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BARAKA
Monday, August 28 • 6:30PM
REVIEWS:
"In this world of wonders there are still places that have not been smoothed
over with the shallow surfaces of Western commercialism. The amazing thing is
not how widely the McCulture has spread, but how many corners it has missed. It
is claimed that the great age of travel is dead - that there are no longer
amazing, exotic, beautiful and fearsome places for the traveler to discover. A
movie like "Baraka" gives hope.
On one level, the film is a 96-minute travelog. On another level, it is a
meditation on the planet. The director, Ron Fricke, has taken his 70-mm camera
all over the globe to photograph natural and human sights.
Some of them are as ordinary as the traffic in Manhattan. Some are as awesome
as a solar eclipse.
Some are as desperate as the tribes of scavengers scuttling like crabs over
the garbage dumps of Calcutta.
Frick was cinematographer and collaborator on "Koyannisquatsi," the 1983 film
by Geoffrey Reggio which is a direct ancestor of "Baraka." In that film, Reggio
used time-lapse photography to capture clouds racing across the desert, and
crowds of people dashing madly about the caverns of big cities. Frick uses the
same technique; it's like watching the weather on fast-forward.
Time-lapse photography can be dismissed as a gimmick, but for me it's
something more than that. It's a visual demonstration of how fleeting life is.
Of how the decisions that seem momentous on our time scale are flickering
instants in the life of the planet, too small to be observed except on the
minute scale of human life.
Somehow the technique makes the earth and its inhabitants seem touchingly
fragile.
Against this fragility, man has raised the bulwark of religion, and Frick's
cameras show us man in the act of worship, from the Pope in St. Paul's to rabbis
at the Wailing Wall, from monks in ancient temples to an extraordinary tribe of
chanters who lean this way and that in time to their prayer, waving their arms
like trees tossed in a storm, led by a man who seems immensely pleased to be in
the center of such ecstasy.
The music has been written by Michael Stearns, who plunders the riches of
ethnic music and chants and combines those sounds with more Western ideas, so
that the score becomes an anthology of the sounds man makes to keep away the
dark and make the light s ensible.
To listen to the sound track by itself, after seeing the movie, would be to
evoke the souls of all of these strange places.
Of course there is a "message" somewhere in "Baraka" - the same message we
have heard before, about how man must love and respect the planet. This is a
piety to which we all subscribe, so long as it does not mean any inconvenience
to us personally. Few people wearing pro-ecology T-shirts, I imagine, ever think
of becoming vegetarian so that grains can be used to feed all the mouths on the
planet, instead of being converted into meat to feed a few.
And few people seeing "Baraka" will make any major changes in their lives to
respect the planet the movie celebrates. (I include myself among that number.)
So the movie has the power of a dream, from which we awaken, instead of a
warning, to which we respond".
--Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
"Nothing in this epic visual poem is less than extraordinary."
-- Hal Hinson, WASHINGTON POST
"Sweeping, jarring and mesmerizing -- not to mention mind-blowing, if I may
indulge a '60s phrase."
-- Chris Hicks, DESERET NEWS, SALT LAKE CITY
DETAILS: 93 min. NR (suitable for all audiences).
Color. 1992.
DATE AND TIME: 6:30PM Monday, August 28th. Downstairs big screen at
Rapid City's Elks Theatre. All seats $5.00. Discussion to follow the show.
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One Showing Only!
TIBET: CRY OF THE SNOW LION
Mon July 31 • 6:30pm
• Elks Theatre on the BIG SCREEN !!!
All Seats $5
Please stay for a discussion following the show
Ten years in the making, this documentary was
filmed during a remarkable nine journeys throughout Tibet, India and Nepal.
TIBET: CRY OF THE SNOW LION brings audiences to the long-forbidden "rooftop of
the world" with an unprecedented richness of imagery... from rarely-seen
rituals in remote monasteries, to horse races with Khamba warriors; from
brothels and slums in the holy city of Lhasa, to magnificent Himalayan peaks
still traveled by nomadic yak caravans. The dark secrets of Tibet's recent
past are powerfully chronicled through riveting personal stories and
interviews, and a collection of undercover and archival images never before
assembled in one documentary.
TRAILER AVAILABLE:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tibet_cry_of_the_snow_lion/trailers.php
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REVIEWERS' COMMENTS:
"Documentaries can be informative, entertaining and provocative, but rare
is the documentary that makes you feel so engaged (and enraged) that it
prompts you to action somehow. "Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion" is that kind of
film -- at least for anyone who doesn't know much about the brutal history of
the Himalayan land.
Since 1950, when China sent troops to subdue the formerly independent
state, Tibetans have lived under the shadow of Beijing, subjugated by a
military authority that has banned the Tibetan language in schools, banned
photos of the Dalai Lama, arrested and tortured dissident monks, killed
thousands and repopulated the region with non-Tibetan Chinese. Jeane
Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says in the
documentary that "ethnic cleansing has been under way for 20 years" in Tibet.
Using archival footage and previously unseen still photos, filmmaker Tom
Peosay shows some of this violence, including scenes of monks being kicked,
hit with rifle butts and forced to wear torture implements. Interviews with
monks who fled Tibet for India and other countries give a tearful voice to
anguished Tibetans. Their plight was made worse, Peosay reminds us, by their
betrayal at the hands of Washington, which financed an army of Tibetan rebels
for years (via the CIA) before the Nixon administration pulled the plug in an
effort to appease Mao Zedong.
What gives Tibetans hope is their Buddhist religion (Peosay shows Tibetans
praying and doing rituals in shrines that are visually breathtaking), their
commitment to a nonviolent solution and their resolve (symbolized by the Dalai
Lama, Tibetans' spiritual leader) to keep bringing their cause to the world's
attention. Peosay, who spent 10 years making the documentary, includes the
comments of Chinese diplomats who castigate the Dalai Lama and defend
Beijing's handling of Tibet -- but these diplomats' strained rationalizations
are in stark contrast to the powerful pleas of Tibetans who Peosay shows
protesting for a "Free Tibet."
"Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion" features a phalanx of well-known Americans
who advocate for Tibet, including Martin Sheen, who narrates the film; Susan
Sarandon and Ed Harris, who do some of the voice-overs; and the group R.E.M.,
which is seen doing a benefit concert.
As "Tibet" is released around the United States, it will undoubtedly
inspire some viewers to join Sheen, Sarandon, Harris and R.E.M. in the Tibet
movement. At a minimum, "Tibet" will change its audiences' perception of a
state that has been blessed with beauty and majestic peaks and cursed with a
strategic location that made it coveted by rulers from Mongolia, Britain,
China and other countries. The history of Tibet is both sad and inspiring.
Advisory: This film contains some strong language and scenes of disturbing
violence".
-- Jonathan Curiel, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"A more concise and affecting summation of the Tibetan crisis would be
hard to imagine."
-- Dave Kehr, NEW YORK TIMES
"Makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of a people that the
world must never be allowed to forget, no matter how much their oppressors
would prefer us to do just that."
-- Peter Howell, TORONTO STAR
_____________________________________________________________________
AWARDS: Audience award--best documentary--Santa Barbara
Internat'l Film Festival 2003
Official Selection--2003 Toronto Internat'l Film Festival
DETAILS: Not rated. 100 minutes. 2003
TRAILER AVAILABLE:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tibet_cry_of_the_snow_lion/trailers.php
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 WAKING
LIFE
TRAILER available:
www.wakinglifemovie.com/trailer.html
REVIEW:
"("Waking Life") is like a cold shower of bracing, clarifying ideas. We feel
cleansed of boredom, indifference, futility and the deadening tyranny of the
mundane. The characters walk around passionately discussing ideas, theories,
ultimate purposes--just as we've started doing again since the complacent
routine of our society was shaken. When we were students we often spoke like
this, but in adult life, it is hard to find intelligent conversation. "What is
my purpose?" is replaced by "What did the market do today?" The movie is as
exhilarating in its style and visuals as in its ideas--indeed, the two are
interlocked. Richard Linklater and his collaborators have filmed a series of
conversations, debates, rants, monologues and speculations, and then animated
their film using a new process which creates a shimmering, pulsating life on the
screen: This movie seems alive, seems vibrating with urgency and excitement.
The animation is curiously realistic. A still from the film would look to you
like a drawing. But go to www.wakinglifemovie.com and click on the clips to see
how the sound and movement have an effect that is eerily lifelike. The most
difficult thing for an animator may be to capture an unplanned, spontaneous
movement that expresses personality. By filming real people and then animating
them, "Waking Life" captures little moments of real life: A musician putting
down her cigarette, a double-take, someone listening while eager to start
talking again, a guy smiling as if to say, "I'm not really smiling." And the
dialogue has the true ring of everyday life, perhaps because most of the actors
helped create their own words: The movie doesn't sound like a script but like
eavesdropping.
The film's hero, not given a name, is played by Wiley Wiggins as a young man who
has returned to the town where once, years ago, a playmate's folding paper toy
(we used to call them "cootie catchers") unfolded to show him the words, "dream
is destiny." He seems to be in a dream, and complains that although he knows
it's a dream, he can't awaken. He wanders from one person and place to another
(something like the camera did in Linklater's first film, "Slacker"). He
encounters theories, beliefs, sanity, nuttiness. People try to explain what they
believe, but he is overwhelmed until finally he is able to see that the answer
is--curiosity itself. To not have the answers is expected. To not ask questions
is a crime against your own mind.
If I have made the movie sound somber and contemplative, I have been unfair to
it. Few movies are more cheerful and alive. The people encountered by the
dreamer in his journey are intoxicated by their ideas--deliriously verbal. We
recognize some of them: Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, from Linklater's "Before
Sunrise," continue their conversation. Speed Levitch, the manic tour guide from
the documentary "Cruise," is still on his guided tour of life. Other characters
are long known to Linklater, including Robert C. Solomon, a philosopher at the
University of Texas, who comes onscreen to say something Linklater remembers him
saying in a lecture years ago, that existentialism offers more hope than
predestination, because it gives us a reason to try to change things.
I have seen "Waking Life" three times now. I want to see it again--not to master
it, or even to remember it better (I would not want to read the screenplay), but
simply to experience all of these ideas, all of this passion, the very act of
trying to figure things out.
It must be depressing to believe that you have been supplied with all the
answers, that you must believe them and to question them is disloyal, or a sin.
Were we given minds in order to fear their questions?"
--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
OTHER REVIEWERS' COMMENTS:
"Anyone who finds value in wondering who we are or why we're here, what's real
and what's not, should be overjoyed to find a theatrical release with the same
sense of curiosity." -- Chris Vognar, DALLAS MORNING NEWS
"It's thoughtful, provocative, liberating and fun." -- Desson Thomson,
WASHINGTON POST
"Truly special, truly different -- a wondrous talky roundelay about and for
people who love life." -- Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
AWARDS, NOMINATIONS:
National Society of Film Critics Award (Best Experimental Film)
New York Film Critics Circle Award (Best Animated Film)
Ottawa International Animation Festival Award: Best Animated Feature Film
Venice Film Festival 'CinemAvvenire' Award (Best Film) --Nominated, Golden Lion
Monsieur Ibrahim
REVIEW
"Love appears in many forms, both in life and the movies. One of the most
touching film incarnations on view recently comes in director Francois
Dupeyron's "Monsieur Ibrahim," a gentle, sensuous French film about a Jewish
boy's rite of passage and an old Muslim man's last journey.
The movie is adapted, with great heart and sympathy, from a
semi-autobiographical book and play, "Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the
Koran," by Eric Emmanuel Schmitt. It's set mostly in 1960s Paris in the
real-life Rue Bleue, a funky little residential-commercial district frequented
by prostitutes.
The central character, Schmitt's obvious surrogate, is French-Jewish teenager
Momo (winningly played by teenage newcomer Pierre Boulanger), a kid who loves
American rock 'n' roll and lives with his gloomy father (Gilbert Melki) above
the streets.
Part of "Ibrahim" is about Momo's severe family problems - he has a deeply
depressed father and an absent mother (Isabelle Renauld). Part shows us Momo's
sexual awakening at the hands of breezy local hooker Sylvie (Anne Suarez) and
others, and his romance with the neurotic girl next door, Myriam (Lola Naynmark).
But the film's heart and soul lie elsewhere, in the unlikely friendship that
springs up between Momo and elderly Turkish Muslim grocery store owner Monsieur
Ibrahim. In a casting masterstroke, Ibrahim is played by legendary Egyptian
movie heartthrob Omar Sharif, now 71. It's one of the two or three finest
performances of his entire career and one of the Sharif roles, along with those
in "Doctor Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia," that we'll most remember and
treasure.
Ibrahim has known Momo since his childhood, and the store Ibrahim owns - called
in Parisian slang an "Arab" because of its operating hours - is dark and crammed
with foods, wines and pates. A widower who barely stirs from his seat at the
cash register, Ibrahim seems to have only two consolations: regular readings
from his Koran and his friendship with Momo, who both buys and shoplifts (as
Ibrahim well knows) from the store.
For Momo, Ibrahim represents the paternalistic kindness he never knew. For
Ibrahim, Momo represents youth and renewal. The two finally embark on a car
journey back to Ibrahim's village - a voyage that might seem dangerously
sentimental, except for the empathetic, evocative storytelling and the
brilliance of the actors. The impish Boulanger is a terrific discovery. His
performance as Momo won the best actor Hugo at the last Chicago Film Festival.
But I thought the prize should have been shared by Sharif, who wrings
magnificence from a seemingly commonplace character. Ibrahim (a name with both
Jewish and Muslim connotations) is a different sort of role for the elegantly
seductive Sharif: shaggy, plumpish and haggard. But Sharif is still a great
romantic actor, and that famous, dark-eyed liquid gaze works its alchemy once
again. He evokes perfectly an old man whose hard life and long journey from his
Turkish village and homeland have helped win him spiritual riches few suspect.
That may sound sentimental - and the story too similar to Moshe Mizrahi's
likable 1977 French hit "Madame Rosa," with Simone Signoret as an old Jewish
prostitute who befriends a young Arab boy. But, as in the best of "Rosa," "Ibrahim"
has characters who really live on screen. And thanks to Dupeyron, so does both
the Rue Bleue, with its garish bustle, and the more muted Turkish countryside.
There's a joyous, sometimes bittersweet quality to this film. The sex is handled
in the wry, realistic and non-sniggering way we expect from the better French
films: sensuality without Puritan guilt or lasciviousness. The atmosphere is
rich, the visuals vibrant, the period '50s-'60s rock score (Chuck Berry to Bruce
Channel) a hoot, and the characters truly and richly drawn.
Most movingly, "Monsieur Ibrahim" takes a provocative subject - friendship and
love between a Jew and a Muslim - and makes it seem natural and wondrous. Too
many movies, however entertainingly, drive people apart. Here is a little gem
that opens up a page of flowers, speaking to us convincingly and inspiringly of
amity and peace."
By Michael Wilmington
Chicago Tribune Movie Critic
OTHER REVIEWERS' COMMENTS
"Wry, supple, endearing." -- David Elliott, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
"Unusual in its ambition to pose deep spiritual questions, but its enticing
surfaces ... are the best thing about it." -- Leslie Camhi, VILLAGE VOICE
"A joyful ode to life." -- Charles Ealy, DALLAS MORNING NEWS
AWARDS
- Venice Film Festival: Audience Award (best actor)--Omar Sharif
- Chicago International Film Festival: Silver Hugo (best male
performance)--Pierre Boulanger
- Cesar Award, France: Best Actor--Omar Sharif
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VERA DRAKE
In early 1950's London, a very unassuming and
extremely kindly middle-aged woman takes it upon herself to help out gals with
unwanted pregnancies by performing abortions, unbeknownst to her husband and
children. When she is exposed, the reactions of her family and of the legal
authorities are carefully portrayed without editorial skewing, artfully laying
out the emotional stakes in this issue.
AWARDS:
Academy Awards--
Nominated: Best Director: Mike Leigh
Nominated: Best Original Screenplay: Mike Leigh
Nominated: Best Actress: Imelda Staunton
Golden Globe Awards--
Nominated: Best Actress, Drama: Imelda Staunton
BAFTA Awards--
WINNER: David Lean Award for Direction: Mike Leigh
WINNER: Best Performance by an Actress is a Leading
Role: Imelda Staunton
WINNER: Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran
Nominated: Best Film
Nominated: Best Performance by an Actor in a
Supporting Role: Philip Davis
Nominated: Best Performance by an Actress in a
Supporting Role: Heather Craney
Nominated: Best Screenplay (Original): Mike Leigh
Nominated: Best Editing: Jim Clark
Nominated: Best Make Up / Hair: Christine Blundell
Nominated: Best Production Design: Eve Stewart
Nominated: Alexander Korda Award for Best British
Film: Simon Channing-Willians, Alain Sarde, Mike Leigh
REVIEW:
"Vera Drake is a melodious plum pudding of a woman who is always humming or
singing to herself. She is happy because she is useful, and likes to be useful.
She works as a cleaning woman in a rich family's house, where she burnishes the
bronze as if it were her own, and then returns home to a crowded flat to cook,
clean and mend for her husband, son and daughter, and cheer them up when they
seem out of sorts. She makes daily calls on invalids to plump up their pillows
and make them a nice cup of tea, and once or twice a week she performs an
abortion.
London in the 1950s. Wartime rationing is still in effect. A pair of nylons is
bartered for eight packs of Players. Vera (Imelda Staunton) buys sugar on the
black market from Lily (Ruth Sheen), who also slips her the name and address of
women in need of "help." Lily is as hard and cynical as Vera is kind and
trusting. Vera would never think of accepting money for "helping out" young
girls when "they got no one to turn to," but Lily charges 2 pounds and 2
shillings, which she doesn't tell Vera about.
In a film of pitch-perfect, seemingly effortless performances, Imelda Staunton
is the key player, and her success at creating Vera Drake allows the story to
fall into place and belong there. We must believe she's naive to be taken
advantage of by Lily, but we do believe it. We must believe she has a simple,
pragmatic morality to justify abortions, which were a crime in England until
1967, but we do believe it.
Some of the women who come to her have piteous stories; they were raped, they
are still almost children, they will kill themselves if their parents find out,
or in one case there are seven mouths to feed and the mother lacks the will to
carry on. But Vera is not a social worker who provides counseling; she is simply
being helpful by doing something she believes she can do safely. Her age-old
method involves lye soap, disinfectant and, of course, lots of hot water, and
another abortionist describes her method as "safe as houses."
The movie has been written and directed by Mike Leigh, the most interesting
director now at work in England, whose "Topsy Turvy," "High Hopes," "All or
Nothing" and "Naked" join this film in being partly "devised" by the actors
themselves. His method is to gather a cast for weeks or months of improvisation
in which they create and explore their characters. I don't think the technique
has ever worked better than here; the family life in those cramped little rooms
is so palpably real that as the others wait around the dining table while Vera
speaks to a policeman behind the kitchen door, I felt as if I were waiting there
with them. It's not that we "identify" so much as that the film quietly and
firmly includes us.
The movie is not about abortion so much as about families. The Drakes are close
and loving. Vera's husband Stan (Phil Davis), who works with his brother in an
auto repair shop, considers his wife a treasure. Their son Sid (Daniel Mays)
works as a tailor, has a line of patter, is popular in pubs, but lives at home
because of the postwar housing crisis. Their daughter Ethel (Alex Kelly) is
painfully shy, and there is a sweet, tactful subplot in which Vera invites a
lonely, tongue-tied bachelor named Reg (Eddie Marson) over for tea and
essentially arranges a marriage.
"Vera Drake" tells a parallel story about a rich girl named Susan (Sally
Hawkins), the daughter of the family Vera cleans for. Sally is raped by her
boyfriend, becomes pregnant and goes to a psychiatrist who can refer her to a
private clinic for a legal abortion. Like everyone in the movie, Sally is
excruciatingly shy about discussing sex, and ignorant. "Did he force himself
upon you?" the psychiatrist asks, and Sally is not sure how to answer. Leigh's
point is that those with 100 pounds could legally obtain an abortion in England
in 1950, and those with two pounds had to depend on Vera Drake, or on women not
nearly as nice as Vera Drake.
Vera's world falls apart when the police become involved in an abortion that
almost leads to death, and the tightly knit little family changes when the
police knock on the door. The Detective Inspector (Peter Wight), is a
considerable man, large, imposing, and not without sympathy. He believes in the
law and enforces the law, but he quickly understands that Vera was not working
for profit, and is not ungentle with her. In a courtroom scene, on the other
hand, it is clear that the law makes no room for nuance or circumstance.
Some of the film's best scenes involve the family sitting around the table,
shell-shocked (after Vera whispers into her husband's ear, telling him what he
had never suspected). There are moments when Leigh uses his technique of
allowing a reticent character to stir into conviction. At Vera's final Christmas
dinner, Reg, now engaged to Ethel, makes what for him is a long speech: "This is
the best Christmas I've had in a long time. Thank you very much, Vera.
Smashing!" He knows telling Vera she has prepared a perfect meal means more to
her than any speech about rights and wrongs, although later he blurts out: "It's
all right if you're rich, but if you can't feed 'em, you can't love 'em."
Even in saying that I am bringing more ideology into "Vera Drake" than it
probably requires. The strength of Leigh's film is that it is not a message
picture, but a deep and true portrait of these lives. Vera is kind and innocent,
but Lily, who procures the abortions, is hard, dishonest and heartless. The
movie shows the law as unyielding, but puts a human face on the police. And the
enduring strength of the film is the way it shows the Drake family rising to the
occasion with loyalty and love." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Running time: 125 minutes. Rated R (for depiction of strong thematic material).
 RIVERS
AND TIDES
JAN. 30
More
about the film
Directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer. Produced by Annedore V. Donop. A Roxie
release. Documentary. Unrated (suitable for child viewing). Running time: 90
min. 2001 release. In English.
AWARDS
2001 Documentary, German Camera Award
2002 Best Documentary, San Francisco Film Critics Circle
2002 Golden Gate Award for Film & Video – the Arts, San Francisco International
Film Festival
2003 Best Documentary, German Film Critics Association
REVIEW
"Whether you think Andy Goldsworthy is a genius or just a grown man lucky
enough to have found a way to earn a living playing the kids’ game of Pooh
sticks in his local river, “River and Tides” is a truly beautiful, insightful
movie that captures the nature of this artist who forms art out of nature. Rare
is the documentary that provides the opportunity to watch and absorb the wonders
onscreen in a way that allows your own thought processes to meld with the
content without feeling bullied or trapped by a contrived viewpoint.
Director, cinematographer and editor Thomas Riedelsheimer has transferred
Goldsworthy, his environs, his work process, his thoughts and feelings, his
marvelously structured but fragile, temporal, temporary creations onto the
screen, completely free of impediment. We feel right there all the time,
watching Goldsworthy’s often bleeding hands craft magical constructions from
sticks and stones, bark and bracken, ice, crushed rocks, wildflowers and leaves
from field, stream, hedgerow and wayside, matching and mating them to
ever-flowing waters of sea, river, tide pool, damp ground, sleet, snow and rain
on the wind.
Goldsworthy, a British artist based in Scotland, is filmed both at home and on
location in Canada, the U.S. and France as he works both on commissions that
will stand up for a while to public gaze and, more often, on work balanced for
just a fleeting speck of time before returning to the land or water from which
it came, only living on via photography. The sun shines, infusing but also
melting the loops of ice curled onto a rock on a deserted shore; swirls of
sticks or flowers, layered and draped at tide line or in tidepools, soon drift
away; even the sturdier stone walls and conical sculptures, crafted into balance
from the debris of the landscape, contain their own ruin; the tapestry of
black-rooted bracken, pulled from the earth shifts and scatters with the
seasons.
But oh, how wonderful these forms are for the moments they live--just like all
in nature.
Goldsworthy doesn’t plunder nature, or exploit it. He merely honors it.
Riedelsheimer has achieved the same--he allows Goldsworthy, diffident in speech
but chock full with feeling, to reveal the wellspring of this talent. Doing so
has created a film that is true to--and truly--art".
Bridget Byrne, Box Office Magazine
OTHER REVIEWS
"Fascinating" -- Edward Guthmann, SF Chronicle
"Ravishingly beautiful " -- Stephen Holden, NY Times
"A surprisingly magical experience...Intoxicating and meditative by turns,
helped by Fred Frith's minimalist score, this film opens a portal into a
singular creative mind"
-- Kenneth Turan, LA Times
"TWO THUMBS UP!". --Ebert & Roeper
"Pure and sublime... Andy Goldsworthy's art borders on the religious.... It puts
you into a profound conversation with the glorious, uncompromising and
mesmerizing flow of nature. It is the artistic equivalent of ancient ritual
offerings to the gods."
-- Desson Howe, Washington Post
"Ravishing from start to finish... a work of art in its own right."
-- David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor"
"Some images verge on Kubrick territory"
-- Ed Halter, The Village Voice
"It's a truly balmy experience that puts you in a better place."
-- William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelliegnecer
"It moves at a very leisurely and calm pace, washing over its audience and
soothing its viewers with its lush photography and mellow score by Fred Frith.
I've seen the film about three times now, mostly because it's a great stress
reliever, as well as a wonderful portrait of a very unique artist."
-- Film Threat
VIDEO LETTERS FROM PRISON (December 26, 2005) is a short documentary
by local filmmaker Milt Lee, and won first place in that category at this year's
Native Voices Film Festival.
Milt has agreed to supplement the original film with additional footage which
provides followup on the family members portrayed.
The movie follows three Lakota girls whose father has been in prison or jail
most of their lives. In ten years they have grown numb to empty promises and
have given up on him. Reluctantly, they agree to talk to him in a series of
video letters, and a powerful story of life, grief, and great hope unfolds
between this incarcerated man and his daughters.
The film provides ample food for thought regarding the role of a father within
the family and the basis and strength of family ties. It should lead to an
interesting post-movie discussion (to be conducted by Milt and Jamie Lee).
Contents include strong emotions--the film is not recommended for very young
children.
Official selection: Winnipeg International Film Festival,
Oscar Micheaux Film Festival, International Diversity Film Festival, Winner, Best Short Documentary, Native
Voice Film Festival.
Born
Into Brothels
The winner of 2004's Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature,Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's "Born into Brothels" isn't nearly as prurient an experience as you might expect from a movie focusing on the plight of young children growing up in the notorious red light district of India's Sonagachi, a highly impoverished section of Calcutta.
That's partly because of the kids themselves, on whom the filmmakers mostly concentrate, not their fallen mothers trapped by the unavoidable scourge of "The Line," an inevitable life of prostitution with little if anything to prevent their hapless daughters, some not quite teenagers already, following in their ill-fated footsteps.
Strangely enough the eight featured children--Avijit, Gour, Kochi, Manik, Puja, Shanti, Suchitra, and Tapasi--are vibrantly alive, many with hopes of escaping the slums and securing an all-important education no matter how fanciful, how impossible it might sound. (Their fathers, if they're even still alive, are invariably drug addicts, strung out on hashish.) The kids talk openly and unsentimentally about their lives. "The men who enter the building are not so good," comments one. They work hard tending house–cooking, cleaning dishes, and babysitting siblings.
As a result they are mature beyond their years–older and very much the wiser."Born into Brothels" is all about second chances and the opportunity here has been provided in the form of a simple Western tool that many of us take for granted: a point-and-shoot camera. Briski and Kauffman, the former of whom appears on film and works side-by-side with the children, ask the kids of Sonagachi to tell their own story in words and (mostly) pictures through the construct of a basic photography class and the results are often mesmerizing, with the children--who range in age from ten to fourteen--possessing incredible and heretofore untapped natural talent.
Briski's original goal was to live and work among the prostitutes, capturing the sordid surroundings and conditions that front their illegal activities on film (no easy task to be sure). But she was instantly drawn to the children and quickly changed her approach. In that regard she breaks the cardinal rule of documentary filmmaking by actually getting involved in the children's lives, attempting to register them for boarding school, for example, and influencing some of their decision making, such as securing a visa and other travel documents for the 11-year-old Avijit so that he can journey to Amsterdam to participate in a World Press Photo Foundation exhibit.
In that regard we are afforded many opportunities to witness Calcutta's incomprehensible bureaucracy, as Zana Auntie (as the kids call Briski) battles stubborn government officials and their endless red tape. What unfolds, however, is a film that, despite its scurrilous subject matter, remains genuinely uplifting and inspiring. Whereas not every child introduced in the film is assured a happy ending, "Born into Brothels" paints a vivid portrait of the vibrancy of human life no matter how squalid its environment and reinforces the oft-held notion that one person *can* make a difference.-- David N. Butterworth |
 THE COLOR OF PARADISE: (shown October 2005) An Iranian film about a
motherless blind boy, initially rejected by his father. Beautifully
sensitive movie.
http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/colorofparadise/
Poster---
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0191043/posters
 GENGHIS BLUES: (shown September 2005) A magical documentary concerning the blind
American blues guitarist/songwriter Paul Pena, who taught himself
Mongolian-style throat-singing by listening to short-wave radio broadcasts. He
is contacted by a group (including the late physicist, Richard Feynman) who are
interested in preserving the culture of that Asian region, and who arrange for
him to travel to the tiny country of Tuva, where Pena participates in a
country-wide throat-singing confab.
 TO BE AND TO HAVE: (shown August 2005) Set in a one-room school in modern rural
France, the film follows a remarkably perceptive and loving teacher as he
coaches his 13 pupils through life phases in addition to school curriculum.
 THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES: (shown July 2005) True-life account of a trip through
much of S. America by the young Ernesto ("Che") Guevara and his friend, at a
point where Che hasn't yet finished medical school. Provides an interesting
insight into the shaping of his political views, but doesn't really deal with
later events in his life.
THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL:(shown June 2005) Remarkable insight into the
lives of Mongolian camel herders and their beginning exposure to technological
culture. The nomads invoke a beautiful traditional ritual to fix a situation
where a camel mom has rejected her newborn.
CONTROL ROOM: (shown May 2005) Extremely well done documentary about news
coverage during the current Iraq invasion. Tries to dig into the issue of
whether true objectivity is possible in war reporting from either side. Balances
the perspectives of an official Pentagon spokesman with that of Al Jazeera
staff.
THE FUTURE OF FOOD: (shown April 2005) A hardhitting documentary dealing with
the increasing domination of world agriculture by a few seed/chemical
conglomerates, especially critical of the not-so-well-thought-out and forcible
introduction of genetically modified crops.
http://www.imdb.com/futureoffood
THE CORPORATION: (shown March 2005) Documentary about the pervasive cultural and
political influence of large corporations in American society. Does a
personality analysis of these entities, which have been given protections as
"persons" in our legal code.
http://www.imdb.com/corporation
TOUCHING THE VOID: (shown February 2005). Spectacular film about a pair of
mountain-climbers, one of whom
has to cut his buddy's rope in order to save himself.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379557/
INDIGO: (shown January 2005). A spiritually and psychically gifted child helps
to heal family relationships.
http://indigothemovie.com/
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