Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. TOLO TV is like the Al Jazeera of Afghanistan, except it is critical of terrorism. Founded by Saad Mohseni, his brothers Zaid and Jahid, and their sister Wajma to be an agent of change, TOLO TV is the first and largest media outlet in Afghanistan. For three months, filmmaker Eve Orner documented the Mohsenis and many of their 900 employees at work and on their guard in The Network, which releases on VOD platforms today.

If TOLO TV sounds familiar, you might remember Havana Marking’s Afghan Star, the behind-the-scenes look at the pop idol reality show produced by that station. Marking followed the travails of a particular contest who faced death threats for modestly swaying to her music. Several years later, contestants regularly show off a few non-twerking moves and often appear sans head trappings. This constitutes progress and it was made possible by TOLO.

Growing up in exile as a result of the Soviet invasion, the Mohsenis, especially London-born Saad, are clearly entrepreneurs on a mission. Arriving in Kabul with waves of returning expats, they shared the general euphoria following the fall of the Taliban. Perceiving a need and an opportunity, they started the radio station that would eventually blossom into the TOLO mini-empire. It was a risky venture, because there was absolutely no media whatsoever in the country at the time. None. Zero. The Islamist Taliban had forbidden such a sacrilege. As one TOLO reporter dramatically recalls, the only sanctioned form of entertainment during the regime were public executions. Yet despite the years of doing without, the Afghan people immediately took to TOLO’s offerings.

On one hand, The Network is a success story, charting TOLO’s growth as a business and a cultural phenomenon. However, an uneasy pessimism hangs over the film. The Mohsenis and their employees openly fear the consequences when the western military powers cut-and-run. After all, TOLO personnel have definitely become targets of the Taliban and their allies. Orner documents many of the tight spots they just barely survived. Ironically, some of the most tragic episodes were instances when TOLO staffers were literally caught in the crossfire.

Arguably, Saad Mohseni is a media visionary. Yet, TOLO often walks a fine line to avoid angering the Islamist element. Their answer to Dr. Phil is particularly problematic, but one could make a case that the open criticism expressed by TOLO’s female employees of his “just be virtuous” advice is a promising sign. Granted, their melodramas look rather cheesy, but not as amateurish as the grade-Z Pashto films gonzo documentarian George Gittoes produced. TOLO also challenges many pre-conceptions viewers might hold, especially with regards to the success they have had with their anti-terrorist cop show, partly underwritten by the U.S. embassy.

Indeed, there is little anti-American sentiment in The Network, per se, and there is absolutely no nostalgia for the Communist regime. This is fascinating stuff, with far reaching social, economic, and geopolitical implications. Orner captures plenty of telling moments and conveys a good sense of the increasingly uncertain vibe in-country. It is a smart doc that is all muscle and no fat. Highly recommended for Middle East watchers and strategic thinkers, The Network is now available for VOD viewing.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 8th, 2013 at 11:05am.

By Joe Bendel. Doc Pomus was one of the first legit white blues singers and he had some legitimate blues. However, he would make his lasting mark on the music business as a songwriter. The man who brought soul to the Brill Building is affectionately profiled in Peter Miller & Will Hechter’s A.K.A. Doc Pomus, which opens this Friday in New York.

The man born Jerome Solon Felder might not sound like much of a blues or R&B vocalist, but soulful African American music just spoke to the young Jewish boy stricken with polio. After serendipitously discovering his talent, Felder redubbed himself “Doc Pomus,” embracing music as a calling he could still pursue. Unfortunately, he was not exactly the major labels’ idea of a front man, but he could write a tune.

You will know his songs, even if you don’t know his name. Without Pomus, the world would not have “Lonely Avenue,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “This Magic Moment,” “There Must Be a Better World,” or “Save the Last Dance For Me,” the Ben E. King hit that serves as the film’s touchstone song.

Conceived and co-produced by Pomus’s daughter, Sharyn Felder, AKA is an unusually revealing look inside the creative psyche. Incorporating Pomus’s uncomfortably candid journals (read by Lou Reed), Miller and Hechter create an unflinching portrait of an artist prone to severe bouts of depression. The Felder family participated in force, with Pomus’s daughter Sharyn, his Broadway actress ex-wife, and his brother Raoul Felder, the celebrity lawyer, all discussing their relationships with the larger than life songwriter. Plenty of his musical colleagues and admirers also duly pay their respects, including Ben E. King, Dion, and Jimmy Scott, whose career Pomus posthumously rejuvenated. Nearly forgotten by the industry, Scott was signed by Sire Records after his moving performance at Pomus’s memorial.

AKA is often a deeply personal film, but its musical analysis is still pretty on target, especially the defense of the soulfulness of Pomus’s “Sweets for My Sweet,” as performed by the Drifters (James Moody also recorded a wonderfully funky instrumental version with Gil Fuller’s big band). Well assembled and surprisingly frank, it is a good cut above most installments of American Masters. Recommended for fans of the blues and American pop music, A.K.A. Doc Pomus opens this Friday (10/4) in New York at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 3rd, 2013 at 5:11pm.

By Joe Bendel. He is like an Old West daguerrotypist capturing the faces of the vanishing frontier, except this barnstorming photographer travels through Tibet. Viewers will watch him work in Hu Wei’s Butter Lamp, which screens during Shorts Program 2 at the 51st New York Film Festival.

At first it looks rather surreal. A quick succession of Tibetan nomads assembles for family photos shot in front of the photographer’s wildly anachronistic fake backdrops, such as Disneyland and the Great Wall of China. Every time the shutter clicks Hu skips ahead to the next family. The older nomads still don traditional formal dress and wield their prayer wheels, but in each subsequent photo sessions, the younger, impatient generation more frequently wears blue jeans and western sportswear.

While the format is simple, Butter offers a shrewd commentary on globalization and the deliberate marginalization of Tibetan culture. While an elderly woman will prostrate herself before the image of Potala Palace, most of the photographer’s customers chose something reflecting a more consumerist lifestyle. Yet, some customs are still observed.

Straddling the boundaries between dramatic narratives, documentaries, and cinematic essays, Butter Lamp is visually inventive and decidedly zeitgeisty (particularly at a time when the Tibetan language is struggling for survival, per government policy). Patrons on a New York budget may not feel Hu’s fifteen minute film alone justifies the price of a ticket, but it is an accomplished production, well worth acknowledging. It screens this Sunday (10/6) and next Thursday (10/10) as part of the 2013 NYFF’s Shorts Program 2.

Posted on October 3rd, 2013 at 5:06pm.

By Joe Bendel. In its heart of hearts, baseball is a neurotic sport. The best games, decided in the late innings, all come down to a simple question—who will choke, the pitcher or the batter? The statistics always favor the pitcher, but fans live in constant hope of that dramatic walk-off home run. We have been conditioned to it after seeing so many of them over the years. None is as indelible in sports fans’ collective memory as the ninth inning game-winner Bobby Thomson hit off Ralph Branca to secure the 1951 National League pennant for the New York Giants—the so-called “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” However, Branca had not cracked. He made his pitch: high and inside, a terrible home run ball. Thomson just knocked it out anyway.

There is more to this story than fans realized, but Branca had to live with the results just the same. Viewers will learn the truth behind baseball’s most iconic game and how it changed the three-time All-Star’s life in Andrew J. Muscato’s documentary profile, Branca’s Pitch, now available on DVD from Strand Releasing.

For years, every time Thomson’s home run was replayed on television, Branca grinned and bore it, like a good soldier. A family man with a prosperous life insurance business, Branca’s post-baseball career was considerably more successful than most of his contemporaries, but that one moment in 1951 dogged him nonetheless. Finally, Branca decided to tell his story, enlisting the help of prolific ghostwriter David Ritz.

You might very well have some of Ritz’s work on your shelf. Originally inspired by Billie Holiday’s Lady Sings the Blues, Ritz has somewhat specialized in co-writing the memoirs of jazz, blues, and R&B artists like Jimmy Scott, Ray Charles, Buddy Guy, Nathalie Cole, and B.B. King. Ritz also happens to be a Brooklyn guy, so he and Branca get along famously.

In addition to a sports doc, Pitch also explores the largely overlooked relationship between a famous memoirist and their ghostwriter (or credited co-writer in Ritz’s case). Cynically, we often assume this is a rather cold-bloodedly commercial relationship, but a genuine friendship blossoms between Branca and Ritz. At one point, Ritz describes Branca’s voice as quite intelligent and well educated, but still a little bit “street,” which seems to fit the co-writer’s sensibilities like a mitt.

Ritz and Muscato both convey a sense that Branca can go days or even months without thinking of the fateful pitch, but as the macro years pass, he still bitterly resents being defined by that one pitch, especially since facts have since come to light suggesting that the Giants late season surge just wasn’t cricket. (Well reported in numerous sources, readers can reference Joshua Prager’s The Echoing Green for specific details, or wait for Pitch to reveal all in due course.)  He is both at peace with the past and deeply outraged—a contradiction Ritz argues he is wholly entitled to.

Executive produced by oh-so former Mets manager Bobby Valentine, Pitch nicely captures baseball’s influence on American culture and the cathartic relief Branca experiences when his side of the story finally enters the public discourse. It is a sports doc, but also a publishing story. Recommended for baseball fans and New Yorkers of all stripes, Branca’s Pitch is now available for home viewing from Strand Releasing.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 2nd, 2013 at 9:29pm.

By Joe Bendel. According to estimates, the Maoist Khmer Rouge regime executed ninety percent Cambodia’s creative artists and performers. During their reign of terror, the nation’s once thriving film industry was also literally decimated. Decades later, a filmmaker and a sculptor combined their talents to chronicle Cambodia’s years of madness with unusual power and grace. Rithy Panh is arguably the foremost documentarian chronicling the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, but to tell his family’s story he enlisted the skills of French Cambodian artist Sarith Mang. Where once there were no surviving images, Mang’s carved figures bring the tragic past back to life in Panh’s The Missing Picture, which screens during the 51st New York Film Festival.

While the Khmer Rouge churned out plenty of propaganda, they were more circumspect in documenting their own crimes. That left plenty of holes for Panh to fill in, as his title suggests. With the help of Mang’s coarse yet eerily expressive clay figurines, Panh recreates the torturous conditions he somehow lived through, but which claimed the lives of his parents, nephews, and little sister, one by one.

Panh’s decision to use Mang’s figures and richly detailed diorama backdrops might sound bizarrely hyper-stylized, but it is shockingly effective. Frankly, the scenes depicting the horrifying death of Panh’s sister are nothing less than devastating. It is an unlikely approach, but it directly conveys the emotional essence of the circumstances.

To better understand the extent of what was lost, Panh periodically looks back at happier, pre-Khmer Rouge days, as well. Again, he compellingly evokes of tactile sense of those innocent times. Viewers can practically smell the spices at the neighborhood parties as they listen to a hip local rendition of Wilson Pickett’s “Midnight Hour.”

Rarely has a documentary ever been so exquisitely crafted. Each and every one of Mang’s figures is a work of art, perfectly lit and lensed by cinematographer Prum Mésa to bring out their full eloquence. Composer Marc Marder supports the visuals with what might be the most mournful film score since Schindler’s List. It is a film that resounds with raw pain and defiant honesty (aside from a dubious bit of moral equivalence regarding western capitalism, probably tossed out to mollify festival programmers).

Not a film to be shrugged off, The Missing Picture holds viewers completely rapt and haunts them for days after viewing. Recommended for a considerably wider audience than traditional doc watchers, it screens this coming Monday (9/30) at the Beale Theater and Tuesday the eighth at the Gilman as an official selection of the 2013 NYFF.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on September 27th, 2013 at 3:20pm.

By Joe Bendel. Given his darkly surreal imagery and his penchant for destroying his own work, there is definitely something Kafkaesque about the late Iranian expatriate artist Bahman Mohasses. For years he had removed himself from the world. Yet, he was ready, perhaps even eager to talk when Mitra Farahani tracked him down for her documentary profile, Fifi Howls from Happiness, which screens during the 51st New York Film Festival.

Mohassess is clearly out of step with the current Islamist regime in Iran. It seems his large scale nude statues were not compatible with the post-Revolutionary standards of “decency.” He also happened to be gay, but in a defiantly politically incorrect way (marriage was not exactly a priority for him). However, his first extended period of self-imposed exile began shortly after the Shah’s ascendency.

Eventually, Mohassess returned to his homeland, where the Shah’s wife became one of his leading patrons. A far cry from a fundamentalist, Mohassess still gave the Islamic Revolution a fair chance, but eventually tired of the gauche scene. Before he left, Mohassess destroyed a significant portion of his oeuvre, taking only a few pieces with him (most notably including the painting that supplies the title of Farahani’s film).

On one hand, Mohassess’s actions echo the existential self-negation of a Dostoyevsky character, yet at other times one suspects it is all a calculated attempt to create mystique. It almost seems like Mohassess has been waiting for someone like Farahani to take his bait. Regardless, she develops a considerable rapport with the artist, but never sounds nauseatingly fawning.

While not quite deleted from Iranian history books, Mohassess’s place in the nation’s collective consciousness is decidedly ambiguous, which makes Fifi a valuable cinematic record. Clearly, there are still Mohassess collectors, like Rokni and Ramin Haerizadeh, prominent Iranian artist-brothers working in Dubai. Through Farahani, they visit Mohassess to commission what may or may not be his last great artistic statement.

Since Fifi is almost entirely shot in Mohassess’s residential hotel, the film is visually somewhat static. Still, it is fascinating to see the stills of his work, accompanied by his artist commentary, especially considering most of said pieces no longer survive. Farahani cleverly incorporates her subject’s unsolicited directorial advice, ironically following it to the letter. Her extended allusions to Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece and Visconti’s The Leopard also add literary flair.

Indeed, Farahani earns great credit for working with and around Fifi’s inherent limitations. Mohassess is a difficult subject, who never sounds like he is really “for” anything or anyone, not even himself. Yet, Farahani does him justice, convincing the audience he is an odd character to visit, but one well worth saving from the memory hole. Recommended for connoisseurs of art documentaries and Mohassess’s work, Fifi Howls from Happiness screens tomorrow (9/28) and Tuesday (10/1) at the Gilman Theater as part of the Motion Portraits section of the 2013 NYFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 27th, 2013 at 3:12pm.