CHIMERAS (Mika Mattila)
The most impressive of the films I was able to preview, the visually stunning and intellectually stimulating Chimeras explores the parallel lives of two Chinese artists. Wang Guangyi, who was involved in China’s avant-garde art movement of the 1980’s, is now a contemporary art-world star, whose canvases sell for millions of dollars apiece. Despite this success, Wang is now going through an anxiety-of-influence artistic crisis, feeling increasingly conflicted over the growing Westernization of Chinese art and culture. Meanwhile, up-and-coming photography artist Liu Gang is getting his first taste of recognition with a major gallery show, featuring warped images of Western pop culture. However, this is complicated by his fiancé’s pressures on him concerning marriage, and a proposed project about China’s one-child policy that others tell him may be politically dangerous.
Chimeras presents a China filled with pervasive Western influences, and Mattila has an unerring eye for capturing images that perceptively illustrate this, from people doing tai chi in front of a looming Cartier storefront, to Beijing’s imitations of Paris and London. Through its portraits of artists, Chimeras brilliantly portrays an unsettled China, constantly in artistic and political flux.
(October 19, 3:30pm)
AS TIME GOES BY IN SHANGHAI (Uli Gaulke)
This very charming film follows Shanghai’s Peace Old Jazz Band, a sextet recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest band in existence, whose ages range from 65 to 87. The band formed in 1980, but its members have been performing for much longer than that, some since the 1940’s. The film documents the band’s preparations leading up to a major gig performing at a jazz festival in Rotterdam. Along the way, these musicians offer their memories of their lives in Shanghai, from the Japanese occupation, to the Cultural Revolution’s ban on their music, and their later liberation from this political repression. (One band member tells a great story about how hearing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony on the radio signaled to him that Mao’s era was truly over.)
As Time Goes By in Shanghai maintains a gently amusing tone throughout, as the band members struggle through rehearsals (what they lack in technique, they make up for in charisma and enthusiasm), audition younger female singers, and argue with their manager. The film briefly touches upon how some of these old men suffered because of the Cultural Revolution, but this isn’t dwelled upon. What comes through strongly is how these musicians’ dedication to their love of music and their irrepressibly positive outlook carried them through often turbulent times.
(October 19, 6pm)
CINEMA INCH'ALLAH! (Vincent Coen and Guillaume Vandenberghe)
Cinema Inch’Allah! tells the story of four Belgian-Moroccan men – Reda, Farid, Mohamed, and Noon – childhood friends whose passion for the movies have been the cornerstone of their existence. Over the past 20 years, they’ve made 33 low-budget action comedy films starring themselves and other friends. (Sample titles: “Jamal Disco,” “Ghost Cop,” “Super Detective,” “The House of the Sacrifice.”) We follow them during casting and rehearsals for their latest opus, “Jamal Disco 2,” starring Reda as the title character, wearing a very glittery outfit and a huge afro wig. All four consciously search for ways to balance their love for action and horror films with their Muslim faith and their Moroccan identity, and they use their films as a conduit to work out religious and cultural issues. But when Farid begins to see their film work as incompatible with orthodox Islam, this threatens both the film they are working on and their friendship.
Cinema Inch’Allah! uses a breezy, deceptively light style to illuminate the very serious issues facing its subjects, and offers a fascinating and nuanced look at the cultural pressures affecting artistic expression.
(October 19, 1pm)
FINDING HILLYWOOD (Leah Warshawski and Chris Towey)
Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, which wiped out half a million people – nearly 20% of the population – has left no one still living in the country untouched. One of these is Ayuub Kasasa Mago, who lost his own mother in one attack. Wracked with guilt because he convinced his mother to move to Rwanda not long before the genocide, he fell into a deep depression for a long time. Soon after he emerged from this dark period, he found his way into the movie business, working as a location assistant on The Last King of Scotland. Ayuub developed a passion for films as a result of this experience, and began to see film as a way for his country to confront the horrors of their history and begin a process of healing.
Ayuub became involved in a program called Hillywood (named for the major feature of Rwanda’s landscape), a film festival of sorts that brings locally made films in the local language to rural communities, shown on a portable, inflatable screen. Films dealing with the genocide as well as social issues such as domestic violence play to large, enthusiastic crowds. Many screenings take place in stadiums that sit right next to mass graves, further emphasizing the pervasiveness of the genocide’s aftermath in Rwandans' daily lives. Filmmaking training programs emerged with the festival, and Finding Hillywood documents what is no less than the birth of a national cinema. And though the film sometimes comes across as an infomercial for the festival, it still strongly affirms cinema’s power to speak to people and touch them in transformative ways.
(October 18, 5pm)
BLACK OUT (Eva Weber)
The search for light and a way out of darkness takes on both literal and metaphorical meanings in Weber’s succinct (47 minutes long) yet profound and beautifully shot Black Out. Filmed in Conakry, the capital of the West African nation of Guinea, Black Out covers several months in 2011, shortly after the election of Alpha Conde, Guinea’s first democratically elected president. Despite campaign promises of improving citizen’s lives, the infrastructure of much of the country remains a shambles. Foremost among these is the scarcity of electricity – most of the country has none at all, and those that do have service that is erratic at best, with frequent blackouts commonplace. This forces young people who have no light at home to study to congregate at airports, gas stations, and public parks, places that are often the only source of illumination for miles around.
This situation is the source of the film’s evocative imagery, as these young nocturnal scholars, reading aloud to themselves from textbooks, work untiringly to improve themselves and their country. Black Out forms a mostly unspoken, but quietly powerful indictment of a society that allows its people, living in the 21st century, to endure standards of living far more suited to much earlier centuries.
(October 19, 5:30pm)
TALES FROM THE ORGAN TRADE (Ric Esther Bienstock)
This HBO documentary, narrated by David Cronenberg (an appropriate choice given his long history as a creator of indelible body horror cinema), is in its style very much the standard TV doc. But where it has the edge on many others is in its remarkably nuanced view of the vast trade in human organs on the black market, partly filling a huge gap between donors and those who desperately need these organs to continue living. Kidneys are the most prized organs in this illicit network, and Tales From the Organ Trade spans the globe – Canada, the Philippines, the U.S., Turkey, Kosovo, Moldova – to examine the thorny ethical issues involved. Exploitation of the poor, of course, factors very much in this situation; many in desperate financial situations consider a kidney a relatively small price to pay for some relief, however temporary. Also, the non-regulated nature of this business has the great potential for abuse and physical dangers. But on the other hand, lives are often saved by this practice, and waiting years to get to the top of an organ recipient list hardly seems to be a better system.
Tales From the Organ Trade admirably refuses to give easy answers, assign blame, or spoon-feed opinions to its viewers. As such, it is a valuable conversation starter, and a provocative occasion for much food for thought.
(October 18, 7pm)