in one hand, wandered.
I'm not familiar with the film, but I'm definitely curious. An IMDb user proclaims it "possibly the weirdest" of the eight Rollin pictures he's seen. Good or bad, it's sure to be...provocative, and I'm sure Whittaker and Canty have conjured up a suitably atmospheric score to accompany it. At the very least, Rollin didn't consider Nue the worst of his 42 (or so) films—that honor went to 1980's Zombie Lake.
Rollin prioritized the production of imagery over the direction of actors.
Demdike Stare re-score La Vampire Nue at Broadway Performance Hall today at 5:30pm. More info here. On Sept 27, they'll be part of the Modern Love Showcase with Andy Stott and Cut Hands at Melrose Market Studios.
Because I started reviewing films for The Stranger's SIFF Notes during the first week in April, the 25-day film festival has felt more like a three-month affair to me. Granted, it still sped by relatively quickly, even as I attended two conferences (MoPOP's Pop Conference and Crypticon), worked on several non-fest reviews and previews, got back together with someone--and broke up with that person all over again (suffice to say, I'm a little...tired).
I also caught up with a few non-fest movies and television shows, like Black Panther and iZombie, but I've tried to make SIFF my priority. Consequently, I caught over 30 films, even though I didn't attend any press screenings or take any time off work. Here are a few more words about the films I saw.
Blaze
Ethan Hawke's third narrative feature, a time-fractured docudrama about country songwriter Blaze Foley (née Mike Fuller), is his best yet (I haven't seen his sole documentary, Seymour: An Introduction). Little Rock musician Ben Dickey is convincing as the unpredictable Blaze, but the standout is Austin native Charlie Sexton as the slippery Townes Van Zandt (he and Hawke previously worked together in Richard Linklater's Boyhood).
Hawke in conversation with Indiewire's Eric Kohn
Other notable performers include Alia Shawkat as Blaze's wife and Alynda Segarra (Hurray for the Riff Raff) as his sister. In a brief scene, Segarra sings with Kris Kristofferson, who plays the Fullers' memory-challenged father, which reminded me of Michael Almereyda's casting of Sam Shepard as Hawke's ghostly father in his modern-day adaptation of Hamlet. Based on Hawke's career to date, it's hard not to see both multi-hyphenates as models for the kind of career he would like to have. Oddly, the clip collection SIFF assembled for their tribute to Hawke omitted this film, a favorite of mine from both actor and director.
Eighth Grade
The directorial debut from author, musician, and stand-up comedian Bo Burnham is far better than it has any right to be. I mean, he's only 27, and he's already enjoyed success in several fields. Turns out, he can direct, too. At the SIFF premiere, he gave much of the credit to 15-year-old Elsie Fisher, who plays acne-prone Kayla Day, but this isn't as performatively magnanimous as it sounds. Burnham wrote a wise and witty script, but without the right actress, the kind who can elicit sympathy even as she tortures her father with self-aborption, that wouldn't have been enough.
Burnham and Fisher in a rare moment of levity
The point of the film isn't exactly a new one, but we can always use more perceptive perspectives on adolescence, and the 21st-century milieu changes everything. If Kayla has more than a few things in common with Pretty in Pink's Andie, right down to the supportive single father (nicely played by Josh Hamilton, who also appears in Blaze), she lives in a world that is totally wired. If anything, she lives in two worlds: the real one, where she feels like a hopeless outcast, and the virtual one where she follows unworthy crush objects on Instagram and uploads affirmative videos to YouTube.
Despite all her trials and tribulations, we know she'll be fine in the end, because she doesn't let disappointment slow her down. I'm twice the age of filmmaker and actor combined, and yet Kayla is as much of an inspiration for chronic self-doubters like myself as for kids her own age, of which there were many in the audience, all eager to ask Fisher questions at the lively Q&A. By the fest's conclusion, Eighth Grade had won Golden Space Needle awards for best film and actress. It opens at the Egyptian on July 19.
Hal
I've been a Hal Ashby fan for as long as I can remember, at least since 1978's Coming Home, so I had high hopes for first-time filmmaker Amy Scott's documentary. Fortunately, she delivers. The setup is a simple one, and it works perfectly: she uses Ashby's major films, including Harold and Maude and Being There (which played at this year's fest), as a structuring device. She also has Ben Foster, who appears in Debra Granik's Leave No Trace, read from Ashby's no-bullshit memos, and he proves a fine fit.
Fisher looks towards SIFF's Beth Barrett
The problem with this sort of setup is that the last section, a consideration of Ashby's less significant (and more heavily compromised) films, feels anti-climactic, but I'm not sure there's a more honest way to sum up his career. Towards the end of his life, Ashby had several ideas for literary adaptations that might have put him back on the map, but he didn't live long enough to realize any of them. There really isn't a positive way to spin that story. It's tragic that he didn't get the chance to make a single one, but making seven great films, largely as intended, is the exact opposite of tragic. If anything, it's miraculous.
Leave No Trace
When it comes to any film, regardless as to the subject or director, I try to keep my expectations in check. I let my enthusiasm for Hal Ashby run away with me when it came to Hal, so I was relieved that Scott came through, but as impressive as I found Debra Granik's Winter's Bone, I kept an open mind about Leave No Trace, a loose adaptation of Peter Rock's novel, My Abandonment (co-written with producer Anne Rosselini). The primary reason: Ben Foster grates on my nerves, especially when he plays bad guys (Alpha Dog, 3:10 to Yuma), but give the guy credit: he never phones it in.
Hal producer Brian Morrow and film critic Michael Dare
I should have had more faith in Granik, not just in terms of her casting, but her directing. Playing a single father on the run from straight society, Foster beautifully underplays from start to finish, which makes thematic sense, since Will is keeping a lot inside, but it also makes structural sense, because his daughter, played by Thomasin McKenzie, provides the film's point of view as surely as Jennifer Lawrence's Ree did in Winter's Bone. And the New Zealand native is every bit as good in a slightly less showy part.
As much as I hate to pit the films against each other, I would give the edge to Leave No Trace, largely because there are no real antagonists in the latter. Every time Will and Tom tangle with authority figures of some kind, they turn out to be pretty reasonable people. It's no spoiler to say that Will is his own worst enemy, but he's still a loving father and Tom is still a good kid. She owes that to him, but that doesn't mean he's a reliable provider.
Friends have compared the film to Matt Ross's Captain Fantastic, and there are clear parallels, but at heart, it's more like Jeff Preiss's Low Down, in which John Hawkes, who starred in Winter's Bone, plays jazz pianist Joe Albany, a single father with a lot of love and a host of parental challenges. In look and feel, it also has a lot in common with Kelly Reichardt's Oregon-set films about poverty and dislocation, like Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy.
SIFF programmer Megan Leonard and Anne Rosselini
Just as local label Light in the Attic will be releasing the soundtrack to Blaze, they'll be releasing the soundtrack to Leave No Trace. When I spoke with Rosselini at the screening, she credited my friend, Pat Thomas, for putting her and Granik in touch with Kendra Smith who sings the closing track. According to Thomas, it represents her "first new music since 1994." At the Q&A, Rosselini said that Smith, a former member of Rain Parade and Opal, "lives about 99% off the grid." Former Fug Michael Hurley and Marisa Anderson, who will be opening for Joan Shelley on June 19, also appear in the film as denizens of the trailer park where Will and Tom wind up during one of their breaks from forest living.
From the music to the extras, it was lovely to see so much local involvement in Leave No Trace, especially the Northwest itself as a place to which you can escape, but where you can never really get away from yourself.
Other films I saw and enjoyed:Being Frank:
The Chris Sievey Story, Belle de Jour, Peter Strickland's portion ("The Cobbler's Lot") of The Field Guide to Evil, First Reformed, McQueen, Puzzle, and Sorry to Bother You. Films that didn't quite live up to their potential: Dark River, Let the Sunshine In (I know I'm in the minority with Denis' film), Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist, and Wild Nights with Emily. Endnote:Click here for my first SIFF '18 dispatch.
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.
Between my last SIFF dispatch and this one, I seem to have missed more films than I've seen. It isn't completely my fault. Aside from a full-time job and weekly freelance assignments, two of the films I attempted to see were cancelled.
On Saturday, June 4, I got to the Uptown in time for a 12pm screening of Mekko with director Sterlin Harjo in attendance (I reviewed his documentary about Native American spirituals, This May Be the Last Time, in February). I even caught a glimpse of the filmmaker outside the theater chatting with a pass holder. That's when I found out there was a power outage in the theater. I don't know if they ever identified the cause, but programmer Maryna Ajaja speculated that it might be due to the construction in the area, like at the other end of the block (where Kidd Valley once stood). SIFF staffers said they hoped power would be restored in time for the screening. It wasn't.
Chelle Sherrill and blurry-hand Phillips.
So, I bided my time until the next screening, Burn Burn Burn with director Chanya Button andDownton Abbey actress Laura Carmichael ("Lady Edith") in attendance. I had seen a trailer for the road trip comedy a few days before, and it didn't look too promising, but The Sun Break's Chris Burlingame and Three Imaginary Girls' Amie Simon praised the film, so I added it to my schedule instead of the competing screening about Austin City Limits, Keith Maitland's A Song for You, which seems likely to air on PBS at some point. (Another film I missed? Maitland's acclaimed historical documentary Tower, which will air as part of Independent Lens's 2016-2017 season.)
Waiting 40 minutes for the first film was one thing, but this time, I waited 30 minutes before they announced that they were going to reschedule the 2pm screening for 3pm, so I waited another hour, but at five minutes after, they canceled the screening altogether, so I took a Pagliacci's break.
Annalisa Cochrane and Zoe McLane as Kit's friends.
Near as I can tell, neither screening was rescheduled, though they did reschedule Queen of Ireland, which was also set to screen that morning. I'm not blaming SIFF for any of this, especially since they had no control over the inconvenient outage, which ended in time for the premiere of Megan Griffiths' The Night Stalker at 5:30pm. They also gave vouchers to all of the disenfranchised ticket holders.
Though Griffiths' Eden impressed me, I wasn't crazy about 2014 follow-up Lucky Them, which suffered from an underdeveloped script. A friend who caught a work-in-progress screening of The Night Stalker wasn't convinced by the scenes with the adult Kit (Scandal's Bellamy Young), so I went into the film with modest expectations, unlike other locals, who get excited every time Griffiths embarks on a new project. I take things on more of a case-by-case basis, and in this case, The Night Stalker, which aired on LMN on June 12, worked for me. In its bifurcated structure, Griffiths' fourth feature recalls Allison Anders' Things Behind the Sun, another film that aired on cable after screening at SIFF, and centered on a self-destructive musician who can't move forward until she acknowledges a traumatic event from her past (Anders drew from her own rape for the story).
Richard Ramirez shows off his pentagram.
I wouldn't say The Night Stalker works as well, but it sidesteps many of the stereotypes of the made-for-TV true crime genre (soft-focus flashbacks, teary funerals for victims, and the like). Although Young isn't as effective as Lou Diamond Phillips, who plays serial killer Richard Ramirez, her performance grew on me as she became more comfortable with it. She's stiff and self-conscious in the opening sequence in ways that go beyond the fact that her attorney character is meeting with a brutal murderer for a face-to-face. Kit aims to elicit a confession from him before an innocent man faces execution for a crime she believes Ramirez committed. Griffiths invented that part of the narrative, but it establishes a plausible reason for Kit, who was fascinated with Ramirez as a teenager, to put her own betrayal and sexual abuse in context.
Phillips, who was a live wire at the screening, is terrific as Ramirez. If he isn't a complete monster, he isn't a wounded little boy either; he's an unrepentant killer. He's also lonely, perceptive, and manipulative. That's a tricky balancing act to pull off. Chelle Sherrill is also good as the young Kit, who lives in fear of Ramirez's evening exploits, but who follows his media coverage the way today's kids follow celebrities on Instagram--not necessarily because they're attracted to them, but because they want to see what they'll do next. And to relieve the boredom of suburban living.
SIFF programmer Hebe Tabachnik with Paulina Obando.
Though Griffiths based her screenplay on Phillip Carlo's book, she drew from her own Riverside, CA childhood for Kit, who likes heavy metal as
much as Ramirez. At the Q&A, Griffiths said that he was a big AC/DC fan, but she knew the music
rights would be beyond her means, so she opted for Pentagram instead (Kit has a Pentagram t-shirt, a Bobby Liebling poster on her wall, and a Pentagram song plays over the end credits). It turns out to be a particularly apropos substitution, since the band's occult image and Liebling's soulful voice add spooky gravitas to a film that might have felt too much like a pop-cult period piece otherwise. It doesn't hurt that the Satan-referencing Ramirez was fond of pentagrams, although I didn't know that until I read Bob Calhoun's three-part SF Weekly series on the killer.
At the Q&A, Griffiths and Phillips performed a karaoke duet on Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" from Young Guns II. Clearly, they had fun working together. As SIFF programmer Clinton McClung pointed out on Twitter, Phillips deserves credit for praising women directors and for noting that Griffiths hired women for most (if not all) of the key positions on the film.
***** ***** *****
Once I read the description of Miguel Ángel Vidaurre's Red Gringo, I knew I couldn't miss this documentary. The story is so bizarre that I'm surprised I hadn't heard it before. In short, Dean Reed was a Colorado-born pop singer in the 1960s with a fabulous head of hair and a strong South American following. Why he rose above the pack, I couldn't say, but it convinced him to tour the continent. In Chile, the ladies went wild, so he made the surprising decision to stay, but instead of continuing on in a pop vein, he transformed into a protest singer. Despite his American roots, he sang in Spanish, leading me to wonder if any of his original fans felt let down. No longer something foreign or exotic: he had become one of them.
On the basis of the material in the film, Reed was a talented singer, a charismatic performer, and a persuasive speaker. He probably would've done okay if he had remained in the States, but he wouldn't have had the same impact. Sadly, his embrace of left-wing politics may have contributed to his demise in 1986, by which time he had traded Chile for East Germany (over the years, he also lived in Peru and Argentina). Though officials ruled his death an accident, some associates suspected foul play.
McClung with Southside with You director Richard Tanne.
Vidaurre, who worked on the film for six years with his wife, producer Paulina Obando, builds it around archival footage in which Reed speaks for himself through interviews, speeches, and song lyrics, but the scarcity of outside voices gives short shrift to his personal life. Only at the end does a newscaster note the wife, East German actress Renate Bloom, and two daughters he left behind. I'm not sure why Vidaurre chose not to interview them, especially since they've attended screenings in Chile to support the film. My guess is that he wanted Reed to recount his life as a public figure from his own point of view, but it would've been nice to learn more about his private side.
Other films I've seen since May 31 include Author: The JT Leroy Story, Lamb, Olympic Favela, Mountains May Depart, The Love Witch, A Walk on the Moon, Captain Fantastic, and Southside with You (other non-SIFF films include Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue, T-Rex, Golden Gate Girls, Nefertiti's Daughters, and Maggie's Plan). Of the films I was sorry to miss, Cameraperson, Creepy, Dead Slow Ahead, and The Fits top the list.
And that's a wrap! SIFF '16 concluded on Sunday with a gala screening of Jocelyn Moorhouse's starry adaptation of Rosalie Ham's 2000 novel, The Dressmaker. The Golden Space Needle (audience award) for best film went to Matt Ross's Captain Fantastic with Viggo Mortsensen (see the full list here). Moorhouse, Ross, and Mortensen all came to town over the final weekend to support their films. My favorite award: best actor special mention to Jumpy the Dog in Ti West's In a Valley of Violence.
Postscript:Burn Burn Burn will return to the Uptown on June 18.
The 42nd Seat- tle Interna- tional Film Festival pas-
sed the midway
point on Memo-
rial Day. Here are a few
thoughts and
images from the first 12 days.
In this photo, director Shunji Iwai (Hana and Alice, SIFF '05) ponders an audience member's question after the second screening of A Bride for Rip Van Winkle, a three-hour tragicomedy about a soft spoken high school teacher (Haru Kuroki, reuniting with the director after 2015'sThe Murder Case of Hana & Alice) who finds her true self through a series of fabricated encounters.
I first became acquainted with Iwai, who got his start in television, when SIFF screened the dreamy murder mystery All about Lily Chou-Chou in 2002, and I've made an effort to keep up with his work ever since.
The last Iwai film to appear at the festival, 2011's Vancouver-shot Vampire with Kevin Zegers, marked his first English-language feature. It'll be interesting to see if he ever makes another. Though the downbeat, if sympathetic horror film had its detractors (the Fool Serious crowd gave it low marks), I enjoyed Iwai's idiosyncratic twist on a disorder previously explored in George Romero's Martin and Robert Bierman's Vampire's Kiss.
Forbidding length aside--at least for those who find 179-minute films challenging--the cautiously optimistic A Bride for Rip Van Winkle is likely to find more admirers as it continues to make the rounds.
Clinton McClung at the Egyptian on May 29.
SIFF's cinema programming director Clinton McClung, one of my favorite presenters, introduced the first screening of Ti West's In a Valley of Violence(my other favorites include Beth Barrett and Dustin Kaspar, largely because they all seem comfortable on stage, they have no interest in airs and graces, and their improvisations can be pretty hilarious).
West last came to Seattle to promote 2012's horror anthology V/H/S. His fourth feature and first Western stars Ethan Hawke,John Travolta, Taissa Farmiga, Larry Fessenden, Toby Huss, a completely-over-the-top James Ransone, and scene-stealing border collie Jumpy.
Though I wasn't wild about his last film, the Jonestown-inspired docu-thriller The Sacrament, In a Valley of Violence proves he has no problem making the move to marquee names like Hawke and Travolta, both of whom are very good. If anything, Travolta's part, as a small town sheriff, could've been bigger. Hawke's primary foils are Ransone as his mortal enemy, Farmiga as his love interest, and Jumpy as his best friend.
At the Q&A, West repeated W.C. Fields's deathless maxim about how movie people should "never work with animals or children," but said that he couldn't have had an easier time with Jumpy, who shares a trainer, Omar von Muller, with Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier from The Artist.
Ti West and Clinton McClung.
Other questions revolved around influences and the casting of two actors, Burn Gorman and Karen Gillan, from the Dr. Who and Torchwood universe. West said that the latter connection was purely coincidental, and that he didn't intend the film as direct homage, though he acknowledged that some of the key spaghetti westerns, like Django and High Plains Drifter, were swimming around in his subconscious while he was making the thing. This is most evident in the animated title sequence, the Morricone-like score, and the stoic man-faces-down-vile townspeople plot, which may sound derivative, but he brings his own unique comic tone to the proceedings, and that makes a difference.
Beth Barrett, Martin Bell, and Erin Blackwell.
SIFF programming director Beth Barrett conducted the moving Q&A with director Martin Bell (American Heart) and the subject of Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell, sequel to his 1984 Seattle-set documentary Streetwise (both made with his late wife, the photographer Mary Ellen Mark). The film itself is a difficult watch, since Tiny has had 10 children since her Streetwise days, starting when she was 15. Due to her addiction to heroin and other factors, she lost several of those kids to the foster care system (all of them participated in the film).
On the plus side, Bell and Mark never lost touch with her, and Tiny combines present-day footage with material the filmmakers shot in 1999 and 2004. It's clear that the 44-year-old woman is also in a better place than she was during those prior visits, despite some serious health issues. If anything, it came as a relief when she walked to the front of the theater after the screening, because she looks far healthier and happier than she does in the film in which she can be seen smoking, riding a motorized scooter, and nodding out in her garage in a methadone-induced stupor.
I also took pictures of Nick Pesce, the director of The Eyes of My Mother, and Clea DuVall, the director of The Intervention, but they didn't turn out. Here's a list of the other films I saw from May 19 - 30 (in alphabetical order): As You Are, Evolution, Little Men, Love & Friendship, The Memory of Fish, Other People, Our Little Sister, Sunset Song, Tag, The Violin Teacher, Where Have All the Good Men Gone, and Wiener-Dog. I hope to write about some of these films in the next few months as there's some good stuff here, especially Little Men, Our Little Sister, and Sunset Song, all three of which justify my belief that Ira Sachs, Hirokazu Koreeda, and Terence Davies are three of our finest living filmmakers.
More thoughts and images to come. SIFF '16 runs through June 12.
SIFF artistic director Carl Spence with Jemaine Clement.
In my previous dispatch, I mentioned that I prioritize the Seattle International Film Festival selections that "look most interesting, especially if the director or subject will be in attendance," so I end up catching a lot of guest appearances. Here's a sampling from the past couple of weeks.
On the basis of his first feature, the affecting Grace Is Gone (2007), which features one of John Cusack's finest performances, I decided to catch writer-director James C. Strouse's third film, People, Places, Things.
Strouse isn't a big name and his work tends to be pretty low-key, so I was surprised to find a packed house at the Uptown (capacity: 500), but that's when I remembered that the film stars Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows). Based on the enthusiastic reaction to his introduction and the robust Q&A, Clement has a substantial Seattle fan base. The new film, which revolves around a New York graphic artist, is just as unassuming as Grace in its depiction of a father moving on after loss, but it's lighter on its feet. Clement noted that Strouse has two kids and draws from his own life for his scripts--in his IMDb portrait, the two even look a little alike. The depiction of Will's ex-wife could've been handled better, but Clement has a good rapport with the Gadsby twins, who play his daughters, and Regina Hall, who plays his love interest.
Marah Strauch spent eight years working onher first film.
Sunshine Superman, a profile of engineer-turned-extreme athlete Carl Boenish, proves the power of effective marketing. I had heard of Marah Strauch's documentary debut, but it wasn't on my preliminary list until I caught the trailer and realized that I would have to see how her charismatic subject's story plays out (check it out below).
If a documentary about BASE jumping sounds like a project geared more
towards the sports fans who've made Warren Miller a very rich man,
Strauch finds appeal beyond the testing of physical limits--not that that
part of the film isn't a real thrill. Boenish wasn't just exhilarated by jump-
ing from great heights (buildings, antenna towers, spans, and cliffs), he found ways to document these stunts--like attaching cameras to jumpers' helmets--that makes for an especially visceral viewing experience. It's one thing to film a person jumping out of a plane; it's another thing entirely when that person films what they see as they plummet to the Earth, and there's a lot of that kind of vertiginous footage in the film.
Carl himself is an intriguing character. His widow, Jean, says he didn't have a death wish, and that he always took the necessary precautions before his jumps, but there's the sense that he felt impermeable, not due so much to an overinflated ego, but to the fact that the things that should've scared him didn't. It's a mystery Marah and Jean can't adequately solve, and I appreciate the fact that they don't try (something to do with his brain chemistry, perhaps). They just report the facts about his life--and death. Sometimes, it's better not to know exactly why people do the things they do, because that can lead to blame and judgment, and Carl comes across as a sunny character who didn't mean anyone harm. He took joy from what he did and wanted to share that joy with the world.
Director Colin Hanks and producing partner Sean Stuart.
In retrospect, I'm amazed that Werner Herzog didn't take on his biography first, since he can't resist single-minded risk-
takers who like to fly through the air--
whether by plane, ski, or balloon--but Strauch does it justice (in the Q&A, she acknowledged that producer Alex Gibney was a particularly helpful sounding board). I wasn't crazy about the reenactments, though she handles them well, and my misgivings diminished with repeated exposure. Still, I believe she could have done without them. Strauch also noted that she became attached to the songs on her temp track, and was gratified that she was able to get the rights to all of them, including Donovan's title track, which seems an appropriate choice on every level.
Some of the other guest appearances I've caught include: producer Alex Noyer (808), subject Ericka Huggins (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution), director Daniel Junge (Being Evel), and director Colin Hanks (All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records). If I can find the time, I plan to write about a few of them. Unfortunately, I've had to balance the festival with a move, because my downtown apartment building (built in 1909) is being torn down. It's an old story in Seattle, but this one is particularly unfortunate as it involves the destruction of an entire block, from Olive to Stewart, to make way for a 44-story luxury hotel--just what this city really needs. To bring things back to the matter at hand, I got to enjoy All Things Must Pass at the Harvard Exit, which will cease to function as a theater when the fest ends. SIFF gave it one last hurrah, and I'm truly grateful they were able to make that happen.
Sunshine Superman opens at the Egyptian on June 19. People, Places, Things is still making the festival rounds; release dates TBA.
This post was supposed to go up on The Stranger's Slog last week, but fell through the cracks, so it lives here now.
It may sound like a cliché to say thatthe Seattle International Film Festival offers a documentary to suit every taste, but with 70+ non-fiction films on offer, it's just plain true. That said, I'll always be more interested in documentaries about music, medicine, and politics than those about sports, food, and the environment. Lest it sound as if I'm limiting myself, in my off-hours, I review hundreds of documentaries a year. I try not to go overboard during SIFF, since I'll end up catching some via PBS's documentary series Independent Lens and P.O.V. and others via DVD, so I prioritize the ones that look most interesting, especially if the director or subject will be in attendance (this week's non-SIFF assignments include Mujeres con Pelotas, a film about women's soccer in Argentina).
No Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, aka 808, no "Sexual Healing."
All are worthwhile, but I wanted to call out two that I haven't seen yet. First up: Colin Hanks's All Things Must Pass. Granted, it's the actor's first feature, but as a former record store clerk, I can't resist a film about a global record store chain—it doesn't hurt that the documentary has been winning fans wherever it goes. Even back in the late-1980s and early-1990s, when I was working at Cellophane Square on the Ave, I would drop by Tower Records from time to time. They carried memoirs, magazines, and other music-related items that our cramped space didn't (I would also drop by Peaches, but I guess that's a story for another day). Back then, it never would have occurred to me that the monolithic Tower Records wouldn't be around forever.
May 30 at the Harvard Exit and May 31 at the Uptown. Hanks and producer Sean Stuart are scheduled to attend both screenings.
Next up: 808, a film about the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer drum machine. Without it, Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" and Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" wouldn't exist—or they'd exist in forms that wouldn't have gone on to inspire so many other R&B, hip-hop, and electronic artists to take a walk on the wildly synthetic side. The Japanese trio Yellow Magic Orchestra (featuring future Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto) built their entire sound around it, Manchester duo 808 State took their name from it, and Kanye West squeezed an album title and a guiding aesthetic out of it (2008's 808s & Heartbreak). I love a good history-of-an-instrument documentary, so here's hoping this one's at least half as compelling as Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, which is pretty much the master of the form.
Due to a snafu, this post didn't go up last week as planned, and there are no more screenings of 808, which played twice, but if you happen to be in England on June 7, it plays Sheffield Doc/Fest on that date.
As far as word of mouth goes—I rely on it heavily during SIFF—friends had good things to say about Tab Hunter Confidential, which screened with the actor, matinee idol, and John Waters favorite in attendance. I was unable to track down release dates for For Grace and Tab Hunter, but I'm sure these films will return to Seattle in some way, i.e. if not a theatrical run, then via streaming services.
As for Best of Enemies, which revisits the televised 1968 debates between liberal author Gore Vidal and conservative editor William F. Buckley, Jr., it's a production of ITVS, the engine that powers Independent Lens, so expect a PBS broadcast sometime after the theatrical release on July 31 (Seattle venue TBA). Co-directors Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville (Oscar winner for 20 Feet from Stardom) do a great job at staying out of the way of their famously well spoken subjects, making for one of my favorite films of the fest so far.
Some of these films premiered in the US in 2011, but didn't arrive in Seattle until 2012, in which case I deferred to local release dates. Some missed the city altogether, in which case I caught up via DVD. The links lead to my reviews for Amazon, Line Out, The Seattle International Film Festival, SIFFBlog, and Video Librarian (Amour hasn't been posted yet, since it doesn't open here until January 25).
If Laura (Stephanie Sigman) comes at the trade from a different angle, Miss Bala serves as an inside-out
response to Joshua Marston'sMaria Full of
Grace, which also centered on a sympathetic mule (and featured a
strong central per- formance from another virtual unknown). From start to finish, Laura is
neither action heroine nor passive victim, but rather stoic survivor.
7.House of Pleasures (Bertrand Bonello) 8.Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell) 9.Dark Horse (Todd Solondz) 10.Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
Second runners-up: 1. Tie:The Avengers(Joss Whedon) and Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard) 2. The Sessions (Ben Lewin) 3.Holy Motors (Leos Carax) 4.Looper (Rian Johnson)
Mostly for theboyfrom StephenKingLand.
5.Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg) 6.Flight(Robert Zemeckis) 7.For a Good Time, Call...(Jamie Travis) 8.Life of Pi(Ang Lee) 9.Chicken with Plums(Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud) 10.Magic Mike(Steven Soderbergh) Also worthy of note:Anna Karenina,Before Your Eyes (MinDit: The Children of Diyarbakir), Bonsái,Bullhead, Cirkus Columbia, Cloud Atlas, Coriolanus,The Dark Knight Rises,The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, Eden, Eye of the Storm,Goodbye(Bé Omid E Didar),The Hunger
Games,In Darkness(W Ciemności),The Iron Lady, Policeman (Ha-shoter), Post Mortem, Rampart,Rebellion(L’Ordre et la Morale), Rent-a-Cat (Rentaneko), Roadie,Seven Psychopaths, Snowtown Murders,Sound of My Voice,The Slut,Summer Holiday (Boogie), Turn Me on Dammit!(Få Meg På, for Faen),V/H/S, We Need to Talk about Kevin,Your Sister's Sister. Missed (or haven't seen yet):Arbitrage, Barbara*,Bestiaire, Chronicle,The Color Wheel,Consuming Spirits,Damsels in Distress, The Day He Arrives(Book Chon Bang Hyang),The Deep Blue Sea,Footnote (Hearat Shulayim),Goodbye First Love(Un Amour de Jeunesse),The Grey, In Another Country(Da-reun Na-ra-e-seo),Keep the Lights On,The Kid With a Bike(Le Gamin au Vélo), Late Quartet,Les Misérables, The Loneliest Planet,Middle of Nowhere,Neighboring Sounds(O Som ao Redor),Oslo, August 31st,A Royal Affair(En Kongelig Affære),A Simple Life(Tao Jie),Sister (L'Enfant d'en Haut),Starlet,Zero Dark Thirty. Televisionnotables:Boardwalk Empire - Season Two, Downton Abbey - Season Two,Game Change,The Good Wife - Season Four,Revenge - Season Two, andVegas - Season One. * I caught a screening on Jan. 5. Adding to my Best of 2013 list.
They've done better: Andrea Arnold (Wuthering Heights), Bob-
by and Peter Farrelly (The Three Stooges), William Friedkin (Killer Joe),Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained), and Woody Allen
(To Rome with Love...which I enjoyed in spite of myself). Top documentaries:
Caught few big non-fiction films, butsawthe small onesothers missed.
1.5 Broken Cameras(Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi) 2.The Chilean Building(Macarena Aguiló) 3.The Boxing Girls of Kabul(Ariel Nasr) 4.Taken by Storm: The Art of Storm Thorgerson
and Hipgnosis(Roddy Bogawa) 5.Paul Williams: I'm Still Here(Stephen Kessler) 6.Pink Ribbons, Inc.(Léa Pool) 7.Girl Model(David Redmon and Ashley Sabin) 8.Marley(Kevin Macdonald) 9.Bad Brains: A Band in DC(Benjamen Logan) 10.Chely Wright: Wish Me Away (Bobbie Birleffi and Beverly Kopf)
Missed (or haven't seen yet):Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,Beware of Mr. Baker,Brooklyn Castle,Bully,The Central Park Five,Detropia,The Gatekeepers,The House I Live In, How to Survive a Plague,The Invisible War,Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present,The Queen of Versailles,Searching for Sugar Man, This Is Not a Film, andUnder African Skies.
Reissues and rediscoveries: 1.World on a Wire / Welt am Draht(Rainer Werner Fassbinder) 2.A Man Vanishes / Ningen Jôhatsu(Shohei Imamura) 3. Tie:The Connectionand Ornette Made in America (Shirley Clarke) 4. Movie Orgy (Joe Dante) 5.La Vampire Nue / The Nude Vampire(Jean Rollin)
With live Demdike Stare score at this year's Decibel Festival.
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.
