By Joe Bendel. Zoos, farms, and taxidermy shops are good places for gawking at animals. French Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté essentially invites viewers to do precisely that. Supposedly, the clever part is that the animals will gawk back. However, they do not seem particularly interested in holding up their end throughout his non-narrative documentary Bestiaire, which screened as a New Frontier selection of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Côté’s title is derived from the medieval bestiaries, which evoke images of lavish illustrations on gilt-edged illuminated pages. He takes rather the opposite approach, de-emphasizing the exoticism of the animals, focusing instead on the drabness of their surroundings. Unlike recent animal documentaries, such as the Jouberts’ Last Lions, Nick Stringer’s Turtle: the Incredible Journey, and even Nicholas Philibert’s Nenette (a film much closer akin to Bestiaire in terms of tone), Côté discourages attempts to impose individual personalities on the animals by framing them from off-kilter perspectives and completely eschewing mood-setting soundtrack music.

A considerable portion of Bestiaire was shot at Quebec’s Parc Safari, whose animal handlers are likely to stoke the zeal of anti-zoo protestors with their dispassionate professionalism. Indeed, Bestiaire could almost be considered an expose for people who really need films to be about something. Regardless, less adventurous viewers will be decidedly uncomfortable during the sort-of observational doc.

If you want to learn something about the process of taxidermy, Bestiaire eventually delivers the goods. On the other hand, if you want to get to know some of the beasts, Côté will deliberately undercut any such attempts. There is no question the filmmaker accomplishes exactly what he set out to do. Yet it remains wholly fair to ask “so what?” Probably more interesting as a concept than as a viewing experience, Bestiaire was definitely for the New Frontier track die-hards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

SUNDANCE GRADE: C

Posted on January 30th, 2012 at 12:18pm.

By Joe Bendel. In the late 1930’s, Lithuania twice won the European basketball championship. In 1940, it was invaded and subjugated by the Soviet Union. Yet, the tiny Baltic country’s proud sporting tradition helped sustain it during those painful decades, culminating in the newly free Lithuania’s Olympic victory over the Russian-Unified team in 1992. The incredible history of Lithuania’s break from the Soviet Union and the game that announced their independence to the world is told in Marius Markevicius’s stirring documentary The Other Dream Team, which screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

America’s 1988 Olympic loss to the Soviets was the impetus for the creation of the so-called “Dream Team” of NBA all-stars, including Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. However, four of the Soviet team’s starters were actually Lithuanian. In fact, warriors like Arvydas Sabonis and Šarunas Marčiulionis had dramatically mixed emotions about their 1988 gold. They were proud of their accomplishments, but the Soviet anthem was not the anthem they wanted to hear on the medal stand.

Four years later, much had changed. Sabonis and his colleagues were finally allowed to play in the NBA as a reward for their Olympic glory. At great risk, Lithuania had asserted its independence and held out against invading Soviet forces. The freshly sovereign country could field one of the best basketball teams in the world but had insufficient resources to send them to Barcelona. However, help would come from an unexpected source: the Grateful Dead.

Dream gives roughly equal time to sports and history, but each part is equally uplifting and informative. Indeed, people often forget it was Nobel Peace Laureate Mikhail Gorbachev who sent the tanks into Vilnius. In fact, independence leader Vytautas Landsbergis was just as much a protagonist as Sabonis and his teammates.

Just about all the starters from the 1992 team are heard from in great length throughout Team and each has their share of telling anecdotes. As is so often the case with survivors’ reminiscences of the Communist era, they are often simultaneously funny and sad. Yet, simply considered as a sports doc, Dream is one of the best in years. Even basketball fans who think they know the players well will learn something new here.

This is a great story, smartly constructed with rich details and full historical context. The many Grateful Dead tunes included in the soundtrack are also a nice bonus. For those looking for a movie that celebrates the spirit of freedom, Dream will get you choked-up, in a good way. Legitimately inspiring and hugely entertaining, it is one of two truly standout documentaries at Sundance this year (along with Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry).  Enthusiastically recommended, it screens again today (1/25) and Saturday (1/28) in Park City, as well as this Friday (1/27) in Salt Lake.

SUNDANCE GRADE: A+

Posted on January 25th, 2012 at 6:58pm.

By Joe Bendel. Don’t ask who that masked man is. You don’t want to know. In 2009, a ’sicario’ (a professional killer working for the Mexican drug cartels) gave an in-depth interview to Charles Bowden for a revealing Harper’s article. Despite the cartel’s $250,000 bounty, he subsequently consented to a lengthy on-camera interview with Bowden’s filmmaker colleague Gianfranco Rosi, who shaped his pseudo-confession into the documentary El Sicario, Room 164 (trailer below), now playing in New York at Film Forum.

Rosi and Bowden are deliberately sketchy about the details, but the film was shot in a border town hotel room (number 164), where the masked sicario once held and tortured someone who owed money to his cartel. Eventually, he turned the battered man over to another team of sicarios. While he does not know his victim’s ultimate fate, he knowledgeably assumes a grisly end. Though this disturbing information seems to lend considerable significance to the location, it quickly becomes apparent the sicario has done such crimes innumerable times before in similar motels and so-called “safe houses” on either side of the border.

The sicario might very well be embellishing a host of individual details, but the broad strokes he sketches out ring chillingly true. Like a talented young baseball player, the sicario was recruited by his cartel at a young age. After serving a drug-running apprenticeship, the cartel greased his way into the police academy. Yes, the killer is also a copper. He estimates about a quarter of the graduates of all Mexico’s law enforcement academies are cartel plants. Not surprisingly, the free access to squad cars greatly simplifies the kidnapping process.

164 is all kinds of scary. Frankly, it makes it pretty clear narco-terrorist warlords have taken over the country. This is not happening in remote Afghanistan, but along our southern border. It is also evident the current administration is not capable of thinking sufficiently strategically over the long term to combat them in any meaningful way. Sending them a bunch of free guns as part of Operation Fast & Furious just is not going to do it. Continue reading »

Director Werner Herzog.

[Editor's Note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. In Part I of my interview with Werner Herzog, we discussed his new movie Into the Abyss and its searing exploration of evil in human society. Now in Part II we turn to the world of nature, which Herzog sees as even more dangerous. In Les Blanks’ documentary Burden of Dreams, Herzog famously spoke out on the “obscenity” of the jungle, its “harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.” In Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World, he expressed skepticism toward “tree huggers and whale huggers,” while in Grizzly Man, he documented the fate of a man literally killed by his unhealthy obsession with wild nature. Herzog has even criticized the romanticizing of nature in Avatar, calling the film “an abomination because of its New Age schlock and bullshit.”

Obviously Werner Herzog has strong feelings about the proper relationship between humanity and nature. One sees this, for example, in Herzog’s stunning documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, released this week on DVD. Cave of Forgotten Dreams offers an extraordinary look at the 30,000 – 32,000 year-old Paleolithic cave paintings inside the Chauvet Cave in southern France – currently considered to be the oldest cave paintings in the world. As Herzog told me in Part I of our discussion on the concept of “the abyss,” “I’ve always tried to look deep inside of what we are – deep into the recesses of our existence, of our prehistory – like in Cave of Forgotten Dreams. So it is some sort of a theme that runs through quite a few of my films.”

The Paleolithic cave paintings of Chauvet.

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Herzog speaks eloquently of the Paleolithic cave paintings of Chauvet and their relationship to the surrounding landscape:

“These images are memories of long-forgotten dreams. Is this their heartbeat, or ours? Will we ever be able to understand the vision of the artists across such an abyss of time? [Camera shows a massive natural stone arch in the landscape.] There is an aura of melodrama in this landscape. It could be straight out of a Wagner opera or a painting of German Romanticists. Could this be our connection to them? This staging of a landscape as an operatic event does not belong to the Romanticists alone. Stone Age man might have had a similar sense of inner landscapes …”

And yet despite these poetic sentiments, Herzog vehemently denies being a Romantic; rather, he defines his approach to nature as being similar to that of the artists of the late Middle Ages.

Ultimately, if one were to search for a theme that unites Werner Herzog’s diverse body of work, it would be that respect for human life and its limits is what holds us back from the brutality of amoral nature – the abyss into which humanity’s natural instincts might otherwise plunge. As Herzog told me, he is concerned above all with civilizational breakdown – with how humanity can abandon its own heights to descend into unfathomable depths of madness and annihilation. Equally importantly though, Herzog’s love of art, of literature, of joyful exploration of the world and its peoples points to a hopeful way out of the abyss and into the light of day.

Klaus Kinski treks into the Amazon in Herzog's "Aguirre: The Wrath of God."

Thus, in Part II of this interview, we tackle such colorful subjects as Herzog’s anti-romantic views on nature, why he can’t help ranting about Avatar, his excitement over his Rogue Film School (in which he teaches such crucial skills as “lock picking” and “neutralizing bureaucracy”), and his belief that Wrestlemania and reality TV offer vital clues to understanding civilization. The interview has been edited for length.

GM: There is this sense in all of your films, whether they’re historical dramas or contemporary documentaries, that you wish to explore the extremes. You go from examining the molecular world in scenes from Encounters at the End of the World to these broad vistas of Antarctica or the desert or the Himalayas in your other documentaries. Do you feel that you’re part of what could be termed the German Romantic tradition in terms of having this approach to nature – seeing it both as a place of danger and a place of inspiration?

WH: I think that’s a common misconception [that] I had an affinity to romantic culture – no I don’t. I do not feel much affinity with it. I don’t feel at home with it. I’m much closer to poets like Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Büchner who wrote Woyzeck – in the early 1820s he wrote literature that belonged to the early 20th century, that was almost like Expressionism. Or Hölderlin the poet, and he’s not a Romantic poet either. He’s somewhere completely unique. He’s like a continent of his own – not really comparable to other Romantic writers of his time…

And when you look at how I depict nature – wild nature for example in Grizzly Man, it’s quite evident that it’s a completely anti-Romantic view. Timothy Treadwell who was protecting bears and who was killed and eaten by a grizzly bear together with his girlfriend, he has this kind of watered down Romanticism … that’s what I’m completely against. I would stop the course of the film even and in my comment I would have an ongoing argument with Treadwell: “Here I differ from Treadwell.” I do not see wild nature as something benign and beautiful and the bears fluffy like little pets. No, they are dangerous and aggressive and nature itself looks rather chaotic and hostile. You look at the universe – it’s very, very hostile out there.

For example in Les Blanks’ Burden of Dreams I deliver a speech/rant about the jungle and you’ll never see anything so clearly against Romanticism and the romanticizing of landscapes, romanticizing of wild nature. … It’s funny because being a German everyone immediately thinks yeah yeah he must have an affinity with Romantic culture. No, I don’t.

GM: I think I see multiple sides to Romanticism. It’s such a complex movement. What I was thinking of was not so much the warm, romantic with a small ‘r’ approach to nature but the approach that sees it as terrifying and overwhelming. For example, even going back into 16th century German art I think of Albrecht Altdorfer with his landscapes towering over very small figures, or of Bruegel’s Landscape With the Fall of Icarus with the human figures very small in the distance, on through Caspar David-Friedrich’s work [in the early 19th century] where you have the two extremes – you either have humanity dwarfed by nature, as in The Monk on the Seashore or you have humanity standing titanic over nature, as in The Wanderer over the Sea of Clouds. So it was in that sense I was asking about nature. Your quote was very striking [in Burden of Dreams] where you mention the jungle as being “full of obscenity … nature here is vile and base.”

From Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo": Kinski in nature.

WH: Yeah. Obscenity – that was because Kinski kept saying everything is erotic. And he would hug a tree and fornicate with it. [Laughs] Which is really against my inner convictions.

GM: But this comment about the ‘harmony of overwhelming and collective murder’ – setting aside Kinski’s comments, is that how you would see that particular jungle, or nature in general?

WH: No, you would have to be a little bit cautious. It’s a rant ‘against’ the jungle, but it came at a time of enormous strain on me – weeks and weeks and weeks where there was every single day a major disaster. And when I speak of major disaster I mean disasters like two plane crashes. Two consecutive plane crashes, and on and on and on. So, yes you have to see it in the context. But otherwise, thinking about the jungle, it’s not completely wrong what I said. But the ferocity of the rant is in a way a result of enormous pressure of disasters one after the other. … And it’s OK, I still like my rant.

GM: It’s achieved a cult status on-line. People enjoy it a great deal.

Continue reading »

[Editor's Note: Cyril Tuschi's Khodorkovsky is available free in its entirety at Vimeo.]

By Joe Bendel. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is now the chief lobbyist for Russian energy concerns. It may explain his less than vigorous interest in the political persecution of Mikhail Khodokorvsky, the chairman of the Yukos Oil Company and a leading bankroller of Russian opposition parties. It certainly helps explain how the Putin regime does business. Unfortunately, not even eight billion (with a “b”) dollars could protect Khodorkovsky from Kremlin persecution. German filmmaker Cyril Tuschi examines both the man and the dubious case brought against him in Khodorkovsky, which opens tonight in New York at Film Forum.

As any Russia watcher knows, Khodorkovsky is complicated individual. He was once an ardent Communist, which is how he was allowed to take control of Yukos during the fixed privatization process. He was not just an oligarch, he was the worst of the lot by any standard of open corporate governance. At this time, he enjoyed close relations with the Kremlin. Around the turn of the millennium, he radically changed the Yukos corporate culture, embracing openness and capitalism. He also started supporting democratic reformers. He is now serving a prison sentence in Siberia, as the result of what Schröder reportedly called “a thing between men.”

Though fascinating and not a little bit scary, this basic story is all well documented. However, Tuschi uncovers new (or criminally under-reported) information (particularly regarding the suspicious murder of a provincial mayor making trouble for Yukos) and scores legitimate interviews with Khodorkovsky himself, mostly conducted via letters but also hurriedly shot in between sessions of the Siberian kangaroo court. Aside from his subject, Tuschi also talks on camera to almost all of Khodorkovsky’s close associates not currently behind Russian bars, notably including his insightful early business advisor, Christian Michel, as well as a surprising number of Russian officials.

Tuschi’s German perspective hardly burnishes the former Chancellor’s image, but it gives the film an intriguing twist. He also includes dramatic black-and-white animated interludes that unmistakably evoke the Orwellian nature of the Khodorkovsky case. A classy package, Arvo Pärt’s fourth symphony, which he dedicated to Khodorkovsky, serves as the film’s soundtrack. Even Tuschi’s commentary is rather sharp. About all that is missing is a happy ending. Indeed, the documentarian had to know he was onto something when his laptop containing the film’s final edit was “mysteriously” stolen from his home.

Frankly, Tuschi’s documentary is timely beyond the prosecution of Khodorkovsky, reminding audiences wealth cannot provide a lasting defense against a government wielding unchecked power, as the case in neo-Soviet Russia. In fact, the circumstances of his imprisonment are so egregious, Milan Horáček, the German Green Party Human Rights delegate to the European Parliament, adopted his cause, stating unequivocally: “One can’t distinguish between human rights for the young, old, poor or rich.”

More documentaries should aspire to be like Khodorkovsky. Never smug or snarky, it is a bold, and sometimes artful film that truly challenges the powerful,  An important and engrossing work of big-screen journalism, it is highly recommended when it opens tonight (Wednesday, 11/30) in New York at Film Forum, with Tuschi scheduled to attend the 7:50 screening.

Posted on November 30th, 2011 at 11:42am.

By Joe Bendel. Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who embraced the 1960’s counterculture, but could not abide rock & roll. He drank significantly more than he should have, openly and often, but he had no use for drugs. A former monk, Trungpa renounced his robes, developing ways to teach Tibetan Buddhism in the western vernacular. A study in paradoxes, Trungpa’s all too brief life avoided cliché, making him a rich documentary subject in Johanna Demetrakas’ Crazy Wisdom: the Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, which opens this Friday in New York at the Rubin Museum of Art.

A recognized reincarnation, Trungpa was the last of his generation to be entirely educated in Tibet. After the Chinese Communists invaded in 1959, he took a leading role securing the teachings and documents of his faith, personally guiding a group of his fellow monks to safety in India. Living in exile, Trungpa chose to embrace the west, trading his robes for a business suit. It was the start of a transformation that was decidedly controversial with his elders.

Living in Scotland, Trungpa married a young British woman and began teaching Tibetan Buddhism to hippies. For obvious reasons, they were attracted to his “crazy wisdom,” a recognized approach to enlightenment celebrating the eccentric and unconventional, sort of the rough Tibetan Buddhist analog to drunken master martial arts. However, Trungpa liked to keep people guessing.

As one of his students recalls, at the height of the anti-war movement, Trungpa was once asked to comment about aggression in America, to which he replied: “I want to talk about the aggression in this room.” Ouch. He was also evidently a stickler for the Queen’s English, perhaps giving scores of hippies their first elocution lessons. However, the greatest irony must have been the Dorje Kasung, the military drill team he established at Naropa University, the American Buddhist school Trungpa founded in Boulder, Colorado. Continue reading »

By Joe Bendel. Juan Pujol was the all-time greatest writer of spy fiction, but he wrote for a very select audience: German intelligence. Supposedly based in England, the Spanish double agent wrote incredibly verbose reports to his unsuspecting German handlers, riddled with disinformation and imaginary sub-agents, but it all boiled down to one word: Calais. Misdirecting the National Socialist war machine was the intrigue of a lifetime in Pujol’s life of intrigue, idiosyncratically documented in Edmon Roch’s Garbo the Spy (trailer above), which opens this Friday in New York.

The Germans knew him as Alaric, but the British code-named him Garbo. A deserter during the Spanish Civil War, Pujol’s story is so unlikely it would be difficult to believe without documentation. In fact, MI-5 did not believe him when the unprepossessing man came cold-calling. Rebuffed but undeterred, Pujol next approached the Germans, who immediately recruited him as an agent.

Pujol fed the Germans a steady diet of information largely culled from old newspapers that nonetheless built up his controllers’ trust. Eventually, after several further overtures, the British realized Pujol was legit and began directing his work. While he passed along a great deal of misleading intel, his most important assignment was Operation Fortitude, a concerted campaign to convince the Germans the D-Day invasion would land at Calais rather than Normandy.

Eventually, the war ends satisfactorily for Pujol. A bit of time passes, he disappears, and at some point is reported dead. Obviously though, there will be more to the master of the deception’s story. Military historian Nigel West (and former conservative MP under his given name, Rupert Allason) would tell the full tale when he literally wrote the book on Pujol, finally giving the remarkable spy his proper due.

Roch’s film is incredibly cinematic, employing extensive archival footage and clips from vintage war and espionage films as illustrative devices. In fact, the video sampling strategy often threatens to overwhelm the deadly serious subject matter, giving Garbo a vibe somewhat akin to a Jay Rosenblatt short film collage. Frankly, it occasionally borders on the inappropriately ironic. Still, the substance of Pujol’s story consistently rises above any stylistic excesses.

Garbo the film also boasts a relatively small but highly specialized cast of interview subjects, including West (as he is billed) and Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones, a contemporary of Pujol’s working clandestinely for the OSS. Everything they have to say is quite noteworthy. It also interviews members from both of Pujol’s families, neither of whom knew of the other until West discovered his fate.

There is no question Pujol saved many Allied lives. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of servicemen survived the European theater because the Germans were dug in at Calais. The strange details and anecdotes surrounding Operation Fortitude by themselves are well worth the price of admission. Totally fascinating history, briskly if somewhat distractingly rendered on-screen by Roch, Garbo is definitely worth seeing, particularly for history buffs and espionage junkies, when it opens today (11/18) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

Posted on November 18th, 2011 at 3:52pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. It appears that we may have a new film movement afoot, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests: “Occupy Cinema.” For the moment this movement seems to be situated around just a few sites: Cine Foundation International, Occupy Cinema and Cinemas In Solidarity. However, I sense a trend growing – a filmic uprising that may change the cinema as we know it.

Or not.

A movement in the making?

I recently watched two of the film offerings at Cine Foundation International, and decided to embed their latest – a short film titled “#Occupy Cinema Untitled 1” – above, for LFM readers’ consideration. Frankly, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the film, so I decided to email my old colleague, Professor Jacques de Molay, Professor of Cinema & Neurosemiotics at the University of Northern California. I was very eager to seek out Jacques’ opinion about the film – as he’s always had a better feel for radical, transgressive cinema than I do.

As regular Libertas readers know, Jacques is a widely recognized Marxist intellectual, and last appeared on our site here to provide a guest review of Piranha 3D, which he liked very much – interpreting the film as a subversive parable on ‘consumerism.’ As Jacques put it at the time, reviewing Piranha: “after the Wall Street collapse, commerce in today’s capitalist society can only end in bloody apocalypse – a farrago of bikini tops, chewed limbs … and shattered ideals.”

With this in mind, I asked Jacques what he thought of the film above. He emailed me this reply, from his vacation home in St. Bart’s: Continue reading »

By Joe Bendel. If the Taliban mullahs want to call you something heavy, they will probably label you a “miscreant” (a villainous heretic). Unfortunately, for entertainment-starved Pakistanis, just about everyone involved in artistic endeavors is automatically considered a “miscreant,” most definitely including actors and filmmakers. Ironically though, the cottage Pashto film industry was largely based in the Taliban stronghold of Peshawar, which is where Australian filmmaker-artist George Gittoes took his camera for an up-close and personal look at militant intolerance in The Miscreants of Taliwood (see a 6-minute preview above), which screens during Anthology Film Archives’s upcoming retrospective of Gittoes gonzo-ish filmmaking.

If truth be told, Gittoes was probably fortunate to live through the first thirty seconds of Miscreants. Fortunately, he was only roughed up a bit while filming Islamists building a bonfire of CDs and DVDs in Islamabad, a city that Gittoes reminds viewers contains nuclear weapons. However, as Gittoes pursues his story, he becomes increasingly a part of his own film, at considerably further risk to his own well being.

While it is ordinarily annoying to see filmmakers inject themselves into their own documentaries, Gittoes was hardly motivated by self-aggrandizement. To gain access to the world of Pashto filmmaking, he became an actor himself, forming a fast friendship with his co-star Javed Musazai. When the Taliban terrorized Taliwood into submission, Gittoes financed two films on his own in order to keep the documentary going. Though hardly well-heeled, Gittoes is able to scrape together seven grand, sufficient funds for two Pashto films.

George Gittoes & Javed Musazai in "The Miscreants of Taliwood."

Continue reading »

By Joe Bendel. Before Kim Il-sung, mass-murdering megalomania had never been so kitschy. The Kim dynasty’s tyrannous misrule has been marked by imposingly ugly architecture, stilted cinema, and truly bizarre mass “arirang” stadium performances, all of which promoted the so-called Juche Idea, his crypto-Confucian brand of self-isolating socialism. An expatriate leftist South Korean filmmaker takes on the challenge of making Juche propaganda art films for an international audience, when not weeding the vegetable patch of a North Korean arts collective in The Juche Idea (trailer above), Jim Finn’s experimental mockumentary mash-up, now available on DVD.

Before he bravely led the proletariat into the future, the crown prince Kim Jong-il wrote North Korea’s definitive book on film studies. Not surprisingly, he concluded any honest, class conscious film should scrupulously adhere to his father’s Juche Idea concepts. DPRK films tended to be a wee bit formulaic as a result, typically culminating with a tearful self-criticism session and a vow to rededicate one’s self to Communist Party, as Finn illustrates with several clips crying out for the Crow and Tom Servo treatment.

As Yoon Yung Lee, the filmmaker-in-residence, splices together her strange Chuck Workman-like Juche films, the insular nature of the North’s ideology-driven culture becomes inescapably obvious. As soon as any distance is applied to the cheesy visuals and overblown synchronized dance numbers, irony rushes in like air into a vacuum. There is also an unexpected abundance of accordion music to heighten the surreal vibe of it all.

Finn never directly addresses the brutal reality of DPRK concentration camps, intrusive secret police, and widespread famine. As a result, Juche Idea really ought to be seen in conjunction with other North Korean documentaries, like Mads Brügger’s fearlessly subversive Red Chapel, which Lorber Films has also just released on DVD.  Unlike the play-it-safe “Yes Men,” Brügger and his colleagues punk a target that wields absolute, unchecked power, on its own turf. You have yet to truly live until you have witnessed a pair of Danish-Korean comedians perform a slapstick rendition of “Wonderwall” for an audience of stone-faced DPRK apparatchik-minders in this mad expose-performance art hybrid.

In contrast, Juche Idea is all about the outrageous over-the-top propaganda serving the Great and Dear Leaders’ personality cults, without any reality-based context. Though it seems hard to miss the joke when a Russian tourist’s loose bowels lead to a lecture on the merits of North Korea’s socialized medicine, some of those protesting downtown might just swallow it whole.

Clearly, Finn is not exactly an underground conservative filmmaker, having also produced the short film Dick Cheney in a Cold, Dark Cell, which should have certainly maintained his standing in the experimental film community. Still, after watching Juche it is clear North Korea is a profoundly scary place, at least by any rational aesthetic standard.

Viewers who missed Brügger’s Chapel in theaters should definitely catch up with it first and then supplement it with Juche’s head-spinning images and sly satire. Though only sixty-two minutes, there are some nice supplements on the DVD, including some deleted scenes, such as a whacked-out Juche comic book given the motion-comic treatment, as well as Finn’s short film Great Man and Cinema, which essentially boils down the essence of Juche Idea to three minutes and forty-nine seconds. Recommended for the ironically-inclined and the propaganda-savvy, Juche Idea and Chapel are easily two of last week’s most notable DVD releases.

Posted on October 13th, 2011 at 5:05pm.

By Joe Bendel. He was frequently dubbed “the Quiet Beatle,” but George Harrison could also be called the cineaste Beatle. One of his first solo projects was the original soundtrack for Joe Massot’s psychedelic Wonderwall, completed while the Fab Four were still together. After the band broke up, he eventually founded Handmade Films, providing a jolt of capitol for independent British filmmakers. Harrison himself gets a full 208 minutes of screen-time in Martin Scorsese’s definitive documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, which screens this Tuesday at the 49th New York Film Festival, just ahead of its HBO premiere.

Yes, George Harrison was a lad from Liverpool. The youngest Beatle, he was initially recruited because he could actually play. The general gist of the Beatles story will be generally familiar to just about everybody: initially, Lennon and McCartney were front-and-center, carrying the songwriting load, but slowly Harrison asserted himself, introducing the sitars and tablas into their later, trippier recordings. Since Yoko Ono consented to an on-camera interview, their eventual break-up is presented solely in terms of the stress of working so closely together for such a long time. Still, it is hard not to get sucked into Scorsese’s Harrison-centric retelling of the Beatles mythos.

However, it is something of a surprise how eventful Harrison’s post-Beatle years were, despite his often deliberately low profile (essentially constituting the second half of Material). Of course, his spiritual quest continued, which is a major focus for his widow, co-producer Olivia Harrison. Those who saw the IFC Channel’s behind-the-scenes history of Monty Python will already be well aware of Harrison’s close personal relationship to the comedy troupe, but who knew he was a Formula One Racing fan? In fact, one of the most touching interview segments features his friend Jackie Stewart, the “Flying Scotsman.”

If Ono gets a pass, at least Eric Clapton is forthright enough to address on-camera the whole business of how he romanced Harrison’s first wife while they were still married, albeit rather gingerly. Yet, for personal drama, the events surrounding the violent home invasion Harrison survived late in life effectively serves as a rather stark climax.

Harrison’s friends and family make a compelling case he just might have been the most interesting Beatle. Scorsese calls in some major star power, including both surviving Beatles as well as fellow Traveling Wilbury Tom Petty. It is also a pleasure to see Jane Birkin (from Wonderwall) on-screen in any context, but it is just plain creepy when his one-time producer Phil Spector shows up.

Material is a very good rock doc, but the nearly three and a half hour running time is pushing the limit. According to IMDB, it is almost half an hour longer than Ken Burns’ Thomas Jefferson—and Jefferson was the first to do just about everything. Nonetheless, it is consistently more engaging than the Lennon documentary that screened at last year’s NYFF. As a further point in Material’s favor, Scorsese, Olivia Harrison, and their collaborators almost entirely avoid politics, focusing squarely on the musical, spiritual, and personal aspects of his life, essentially in that order of concentration. Informative and entertaining, Material screens this Tuesday (10/4) at Alice Tully Hall as a Main Slate selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival and airs on HBO in two parts this Wednesday and Thursday (10/5 & 10/6).

Posted on October 4th, 2011 at 2:00pm.

By Joe Bendel. New Yorkers are tough. Since the horrific events of September 11th, the City has weathered blackouts, blizzards, tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Still, the lingering trauma of 9-11 dwarfs all subsequent travails. Capturing the physical rebuilding of Ground Zero and the emotional healing of five New Yorkers profoundly affected by the tragedy, director and conceiving producer Jim Whittaker shot almost a thousand hours of footage, resulting in perhaps the first documentary with its own non-profit governance structure: Rebirth, which opens this today in New York at the IFC Center.

Affectionately called “Captain Manhattan,” FDNY Cap. Terry Hatton was already widely regarded as a fireman’s fireman, even before his heroic death during the collapse of Tower 1. For his best friend and colleague Tim Brown, both grief and survivor’s guilt would debilitate his psyche. Yet, despite his depression, we watch as Brown tries to take affirmative steps to prevent such acts of terror in the future, accepting an appointment to the then newly created Department of Homeland Security and serving as an advisor to Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s ill-fated presidential campaign.

Like Brown, Tanya Villanueva Tepper grieves a New York firefighter, her fiancé, but her new life seems to fall so well into place, she starts to feel guilt over her happiness. In contrast, construction worker Brian Lyons has a more difficult recovery process. He also mourns for a FDNY brother, his younger brother, Mike. In addition, his tireless work in the rescue and recovery efforts has left him with persistent health issues and a case of PTSD. Nick Chirls also lost someone close to him: his mother. Unfortunately, a difficult bereavement would lead to an estrangement between Chirls and his father.

Yet, of the five interview subjects, Ling Young is arguably the most compelling. A dutiful state employee at work on the 78th floor at the time of the attack, Young suffered burns so serious, they caused considerable physiological complications. Though her physical healing process remains unresolved, she emerges as the film’s most inspiring figure.

It is hard not to be moved by pain and honesty expressed by Whittaker’s POV figures. However, the time lapse footage of the Ground Zero rebuilding project might ironically prove counterproductive. While it is impressive to see the construction of the transit hub and smaller buildings in fast forward, it is conspicuously obvious that the Freedom Tower has yet to rise triumphantly from the rubble.

To his credit, Whittaker treats his subjects with sensitivity and respect. Still, it seems clear he chose to play it safe at each juncture, glossing past Brown’s reasons for signing on with the Giuliani campaign and including only a brief vent from Chirls directed at moral relativist apologists for the terrorists. Perhaps it is just as well, focusing Rebirth squarely on the personal makes it more immediate and universally relatable, but the gaps still show. After all, what happened in Lower Manhattan was not a random happenstance, but a deliberate act of mass murder motivated by a hateful ideology. Rebirth completely ignores that reality, concentrating solely on the consequences.

In truth, it is a defensible decision, but it requires far more context than that found in Rebirth to fully understand September 11th. Technically, it is also a well-crafted production, with important aesthetic contributions coming from composer Philip Glass and cinematographer Tom Lappin, who gives the oral history portions a warm glossy look. (As an aside, viewers should look for Jon Fein & Brian Danitz’s thematically related documentary Objects and Memory, also boasting a Glass score, when it airs on PBS as part of their ten year anniversary programming). Well intentioned and executed, but clearly determined to avoid controversy, Rebirth opens today (8/31) in New York at the IFC Center.

Posted on August 31st, 2011 at 5:41pm.