Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. They know something about rivalry in Sicily. For years, Orlando and Rinaldo have both vied for the affections of Angelica in Sicily’s puppet theaters. It is a tradition that partly inspires Italian-American actor John Turturro’s return to his ancestral roots. Puppeteer-filmmaker Roman Paska documents Turturro’s combination sentimental journey and spec research tour in Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy. Now available on DVD from First Run Features, Paska’s film also kicks off the Winter 2013 season of Stranger Than Fiction this coming Tuesday at the IFC Center.

The first generation Turturro has an understandable affinity with his family’s homeland. Off and on, he has developed a project about a traditional Sicilian puppeteer, finding a mentor in Mimmo Cuticchio, who is widely considered the greatest living practitioner of the art (and can also be seen in a straight acting role in the forthcoming Terraferma). While Turturro’s prospective film has yet to come to fruition, he will indeed collaborate with Cuticchio on a production of Orlando’s tragic story.

Paska makes his wandering focus a virtue, leisurely alternating between Cuticchio’s Opera deo Pupi, Turturro’s emotional pilgrimage to sites of great family significance, dramatic readings, and talking head interviews on Sicilian culture. Not what you might call a tight film, it is rather pleasantly discursive. As a result, one gets an impressionist sense of the region’s rhythms and eccentricities instead of an information dump of names and dates.

Cuticchio and his pupi are ridiculously cinematic. Paska simply cannot miss when he has them in a scene. Likewise, Turturro comes across as a mostly likable, down to earth fellow, in touch with his familial legacy. Even scholar Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi looks interesting on camera, making some intriguing points on the shifting roles the Day of the Dead and Christmas have played in Sicilian culture.

Unhurried and disorganized in appropriately enjoyable ways, Rehearsal’s spirit fits its subjects. It offers considerable insights into art and tradition, capturing a few surprisingly touching moments along the way. Warmly recommended for fans of Italian cinema and puppetry, Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy is now available on DVD and screens in New York this coming Tuesday (1/8) at the IFC Center, with both Turturro and Paska scheduled to participate in a Q&A.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on December 4th, 2012 at 12:41pm.

By Joe Bendel. Niall Ferguson would say “I told you so.” For centuries, Tibetan Buddhism was largely confined to the Himalayan region. Then China invaded Tibet, precipitating an exodus of refugees. A few decades later, Tibetan Buddhists have earned growing ranks of converts around the world. Arguably, a bit of competition and Westernization has been beneficial. Victress Hitchcock explores the positive implications of their exile in When the Iron Bird Flies: Tibetan Buddhism Arrives in the West, which appropriately screens before and after New Year’s at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York.

It is a rather eerie prophecy in retrospect. In the Eighth Century, Guru Padmasambhava wrote: “When the iron bird flies and horse run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth.” Communist China realized the prediction with the 1959 invasion. In many ways, it was absolutely devastating to Tibetan culture, particularly during the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Yet Hitchcock suggests it forced one of the world’s most isolated religions into contact with entirely new nations and peoples during the 1960’s, a period when popular Western culture was widely receptive to Eastern thought.

In Iron, Hitchcock challenges our traditional thinking on the Tibetan exile experience, suggesting it has invigorated, modernized, and spread their religious practice. She has a real point. If one took a survey of most American college dorms and neighborhoods, one would be far more likely to find books about Tibetan Buddhism than Mao’s Little Red Book, even in Berkeley. That is a defendable standard of victory, but it has certainly been costly.

Iron revisits subjects of several documentaries that have played at the Rubin over the last two years, including one covering the late E. Gene Smith’s game-changing campaign to preserve and digitize ancient Tibetan texts (fully documented in Dafna Yachin’s Digital Dharma) and another dealing with Chogyam Trunpa, Rinpoche, a learned teacher who adopted a Western business suit and lifestyle to popularize Tibetan Buddhism with the Western counter-culture (profiled in Crazy Wisdom, directed by Johanna Demetrakas, who served as a consulting editor on Iron).

If the learned Rinpoches became evangelists out of necessity, Iron spreads the Tibetan Buddhist “gospel” with the zeal of a convert. Hitchcock clearly hopes to convince Western audiences this once exotic faith speaks directly to the times in which we live. A little of that is all well and good, but she risks alienating the sympathetic by coming on too strong.

Still, Iron offers a fresh perspective on Tibetan Buddhism, capturing its efforts to shed centuries of male chauvinism. It is very definitely the result of Western contact, but also a reflection of the fundamental humanism of the Tibetan Buddhist establishment in exile. Do not hold your breath waiting for similar soul searching from the Islamic world. The wit, erudition, and humility of many exiled Tibetan leaders also help enrich Hitchcock’s portrait. Educational and surprisingly optimistic, When the Iron Bird Flies is definitely worth checking out when visiting the Rubin, home to the world’s leading collection of Himalayan art. It screens again this Wednesday (12/26), Saturday (12/29), and Sunday (12/30), as well as the 2nd and 23rd of January 2013.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 26th, 2012 at 12:02pm.

By Joe Bendel. Can you separate an artist’s work from their offensive ideology? Hollywood asks Middle America to do exactly that nearly every weekend. Granted, the case of Richard Wagner is of a much higher magnitude. After all, we know whose favorite composer he was. Stephen Fry is also an ardent admirer, who tries to reconcile his beloved music with the man’s problematic legacy in Patrick McGrady’s Wagner & Me, which opens this Friday in New York.

Fry is clearly a civilized man of the arts, who actually lost family members in the Holocaust. He also loves Wagner’s music. Love might be an understatement. Touring the celebrated Bayreuth concert hall built to the composer’s specifications as it prepares for its annual Wagner festival, Fry is absolutely giddy. All his sophistication deserts him. It is a total fanboy geek out.

Frankly, Fry might cringe at some of this footage in years to come, but on the other hand, cynicism is overrated. Fry conveys his passion for the music and God bless him for it. To his credit, though, he does not ignore the dark side of Wagner. While he does not delve too deeply into the composer’s documented anti-Semitic sentiments, he fully explores the way Hitler and the National Socialists used the long deceased Wagner to legitimize their reign of insanity. W&M is particularly eye-opening when addressing the support Wagner’s heirs lent to Hitler at a very early stage in his career. Fry also visits a violinist who survived the concentration camps to get her considered judgment on Wagner, which is indeed quite reasonable and reflective.

Wagner will always be a tricky figure to come to terms with. On a basic level, an artist like Wagner or a veteran of film and television like Fry cannot help it if some unsavory characters become fans of their work. Yet, many will fairly argue there were chauvinistically nationalistic themes in Wagner’s operas that were all too compatible with National Socialism. Fry somewhat tries to rehabilitate his idol (while wisely refraining from the “he was a big fan of Mendelssohn and some of his best friends were Jewish” defense the Wagner establishment has floated), but he never closes the deal.

In fact, viewers might walk away from W&M more critical of Wagner the man than when they walked in. That is a testament to Fry’s honesty if not necessarily his persuasiveness. Sometimes interesting but hardly essential, Wagner & Me opens this Friday (12/7) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on December 6th, 2012 at 11:02am.

By Joe Bendel. This is a film the Sheik of Sharjah does not want you to see. In the Emirate of Sharjah, he has the first and final say on everything. A self-styled scholar, he has published tracts like The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf. If ever there was someone in need of a thorough mocking, it would probably be him – but don’t tell that to the Sharjah Art Foundation. Why yes, the Sheik happens to be their primary patron. However, the issues Iranian-American filmmaker Caveh Zahedi encountered while filming a commission for the Sharjah Biennial cut deeper than the merely economic. He documented his outrageous yet chilling misadventures in The Sheik and I, which opens this Friday in Brooklyn.

Frankly, the Sharjah Biennial was asking for it. They recruited Zahedi, told him what great fans they were of his appropriately titled I Am a Sex Addict, proclaimed the theme of the Biennial was “art as a subversive act” or some such artspeak, and assured him nothing was off limits – except the Sheik. Talk about planting a seed. Granted, they also said no frontal nudity and no mocking the prophet, constraints Zahedi thought he could easily abide by. The Sheik just got in his head.

With his wife and young son in tow, Zahedi quixotically sets off on a Roger and Me quest to get the Sheik to play himself in his Biennial film. He intends to blend documentary and fictional narrative in a way that will mock American stereotypes about the Middle East. However, he cannot ignore the way his requests freak out everyone around him. They might say art is a subversive act, but nobody seems to mean it. To his credit, Zahedi never ignores this hypocrisy or the harsh facts of everyday life for migrant workers in the UAE.

Does Zahedi conduct himself rather recklessly at times? Probably. However, charges that he endangered people’s lives might be technically true but completely unfair. To be invited to make a film in a closed, repressive society is a rare opportunity. To make a puff piece would completely squander that prospect and betray any notions of artistic or journalistic integrity one might hold. Zahedi duly holds up a mirror to the UAE society. It is not his fault if what he sees is dirty, dangerous, and decidedly undemocratic.

Nonetheless, the important thing to keep in mind about Sheik and I is that it is a really funny movie. The sarcastic yet weirdly guileless Zahedi serves as the perfect everyman-commentator on the bizarre deceit and denial going on around him. He also stands his ground quite admirably down the stretch, especially when the dreaded b-word comes out: “blasphemy.” Indeed, it is rather telling when a playful dance involving Indian street children and Islamic prayers becomes the stuff of a potential fatwa (no joke). Had he staged a similar number incorporating Catholic rituals, the Pope probably would have found it cute.

Truly packed with revealing scenes, Zahedi clearly captured more than anyone realized at the time and what he did not record, he recreates with some South Park-ish animated sequences. Diehard doc watchers will also enjoy the brief but amusing appearances by Zahedi friend and advisor Alan Berliner. With a third act explosion of irony, The Sheik and I absolutely must be seen to be believed. Worthy of being screened with Mads Brügger’s The Ambassador, Zahedi’s docu-provocation is very highly recommended when it opens this Friday (12/7) at Videology in Brooklyn.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 3rd, 2012 at 9:50am.

By Joe Bendel. Notorious British Rock and Jazz drummer Ginger Baker is the sort of difficult individual people often call a “character” to be polite. There is plenty of “character” talk going on throughout a new warts-and-all documentary profile of the former Cream musician. However, some of his very former colleagues choose not to mince their words in Jay Bulger’s Beware of Mr. Baker, which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Baker is the king of widely acclaimed but short-lived bands, like Cream, Blind Faith, Ginger Baker’s Airforce, Masters of Reality, and a dynamite legit jazz band Baker formed during his Colorado residency. He is a major reason why each outfit struck a chord with listeners and critics alike, and also the primary cause of their premature demise. Just ask Eric Clapton, Baker’s colleague from Cream and Blind Faith. Bulger does exactly that. While the timeless guitarist tries to be diplomatic, it is clear Baker the Wildman scared the holy heck out of him—and probably still does.

It is mind-blowing to watch Baker’s repeating pattern of career comebacks cut short by self-sabotage. A case in point would be his African sojourn, partly documented in Tony Palmer’s rather engaging Ginger Baker in Africa. Arguably at the height of his fame, Baker went off the grid, traveling to a decidedly unstable Nigeria to explore traditional forms of music. Yet somehow he managed to fall in with Fela Kuti, who was not particularly inclined towards Europeans appropriators, only to alienate the musician-activist by joining the Nigerian ruling class’s Polo Club (that part Palmer misses out on).

In fact, polo has often been the downfall of Mr. Baker. Those ponies are expensive and they draw the attention of tax inspectors like a magnet. Still, the polo club Baker founded in Colorado and the jazz concerts his group gave after matches emerges in Bulger’s account as a brief high point in the drummer’s chaotic life.

While not Bulger’s uppermost concern, Beware makes a compelling case on behalf of Colorado’s local jazz talent. If you can satisfy Ginger Baker, than you can play with anyone. In fact, he had a great ear, recruiting excellent musicians like Fred Hess and trumpeter Ron Miles, who also appears as an interview subject. Of course, most of the film’s potential audience will be more interested in the likes of Clapton, Steve Winwood, Stones drummer Charlie Watts, Cream bassist Jack Bruce, Johnny Rotten, Lars Ulrich, Stewart Copeland, Femi Kuti, and various ex-wives. If there is anyone Bulger couldn’t get, they aren’t missed.

There is something perversely inspiring about Baker’s resiliency. He keeps doing it his way, regardless of the consequences. Beware captures all the madness of the Ginger Baker experience, but Bulger tries his best not to let it overshadow the music. Naturally, Baker is often his own worst enemy in this respect. Yet, somehow viewers will want to listen to Baker’s classic tracks after witnessing his spectacularly anti-social behavior. That is a neat trick Bulger deserves mucho credit for pulling off. A thoroughly entertaining documentary chocked full of unforgettable headshaking, face-palming moments, Beware of Mr. Baker is recommended for fans of rock, jazz, world music, and all around excess when it opens this Wednesday (11/28) at New York’s Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on November 27th, 2012 at 11:21am.