Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. They lack the official recognition of the Falasha Ethiopians, but a small group of Igbo Nigerians remain convinced they are part of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. ‘Small’ would be the word to emphasize here; in a country almost entirely divided between Christian and Muslim believers, Jewish Nigerians are a distinct minority. Nonetheless, growing numbers of Igbos are embracing Judaism as part of their heritage. Jeff L. Lieberman documents their lives and faith in Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria, which screens as part of the 2012 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

It is complicated, but many Igbo believe they are the modern day descendants of the Tribe of Gad. It could certainly be possible, but it would have been one arduous trek. One has to have a little faith. Still, the Jewish Igbo point to striking ways their language and culture corresponds to Hebrew and Jewish religious practices. Tragically, the Igbo experience during the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War also somewhat paralleled that of European Jewry during World War II, with an estimated three million Igbo killed due to the massacres and economic blockades perpetrated by the Muslim north.

Whether Eri, fifth son of Gad, really made it to Nigeria hardly matters to Rabbi Howard Gorin, who emerges in Re-Emerging as one of the most impassioned international advocates for the Jewish Igbos. Like Rabbi Gorin, the Jewish scholars who have visited the Igbo community describe the experience for Lieberman as inspiring and even humbling.

Indeed, there are some surprisingly affecting moments in Re-Emerging. Lieberman also supplies a good deal of helpful cultural-historical context without bogging down the film in anthropological minutia. Nor does Lieberman turn a blind eye on the institutional corruption afflicting Nigeria at large. Yet he raises the intriguing question of what Igbo Judaism might mean for African-Americans, many of whom are descended from captured Igbo slaves, without fully exploring the implications.

Re-Emerging is an informative film that broadens one’s perspective on both the Jewish and African Diasporas. Indeed, it is a laudably inclusive selection of this year’s ADIFF that ought to expand the festival’s audience. Recommended for multicultural and multi-faith audiences, Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria screens next Monday (12/3) at the Columbia Teachers College Chapel as the 2012 ADIFF continues in venues throughout New York.

LFM GRADE: B-

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

By Joe Bendel. Long Island used to be considered a great place to settle down and raise a family. That was before Buttafuoco and Frankenstorm. However, the thing that really freaked people out was the incident known as “The Amityville Horror” in a raft of books and movies. Now a grown man, the eldest son of the terrified Lutz family, finally breaks his silence on their twenty-eight days spent at the notorious Ocean Avenue address in Eric Walter’s My Amityville Horror, which screened over the weekend at this year’s DOC NYC, closely following word it had been acquired by IFC Midnight.

Daniel Lutz is a heck of an interview subject. Not afraid of a little salty language, he sounds a lot like a typical Long Island knucklehead – until you hear his story. Although there is a fair amount of skepticism expressed by others in the film, no one doubts his sincerity. Clearly, he never enjoyed being known as the kid from The Amityville Horror. Listening to him unburden himself in what appear to be staged counseling sessions, audiences might surmise the subsequent notoriety was as traumatic for him as whatever might have happened in the house itself. The same may well be true for the circumstances surrounding his mother’s marriage to his stepfather, George Lutz, whose name he was forced to adopt.

New Yorkers will be especially interested to learn the extent to which local Channel Five (now Fox 5) owned the Amityville story before Jay Anson’s “true story” novel and the release of the films. Marvin Scott (now with the City’s CW affiliate) even helped introduce the film and appears at length, along with his former colleague, Laura DiDio. Having spent a mostly uneventful night there, Scott remains largely incredulous, whereas DiDio sounds like she gives it all considerably more credence.

Scoring a series of interviews with Lutz was certainly a coup, but it is precisely that tension between belief and skepticism that really distinguishes Walter’s film from a History Channel special or DVD extra. Yet, the documentary still has plenty of creepy moments (particularly with regards to George Lutz and his reported background with the occult), despite Walter’s level headed approach. Many viewers will likely conclude there was definitely something evil in that house, but whether or not it was supernatural is an open question.

Even for us doubting materialists, My Amityville is fascinating stuff, featuring a truly compelling central character in Daniel Lutz. An intriguing nonfictional twist on the horror genre, it would make a strange but fitting double feature with either Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 (as a one-two examination of the cultural impact of well known horror movies) or Joshua Zeman & Barbara Brancaccio’s Cropsey (as the Long Island-Staten Island axis of real life horror stories). Eerie but entertaining and always open-minded, My Amityville Horror is definitely a satisfying doc for genre fans. Recommended accordingly, it should be coming back to the IFC Center relatively soon, courtesy of IFC Midnight.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on November 13th, 2012 at 3:47pm.

By Joe Bendel. The last few years have been tough for Wonder Woman. While her Justice League colleagues have gotten big screen treatments, she suffered the embarrassment of a network rejection for her pilot. Considering it was from David E. Kelley, maybe it was just as well. The heroic Amazon will always have her fans, several of whom explain her personal significance and lasting cultural influence in Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s Wonder Women: the Untold Story of American Superheroines, which screens as a Midnight selection of the 2012 DOC NYC.

Psychologist William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman to embody feminine virtue – but Wonder Woman also found herself frequently bound-up, like a comic precursor to Bettie Page. Wonder Woman might imply much about her creator’s subconscious, but her self-reliance struck a chord with many readers. Unfortunately, when the Comics Code Authority began nannying the industry, Wonder Woman was amongst the hardest hit, effectively becoming a costumed Ally McBeal.

Guevara-Flanagan incorporates many talking head interviews with self-identifying feminists who celebrate the 1940’s era Wonder Woman and bemoan her subsequent watering down. Frankly, she would have gotten much the same response had she interviewed conservative cultural critics, as well. The old school Wonder Woman might have been an Amazon Princess, but she also adopted the American cause – fighting the Axis tooth-and-nail. That’s a role model.

Yet, when addressing Wonder Woman’s cultural influence, the doc is rather hit-or-miss, by any standard. Guevara-Flanagan and her experts draw a straight line from Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena the Warrior Princess, who serve as the sole representatives of a smallish, contemporary golden age of strong women action figures. Yet they ignore, for example, a huge chunk of Michelle Yeoh’s intervening filmography, in which she made a practice of playing strong butt-kicking women. (She still does.)  Furthermore, Wonder Women largely ignores recent developments for the character, including her comic book reboot in conjunction with the 2011 re-launch of the DC universe, the 2009 animated direct-to-DVD animated feature (featuring the voice of Keri “Felicity” Russell), or the much hyped but ill-fated pilot. That’s too bad, because the film is at its strongest when tracing Wonder Woman’s early evolution.

Too politicized for the natural comic fan audience, Wonder Women is expressly intended for those who fondly remember her appearance on the first issue of Ms. Magazine. For the rest of us, the film is quite uneven, reflecting a rather insular perspective. It screens at the IFC Center this coming Sunday night (11/11) and the following Tuesday (11/13) as part of DOC NYC 2012.

LFM GRADE: C-

Posted on November 8th, 2012 at 11:57am.

By Joe Bendel. It is a real Rorschach test. When people see a gun in the hands of a woman, they might see it as an equalizer, an instrument of empowerment, or as a fetish object. None of these is mutually exclusive. Indeed, the many perspectives on women gun-ownership often overlap and conflict with one another in Cathryne Czubek’s A Girl and a Gun (see excerpt above), which screens as part of DOC NYC 2012.

Although many of G&G’s talking head experts hail from the general neighborhood of feminist thought, just about everyone acknowledges women’s relative physical vulnerability compared to men – especially liquored up stalkers. This was particularly true for one middle aged tai chi instructor who broke up with her abusive body-builder boyfriend. Realizing that the police operate almost entirely reactively rather than proactively, she came to the somewhat reluctant conclusion that she needed a gun.

She is not the only one to rely on guns for protection of life and limb. One young widow living on an isolated farm with her young baby used her late husband’s shotgun to blow a home-invading predator to Kingdom Come. Part of her remains troubled by the incident, but she will do it again if need be to protect her child. Similarly, sex columnist Violet Blue has seen her fair share of death threats. However, letting would-be stalkers know she keeps a loaded gun handy has had a deterrent effect. She also thinks armed women are hot (and we’re not about to argue with her).

Naturally, G&G takes great efforts to show the other side of the coin, such as the prison interview with a woman who fatally shot her ambiguous roommate. Somewhere in the middle, we meet an Upper Westside social worker, who became an accomplished recreational shooter – but refuses to keep a firearm in her apartment.

When supposedly exposing the ways the gun industry has attempted to exploit the women’s market, G&G is rather underwhelming. In truth, it is hard to imagine a better informed group of consumers than women gun-owners. Still, the fact that Czubek’s film will even entertain the notion some women have a legitimate and pressing need to own a gun for reasons of self-defense is rather bold. That she bends over backwards to present cases of accidental and criminal gun deaths is to be expected. Yet, it is impossible to watch the Oklahoma farm widow’s segment and argue she would be safe without her guns.

Given its somewhat balanced approach, G&G is probably in for a rocky reception at DOC NYC. However, it could have earned Blue a whole new fanbase were it not for some gratuitous political material on her site. For New Yorkers and her Bay Area neighbors, A Girl and Gun offers some eye-opening moments. Recommended accordingly for local audiences, it screens this coming Sunday (11/11) and the following Wednesday (11/14) at the IFC Center, during DOC NYC ’12.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on November 8th, 2012 at 11:56am.

By Joe Bendel. Don’t call her “notorious.” Bettie Mae Page was a good Christian and the ultimate girl next door. She just happened to have had a pin-up and fetish modeling career. Gone but never forgotten, the late cult icon tells her story for posterity, serving as the de-facto narrator of Mark Mori’s Bettie Page Reveals All, which screens as part of the new Midnight section of the 2012 DOC NYC at the IFC Center.

Who doesn’t recognize those trademark bangs? The rest of her was pretty distinctive, too. Mori illustrates the film with plenty of Page’s risqué-for-the-time and still somewhat naughty photos. In fact, as per Ms. Page’s wishes, he almost exclusively shows her as she wished to be remembered. In the opening minutes, Page relates several incidents from her early life that could have permanently scarred her and left her completely incapable of intimacy. Yet, Page was always comfortable with such matters, particularly when it came to a little topless posing.

Through Page’s reminiscences, viewers get a peek into a bygone era, when the salaciousness was more innocent. Page often worked for “camera clubs,” groups of earnest and impeccably behaved photography enthusiasts who would slink off on weekends to shoot live (and usually topless) models. As one might suspect, Page was one of their favorites, but evidently no funny business ever happened on a shoot. Yet, it was Irving Klaw’s specialized mail order photos that made Page’s fame.

Unfortunately, Page’s second and third acts were characterized by a series of divorces and a persistent struggle with mental illness. Having dropped out of the pin-up world soon after Estes Kefauver’s grandstanding Senate hearings on pornography, Page’s fate was the subject of wild speculation amongst her fans. She does indeed deliver, revealing all, but it is often rather sad. Still, Mori deals with it forthrightly, warts and all, to his credit.

Indeed, Mori’s overall approach is right on target, giving viewers a good eyeful of what they want to see. He also puts Page in proper cultural context, tracing her influence on second rate imitators like Madonna and Katy Perry—make that third rate imitators—and explaining her role as graphic novelist Dave “Rocketeer” Stevens’ muse.

Mori makes it clear that Page truly represents Americana at its hottest. It is surprising but fascinating how much seemingly unrelated cultural history finds its way into her story. Lovingly assembled, Bettie Page Reveals All should definitely hold the attention of non-fans nearly as well as that of devotees, which is the real test for documentary profiles. Recommended with affection, it screens late night this Friday (11/9) as a midnight selection of DOC NYC ’12. For obvious reasons, it is hard to see it getting much airtime on PBS, so Page admirers should probably see it now.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on November 6th, 2012 at 9:40am.