04/29/13

Interview with “Something In The Air” actor India Menuez

India Menuez in "Something in the Air"

In her first scene in Olivier Assayas’ new film “Something in the Air,” Leslie, 17-year-old daugher of an American diplomat, is sitting on the grass with some other young people in a park in Italy. It is the early 1970’s. A man is playing the Phil Ochs song “Ballad of William Worthy” on a dobro guitar. Leslie introduces herself to a painter, Alain (Felix Armand). She then kisses him on the upper lip, takes his hand and leads him away. Impulsif! Leslie speaks to him in English and the sudden change of language, along with her striking beauty, heighten this remarkable introduction of a new character in Assayas’ marvelous portrait —a self-portrait in many ways— of activist student life a few years after the Spring ‘68 events that radicalized so many French youths.

It’s also a stunning entrance by the (now) 20-year-old New York actor and artist India Menuez. India’s credentials are almost a four-decade update of the flower child artist she plays in the film: graduate of an alternative high school in New York, member of the “Luck You” Chinatown-based art collective, frequently featured in style blogs and one of Papermag’s “Beautiful People of 2011.”

This summer India will play a rebellious teen in Brooklyn indie filmmaker Dustin Guy Defa’s latest feature, “Sweet Lover.” Defa (“Fever Dream”) says his team auditioned her and, “we fell in love with her. She is an intelligent and genuine actress.” “Something in the Air” opens in New York this Friday, May 3, at the IFC Center. Read my review of the film here.

India Menuez

Photo by David Swanson

Herbert Gambill: I see a lot of similarities between the students in this film and the preoccupations of students today—a renewed interest in political change, collective work, questioning values, a frustration over the delayed arrival of a better world that earlier generations seemed to think was on the horizon. I’m very curious to see what people who took part in Occupy Wall Street will make of this film—will they be heartened by it?

India Menuez: What I understand OWS to be doing is simply creating a broad call to general action. But that makes it seem a bit pointless—which I don’t think it is—because it is a choir of many different calls, which together become a kind of magical confusing song of hope. The issues are multifaceted and each of these facets are respected in their complexity with “never white wash” sticker stamp solutions attached, which becomes part of the confusion but then again gives the movement a sense of being real. I imagine a lot of it being like an elaborate tapestry, the picture we together compose of our world, this collective society, something along those lines—a collection of complicated knots. It’s complicated. Continue reading →

11/3/12

DOC NYC 2012

In this year’s DOC NYC —its third season— the festival runs from November 8-11 and will showcase 61 feature-length documentaries as well as many shorts and panel discussions by leaders in the field of documentary filmmaking. Standouts include opening night’s “Venus and Serena,” a portrait of the tennis stars the Williams sisters; “Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp,” about the life of the writer who vividly captured street life in the ‘60s; and “The Central Park Five,” the eagerly-awaited film about the controversial Central Park Jogger rape case, co-directed by Ken Burns, which closes out the festival. Go here for more information and a full schedule.

The team behind 2006’s entertaining and thought-provoking documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema have followed up with a new essay doc investigating how films influence our collective beliefs and practices by helping to shape our dreams. The style of “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” is exactly like the earlier film: the colorful, heavily-accented Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek uses scenes from films to illustrate intellectual arguments; these are punctuated by Slavoj continuing his narration in costumes and sets which pay homage to the films.

Clips from John Carpenter’s 1988 cult film “They Live” are used to explain Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser’s concept of ideological interpolation, in which our subjectivity is addressed (and partially created) by the social structures we inhabit. A drifter has discovered a pair of sunglasses that reveal the hidden instructions behind the surface of everyday life. An ordinary billboard advertisement turns into the text “OBEY” when viewed with the glasses! Continue reading →

10/18/12

SUN KISSED: A Documentary Explores a Fatal Skin Disorder Killing Navajo Young

Native American author —he prefers to be called an American Indian— Sherman Alexie was on the Leonard Lopate Show the other day talking about his new book, Blasphemy, and he said he thinks the U.S. still practices colonialism in respect to American Indians. “When you lose centuries of tradition,” Alexie said, “you’re in incredible existential pain.” Yet another source of pain for one tribe, the Navajo, and its connection to the genocide of the American Indians is powerfully revealed in the documentary Sun Kissed, airing this Thursday (Oct. 18) on POV at 10pm.

“Sun Kissed” tells the story of Dorey and Yolanda Nez, a Navajo couple living on a reservation in New Mexico. Both of their children were born with Xeroderma Pigmentosum —or XP— a genetic disorder that makes exposure to sunlight fatal. The disease is so rare it only occurs one in a million in the general population. Their son passed away at age 11 and when the film begins Dorey is the full-time caretaker of his 16-year-old daughter Leanndra, who is paralyzed by the neurological degeneration that can also be caused by XP. Continue reading →

10/10/12

New York Film Festival: To The Barricades!

A scene about one-third of the way into French director Olivier Assayas’ wonderful new film “Something in the Air” brings up a question that was central to film criticism and theory during the time in which the film is set, the early 1970s. It also amounts to something of an embedded self-criticism by the filmmaker. There is a screening of agitprop films for a group of young French and Italian revolutionaries. During a Q&A session someone remarks that the film shown may have political content but its form is not political; it’s simply a conventional document of political struggle.

The filmmaker, in the film’s defense, is that he doesn’t make films for “aesthetes,” he makes them for workers. Assayas can’t make the same excuse, of course; it’s unlikely his new film —or his last, the terrific made-for-French-TV mini-series “Carlos”— will be shown at any factories soon. But the simple binary of political film/film made politically has subsequently been shown to be insufficient to evaluate the political agency —or effectiveness— of a film. Continue reading →

10/1/12

New York Film Festival 50: Pi and Kubrick in the Sky

The opening night film for this year’s New York Film Festival presented the world premiere of “Life of Pi“, Ang Lee’s adaptation of the beloved 2001 novel by Canadian writer Yann Martell. Introducing the press screening, Lee joked that this project violated all three of the things directors are warned against working with–children, animals, water–add a fourth one, he shot it in 3D. He also noted that it was a challenge for him to make a film about faith. “Life of Pi” is about a boy (Pi, short for Piscine) from India, played by 19-year-old newcomer Suraj Sharma, who is so curious about religion he practices three of them. His father owns the animals in a zoo,  and in one harrowing scene Pi’s father teaches the young boy why he should not be sentimental about animals. Bad times force the family to sail to Canada, along with their animals (which they’ve sold to North American buyers.) A shipwreck puts Pi and a fierce Bengal tiger (named Richard Parker) into a lifeboat together.

The bulk of the film is taken up by Pi’s 200-plus days adrift, trying to keep himself and the tiger alive. The difficulty filming these scenes is what made the novel seem un-adaptable for years but Lee and crew have succeeded brilliantly. Never, for one second–for example–did I believe that the Richard Parker on screen wasn’t a real tiger. (The tiger, in fact, turns in one of the best performances you will see this year!) I’m no fan of 3D, especially since I wear glasses and two pair of lenses make it difficult to watch 3D; the 3D is as good as it gets here but I think the film would be just as visually awe-inspiring in 2D. The scenes of Pi’s inventiveness as he figures out how to keep the tiger at bay and gradually establish a mutual existence are captivating. Occasional fantasy sequences illustrating Pi’s longing for others are poetic and visually stunning. Continue reading →

09/24/12

New York Film Festival: Frances Ha Ha, or Frances Weird?

Over the next few weeks I’ll be blogging about the 50th New York Film Festival, based on press screenings and films seen during the actual festival (September 28-March 14). In addition to the 33 main slate films, this year’s festival features many interesting sidebars, including a rich selection of episodes from the French TV series “Cinéastes de notre temps.” There are also gala tributes to Nicole Kidman (accompanied by the premiere of her new film “The Paperboy”) and to Richard Pena, who is leaving after 25 years as the head of the festival.

• • •

Noah Baumbach’s exhilarating new film “Frances Ha“, co-written with and starring Greta Gerwig, is stylistically a love letter to the cinema of early Truffaut and Godard and even ‘70s Woody Allen. The story is ultimately about a deep friendship between two women (played by Gerwig and Mickey Sumner) in their late twenties —actually a rare subject for an American film— as Gerwig pointed out herself during the Q&A immediately following a recent press screening. Gerwig plays the titular character Frances (you don’t learn why it’s called “Frances Ha” until the end), a 27-year-old dancer in New York whose financially poor, but emotionally rich life is turned upside down when her best friend and roommate Sophie (Sumner) moves out of their apartment and in with her yuppie boyfriend. A search for work and cheaper lodging follows; she moves in with two hipster guys (one played by Adam Driver, best known as Lena Dunham’s inattentive lover in “Girls”), flies home for a Christmas trip to Sacramento (Gerwig’s real birthplace), takes a ruinously spontaneous two-day trip to Paris, and endures a stint as a dorm counselor at Barnard College. Continue reading →

09/18/12

HERMAN’S HOUSE directed by Angad Singh Ballah

Anyone who cares about social justice surely knows about the sad story of the Angola Three. A new documentary, “Herman’s House“, which is having its New York premiere Wednesday night at the Harlem International Film Festival, powerfully states the case against prolonged solitary confinement and how one activist made a huge difference in the life of Herman Wallace. Wallace has been in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola prison for 40 years, longer than anyone ever has been in the U.S. There are doubts about his guilt–the widow of the guard he is charged with murdering even has her doubts. And one can’t help but suspect that his involvement in the Black Panther chapter at the prison is why he still remains in solitary, rather than being in the general prison population.

“Herman’s House,” directed by Angad Ballah, tells the story of New York artist Jackie Summell’s unique artistic response to Herman’s fate. She began writing and phoning Wallace and asked him to imagine the type of house he would like to live in instead of the six-by-nine-foot cell he has been in since 1972. This communication was the basis of an art installation she built, which included a life-sized model of his prison cell, plans and models of the dream house he imagined, and a timeline of his life. (You can see more documentation of the show at her website.) “The best activism,” Jackie says, “is equal parts love and equal parts anger.” Her outrage is matched by her rich friendship with Herman and her devotion to his cause extended after the installation (which she put on twelve times in various countries); she moved to New Orleans and began working to realize Herman’s dream of a house built to help troubled children. Continue reading →

09/6/12

GREEN Directed by Sophia Takal

In the opening scene of filmmaker Sophia Takal’s fascinating debut feature “Green” some young New York hipster types have a ponderous discussion about author Philip Roth. Sebastian (Lawrence Michael Levine) insists that “even as a technician the guy’s amazing.” He teases his girlfriend Genevieve’s (Kate Lyn Sheil) ability to evaluate a Roth novel of which she’s only read thirty pages. No, she corrects him, she’s read all of it. The remainder of this short film (it times in at 72 minutes) concerns the emotional and intellectual dynamics of this couple, yet everything we will learn —or need to know— about their characters is revealed in this one brief exchange. Sebastian is very opinionated but he’s not a snob; he doesn’t take himself too seriously nor is he shy or hesitant in the way Genevieve is. She’s less outspoken but she’s as competitive as he is in her own way. They laugh and smile tenderly at each other during the hipster gab and trade shorthand looks and gestures; they’re obviously in love and comfortable with each other.

The next scene is a wide shot of the couple arriving at a house in the country. The location is never identified but with some observation one notes that all the cars have Pennsylvania plates. Takal employs these long exterior wide shots several times in a similar, mysterious fashion: we have to scan the frame–”where’s Waldo” style–for the origin of the voices we hear. The sound design by Weston Fonger is supple and rich. Nature and ambient sounds are combined with Ernesto Carcamo‘s spooky, almost sci-fi soundtrack (think of the soundscapes Giovanni Fusco created for Antonioni). Partnered with the lush, sylvan exteriors the film almost feels at times like a trippy, environmental installation. Continue reading →

08/12/12

COMPLIANCE Directed by Craig Zobel

True story.  I recently heard a young woman —shaken, on the verge of tears— tell some friends about how her thuggish bar manager accused her and a co-worker of theft the night before. After the place closed, he locked the door and wouldn’t let them leave until one of them confessed. Frustrated when both pleaded their innocence until early in the morning, he fired both of them. “Can he do that?” she asked. No, he can’t. It’s called illegal imprisonment. And he probably broke any number of labor laws as well. The susceptibility of people who don’t know their legal rights, of underpaid workers afraid of losing their job, and our ingrained fear of and deference to authority–this is at the heart of Craig Zobel’s brilliant film “Compliance.” It is easily the most radical American film of the year.

Ostensibly a thriller, the story is very simple. On a busy Friday night at an Ohio fast food restaurant called ChickWich, middle-aged manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) receives a call from a police officer telling her that one of her employees, Becky (Dreama Walker) is suspected of theft. Sandra diligently follows the policeman’s instructions, taking Becky to the back, questioning her, subjecting her to a strip search, even asking her construction worker fiance Van (Bill Camp) to help as she juggles the demands of the front counter and the man on the phone. We know the caller (Pat Healy) is a sadistic prankster, trying to see how far he can push people beyond their ethical boundaries. It’s easy to think we’d catch on quickly if this happened to us, yet this is inspired by a real incident, one of 70 such pranks that happened over a decade. (For a fascinating document of them, see the Wikipedia page on the “strip search prank call scam.”) Continue reading →

08/9/12

CHICKEN WITH PLUMS Directed by Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud

After his demanding wife smashes his beloved violin, gifted musician Nasser-Ali Khan decides it can not be replaced. No other violin will produce the beauty that has led to his stellar musical career or help him forget his unhappy marriage. After rejecting a number of conventional suicide methods, Khan announces that he will die in eight days, simply by laying down and giving up. Each day, memories from his past gradually tell the story of how his love of life diminished and the significance of this particular violin.

The old technique of deathbed flashbacks is enlivened here by a wealth of narrative devices (live action mixed with numerous styles of animation, theatrical re-enactments and multiple film stock simulations) as well as some Oscar-worthy art direction and sound editing. The setting will also be novel for most audiences: Tehran in 1958, a time when Iran was more westernized than it is now. “Chicken with Plums” is adapted from co-director Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel of the same name.  She and her co-director, Vincent Paronnaud —also a graphic novelist— made the acclaimed 2008 animated version of her graphic novel “Persepolis.” Continue reading →

08/9/12

This Evening PINE HILL Comes to Fort Greene

Keith Miller is excited about his new indie feature, “Welcome to Pine Hill“  screening outdoors in Fort Greene Park this Thursday.  Just how will it play under the stars?  It’s not an action movie or a romantic comedy.  Well, maybe kind of a bromance.  ”Welcome to Pine Hill”, which has been getting raves and awards ever since its debut at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize, concerns a young man named Shannon Harper played by Brooklyn native, non-actor Shannon Harper.  [Editor's note: I harbor no ill will because Shannon, who was supposed to be interviewed for this piece, was a no-show.]  I won’t give away too much of the plot, I can only say that the movie has a most memorable opening which just happens to be based on a real life incident that occurred just outside filmmaker Miller’s apartment building in South Slope.

Miller, an unassuming white guy, was walking his dog, William, when he was stopped by a large young black man.  The larger of the two turned out to be Shannon Harper who identified William as his own lost dog, Prince.  When Miller told Harper that he rescued the dog —then a four month pit bull pup— off the street and attempted to find its owner, the two men started the process of navigating the breaches that existed between them.   Continue reading →

08/7/12

CRAIGSLIST JOE directed by Joe Garner

Every morning, Justin, a young Chicago man juggling dozens of part-time jobs and activities, goes on Craigslist and follows the same routine. First he checks the “personals: strictly platonic: women seeking men” section. Then he goes to “jobs: general labor” and clicks on “Transport” and “ETC.” Within the “Gigs” section, he browses listings in “labor”, “event,” “crew,” “domestic” and “talent.” Finally he heads over to the “pets” section in “community.” Justin is one of the self-described Craigslist addicts whom filmmaker Joe Garner meets on a journey to see if the free, online forum begun seventeen years ago is actually enabling a sense of community for its users. “I’m going to use technology,” Joe declares, “the very thing that is supposed to be isolating us — to connect with others.”

His mission?  For one month he will have no access to money, friends or family, carrying with him only a laptop, cellphone, passport and toothbrush. He will rely totally on Craigslist to find food, shelter, rides and company. Sure, some might suggest that a  healthy, young, attractive white male pretending to be homeless for a month is not the riskiest example of participatory journalism. And then there is the matter that he is being accompanied the whole while by a camera man (Kevin Flint) whom he also found on Craigslist. Still, it’s an interesting idea and Garner is an earnest, genial pathfinder. A boyish 29-year-old (he looks a bit like Kevin Connolly of “Entourage”), he’s good at staying in the the background and letting people tell their stories. Continue reading →

08/3/12

KLOWN directed by Mikkel Nørgaard

Early in “Klown,” a Danish sex comedy released in the U.S. last week, the slow-witted, geeky, thirty-something Frank (Frank Hvam) confesses to his horny, always scheming pal Casper (Casper Christensen) that he hasn’t read the assigned text for their all-male book club meeting. But neither has Casper. “I didn’t join the book club to read,” he snaps back. “I come here to hang out with the guys!” Not a typical venue for male-bonding councils, yet that is exactly what it turns out to be. The other men give Frank mischievous advice on how to court favor with his girlfriend: masturbate on her while she is asleep. (He later tries this in a boundary-pushing, outrageous scene.) When another member also confesses to not having read the book (the novella, “Heart of Darkness”), the club leader punishes him (Jørgen Leth, star of “The Five Obstructions”) by giving him what he calls a “schnozzle”–the kind of nose crimpings Moe routinely dealt Curly and Larry.

The club is led by Bent, an octogenarian made rich and famous for writing one song (“Alley Cat”) and who also runs a very exclusive brothel, one Casper hopes to visit during a canoeing vacation with Frank. (A funny bit lost for most non-Danish audiences is that Bent is played by Bent Fabric, the actual Dane who wrote the silly piano standard that won a Grammy in 1962 and which also appears on the film’s soundtrack a couple of times.) For family man Casper, the trip down the river promises to be a wild, lecherous “Tour de Pussy,” one almost ruined when Frank kidnaps a 12-year-old nephew, Bo, and brings him along to disprove his pregnant girlfriend’s understandable doubts about his potential for fatherhood. Continue reading →

06/12/12

INTERVIEW: Lynn Shelton

I’ve often been told I have a face made for radio.  It’s an old joke but actually holds true in my case.  Lynn Shelton, on the other hand, probably belongs somewhere shy of an IMAX screen.  Warm, funny, easy on the eyes.  I had it all set that I was going to interview her on my radio show.  Frustratingly, that didn’t quite work out timing-wise (for the moment) but I couldn’t let the scheduled interview go to complete waste.

I was particularly interested in what life on a Lynn Shelton set was like.   Having seen all four of her feature films, and having long admired the humanity that comes off the screen, I was anxious to talk. Her characters are all written with warmth and wit; utterly believable.  There was estranged Eric (Basil Harris) & Dylan (Sean Nelson), trying to find common ground out in the woods in rural Washington in “My Effortless Brilliance”.  “Humpday” reunites old friends married Ben (Mark Duplass) & unanchored  Andrew (Joshua Leonard), who agree to make an amateur man-on-man porno even though neither man is homosexual.  In her latest comedy, “Your Sister’s Sister”,  Jack (Duplass), who recently lost his brother must grapple with his romantic feelings for his widowed sister-in-law, Iris (Emily Blunt), in spite of a one night fling he had with her lesbian sister, Hannah (Rosemary DeWitt).  If it sounds complicated —and it is— the whole thing is written and performed so smoothly that you won’t miss a step.

Filmwax: Congratulations on “Your Sister’s Sister”.  I saw it and really enjoyed it thoroughly.

Lynn Shelton: Oh great, thanks.

Filmwax:  What’s your secret in creating an environment on the set in order to get the kinds of performances you do with “Humpday” and “Your Sister’s Sister”?

Shelton: Um, well I try to have as few bodies as possible, and really, the most important thing is the right bodies. The right people. So I’m really incredibly careful about who I bring into the crew family and just as careful as I am in casting the cast.

Filmwax: Do you mean literally who you allow to be on the set?

Shelton: Yeah, yeah. I’m talking about the d.p. (director of photography) and the sound guy.  Every single person.  I’ve been an artist all my life, and I didn’t come into my own as an artist until I discovered the collaboration of narrative filmmaking. And so, I’ve been using a lot of – I mean it was decades before I really figured out,  Like: “Oh, if you let go or let loose a little bit, open up your control freak nature and let other people into the process, like, wow! The things that can happen are pretty amazing.”

And I’ve been thinking a lot about why that is, and I think that, at its best, collaboration pushes. What’s great is when you have partners who are all pushing each other. They are all being the best that they can be. One of my collaborators recently told me that, he said: “You believed in me more than I believed in myself, and I’ve done better work because of it, and work I never would have done because of it.”  And that is it in a nutshell. I think that if everybody believes in each other, more than they even believe in themselves, then they end up sort of raising the bar.  Everybody just ends up, you know, getting the best out of each other. In order to do that, you have to have an incredibly emotionally safe environment.  Making art is a very risky venture – you’re putting a little piece of your soul out there for people to just like… you know, you’re laying yourself bare when you’re being creative. Continue reading →

06/7/12

Brooklyn Film Festival Lives Up To Its Name

Characteristically, the Brooklyn Film Festival (formerly known as the Brooklyn International Film Festival) has made Brooklyn films and filmmakers a priority.  While other New York area festivals focus on national or international content —not to say that BFF ignores it; it’s an international competition festival— this Williamsburg-basd festival stays true blue.  Founded in 1998, the festival has been slowly growing in its stature.  In addition to a load of new indie films, the festival now boasts an industry panel day which they are calling the BFF Exchange and whose sessions run this Saturday.  But it’s bread and butter are the 104 features and shorts, including 28 world premieres and 28 U.S. premieres.  This past year there were some 2,000 submissions so the secret is definitely out. And this blogger should know; he was a screener for their documentaries.

A scene from Kelly Anderson's MY BROOKYLN which closes the Brooklyn Film Festival

A few standouts among those Brooklyn-centric films are Kelly Anderson’s “My Brooklyn“,  Su Friedrich’s “Gut Renovation” and Katie Dellamaggiore’s “Brooklyn Castle“.  All are worthy of your time & money and are having screenings over this coming weekend.  Anderson’s “My Brooklyn” will enjoy a Filmwax Film Series screening some time in the fall, date to be announced.

The Brooklyn Film Festival, Decoy Edition, which runs from June 1st through the 10th, screens at both indieScreen & The Brooklyn Heights Cinema.  The festival is owned and operated by Marco Ursino & Susan Mackell; Nathan Kensinger is the Director of Programming.