California Company Town

In California Company Town director Lee Anne Schmitt films dozens of abandoned settlements, mostly old timber towns, military bases and factories. Schmitt is a professor at CalArts and this academic art background is apparent in the film, which is both poetic and thoughtful in its hypnotic survey of emptied landscapes. After the film Schmitt explained that although she spoke to many people around these ghost towns (she spent a number of years doing the filming and returned to some towns again and again) she chose not to include many people, instead focussing on what they left behind. It’s amazing how fast these towns came and went — running through local timber suplies or replacing working through mechanization - but even decades later, houses, furniture, schools, photographs and piles of paper still remain. California Company Town reminded me of some sections of Where I Was From, Joan Didion’s memoir and thoughts about California — the book and film are good companions pieces.

The film festival drew to a close on Friday night but the VanCity Theatre is still showing a few of the most popular films - Monday is the last night.

This Dust of Words

This Dust of Words is a profound film about a tragic life. Elizabeth Wiltsee was an extraordinary girl who taught herself to read and write in many languages, including ancient Greek when she was less than ten. Liz had an IQ of 200 (which may not be the be all and end all but probably means she was pretty smart) and studied literature at Stanford in the late 1960s where she impressed her advisor with an insightful experimental dissertation on Samuel Beckett.

After university Liz pretty much dropped out of society, travelling in Europe and around the States, working in libraries and publishing companies for enough money to get by. She didn’t believe in academic careers or conventional jobs or lives — she preferred to read, study and write. Her problems with mental illness started some time in her youth (she didn’t like doctors but we find out exactly why) and when these worsened she eventually became a homeless person. Finally Liz walked into the California wilderness to die.

This Dust of Words is assembled from Liz’s letters, plays, essays and unpublished novel, from family films, photographs and from interviews. The film also includes the thoughts of the people of Watsonville, the farming town where Liz lived in a church doorway and was known around town as the harmless crazy lady who liked to spend all day in the library. Film-maker Bill Rose (who came across this story when looking for a baby-sitter on the Internet) approaches the material with a great deal of sensitivity and insight, providing just enough information to draw a real person but not so much as to bog us down in details. This is the story of a woman who wanted to be free but also of the common link between brilliance and mental instability and how difficult it is for such a person to be taken care of in our society.

As Slow as Possible

I don’t know why I assumed that this film about Ryan Knighton would be based on Cockeyed, his memoir about going blind. Anyway, it’s not.

In As Slow as Possible, Ryan goes to a town in Germany where the residents have built as organ to play John Cage’s composition, Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) as slowly as possible. In fact it will take over six hundred years. Ryan comes to town for the changing of the note which happens every few years or so. So why? Well, Ryan’s condition has meant constant changes in his vision and each time he feels he has come to terms with his blindness it changes yet again. After the big climax scene when the note changes Ryan points out that after a minute or so he can’t even remember what the old note sounded like.

This is a very focussed film and Ryan’s personality is what pulls it along - without his particular sparkle, the congruence of ideas wouldn’t really work at all.

Canadiana

If you ever noticed a guy sitting on the edge of the pier at Trout Lake Park paddling for hours on his own, that was Taku Hokoyama. Taku was preparing to paddle across the boreal forest of Manitoba and Ontario with his friend Frank Wolf, an experienced outdoorsman and the director of the film Borealis. Frank’s the kind of mountain man who revels in a challenge and I could imagine him in the wilderness on his own searching for the northwest passage. Frank and Taku paddle and portage for seventy five days and cover a few thousand kilometres. It’s exhausting just watching them but the two always have high spirits, even when stuck in their mosquito suits amongst a bloodthirsty horde.

The intention is to show the splendour of the boreal forest which is one of the world’s most important ecosystems. The pair pass from pristine lakes and rivers to areas devastated by pollution and overdamming and explain that government and industry are always looking to expand further into the forest. My only complaint was that we saw plenty of the guys’ antics but not quite enough of the animal and landscapes along the way.

It is hard not to like When Life Was Good, even though there is often something amateurish and insular about Vancouver films (it reminded me of two other Vancouver films I liked - Reg Harkema’s A Girl is a Girl and Blaine Thurier’s Male Fantasy). It has a slightly improvised feel, as if the director (Terry Miles) created three main characters and just had them run with it. Casey and Faith are a young slick boho couple living in one of those new downtown glass towers. How they afford this, I don’t know. Faith is a ballerina with a past eating disorder and Casey is an aspiring writer trying to work his way up the ladder. Into this mix comes Brooklyn, a friend who lives in New York but still has a hometown boyfriend. She’s come to visit but decides she can’t quite stand the idea of him and hides out on Casey and Faith’s couch for a few weeks. Kristine Cofsky is charming and comfortable in this role. Her performance really works, and so do the interesting jumps and cuts in the editing and the believable way in which the characters are often at a loss for words.

It’s a very funny film, but most of the comedy is provided by a string of outrageous characters while our heroes play the straight man role. The wacky agent, director and actors that our wannabes meets aren’t realistic at all but it isn’t that outlandish to presume that everyone else is the world might seem nuts to them.

Peter and Ben

It’s only ten minutes long but Peter and Ben creates a lasting impression. Pinny Grylls remembered Peter, the family friend who lived in self-imposed isolation in the Welsh hills when thinking of subjects for her next film.  And while Peter has no human company he bonded with an abandoned lamb. Years later Ben the sheep is all grown up and hangs around Peter like a family pet, occasionally stealing bananas from the kitchen. Peter decides that Ben is better off in the hills with his own kind but scours the hills with his binoculars and listens for Ben’s distinctive ‘baa.’

The scenery is desolate but beautiful and the meditation on companionship shows that meaningful relationships transcend species. Also Ben is a really cute sheep.

People who are having a worse time than me

The Infinite Border, Juan Manuel Sepúlveda's documentary about the migrant experience, is haunting and thoughtful and it draws us further south than usual, to Central America and the millions of people there who begin a long journey to the United States (or so they hope). Most of the migrants never reach their destination and with so many borders to pass and obstacles to overcome they find themselves deported, imprisoned or even mutilated by the trains they attempt to jump. Their lives must be misery to risk death but it made me wonder if any of these people might choose to stay at home and try to improve conditions — even the most poor and uneducated subjects are eloquent and intelligent about their lives and struggles.

The people are all optimistic, vowing to keep trying until they arrive at their destination if God wills it. This is a more stylized documentary with many long long shots, especially of people waiting — for trains or busses, or waiting on top of trains for that train to finally get somewhere. Hundreds of people hang off every train — where are they going and how do they think they’ll arrive? There is no answer.

Allis and Charley were one screwed up couple. Morgan Dews made Must Read After my Death about his grandparents from hundreds of hours of home movies and from hundreds of hours of tapes and records Allis made while in therapy. Some of these were correspondence with her husband when he was on business but most are deeply personal and explore the hell of her family life and the way she fought against her role as housewife. Dews only knew his grandmother as a wonderful woman who was fun and full of love — he was too young to remember life when Charley was alive. And, according to Dews and his uncle Bruce who were both at the screening, Allis lived a different life after her husband died (under slightly mysterious circumstances) and she never spoke of him.

It’s too easy to blame Charley for all of the family trauma but it does become clear that his use of alcohol was the major factor which made their lives so difficult. Allis and Charley had four kids and a house in the suburbs but beneath the superficial middle American trappings, the couple railed against conformity and experimented with new technologies and new social practices. They had an open marriage and they were deeply involved with psychiatry, to their great detriment.

It was a pleasure to hear the thoughts of one of their sons, who they inexplicably committed to a mental institution when he was fourteen. Bruce bears no grudge though and is happy and well-adjusted, as are the other surviving siblings.  Philip Larkin was definitely right when he wrote “They fuck you up, your mum and dad” but this is one childhood we should all be happy to have escaped.

VIFF promo shorts part II

If you haven’t made it to the festival this year then you might be wondering what the introductory shorts are like. They’ve been fairly artsy for a few years and quite a few have fallen flat. This year they have gone in a different direction and most of the spots are only a few seconds long. They depict familiar film festival types or situations (ie the first guy who doesn’t make it into the sold-out screening, the reluctant first question-asker) usually in the theatre itself. A few of them miss the mark — the ‘pretentious film-goer’ over-analyzing the film and the ‘festival Ironman’ who neglects his family and subjects others to tuna smell may be real types but it kind of feels like the festival is insulting its most passionate patrons. I do like the guy wearing four jackets who has to save everyone’s seats.

I’d like to see a different angle on the question-asker: “My question is in three parts,” and “This is more of a comment than a question…” Or I’d like to see a portrait of my favourite festival-goer ever who carefully pulled a bottle of red wine and a fluted wine glass (not plastic) out of his backpack after a film started.

Docs of all kinds

In Blind Loves (watch the trailer here) Slovakian director Juraj Lehotsky tackles blindness and love, telling four stories with a hypnotic rhythm.  Zuzana is still a teen and hoping to find love with someone who accepts her — she chats with boys online but when they find out she is blind they disappear. Elena is happily married, pregnant and already deeply in love with her child. She only hopes that no one from Social Services will try to classify her as an unfit mother. Peter teaches music to blind children and seems to be in perfect sync with his wife.  Miro quietly persuades his partially-sighted girlfriend to defy her parents and marry him. They don't like that he's blind or that his family are or Romany background.

Although they face many challenges, each of the protagonists is wonderfully serene as they go through their daily routines.  It’s a peaceful and beautiful film which is sometimes strange and astonishing — at one point a character walks into the water and proceeds into an animated underwater world where he is captured by a giant squid. This is one of a few films about blindness (or called Blindness) but I think it is one of the best. The film covers a very long time but isn’t showy about pointing out the passage of time. We do get to find out whether Elena’s child ends up with or without sight. It’s on again on Saturday the 4th at 1:30.

Chris and Don: A Love Story. This documentary is the story of Brtish author Christopher Isherwood and his long relationship with Don Bachardy. Although they met when Don was just sixteen and Chris was in his forties, the couple remained together until Isherwood’s death. Isherwood is one of my favourite novelists and his writing exemplifies clarity and subtlety while exploring the margins of society, most famously Weimar-Era Berlin.  Isherwood came to American before WWII, settled in LA and worked in Hollywood. He met Don at a Santa Monica gay beach and slept with his brother before forming an attachment to Don. The relationship wasn’t always easy since Don was young and still figuring out who he was. He loved the celebrity lifestyle but longed to be taken seriously for his own merits and eventually became a painter. Isherwood died in the ‘80’s but Bachardy is the main interviewee in the film and his charm and wit make it a pleasure to watch.

They created animal personas for themselves (Chris was a horse and Don a cat) and wrote notes, letters and drawings, creating a fantasy life for their animal selves. It was a stroke of genius to animate these minimal drawings in the film to illustrate their affection. The film is about a relationship, so it isn’t a big story but it is interesting and is sure to bring some laughs.

Secret Museums begins with a peek into the world of erotic art collectors. A famous collector has recently died and all interested parties are assembled at Christie’s to divide up the spoils. But the film doesn’t really pick up speed until it considers the question of public collections and who should have access to them, regardless of the nature of the art they house. Scholarly credentials are required to visit “L’Enfer” (a collection held in Bibliothque Nationale in Paris since Napoleonic times), women were not allowed to visit the Gabinetto Segreto in Naples until recently and even now visits are restricted to fifteen minutes, and the British Museum denies that have their own Secret Cabinet, even though past employees vouch for its existence. These collections include painting, sculpture, illustrated books, original manuscripts and art objects from around the world. Those created most recently were intended to be scandalous but the objects from antiquity were simply part of everyday life.

This is a pretty short film and it doesn’t really get too far into any of the issues around collecting, exhibiting or the erotic side or art but I found it to be an interesting entry into the topic. I suspect that the reason these collections have been hidden for long is not to protect the public but to titillate us further — what is hidden still remains more erotic and exciting than what is revealed. There is another chance to see it October 8th at 9:30pm.

Random International Sampling

The Rest is Silence: This Romanian movie is about the birth of film-making itself, and tells the story of Grig Brezianu, a young silent filmmaker who is eager to shoot the movie of his country’s War of Independence. To do so he needs a backer and he finds one in the eccentric millionaire Leon Negrescu who loves the theatre but is quickly won over to cinema. The escapades of the cast and crew are entertaining, the film both funny and intelligent and the photography captures pre-WWI Europe. It all seemed to be building towards a really interesting conclusion but the last five or ten minutes were a let-down.

All Inclusive: A Mexican family travels to an all-inclusive beach resort and all their issues bubble to the surface. Sometimes it’s neat to see a genre so American set in another culture but while this film is polished and well-acted the content is pretty obvious. A medical test result is mentioned and we know that someone is dying, the weather channel mentions a storm and we know a hurricane is coming. There are surprising moments though, and enough laughs to make it worthwhile.

Tricks: Stefek is an adorable but dirty boy in a crumbling Polish town. His mother rarely makes an appearance but his sister Elka is his hero. From her he has learned that sometimes bargains and sacrifices can trick fortune. This has worked to help a stranger sell apples, but will it help Stefek manipulate the commuter who he is convinced is his absent father? This acknowledgement of the existence of subtle magic in everyday life is charming and the film is subtle and affecting in its portrayal of these siblings.

Corridor #8

Corridor #8 was an EU bureaucratic fantasy, basically a business venture to link the Black and Adriatic Seas by road through the countries of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. In the first scene a thirty-five kilometre segment of highway is opened with much pomp and circumstance but when the speeches and ribbon cutting are over, a bouquet of balloons blows in the wrong direction down the empty road. This image says everything about this non-existent road its people and places , which are actually further away than they seem. Director Boris Despodov allows the film to meander through the lives of the ordinary people on the corridor’s path, most of whom have no idea where the road is going and no reason to care. From the Bulgarian tunnel to Macedonia which has never been finished (it is used to store cheese and mushrooms) to chilling reminders of recent ethnic violence, the accumulation of stories and details make Corridor #8 both profound and delightful.

Many films at this year’s festival chronicle the demise of a rural life and this lens is much in evidence here — a passenger laments that his train line, “the most beautiful in Europe” has almost no passengers now, a shepherd moves his flock via overpass across the four lane highway. This fading away is all the more poignant juxtaposed against the many absurdities of the project and the good cheer displayed by all involved.

In the last frame we are left with an image of the Adriatic coast, just the waves lapping against the shore and an American flag laying claim to some nearby resource, and the composer of the official Corridor #8 theme song, humming his forgotten tune.

It has one more screening at the Vancity Theatre on Oct 2 at 9:30 pm.