The Chilean doc/fiction hybrid No (T/F 2013) has returned to Columbia, and is now playing at Ragtag Cinema.
No is director Pablo Larrain third consecutive film dealing with the rule of General Augusto Pinochet, whose military junta governed Larrain’s native Chile from 1973-1990. Each approaches life under the dictatorship through the story of an unusual, seemingly apolitical protagonist. Tony Manero (2008) follows a psychopath obsessed with imitating John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever, a darkly comic echo of Pinochet’s regime. In Post Mortem (2010) a middle-aged morgue worker’s strange romance with a burlesque performer plays out during the violent coup that brought Pinochet to power. In No our hero is René Saavedra, an ad-man who creates a catchy campaign to bring down the general. Saavedra is portrayed in a powerful and subtle performance by Gael Garcia Bernal.
No has a direct connection to Columbia, in that it was produced by Hickman grad Daniel Dreifuss. In the video below, shot following our closing night screening at the historic Missouri Theater, Dreifuss discusses the film’s universalism and its use of archival material to create “a feature with a documentary soul”.
Stories We Tell, a runaway hit at True/False 2013, is now playing theaters in New York with more cities soon to follow. Sarah Polley’s autobiographical documentary debut explores an uncomfortable family secret with humor and grace, carefully combining interviews, Super-8 archival footage and sly reenactments in an inventive structure. Avoiding the obstacles of self-importance and excessive cuteness that derail similar projects, Polley uses her family’s story to explore universal questions about the elusiveness of truth, the nature of familial bonds and the role stories play in our lives.
Sarah’s father, the actor Michael Polley, serves as the film’s narrator. You can hear his elegant and resonate voice at the beginning of the film’s trailer.
La Operación Jarocha hail from Veracruz, Mexico and appeared at T/F 2013 alongside the film Who is Dayani Cristal? which features their music. These energetic performers were also a part of our first ever at music showcase at Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream, a long time sponsor of the fest. Thankfully our friends from Folk to Folk were there to capture a stirring performance. See for yourself!
Herman’s House (T/F 2012) opens this weekend at Cinema Village in NYC. It tells the moving story of the friendship and collaboration of artist Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace, who has spent over forty years living in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell in solitary confinement at Angola prison in Louisiana. As part of an art project, Jackie helped Herman imagine and design his dream home, an exercise in creative resistance to the unbelievable inhumanity of his living conditions. I spoke briefly with the film’s director Angad Bhalla by phone yesterday about why he wanted to tell this story.
Following its theatrical run, Herman’s House we play PBS’s POV this summer on July 8th.
-Dan Steffen
T/F: How did you first become involved in telling Herman and Jackie’s story?
AB: My introduction came through Jackie. She was a friend of mine from school, and we were politically active together, so I first learned about Herman through her art. A gallery in Europe put out a book of Jackie and Herman’s correspondence. When I read that, I realized there was something here even more interesting than an art project, that there was a compelling friendship and an unusual mentor/student relationship.
T/F: Did you know at the outset that you wouldn’t be able to film Herman in Angola?
AB: Yeah, I spoke with other filmmakers who had attempted to film Herman and they were denied. I wrote a letter and I was denied. But I spoke with him on the phone early on and I began to think, maybe not seeing him makes sense . . . that it’s a way to highlight his separation. But it was also a challenge, not to have your main character on screen.
T/F: Could you tell during that first conversation how powerful Herman’s presence was, and how powerful his voice was at conveying that presence?
AB: Yes, definitely. He was always very comfortable on the phone and very relaxed, but his voice was able to convey so many emotions.
At the same time we were worried about what we were going to show, because we wanted to have times where it was just Herman, where the audience was just with Herman and his thoughts.
T/F: And did you plan on using animation to help fill in those scenes?
AB: Yes and no. I knew we would need animation, but I didn’t realize we’d need to rely on it as much as we did. We were wary of the traps of animation, that we could fill in too much. We wanted to bring attention to what was lacking. We wanted the darkness and the black. We also didn’t want the animation to feel too digital, since this is the story about a man who has been in prison since the 70s. Nicholas (Brault) did an amazing job and once we found this texture it really came together. We knew we wanted to treat the archival footage in the film, especially since we didn’t have archival of Herman himself, to create an impressionistic sense, to make it feel like more of a memory. It really blended well with the animation.
T/F: What’s happening on the activism front? Has there been any movement on ending long term solitary confinement?
AB: It’s going to be a long journey. Once something has become an institution, like this has, it is difficult to change. I hope the film helps to humanize the issue, and that people can begin to develop an emotional connection to it, something beyond statistics.
This campaign is really happening state by state, since it is primarily in state prisons that this solitary confinement is happening. The NYCLU just helped organize a screening in Albany, New York that was attended by several politicians interested in working on this issue. In Arizona they screened the film as part of a campaign not to build new solitary cells. There is also a campaign to have the American Institute of Architects change their code of ethics to state that it is not acceptable to build inhumane facilities like these.
So there are a lot of ongoing activism throughout the country focused on this issue. I hope the film can continue to serve as a resource for them.
Herman’s House is playing now at Cinema Village in NYC. This weekend’s screening will feature post-film Q and As with filmmakers and activists working on the issue of long term solitary confinement. The schedule of screenings is as follows:
Friday, April 19, 7:00 PM (SOLD OUT!) Moderator: Anna Sale, WNYC Reporter Speaker: Taylor Pendergrass, Senior Staff Attorney, New York Civil Liberties Union Speaker: Jackie Summell, Artist, Activist Featured in Film Speaker: Angad Bhalla, Director of Herman’s House
FRI April 19, 9:15 PM Speaker: Five, Mualimm-AK, NYC Jails Action Coalition Speaker: Angad Bhalla, Director of Herman’s House
SAT, April 20, 7:00 PM Moderator: King Downing, Campaign to End the New Jim Crow Speaker: Soffiyah Elijah, Executive Director, Correctional Association Speaker: Angad Bhalla, Director of Herman’s House
SAT, April 20, 9:15 PM Speaker: Jean Casella, Editor, SolitaryWatch.com Speaker: Angad Bhalla, Director of Herman’s House
SUN, April 21, 3:00 PM Speaker: Angad Bhalla, Director of Herman’s House Speaker: Representative from Metro NY Religious Campaign Against Torture
Tonight! One night only! Fake It So Real (T/F 2011) is playing online for free! Enter the lives of the dedicated men of the Millennium Wrestling Federation as they spend a week preparing for a big show. You can watch Fake It between 7:30-9:30 Eastern/6:30-8:30 Central tonight on the UStream link you’ll find embedded here. Following the film, it’s your chance to probe the unhinged mind of filmmaker Robert Greene during an online Q and A. Be warned though, things may become disturbing. Last year Michael Tully of Hammer to Nail attempted to interview Greene before the film’s VOD release, and the results weren’t pretty.
Each year, the True/False Film Fest selects one film as its True Life Fund recipient. This is a way for us to give back to that film’s subject who has made a significant achievement in selfless social impact. When documentary subjects share their stories with us they not only reveal painful details about their lives, they frequently incur a financial burden or even put themselves in danger. This year’s True Life Fund film, Which Way is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington, tells the story of someone who has already given his life. Tim worked as a photojournalist in war torn countries, documenting the true life stories of the people he found there. He died on the way to the hospital from complications due to shrapnel wounds while photographing the civil war in Libya. Columbia has a rich history of producing great journalists, so we felt our home town would be especially responsive to Tim’s story. That has proven to be so, with the 2013 True Life Fund reaching a new record in donations, totaling $36,760.
This number was reached through a combination of audience donations made during the two screenings of the film during the fest, entry fees for the True Life Run, a generous matching donation from the Bertha Foundation, support from the official True Life Fund sponsor The Crossing and the incredible efforts of the students of Hickman High School. $20,000 of the funds will go to RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues), an organization founded by the film’s director Sebastian Junger in honor of his fallen colleague and Restrepo co-director, Tim Hetherington. In a phone conversation Wednesday between RISC’s Deputy Director, Lily Hindy, and True Life Fund director, Tracy Lane, Hindy was overwhelmed by the generosity of the people of Columbia, “We are so grateful. Thanks to you, we can fund an entire training session.” Each training session provides 24 combat journalists with a medical kit and the medical skills needed to save each other’s lives on the battlefield. Junger visited The Crossing during T/F, to share his experiences alongside his former colleague on the battle field and to explain the life-saving opportunities that RISC provides. Hindy visited Columbia’s three public high schools as well as the photojournalism department at MU during T/F week, to share information about RISC with young journalists. $16,760 will go to the Milton Margai School for the Blind in Sierra Leone, where Tim took many photographs.
Which Way is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington premieres on HBO this Thursday, April 18th. A slideshow of Tim’s photography is available on their website.
Downtown Columbia’s main artery, Alley A, was adorned during True/False 2013 by “Stilted”. This strange threshold was California-based artist Yulia Pinkusevich’s take on our year ten theme, “the Collective Architecture of the Impossible”. Our T/F video team talks with Yulia about her art’s use of perspective and shares images of her finished product in this video.
You can find more photos of the “Stilted” installation below. Also, be sure to check out Yulia Pinkusevich’s homepage for many more pictures and videos documenting her impressive body of work.
The multi-media music project Folk to Folk shot a series of videos at True/False 2013, capturing stirring performances from the T/F busking army. In the second entry, the Brooklyn-based duo Mountain Animation jam on the banjo and violin during a showcase at Cafe Berlin.
If you want to hear more, check out Mountain Animation‘s new album, Lava Letter, in it’s entirety on the group’s bandcamp page. And don’t miss the first Folk to Folk video featuring a boisterous street performance by Yes, Ma’am.
Nicolas Rapold: I too was suspicious, especially when I heard the verb “experience” applied to True/False in lieu of “attend.” But fortunately the high quality of the programming never put me in the awkward position of praising the hospitality for want of anything else to say. Some of my increased feeling of well-being came from seeing theaters packed for the likes of a Chilean film featuring old folks in a nursing home waiting to die. It made me vaguely ashamed of the single-digit audience turnouts not infrequent at challenging programs back home in bonnie New York. Obviously the festival is a special event, but where are these curious moviegoers of many ages when I sit nearly alone at something awesome at Anthology Film Archives, wiping last-minute-samosa grease off my hands? Are my eating habits perhaps driving away potential waves of repertory enthusiasts?
Nick Pinkerton: The movie you are referring to, of course, is Cristian Soto and Catalina Vergara’s The Last Station, which, with its highly composed images—a face perfectly framed in a small mirror at the bottom of a drawer comes to mind—and lack of the instructive graphics and contextualizing voiceover that mark the infotainment documentary, is fairly representative of True/False’s programming. As for the cinema savvy of the average Columbian (Columbianite?), I must agree—the only time anything like “Oh my stars” prudery emerged was in a screening of Peter Whitehead’s The Fall, when a Destructionist theater group pummeled a live chicken to pieces against the wires of a piano they’d already chopped into kindling with an axe, after which half of the crowd walked out to protest the senseless death of some poultry in 1968. This played as part of a sidebar called Neither/Nor hosted by Columbia’s one FULL-TIME cinema, The Ragtag. The bill-of-fare was made of historical precedents to the festival’s signature dish, neither-fish-nor-fowl documentaries that blur the boundary between… well, you know the rest. Jim McBride was there with David Holzman’s Diary, while the Neither/Nor series was curated by some New York critic called Eric Hynes, who sort of looks like the Hip, Concerned Teacher in an after-school special from 1981. Where did they get that guy?
Critic Eric Hynes, who curated our first ever Neither/Nor chimera series, described True/False as “some kind of monster” in an excellent piece for Cinemascope. Among many other things, Eric wrote on what he sees as our unique critical slant.
With these films as a kind of standard for docu-cinematic delirium, it becomes tempting to judge all of True/False programming according to that standard. While this may be a somewhat reductive or misguided impulse (the implications of which I’ll explore shortly), it nevertheless speaks to True/False’s unique place within the festival landscape. Not just another doc survey, industry marketplace, or act of small-town self-promotion, T/F has a genuinely critical slant—and one that, by now bringing critics into the curation process, implies an ongoing interrogation of the art (and act) of documentary filmmaking rather than just a showcasing of the year’s more appealing fare. At least potentially, it’s programming as scrutinizing rather than cheerleading, inviting critical engagement not just with the chosen films but also with the choosing of those films.
I wanted to write about T/F almost immediately after I arrived, because it’s clearly one of the best-managed and enjoyable film festivals within extended driving distance of Chicago. (The trip takes about seven hours, though various permutations of flying and busing are also available.) Compressing a heady mix of filmgoing and socializing into a long weekend—this year’s edition ran February 28 through March 3—the event seems both intensely curatorial and casually eccentric. Or to put it another way: Never did I dream that one day I could order borscht from a Missouri cinema concession stand and then take it into a screening of Jim McBride’s landmark docu-fiction David Holzman’s Diary (1967).
Vadim Rizov crafted two excellent dispatches for Filmmaker Magazine, briefly reviewing films he saw here in Columbia. The first reflects onThese Birds Walk, The Garden of Eden and The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear, while the second pondersSleepless Nights and Computer Chess. Vadim also gave us a shout out in the Onion AV Club’s best festival experiences.
