Cinephilia: Film Festival Preview

The Welling­ton Film Fes­ti­val (sor­ry, New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, Welling­ton Branch) is a huge under­tak­ing for the com­mit­ted cin­e­ma-goer. Every year we devour the pro­gramme for weeks in advance, sched­ul­ing annu­al leave and long “lunch breaks”, try­ing to work out what is essen­tial and what isn’t. After 20 years of this, I’ve only just begun to realise that in the search for the essen­tial many oth­er plea­sures have been pass­ing me by. This year, before I even looked at the pro­gramme, I asked the Fes­ti­val to choose a stack of DVDs for me, with the empha­sis on the unher­ald­ed and the unex­pect­ed. Thus, of the 13 films I’ve been watch­ing over the last three or so weeks, all but one of them were from the back half of the book (and prob­a­bly would not have been on my per­son­al short­list) but all of them had some­thing spe­cial to offer. So, is my advice for the Fes­ti­val to not book in advance but instead choose films at ran­dom depend­ing on your own avail­abil­i­ty and prox­im­i­ty to a venue? Maybe it is.

[Read the rest of the Welling­ton­ista Film Fes­ti­val Pre­view after the jump]

I didn’t quite ‘get’ Blind Loves, a doc­u­men­tary-like film about a series of Slo­va­kian blind cou­ples and their rela­tion­ships and lives — gor­geous to look at, cer­tain­ly, but I wasn’t sure how much was con­trived for our ben­e­fit.

One of the truest rep­re­sen­ta­tions of male friend­ships I’ve ever seen on screen is found in Hump­day, a very enter­tain­ing Seat­tle indie. Ben and Andrew were best friends at col­lege but have drift­ed apart since then — Ben into safe, mid­dle-class mar­riage and career and Andrew drift­ing into a life of incom­plete art projects in Mex­i­co. Reunit­ed for a week­end, they drunk­en­ly decide to make a home-made gay porn film (star­ring them­selves) as a work of art and state­ment about friend­ship between straight men. Or some­thing. Ben’s wife is under­stand­ably hor­ri­fied which sort of forces them to go through with it. Bril­liant.

Black humour from Scan­di­navia was anoth­er theme of my selec­tion: Dead Snow might as well just titled Nazi Zom­bies as that’s what every­one is call­ing it. A cool idea with some love­ly bloody set-pieces is ulti­mate­ly unsat­is­fy­ing due to the lack of inter­nal log­ic and strange­ly moti­vat­ed antag­o­nists. Sweet­er and fun­nier, is The High­er Force from Ice­land — a depressed poet and debt col­lec­tor invents a rela­tion­ship with a gang­land king­pin to boost his cred. Of course, one tiny lie soon blos­soms into com­plete dis­as­ter. A car crash of styles and cul­tures – a bit like Ice­land itself right now.

Two mis­un­der­stood heroes under­take quixot­ic adven­tures to raise aware­ness of glob­al issues in two sep­a­rate docos. Big Riv­er Man is the absorb­ing tale of a Sloven­ian alco­holic (who looks like Mr Incred­i­ble) who swims the length of the Ama­zon riv­er to protest at defor­esta­tion and Enjoy Pover­ty is by a Dutch artist named Ren­zo Mar­tins who trav­els through the Con­go with the breath­tak­ing­ly patro­n­is­ing aim of per­suad­ing the locals to be hap­py with their lives as cir­cum­stances are unlike­ly ever to change. (In his defence he is also try­ing to get them to take own­er­ship of the images of their pover­ty as one of the only indige­nous export indus­tries avail­able.) By the end of each film you realise to what extent each man is dri­ven by ego rather than phil­an­thropy and each is fas­ci­nat­ing and infu­ri­at­ing.

Talk­ing of egos, James Toback’s Mike Tyson auto­bi­og­ra­phy Tyson is an often mov­ing por­trait of a dam­aged and dam­ag­ing soul. Tyson speaks for him­self through­out and the mate­r­i­al is art­ful­ly shaped by Toback – a fine direc­tor and one of Iron Mike’s only true friends.

When the Amer­i­cans decid­ed to go in to space they set up shop in sun­ny Flori­da. For some rea­son the Sovi­ets went to godaw­ful Kaza­khstan. Paper Sol­dier is a hand­some, epic dra­ma about the ear­ly Russ­ian space pro­gram, specif­i­cal­ly the six weeks imme­di­ate­ly pri­or to Gagarin’s first voy­age. Owing a lot to (but not quite liv­ing up to) Chekov and Tarkovsky, Paper Sol­dier is grand and grit­ty in equal mea­sure. A more attrac­tive look at Kaza­khstan is offered by Wild Field about a lone­ly doc­tor tend­ing to the most­ly alco­holic herders of the steppes. The sky is as big as in any John Ford west­ern and the space between peo­ple is equal­ly vast.

For­mer CT film review­er Graeme Tuck­ett’s much-her­ald­ed doc­u­men­tary about Bar­ry Bar­clay, The Cam­era on the Shore, is a mov­ing and heart­felt por­trait of a great New Zealand artist but occa­sion­al­ly hints at some sto­ries that could have been illu­mi­nat­ed fur­ther. Essen­tial nonethe­less.

My favourite two of all the pre­views offered this year are the two least like­ly: Ser­bis is day in the life of a run-down adult pic­ture the­atre in Mani­la and the fam­i­ly that lives there and runs the joint — Com­plete­ly dis­arm­ing – and Day­time Drink­ing is a small but per­fect­ly formed sto­ry of anoth­er kind of male friend­ship – the com­plete­ly unre­li­able kind. Jilt­ed stu­dent Hiuk-jin is per­suad­ed by drunk­en bud­dies to go on a road trip to the coun­try but he is the only one who turns up athe bus sta­tion the next morn­ing. He goes on alone, get­ting some spec­tac­u­lar­ly bad advice from the peo­ple he meets, much of it involv­ing more drink­ing. A superbly sat­is­fy­ing end­ing com­pletes the deal. Director/writer/producer/photographer/editor Young-Seok Noh looks like he could be the next Steven Soder­bergh – a quin­tu­ple-threat to watch.

Final­ly a small dis­ap­point­ment: as a fan of Ramin Bahrani’s Man Push Cart (inex­plic­a­bly not select­ed for the 2006 Fes­ti­val) I was look­ing for­ward to see­ing his acclaimed new film Good­bye Solo. In it, a mys­te­ri­ous old­er man books a two week taxi ride from a Sene­galese dri­ver. Sad­ly for me the Festival’s only DVD copy failed with no chance of replace­ment so it looks like I’m going to have to book for some­thing after all.

Print­ed in Welling­ton’s Cap­i­tal Times on Wednes­day 15 July, 2009. Cross-post­ed to Funer­als & Snakes.

This is only about eleven out of 160. I’d love to hear Welling­ton­ista tips as the Fes­ti­val pro­gress­es so let fly in the com­ments. What are you most look­ing for­ward to?