Sundance Film Festival 2023, Thursday 1/26: Fantastic Machine

Fantastic Machine (Danielson & Van Aertryck, 2023)

One amazing thing you can do at Sundance is accidentally go to the wrong theater, have the wrong QR code scanned so you get in, be surprised that the film is starting later than you expected, and then be totally stunned when the Sundance programmer let's you know that you're about to see Fantastic Machine rather than Mami Wata.

Then, when you're just starting to roll with it, the delightful directors thank the audience for being so responsive and vocal in previous screenings and that each one of us in attendance is a member of "a generous people"--which you never expected to hear ever in your lifetime as a citizen of the United States--confirming that yes, you're gonna stay and see what the Fantastic Machine is.

It's a movie camera, of course! A history of it, by way of sick narration and the most iconic images ever recorded...that horse with all of its feet off of the ground, yes pictures of earth after the moon landing, yes the moment when BBC television was first broadcast. 

At each evolution of the motion-picture camera--from nickelodeon to documentary war footage to television to news journalism to YouTube--there is a moment of optimism: more information, more education, more voices heard, the possibility for more harmony as we understand our neighbors across the globe. And at each evolution the reality that follows: media conglomerates, market capitalism, isolated voices in a sea of content, "fake news," and algorithms that dictate what we see online. It's a beautiful, tragic, compelling story. 

And we're in it. In the end, we need communities that engage and discuss it, media literacy, and more community.

========

Also of note was Shayda (Noora Niasari, 2023) a debut film by an Iranian filmmaker who depicts her experience as a child immigrant to Australian and her mother who moves them both to a women's shelter to escape an abusive relationship. The film allows each character to breathe: inhale...exhale. It allows us to access their space for a moment to experience both a mother-daughter relationship and a precarious journey.

A Winter Day Outside of Park City, Utah

Sundance Film Festival 2023, Tuesday 1/24: Cassandro

Cassandro (Roger Ross Williams, 2023)

Cassandro is cinema. 

Cassandro post-screening Q&A with Roger Ross Williams center and co-writer David Teague speaking

==================

Also of note was The Eternal Memory (Maite Alberdi) which documents a famous Chilean couple dealing with Alzheimer's. And not to be missed: 

AUM: The Cult at the End of the World (Ben Braun & Chiaki Yanagimoto) which uncovers in detail the insane history of the Aum Shinrikyo cult which carried out sarin attacks on Tokyo's subway system in 1995. The latter's sprawling geographical setting, historical contextualization, and transnational relevance today in an era of fake news is sensational.

Sundance Film Festival 2023, Monday 1/23: Victim/Suspect

I remember remarking at my first Sundance: "this year's Sundance is so amazing" and the person I was with said "it's like this every year"--and they were right.

Thanks be to Sundance...another year--this is my fifth time to attend, the first being in 2013 when Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale was the standout film--and as always it blows me out of the water.

Today I watched A Little Prayer (Angus MacLachlan) starring Jane Levy, who delivers an Oscar-worthy performance, and David Strathairn. I also experienced the poetic and experimental film about rocks entitled Last Things by director Deborah Stratman at The Egyptian Theater. 

Director Deborah Stratman takes a picture of the audience at The Egyptian Theater

Victim/Suspect (Schwartzman, 2023)

But today's film that will stay with me for a long time is Netflix's Victim/Suspect by director Nancy Schwartzman. This documentary exposes systemic bias against victims of sexual assault in the United States who are not only disbelieved when they report their stories at local police precincts but are in turn accused of filing false reports which results in punishments including their imprisonment. 

The story centers around the investigative reporting of Rae de Leon (who works at the Center for Investigative Reporting) whose inquiry into one case leads to encountering over 200 cases nationally in which the victim becomes the suspect due to unfair police interview tactics and structural discrimination. In terms of presentation, a kind of love letter to the power of journalism, the doc itself feels like an investigation in the style of the reporters the director deeply admires while highlighting the brave women who are featured in the film and who were in attendance.

Victim/Suspect post-screening Q&A

Sundance Film Festival 2020, Thurs.1/30 & Fri. 1/31

Park City, Sundance 2020

Thursday 1/30

Possessor (Cronenberg, 2019) was the most thought-provoking film of the festival for me this year, and I wrote a bit about it yesterday—please check it out (link here) on my blog if you get the chance. Miss Juneteenth (Peoples, 2020) was fine and the Documentary Shorts Program 1 included an important doc on the 2019 Hong Kong protests: “Do Not Split” by Anderson Hammer. 

Friday 1/31 

Us Kids (Snyder, 2020) powerfully documents the aftermath of the Parkland’s Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Finished up the festival with a bit of levity—the Animation Spotlight was filled with humor and insanity, a nice reminder to stop trying to figure everything out. Loved “Sh_t Happens,” “Daytime Noir,” and “Eli.”

Sundance Film Festival 2020, Wednesday 1/29

Happy Happy Joy Joy - The Ren & Stimpy Story (Cicero, Easterwood, 2019) is a documentary about the record-breaking animated show from the early 1990s. The directors had finished the documentary only a few days before the important BuzzFeed article by Ariane Lange “The Disturbing Secret Behind An Iconic Cartoon” came out on March 29, 2018 which reveals sexual abuse allegations against Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi.

Needless to say, the entire documentary was reconstructed in light of this important story that rightfully recasts the story in a new light. A corollary unresolved site of tension which remains as well is the fact that the animated show was condemned by conservatives in the early 1990s by using the argument that this type of art and its creators live destructive lives, a conclusion they may argue is borne out by the claims made against Kricfalusi. So perhaps Robyn Byrd (see Lange's article) states it best in the documentary when she says, and here I paraphrase, that creators of works of art that push boundaries do not need to individually inflict pain on others.

BLAST BEAT (Arango, 2019) captures the lives of two teenage brothers from Columbia who emigrate to the United States during the late 1990s years of political turmoil. One dreams of a bright future one day in the aerospace industry in the U.S. while the other longs to return to Columbia. Both places are home, depending on their point of view. Along the way they face all of the typical highs and lows one might expect of U.S. high school coming of age films, which makes for a perfect story. Fueled by metal and hip-hop soundtracks respectively, each brother avoids tragedy but not pain.

Sundance Film Festival 2020, Tuesday 1/28

Director of Minari Lee Isaac Chung at Eccles Theater

Minari (Chung, 2020) depicts a Korean-American family pursuing the American Dream, which is a statement which already defeats my purpose of describing this film because "pursuing the American Dream" is a trope and this is a film that seems to defy tired tropes. It is immune to cliche. Instead, by showing the way family relationships might be contingent as much on circumstance as any desire for unity, and trials are a facet of work and life without adding cataclysm, the film beautifully reveals what is under the surface of a first-generation immigrant experience.

Luxor director Zeina Durra and crew.

Luxor (Durra, 2020) is a film about perspective and space. It follows Hana (Andrea Riseborough), a doctor on leave who is at once dealing with wartime trauma in the present while rekindling a past relationship. The simplicity of the film is achieved via complex technique and restraint. As Hana wanders through ancient corridors and views the painting of stars on the ceilings of old tombs, the at-times imperceptible realization that the present is slipping away is clear.

Sundance Film Festival 2020, Monday 1/27

Director of Time Garrett Bradley & the Richardson family

Time (Bradley, 2019) was once again the first Sundance film of the week that just wrecked me, but in a good way. The story portrays the resilience and odyssey of Sibil Fox Richardson as she advocates and waits for her husband Robert to be released from our dehumanizing prison system in the United States. By focusing on perseverance at incredible duration, it is impossible to not feel moved to make a difference.

Director Robert Machoian and cast of The Killing of Two Lovers

The Killing of Two Lovers (Machoian, 2019) is the version of Marriage Story (Baumbach, 2019) that I can get behind (in alignment with Chuck Klosterman's point of view on MS as stated on Bill Simmons's podcast). Killing begins with a longtake of the protagonist running along a rural street, the image split in half--dark road below, bleak white sky and snow-capped mountains above. Our runner, in drab dark clothing, matches the lower half of the screen but contrasts with the white. He may or may not have just committed a murder, and the stunning soundscape during the sequence is of little help--gunshots reverberate throughout the film but if they're interior or exterior sounds remains to be seen. The whole film is fantastic and I'm at a loss for words besides describing the opening...still recovering and still grateful to have seen it.

Sundance Film Festival 2019, Thursday 1/31

Hala (Minhal Baig, 2019)

Minhal Baig's film Hala depicts the experiences of a young woman during her senior year of high school in the U.S. Hala is a bright thinker and student, a skater, and a good friend whose day to day decisions are shaped by the framework of her family's Pakistani American experience. Director Baig mentioned at the screening that film is an empathy machine, and indeed numerous scenes are coupled with dramatic soundscapes that heighten the all-or-nothing importance high school experiences are imbued with. Just as an action film goes all in on explosions, or a romcom goes all in on scenes on top of famous landmarks, this film shows how riding the bus on the way to school can be filled with the entire sum total of a high school student's existence. And why not? It's worthwhile to feel the emotions Hala undergoes and witness the way she navigates her life's predicaments while she learns new insights along the way.

Photo by James Wicks, 2019.

Sundance Film Festival 2019, Wednesday 1/30

Hail, Satan? (Penny Lane, 2019)

The rapid rise of The Satanic Temple is documented in Penny Lane's incredible and important documentary. Using a light-hearted soundtrack and comical soundbites that bring to light the absurdities of the Christian right in the U.S., the film begins with a publicity stunt the TST initiated in 2013 and traces the growth of the movement to the present. While focusing primarily on the national rise of the TST from the 1950s to the present, we are also allowed access to individual stories, personal accounts of the ways the cultural hegemony of the Christian right ostracized people in the past, and strives to keep the other out by maintaining political power today.

Hail Satan?, 2019

The TST appears to be disruptive because it is cognizantly adding new idols to be placed next to old idols already established and in place. The film makes it painfully obvious that it is hard to let go of cultural artifacts and ideas that are attributed with meaning, and that mockery is uncomfortable for whomever is the recipient. At the end of the day, everyone--regardless of political and religious perspective--who watches it is faced with a choice of working together across ideological lines, or maintaining divisive views accompanied by violence and all of its dark corollaries.

Native Son (Rashid Johnson, 2019)

Rashid Johnson's first film Native Son has one of the best character portrayals of the Sundance Film Festival this year: Ashton Sanders, who plays protagonist Bigger Thomas. Additionally, the editing is unbelievably effective. Certain events are slowed down, allowing contemplation, while narrative economy at other junctures drives the narrative forward at pace. The trust the director has in his ability to allow the story to flow translates, at least in my case, to an audience who is more than willing to trust the storytellers (all of the crew deserves credit for the soundtrack, editing, characterization, costume design...) and go along for the ride. In terms of the adaptation of Richard Wright's great American novel, I wouldn't have minded if more creative license were to be taken to alter plot details so that the story could match the absurdity and tragedy of the present in even more ways. Yet without a doubt, the horror of double consciousness is captured here and the tragedy that Native Son is still relevant today is represented clearly.

Sundance Film Festival 2019, Tuesday 1/29

Director Chinonye Chukwu at Windrider, 2019

Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu, 2019)

I loved Clemency, a slow-paced, dark (both thematically and in terms of its over-exposed film), and lucid portrayal of the weight of responsibility on a warden in charge of inmates on death row. The soundscape, mise-en-scène, and editing are superb. Shots early in the film are slightly tilted so that the angles generate tension rather than tranquility as I attempt to depict in these hasty film notes below:

Clemency film notes, 2019

By delving into the life of the warden, portrayed perfectly by Alfre Woodard, and her interaction with activists, lawyers, family members, and an ostensibly falsely accused inmate (Aldis Hodge), the pressure of the prison system in the U.S. is tangible in all of its complexity in terms of race, class, and gender. While an incredibly slow film in comparison with mainstream releases, I hope the topics this narrative suspend find their place in broad dialogue.

Luce (Julius Onah, 2019)

Julius Onah's Luce is an adaptation of a play that portrays an incredibly successful African-American high school student who was adopted from Africa at age 10 by two white parents. The cast is perfect: Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Tim Roth, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. The challenges and privileges each character in the film experience, the messy contradictions each character is caught within, and the way each character walks right up to the line without resolution is worth further contemplation. Poignant and relevant questions will ensure this film sees a wide release even though it is nearly un-classifiable as (all three) a coming-of-age, thriller, and high school film.

Luce, 2019

Sundance Film Festival 2019, Monday 1/28

Bedlam (Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, 2019)

Bedlam covers the disastrous management of mental illness in the U.S today. Director Ken Rosenberg mentioned before the film that when he set out to document this crisis, he did not know that he would be a participant in the narrative. Yet indeed, mental health issues impacted his older sister and thus the director's participation in his subject matter directly. This story of the U.S. mentally ill begins with the housing of patients in state-funded asylums and "progresses" to today when these citizens are on living in the streets, filling ER beds, incarcerated, or living at home under the full-time care of families. We have an epidemic on our hands.

Bedlam, 2019

This Is Personal (Amy Berg, 2019)

Amy Berg's latest documentary describes the woman's march movement from 2016-18 and outlines the work of two incredible activists Tamika D. Mallory, and Erika Andiola. Berg deftly interweaves the local narratives alongside the national narrative in a way that is both informative and personal. The documentary allows Mallory and Andiola's stories to move from 2D internet click-bait to 3D personalities. The ending of the narrative oddly focuses on one particular issue at the expense of the entire story, so my guess will be that the doc will be re-edited before release. I hope This is Personal receives widespread attention.

This is Personal, 2019

The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent, 2019)

Jennifer Kent's revenge thriller, almost universally characterized as brutal, is set during British-colonialism in Tasmania. The protagonist Clare's family is murdered in an almost unfathomably disturbing way. Although the story develops slowly (there is no narrative economy in the vein of Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse), each detail justifies Clare's desire to track down and kill each of the perpetrators. Like Kent's 2014 film The Babadook, the rhythm of the editing is singular to the director's vision to the joy or dismay of her audience, depending on their preference. And once again, clear thematic elements, in this case including the savagery of colonization and the need for inter-racial harmony, guide the story to its conclusion.

Deng Nan-guang's 8mm Movies (Deng,1935-1941): Mini-Film Review

Deng Nan-guang (1907-1971) was a well-regarded photographer in both pre- and post- colonized Taiwan who shot home movies that offer a candid portrayal of Taiwan life. The silent films recorded in Deng Nan-guang's 鄧南光 8mm Movies 家庭電影 (Deng 鄧南光,1935-1941) show Taiwan under Japanese rule: a leisurely afternoon spent fishing, Tamsui (淡水, Danshui), a school event at a local kindergarten with his son in attendance, a parade, and also scenes along the coast of Japan.

Taiwan's stunning tropical beaches and verdant mountain ranges are renowned. What is remarkable to see here is that all of the island looked like this at one time. Deng's images of Danshui remind me that Taipei once looked like Kenting. What a cool thing it is to see that here. Of course, the material condition and political situation at the time these images were made is powerful as well.

Deng Nan-guang's 8mm Movies x Wami Wang with Improvised Original Music on YouTube

For my complete list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Love in Chilly Spring (Chen, 1979): Mini-Film Review

Love in Chilly Spring 春寒 (Chen 陈俊良, 1979) is pretty hard to watch. Super cheesy, and if you're only reading the subtitles, both unintelligible and laugh out loud funny (see image below). But the star power is evident--the film stars Taiwanese singer Fong Fei-Fei 鳳飛飛 (1953-2012)--and the story itself quite important in Taiwan's history. It takes place in Ilan during the Second Sino-Japanese War when Taiwan was under Japanese colonization, and it portrays a romance between two Taiwanese young people that is thwarted by a Japanese lieutenant. So is it so bad that it's good? For me, not so much.

For my complete list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

The Young Ones (Li, 1973): Mini-Film Review

The Young Ones 彩雲飛 (Li Xing 李行, 1973) is a classic romantic drama from early 1970s Taiwan. Adapted from a novel by Qiong Yao 瓊瑤, and starring Chen Chen 甄珍 and Alan Tang 鄧光榮, the film depicts a young man who loses his love interest to sickness, only to become attracted to a woman identical in appearance later in the film. The "shocking" twists and turns involve a set of twins separated by birth and tragic family histories.

The film is set in the most affluent, cosmopolitan sections of Taipei and briefly Hong Kong. And it features full-length song performances, a kind of MTV-esque quality found in many of the films of the time.

I can't help but think that the influence Li Xing's films had on the modernization of Taipei is underrated. What was once a small percentage of Taipei--as depicted in the film here--is now the norm in terms of communication, transportation, the arts, and global connectivity across all of Taiwan.

For my complete list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Four Moods (Bai, Hu, Li, Li, 1970): Mini-Film Review

Four Moods 《喜怒哀樂》is a portmanteau film, uneven in quality, yet still a must see film for any student or aficionado of Taiwan cinema of the 1960s and 70s because it showcases the four of the five major Taiwan directors (I would include Song Cunshou 宋存壽) of the era.

It is organized into four parts, each one focusing on a particular depiction of emotion taken from folklore: Bai Jingrui's 白景瑞 psychedelic experiment "Joy", King Hu's 胡金銓 tea house drama "Anger", Li Xing's 李行 melancholy representation of loss expressed via flashbacks in "Sadness", and Li Hanxiang's 李翰祥 intersection of the physical and spiritual worlds in "Happiness."

Surprisingly, Li Xing perhaps directs his best cinematic work in this film, a segment staring the absolutely superb Ou Wei 歐威 (pictured below). If you only check out one segment of this film to get an insight into the Taiwan mise-en-scène and aesthetics of the time, Li Xing's section is the one.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Storm Over the Yangtse River (Li Han-Hsiang, 1969): Mini-Film Review

I remember the first time I saw Li Han-Hsiang's 李翰祥 1969 film Storm Over the Yangtse River 《揚子江風雲》--I was in a film viewing room in the Taiwan Film Institute on Qingdao East Road 青島東路 road in Taipei, I was concluding a research trip funded by Taiwan Ministry of Education in 2011 for an article on my favorite Taiwan film of the 1960s and 1970s (Li Hanxiang's The Winter 《冬暖》 (1969),  produced in the same year as Storm Over the Yangtse River), and I had only two hours before I needed to head to the Taoyuan International Airport and head back to the U.S.

It was a film I had to see, in addition to all of Li Hanxiang's major works, in order to discuss his film style and technique. Today, it's great to revisit this classic film--a standout of it's genre in Taiwan film history--restored with clear subtitles, although I do question why these genre film's translate "Japanese" as "Japs."

The film begins with startling black and white film reels of scenic locations in China, such as Beijing's Temple of Heaven, in order to demonstrate the importance of the motherland to Taiwan's film viewers in the late 1960s, and--via a "voice of god" narrator--to remind viewers of the atrocities committed by Japanese military aggression on the mainland during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Storm Over the Yangtse River is perhaps a b-quality melodramatic film about a Chinese spy involved in a complex double-crossing scheme during World War II, but it is "A" quality when it comes to providing a window on pop culture during the Cold War. And true to Li Hanxiang's approach to narrative, it pulls out all the conventional stops of the time: sensuality, torture, action, war, love, patriotism, intrigue, murder, and last-minute rescues.

As the image (below) from the film demonstrates, Li Han-Hsiang was a big-time director who took a "go-big-or-go-home" mentality to his idea of what the silver screen could accomplish. His depictions of war contain numerous extras and his sets are the best of the era.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Love and Duty (Bu Wancang, 1931): Mini-Film Review

As cinema historians and I have described in detail elsewhere, Republic of China (Taiwan, R.O.C.) cinema traces it's pre-1945 heritage to the mainland Chinese film tradition. After all, when the Nationalists fled the mainland in 1949, their number included film directors and personnel who relocated to Taiwan. Director Bu Wancang's 卜萬蒼1931 Shanghai film, Love and Duty 戀愛與義務, produced by Lianhua Film Company, is part of this lineage.

Starring the brilliant Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 (on whom I've written an encyclopedia entry) and Jin Yan 金焰, the 153 minute silent film portrays a love affair, between a married woman and her childhood sweetheart, and the suffering this relationship ultimately causes.

The portrayal of emotion is over the top, each scene incredibly slow paced. The camera lingers on close-ups of each actor's face until all of the expressions that signify a particular emotion are exhausted, in keeping with late 1920s and early 1930s norms. What is fascinating to observe is the way that this particular style of acting and character portrayal came to be representative of film-making more generally across China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong--even today, when the camera stays focused on an individual a little longer than necessary to convey a particular idea, we find the archaeology of these depictions from this earlier time.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

It Takes Two to Tango (Wan Jen, 2013): Mini-Film Review

Wan Jen's 2013 film It Takes Two to Tango 跨海跳探戈 uses humor to illustrate both cultural differences and similarities between mainland Chinese and Taiwanese as it tells the story of a young woman from Taiwan (王心如) who draws ire from her family upon getting engaged to her fiancé from China. One of the standout performances is by the protagonist's father, played by Bor Jeng Chen 陳博正, who had the starring role in Hou Hsaio-Hsien's vignette The Sandwich Man 兒子的大玩偶 in 1983.

It Takes Two to Tango attempts to be a fun movie and has a few gags, and it demonstrates the extent to which free speech is the norm in Taiwan as the film does not hesitate to touch a number of hot-button issues, but over all it is less successful in what it sets out to achieve than the similarly themed The Wonderful Wedding 大囍臨門 (Huang Chao-liang 黃朝亮, 2015), which I would recommend of the two.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Connection by Fate (Wan Jen,1998): Mini-Film Review

Connection by Fate 超級公民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1998), the third film in Taiwan director Wan Jen's “super citizen” trilogy, reminds me of French films of the 1990s in that it--as the director has also concurred--is not driven by a cause-and-effect plot, but rather emotion. In it, a taxi driver named A-te encounters, and discovers a way to assist, the spirit of an indigenous man trapped between the world of the living and the departed in late-1990s Taipei.

Wan Jen's films are somehow perfect despite their imperfections: asynchronous sound, low budget effects, and non-professional acting. In the 1960s and 1970s cinema of Taiwan, poor production values are comical. Here, it is impossible to be distracted because the screenplay is superb. Wan Jen is a transcendent director, a master of depicting memory and a master of seamlessly juxtaposing time periods and locations, most often via the use of a soundscape that is both beautiful and haunting.

Corollary notes: I also found fragments of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Café Lumière (produced five years later) in Wan Jen's film: shots on the MRT and a scene in a small train station built during the Japanese colonial era come to mind. Additionally, a few rural tracking shots from HHH's Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996) overlap with Wan Jen's depictions in Connection by Fate.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Super Citizen Ko (Wan Jen,1995): Mini-Film Review

Super Citizen Ko 超級大國民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1995), which won multiple Golden Horse awards in 1995, is must-see for anyone interested in depictions of political oppression generally, and Taiwan history in the late 20th century specifically. Presented in a series of flashbacks linked by a simple yet moving melancholic score, the film uncovers the life of an aging man who lost nearly everything during Taiwan's White Terror.

Wan Jen's film follows an elderly protagonist named Ko as he recollects being imprisoned for participating in a left-wing reading group during Chiang Kai-Shek's leadership, while in the present it captures Taiwan's mid-1990s, and at times rocky, transformation into a truly democratic state. Along the way the camera does not waiver from depicting Taiwan's most precarious situations both historically and concurrently. It is as sophisticated and complex as any film ever made.

I always wonder, when considering Taiwan's films, the extent to which global audiences might appreciate them because political oppression is experienced and understood universally, while at the same time, Taiwan's situation is singular, considering it's colonial past, the repression of the KMT/GMD/Nationalist government post-1949, and the pluralistic society in Taiwan which has emerged post-1987. Regardless, my hope is that Taiwan films such as this one will enjoy continuous, widespread acclaim.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.