A voice of sanity; more Jeonju pics (last ones, I imagine)

A voice of sanity

And I agree, absolutely--Kiarostami gets harassed, and some sleazy lawyer with incurable TB gets a pass? Whaddahellzgoin on?

Final set of photos from my jury duty at the 8th Jeonju International Film Festival (I think; I'm pretty sure), sent by girl scout extraordinaire Areum Jeong (who should be in New York by now, God willing):

From left to right: film programmer Jung Soo-wan (I liked to call her "Sue Ann," which could be the Tar Heel in me coming out); Mr. Min Byung-lok, festival director; yours truly; Korean actor Jeong Chan; uh--not sure, but I think that's filmmaker Kim Tae-yong; and Netpac jurist and film critic Yu Ji-na (I called her "Gina," no one seemed to notice the difference).

Here's Jeong Chan making a statement in Korean while I--well, I don't remember what I was doing then; trying to follow his speech in English I suppose. Earlier, Jeong had been looking at me while I tried to copy my name in Korean. "Very good," he said. Didn't tell him that compared to Mandarin, Korean seems pretty easy. On the way out, I pocketed that nameplate sitting in front of me, the one with my name in Korean characters.

The press conference that followed was pretty civil, except for one reporter that cited an article critical of the festival; Mr. Min cheerfully replied that attendance in the festival was up, even in rainy days, and that he has it on good word that the one who wrote the article didn't even attend the festival--so he doesn't know what the man's talking about.

Then, being the only foreigner in the conference, the reporters turned on me--asked me what I thought of the festival, what could be improved on, etc., etc. I replied that my impression of the festival was that everyone worked 110% percent, past midnight even--I would catch them still at it when I had come home from either a late screening or a drinking spree, in the wee hours of the morning, and it was a running gag that I kept telling Areum to go to sleep (she had been getting about two hours' rest every night for the past two weeks); she was still pretty and all, I opined, but she looked dead tired.

As for what could be improved--I called on the city of Jeonju to give even more support to the festival. It's a no-brainer, really--the festival gives the city an international profile, brings in visitors both local and foreign, brings films from the world to Jeonju, helps showcase Jeonju films (like the opening film Off Road, which was shot in Jeonju) to the world.

Suck-up sure--what, I was going to bite the hand that hosted me? But I did mean every word.

And here's filmmaker Ying Liang, receiving the Woo-suk Award of $10,000 for The Other Half. Behind him from left to right are the three Indie Vision jurists: filmmaker Jiri Menzel, yours truly, filmmaker Lee Yoon-ki. I don't know who the fourth guy is, or who Ying's getting his award from.

Being the one most fluent in English, I got picked to announce the winner at both the press conference and closing ceremonies. Basically repeated the short official speech I wrote (with everyone's input) on the winning film, after which the ceremony ended and we all sat down to watch Johnnie To's Exiled. Jiri didn't watch it; the Czech ambassador had a car waiting to drive him from Jeonju to Seoul, where he spent the night, so we shook hands then and there (and Olga gave me a quick buss). Ah, memories, memories.

Jeonju Film Festival Photos The Third!

Final set of Jeonju pictures:



The Indie Vision jury--Korean filmmaker Lee Yoon-ki, me, and Czech filmmaker Jiri Menzel. The lone girl in the group is Festival Vice-Director Ancha Flubacher-Rhim. This was outside some cultural center for our Juror's Dinner.



The Juror's Dinner. I'm seated between Festival programmer Yoo un-sung and Jiri, in a traditional Korean meal of epic proportions (to get this shot I had to either cut off the picture's sides or shrink the people in it to the size of cockroaches, and I didn't want cockroaches). Poor Jiri couldn't eat anything, so for most of the dinner he lounged in his chair and struck a pose not inappropriate to the cover of GQ Magazine.



Standing in front of the ice sculpture at the festival's closing ceremony reception (they served whole platters of fresh salmon sashimi, and huge bowls of bright red strawberries (Jeonju, apparently, is famous for its strawberries)), crammed between filmmaker Yoshiharu Ueoka (The Look of Love) and Takushi Tsubokawa (Aria). On extreme right is Kazakhstan's most famous film critic, Gulnara Abikeyeva, who was kind enough to present me a copy of her book, The Heart of the World: Films From Central Asia.

I pulled Takushi aside and tried out my theory re: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz being the inspiration for Aria and in reply--he could just be trying to be polite--he put a finger to his lips and whispered: "don't tell anyone!"



I had to pull Korean actor Jung Chan (Jeong Chan) away from the mob of schoolgirls and pretty autograph hounds surrounding him to take this picture, thinking: this might lend the blog a much-needed influx of Korean fangirl readers. Note the "V for Victory" hand signal, customary in Korean photos.



Outside the crematorium--sorry, that was Jiri's joke, but I couldn't resist--the complex where the festival was to have its closing ceremonies, I prevailed upon poor Areum Jeong (her official title was, if I remember right "jury coordinator;" I called her "nanny and nursemaid to sixteen cranky foreigners," heroically obliging gal that she was) to stop herding us for a moment and snap this photo of us three: Jiri, his lovely wife Olga Menzelová-Kelymanová, and I, moments before we stepped on that damned red carpet/shooting gallery.



And of course, Jiri was kind enough to lend me his wife for a moment to take this pic. Yes, Olga, if you're reading this blog, I'm a shameless sexist pig, so sue me.



All good things must come to an end, the more wonderful the more inevitable I suspect, and the Jeonju Festival was no exception. The festival did have this lovely tradition--all the volunteers (they gave us plenty of souvenirs, but the one I really wanted were those cool yellow rain jackets) lined up outside the crema--sorry--arts and culture complex and sang us a specially composed song that wished us farewell and hoped we would come again. I couldn't resist; I had to grab poor Areum again (or was it Jeong Chan?) and ask him/her to take this picture of me with the volunteers.

Couldn't sing the song (though I did manage to wave the "V for Victory" sign), but for a moment there I enjoyed the illusion that I was one of them, singing the guests goodbye until next year's festival. Till then--an-yeong ni gaseo, or in Tagalog, paalam.

Jeonju, and a trio of Korean films

Jeonju bibimbap

Fourteen hours in a jet--even a jumbo--is no joke. Thankfully the video screens have a wider range of entertainment--not just your usual multiplex fare (The Pursuit of Happyness, Charlotte's Web) but a few classics (Casablanca, Stagecoach). Intelligent and time-conscious man that I am, I instead spent the hours practicing and cheating my way through electronic mini-golf (I'm a world champion now, and able to break into the game's secret tenth level).

Oh, and there were pop Korean films--hits, I presume. Something called Hearty Paws (I can't find it on imdb) is as if Koreda's Nobody Knows had humped Benjie and produced puppies (orphaned kids and a dog! Who can resist?). It has nothing of Kore-eda's understated mis-en-scene or dispassionate eye, though the child actors were good though (there's a fine scene in a police station where the little girl asks the boy "can you remember my name?" hoping someday they might meet again), and it's interesting to see that Korean films are not averse to showing children or dogs in deadly peril (a chld outrunning a dog, however, is beyond the pale).

Kim Yong-hwa's 200 pounds beauty (they really need to get better translators) has a brilliant premise--an overweight singer named Hanna (Kim Ah-jung, in a not very convincing fat suit) who dubs a famous pop star also doubles as a phone sex worker; when she recognizes the voice of a plastic surgeon as one of her clients, she blackmails him into producing his masterpiece--a slimmer version of herself, so 'natural' (the word is loaded with meaning in this film) a beauty no one can tell she's phony (another loaded word).

Too bad the movie fails to follow up on the ingenious setup--Hanna stays mostly sweet and uninteresting; she fails to identify herself to her father, and she disappoints her best friend on occasion, but those are sins of omission, of cowardice, than anything more active or malevolent. The film seems more interested in pleading for plastic surgery to make deformed or overweight people feel better about themselves--noble enough topic, I suppose, but that's about it--than in being a real meditation on the evils of skin deep beauty.

That said, Kim Ah-jung without the fat suit is stunning. Korean women are beautiful, but she has some kind of lost-waif quality that is electrifying on the screen (even the tiny one I was using). There's something dramatic, even tragic about her expression that makes you feel protective; one of the few actresses I know who can inspire this kind of reaction was the young Sandy Dennis.

Easily the best of the lot was Kim Sang Woo's Seducing Mr. Perfect, a romantic comedy about an assistant who falls in love with her superhandsome boss that for once is funny and sexy. What is it Hollywood's missing that other countries--and this is a prime example--seem to have in spades? It could be that I'm not overfamiliar with these faces, that they're fresh as strawberries to my rom-com strained eyes, that the actors have genuine chemistry together, that the writer and director cook up reasonably clever gags for them to try out on each other. Working Girls is the obvious model (though the only time Griffith really turned me on was way back in Night Moves), but I enjoyed this more. It seems lighter on its feet, less inhibited, more willing to take risks and look silly. Daniel Henney is the heartthrob, and he looks suitably stiff and solemn (he spends a lot of the movie without his shirt on, which irks me no end--what is it with these hairless men who look like flatchested girls that women demand them in movies?); at his best, he's practically a Mr. Darcy (Austen being the true ancestor of this oldest of genres). As June, Eom Jong-hwa reminds me of the best qualities of Vilma Santos, or Santos if she wasn't so damned afraid to take risks--a pretty girl who retains your sympathies no matter how many pratfalls she has or schemes she hatches.

Maybe one more thing these filmmakers have over their doddering Hollywood counterparts is a budget small enough that they need to be more inventive. June at one point has a nightmare where all the men in her life tell her just what's wrong with her; later, when she asks her boss to help her win her boyfriend back, we see him hovering over their dates, and inventive staging and camerawork and editing make it clear that he's a figment of her imagination. Surprisingly sophisticated stuff, considering that this is just another rom-com.

Arrived at Seoul at 4 pm. Took a four-hour bus. Arrived at Jeonju's Core Hotel at ten pm. Not a lot of places open for dinner, but I found an alleyway with a street stall that fried up peppers, potatoes, chicken parts, and squid tentacles; bought a thousand wons' (less than a dollar) worth. Crisp and hot, and good.

Walked into a hole in the wall, the best kind, where the counters are stainless steel cafeteria style, the tables and chairs simple wood furniture and the people totally incapable of speaking a word of English. I knew only one word--bibimbap. A big bowl of hot steamed rice with sliced up carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, mushrooms, bellflower root, spinach, soybean sprouts, bracken fern roots (I'm guessing they're the dark brown shoots I found in the bowl), all seasoned with a bright red hot chili paste, topped with crisp fresh lettuce and a sunny-yolked fried egg.

There's beef in there somewhere, I can taste it, but it's not a major component; I'm guessing this was poor man's fare, rice and a little beef and whatever a farmer could pull out of the ground and slice up to add to the meal. Following the big dish was a constellation of little dishes, including the ubiquitous kimchi, pickled cabbage, hot broth with scallions, and bright yellow pickled radishes that were blessedly sweet and cool.

I've tried this dish in Korean restaurants in Manila and even the US (and lemme tell you, the Manila restaurants were better), but it turns out I haven't really tried it, not this way, and Jeonju is famous for this. Not a lot of meat, but huge, huge flavor, and filling, all for three thousand wons--less than three dollars.

Took a spoon with a looong handle out of a box and started mxing it, as I've seen Koreans do. Apparently I was doing it wrong, or too slowly: the girl took my spoon away and did it for me, scooping the contents of the bowl and mashing it down in circular motions with the spoon's bowl. I asked for tea; the girl pointed to a hot water thermos. I asked for a tea bag; she pointed to a jar full of brown powder. When I spooned it into my cup, it turned out to be coffee. Oh, well.

Walked out very happy; just before I left, two police officers came in and sat down and had what I had. Well, if Jeonju's Finest isn't a good enough recommendation of the place, I don't know what is. Thank god they didn't arrest me for being a terrorist.

Jeonju Film Festival photos!

Just to reiterate--this is what the festival grounds looked like:

To be more precise, this is what Cinema Street looked like--the festival's main street, in effect. Traffic is blocked off, and crowds wander up and down to get to the street's two main theaters, and to the festival's central plaza (which holds the press center, the video screening room, the much appreciated free coffee cafe, the outdoor concert hall / outdoor movie theater, the homoerotic statues). I talked about the festival grounds (and the food--Jeonju is a major culinary center of Korea) before here.

Stickers and posters of the festival were everywhere, including every business on Cinema Street; the streets were closed off for a week. Jeonju supports its festival big time.

Im Kwon Taek, standing between Festival Vice Director An cha Flubacher-Rhim and actor Jo Jae-hyeon, and introducing his 100th film Beyond the Years. Maybe my biggest frustration during the festival was failing to pin Mr. Im down for a picture with me. Ah, well, his loss...

One of the volunteers; his name is Bruce Lee. No, really, it is. Well, anyway, it's what he tells foreigners his name is, because it's much easier to remember, and the resemblance is uncanny (it is, isn't it? I think so).

Now, to the left was this really nice guy named Gilbert, a Belgian that's been living in Korea now for some years, has a Korean girlfriend, and speaks the language like a native (mighty useful when you needed a translator on hand). Like all great bartenders, has a real gift for listening (he was the barista at the free guests' cafe for most of the festival--makes a mean expresso, too). Then on the last day of the festival I learn that his name was really Gregory--and all that time I kept calling him Gilbert, not once did he correct me! I don't know whether to be flattered, offended, or skeptical.

The other guy I haven't the slightest idea who he is.

A pansori singer and his drummer, which couldn't help but remind me of Im Kwon Taek's Beyond the Years. From what I understand watching the film, the relatonship between singer and drummer can be professional, adversarial (which means the singing will suffer) or as intimate as between a husband and his wife; two men who've been friends since childhood; a police officer and his partner; two veteran soldiers standing side-by-side in battle. I don't know about these two, but they certainly performed as if they'd been doing it for years.

8th Jeonju International Film Festival

Someone made a mistake, I think (not that I'm complaining). Apparently, I'm being invited as member of the jury judging the Indie Vision section of the Jeonju International Film Festival, from April 26 to May 4.

The films we're going to be judging include the following titles:

1. Aria Dir_Takushi TSUBOKAWA Japan 2006 105min 35mm Color Feature

2. Chrigu Dir_Jan GASSMANN, Christian ZIÖRJEN Switzerland 2007 87min DigiBeta Color+B&W Documentary

3. The Journals of Knud Rasmussen Dir_ Zacharias KUNUK, Norman COHN Canada 2006 112min 35mm Color+B&W Feature

4. The Other Half Dir_YING Liang China 2006 111min DV Color Feature

5. Potosi, the Journey Dir_Ron HAVILIO Israel, France 2007 246mm 35mm Color+B&W Documentary

6. Private Property Dir_Joachim LAFOSSE France/Belgium/Luxembourg 2006 95min 35mm Color Feature

7. Reprise Dir_Joachim TRIER Norway 2006 106min 35mm Color+B&W Feature

8. Salty Air Dir_Alessandro ANGELINI Italy 2006 87min 35mm Color Feature

9. Schroeder's Wonderful World Dir_Michael SCHORR Germany, Poland, Czech Republic 2006 114min 35mm Color Feature

10. WWW. What a Wonderful World Dir_Faouzi BENSAIDI France/Morocco/Germany 2006 99min 35mm Color Feature

11. A White Ballad Dir_Stefano ODOARI Italy/The Netherlands 2007 78min 35mm Color Feature

12. Look of Love Dir_Yoshiharu UEOKA Japan 2006 108min DV Color+B&W Feature

The films range all over Europe and Asia; use 35 mm, digital video, and betacam; and vary in length from a little over an hour to over five hours long (I viewed Lav Diaz's Heremias (2006) once--at least (I'm going through it a second time); I think it's safe for me to say five hours doesn't sound utterly intimidating). After over a year of thoroughly bland Hollywood pap (just sat through a DVD of Casino Royale--not impressed), this should be a blessed relief, if not a genuine treat; not to mention the chance to actually visit South Korea...

Jeonju Film Festival features Kidlat Tahimik

Heads up, Kidlat Tahimik is enjoying a career retrospective of his films at the 2011 Jeonju International Film Festival. 

An excerpt from the writeup:

For the past 11 years, JIFF has gone through retrospectives of master directors such as Chantal Akerman, Hsiaohsien Hou, Glauber Rocha, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder, Shinji Somai, Ritwik Ghatak, Peter Watkins, Béla Tarr, Jerzy Skolimowski, Pedro Costa, showing their works that have left important marks in the history of film. JIFF2011, in celebrating its 12th edition, has chosen Kidlat Tahimik, the godfather of Filippino independent cinema, who has continuously explored the Third World issues such as post-colonialism in a provocative and experimental manner for three decades.

I do have my own selfish reasons for promoting this: a book on Kidlat has been published in time for the retro, and features an article I wrote on the filmmaker. A brief excerpt:

Kidlat Tahimik's name in Tagalog means "Quiet Lightning"-- a paradoxical moniker which, when one looks at his films, turns out to be entirely appropriate. He's a termite craftsman tucked away in his own little corner of the world fashioning handmade films, but fashioning them his way, on his terms; he's an independent filmmaker who takes on big topics such as neocolonialism and cultural identity but without the kind of white-hot anger that, say, the late Lino Brocka (possibly the country's best-known director) wielded when dealing with the social issues of his day. He is physically small with a modest build who managed to marry a strikingly beautiful German woman; when you talk to him he has this affable modesty that gives little to no hint of the kind of confidence and drive that produces several feature films and a number of works in progress in both film and video without any studio support (but with plenty of help from friends and family).

 

Jeonju Film Festival photos too!

On our one free day near the end of the festival, filmmaker Jasmine Dellal, Atlyazi Monthly Editor Firat Yucel and I visited Hanok Village, where eight hundred traditional Korean houses have been preserved.

Arriving at the village, we found some kind of Korean dance being performed in front of Jeondong Abbey, a church built with Byzantine and Romanesque influences, and considered to be the most beautiful church in Korea.

This is what I assume to be the main gate (it's the biggest, anyway) into Gyeonggijeon, a six-hundred-year-old shrine built to house the portrait of King Taejo, founder of the Jeoson dynasty (the photo before this showed a portrait of a later king--not sure who he was).

This is a palanquin for royalty. No, I didn't climb in--it'd probably fall apart if I did.



Near the shrine were some recreations (I suspect they were recreations--they looked as if they were in too good condition) of traditional Korean houses, complete with wood-frame doors held together by Jeonju's famous paper (extremely fragile--I almost put my finger through the door (Almost. Honest.), and centrally heated floors. The floors makes sense when you remember that heat rises from the floors to warm the rest of the house, that Koreans sit cross-legged on the floor to eat, and that they eventually sleep on it (I'd hate to think what the homeowners paid by way of fire insurance, though).

This is a typical Korean kitchen, circa I suppose 1400s. It's tough, putting food on a table, innit?

"No smoking." No--really.



Note the roof--well, what little of the roof is included in the picture. Japanese roofs tend to have straightforward lines, while Chinese roofs have ostentatious curves. The curve of the roof of a Korean house or building is so much subtler, a sort of swoop between a Japanese and Chinese roof. As many a Korean has put it, it's like "the sweep of a bird's wings, about to take flight."

Some friends I made, visiting the shrine. That 'V" sign seems to be a gesture many Koreans make when having their pictures taken (unless it's some formal, occasion like a red-carpet affair)--I was just following their cue.

"Victory, Joe!"

Empire's Worst Movies, the Kraken remarkin, the dragon entered

Don't even want to talk about the kinkiness of this image, taken from Mel Gibson's snuff flick

Empire's 50 Worst Movies
 
Was going to talk about how the list has no historical perspective, that it focuses on big-budgeted Hollywood movies as usual, and so on and so forth.  

Wanted to disagree on some choices, assert that Heaven's Gate was more a great folly than a bad film (that rollerskating sequence cited is breathtaking), that Raimi in Spiderman 3 did a better job evoking a giant anthropoid loose on Manhattan than Peter Jackson ever did, and that the worst film ever made (and believe me the competition for this honor is fierce) is Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, whose many historical and biblical inaccuracies, and merits as a motion picture I talk about here. Then I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and realized--that list is right.

Oh, I disagree with a few titles here and there, would rearrange the whole thing, and would honor Gibson with not one but two entries (the second being his racist Apocalypto), but the list is good, excellent even--a first from a not very respectable, much less credible, source. In short, on the subject of the worse films ever made, for my money Empire is right on the money. 

Saw Clash of the Titans, have two things to say:

1) I miss Ray Harryhausen, now more than ever, and;

2) I think the movie would go better with a tub of tartar sauce and a lemon wedge*

* I'd first proposed this to Tony Rayns in Jeonju--that Filipinos are not fond of making monster movies (other than vampires, manananggal, and various other creatures depicted by stunt men in rubber suits) because they do not always have the desired effect.

Filipinos are a hungry people, food-crazy and startlingly adventurous; if a swarm of killer bees, or rabid dogs, or bloodthirsty piranhas, or marauding birds, or what-have-you ever got loose on the streets (or waterways) of Manila they wouldn't get very far without being clubbed down, sliced thin, and served up sizzling on a hot plate with a ramekin of soy sauce and fresh-squeezed kalamansi. Filipinos don't see the various giant creatures in classic Hollywood movies as monstrous, or a threat; they see them as bar chow. 

How to Train Your Dragon, Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders' animated version of the book by Cressida Cowell is in many ways a dumbed-down adaptation--reducing the thorny give-and-take between dragons and Vikings to a hunt-or-be-hunted situation, and Hiccup and Toothless' relationship into something altogether more sentimental, a Boy and His Dog bonding in vast forests.

All that said, it's surprisingly entertaining--the eponymous dragon is a sleek, black-scaled wonder that acts like a sleek, black Porsche 911 with the temperament of a puppy dog; Jay Baruchel's voice acting grounds the picture with its earthy line readings, its often funny hemming and hawing (he sounds like Woody Allen shot up full of hormones). Possibly its best ideas--know your enemy, he may have good reasons or might not even be an enemy--are taken from Hayao Miyazaki's Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, 1984), only without Miyazaki's philosophical rigor and moral complexity. 

Not bad--not on the level of Miyazaki, of course, but not bad. Prefer this over any of Pixar's recent offerings, or James Cameron's overblown jungle epic.

Sight and Sound (and my own) Best Films of 007

Sight and Sound Magazine's Best Films of 2007

Includes the list of at least two Filipino film critics--Alexis Tioseco and, heh, yours truly. My titles (in alphabetical order) below:

Death in the Land of Encantos (Lav Diaz)

Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)

Foster Child (Brillante Mendoza)

We Own the Night (James Gray)

Zodiac (David Fincher)

That's just the list, with articles I wrote on each film linked when available; to read the brief comments I'd written for Sight and Sound (plus the lists of better known critics) you'll need to download the largish PDF file.

Just a minor cavil about the lists; I'd been made aware that my list should consist only of films released in 2007. Now I know the UK sometimes exhibits certain films late, and I'd actually submitted some titles hoping I can sneak in some that I saw in the Jeonju Film Festival, but nope; strictly 2007 was the reply. So I made my list accordingly.

Now that I flip over that massive (47 pages long) PDF file, I learned that people had submitted films from 2006, even works by Mikio Naruse (I love Naruse, but no way no matter how great a filmmaker he is did he make a film in 2007). The whole brouhaha made me want to raise a brow and ask: "what's going on here?"

But I'm being ungrateful. It's an honor to have been asked to make a list, and I'm proud--tickled bright pink--to be in the company of Geoff Andrew, Derek Malcolm, Adrian Martin, Olaf Moller, Tony Rayns, Brad Stevens, Alexis Tioseco. Our lists are very different, showing a vast range of taste and orientation, and that's all to the good; we need the variety.

Anyway--if I had to make a list of films I'd seen in 2007 that had possibly been released or had yet not been released in the UK in the same year (this being the rule I presume Sight and Sound is following, and that anything released in 2006 possibly qualifes), this is what it would look like (in alphabetical order):

Amazing Life of the Fast Food Grifters (Mamoru Oshii)

Away From Her (Sarah Polley)

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet) - Who knew Lumet had so much juice in him? I liked Dog Day Afternoon, I enjoyed Deathtrap (I know, I know--bite me), but this is possibly one of his best works, showing more grace and expressiveness, I think, than the entire oeuvre of the Coen brothers combined.

Bug (William Friedkin)

Colossal Youth (Pedro Costas)

Death in the Land of Encantos (Lav Diaz)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)

Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)

Exiled (Johnnie To)

The Go Master (Tian Zhuangzhuang)

Heremias Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess (Lav Diaz)

Indio Nacional (Raya Martin)

Inland Empire (David Lynch)

No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen) - Not bad, easily one of their most entertaining. Can't take it more seriously than that, thanks to Bardem's effective but outlandish demon assassin--but it's a fun time in the movies, if your tastes go that way (and mine do, somewhat, for better or worse).

The Other Half (Ying Liang)

Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)

A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)

Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)

Salty Air (Alessandro Angelini)

Sweeny Todd (Tim Burton) - a triumph of emotional and visual textures, a wonderful realization by Dante Ferretti of Victorian London by way of Eddie Campbell. Johnny Depp plays Todd like a berserk Edward Scissorhands, a Dark Knight with a taste for straight razors, an Ed Wood with a real talent for mayhem; his singing is more acting than belting, a way of burrowing into his character to find the massive malevolence within.
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Todo Todo Teros (John Torres)

We Own the Night (James Gray)

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)

Zodiac (David Fincher)

And that's all she said--unless I have a chance to see Brian de Palma's Redacted, to check out for myself what the fuss about them is all about.

Brillante Mendoza's 'Kaleldo' (Summer Heat) wins at Joenju

Do not have the time (I'm packing for Seoul) but just wanted to scoop everyone and say Brillante Mendoza's Kaleldo (Summer Heat) won the NETPAC Award here in Jeonju. Congrats!

Jeonju Indie Visions 3

Joachim Lafosse's Nue propriété (Private Property, 2006) is exactly about that--a piece of property, the question of its ownership, and the suffering people undergo when the issue is raised, again and again.

Pascale (Isabelle Huppert) lives with her two sons Thierry (Jeremy Renier, who also starred in the Dardenne brothers' L'Enfant) and Francois (Yannick Renier, Jeremy's real-life brother) in a lovely countryside mansion owned by their father (and Pascale's former husband), Luc (Patrick Descamps). Thierry and Francois are overgrown puppies, a tad too frisky for poor Pascale--when she goes out dressed they make fun of her clothes; when she mentions having talked to their next-door neighbor Jan (Kris Cuppens), the two brothers burlesqe the neighbor dry-humping their mother.

Pascale isn't amused; in her eyes, she's wasted years raising these two, and she deserves something of her own--in effect, a little bed-and-breakfast joint, run by her and Jan (who really is her lover), financed by the sale of the beautiful countryside mansion their father left to the two boys.

Lafosse keeps everything teetering in a delicate balance; no one has clear claim to our affections, no one deserves our total enmity. Pascale might seem to be a monster of a mother, but her scenes with Jan reveal just how frustrated and lonely she is, what a deeply unhappy woman she has become; likewise, the two boys can easily be seen as the victims, only it quickly becomes clear how spoiled they are, how callow and selfish they can be. As Pascale becomes even more desperate, leaving the boys behind to stay at a friend's apartment, her abandonment is balanced by Thierry's ever more naked contempt for his mother (Francois on the other hand is the single sweetest person in the film, but one can't help feeling a little contempt at his passivity).

The film contains a different other level of irony, something I couldn't help but notice looking at all three onscreen, then later at the father: Thierry, who hates Pascale but is close to Luc (their father), seems to resemble Pascale; Francois, who dearly loves his mother but is indiffeent to Luc, resembles Luc.

The odd correspondences seem to confirm so many things people say about relationships--that like does repel like (Pascale hates Thierry's--her own, in effect--stubborness; Thierry stubbornly refuses to understand Pascale's needs), that predesposition does transmit itself across generations (Francois' tenderness towards Pascale evoke the feelings Luc at one point must have harbored for her; Thierry's bond with his father looks to be a distant echo of the attraction Pascale once felt for Luc). When they yell and suffer and inflict pain on one another it's doubly distressing, because you can see the genetic and behavioral similiarities in all four, similarities that they either pointedly ignore, or remain utterly unaware of.

The film ends with a long-take shot that gives an eloquent sense of closure to the story, puts everyone's questions and demands into perspective, and gives us the true value of the property in question, compared to what had just been irrevocably lost.

Chrigu is a documentary on the simplest, most potent subject matter I can think of: one's own mortality. It's Christian Ziörjen's coverage of his own exprience with cancer, and inevitable demise--a well nigh unbearably weighty topic, you might imagine, except for the protagonist's insistence that "the movie shouldn't be sad." It isn't--it's amiable, funny, courageous, anything but. The director (with the help of co-director Jan Gassmann) stuffs his film with footage of his travels (a beautiful interlude in India, and on the River Ganges), some early music-videos he directed (you might call this his audition piece), scenes of time spent with friends and family. He manages to keep most of the film remarkably free of the self-pity and pathos it could potentially have, and even displays a sense of irony (at one point he notes that a quiet moment in the film is actually filler to pad out the running time). Not much else one can say: it's undisputably powerful stuff; at some points somewhat self-indulgent--but when someone is making his first and final feature, one can hardly begrudge him the time spent or the minor flaws (I would have loved to know more, for instance, about the reasons behind his tight-lipped policy towards his mother--there's some affection there, all right, why wasn't there more? And didn't he have a girlfriend?). All in all, I wish I could leave as well-made a Last Statement.

Alessandro Angelini's L'Aria salata (Salty Air, 2006) pretty much has you in a death-grip from the start, and doesn't for the length of the film let go. It follows Fabio (Giorgo Pasotti) as a social worker in a penitentiary--he has high standards, but he never puts on airs; most convicts like him and confide in him. When he's confronted by Sparti (Giorgio Colangeti), his father--a man he's never seen, who has spent the past twenty years in prison for murder--he's confronted by an unenviable dilemma. Should he tell his father who he is? Should he treat him like any other prisoner? Less kindly, perhaps? More?

Angelini directs in a straightforward manner, keeping to medium shots that suggest the claustrophobia of prison, and simple staging that at one point turns into a bravura sequence (inspired, I suspect, by something similar in Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) where Sparti enlists his fellow prisoners in an impromptu skit that humiliates the prison warden. Angelini relies on a strong script (which he wrote, with the help of Angelo Carbone) and even stronger acting--I don't know where Colangeti came from, and I've seen only one other film in which he's appeared (his debut in fact, in Pasolini, un delitto italiano (Pasolini, an Italian Crime, 1995)). Don't remember him in it, unfortunately, but I'm hardly about to forget him now. As Sparti, Colangeti is amazing; he incarnates the hardened convict, by turns arrogant and subversive, and only by increments and tiny moments do you eventually notice the cracks spreading over his facade, caused by his son. Part of the power of Colangeti's performance is that you're never quite sure how he feels about this, whether he's delighted or dismayed, excited or wary, invigorated or enervated, and you feel you need to know. One of the best films in the program, and my fellow jurors Mr. Jiri Menzel and Mr. Lee Yoon-ki thought highly enough of it to give it a special mention, to which I readily agreed.

Ying Liang's Ling Yi Ban (The Other Half, 2006) starts off looking like a documentary, with people directly addressing the camera; turns out they are consulting lawyers about the merits of their respective cases, which run the gamut from marital problems to malpractice to potential industrial disasters.

Ying Liang (who directed the film and wrote it with producer / companion Peng Shan) likes to mix these testimonies with the story of Xiaofen (playing herself), a law clerk in the same office, whose loser boyfriend Deng Gang (also playing himself) is constantly getting into trouble--at one point poor Xiaofen finds herself being interviewed by one of the office's lawyers (concerning, of course, the no-good Deng Gang), and awareness of the incongruity (I should be sitting on the other side of this table) seems to make her every bit as uncomfortable as relating the actual circumstances of the case.

Documentary mixed with drama, fictional footage mixed with nonfiction (at one point the threatened industrial disaster does happen, and Ying Liang inserts actual footage of the true-life incident), with Ying interchanging episodes of grim reality (the industrial disaster) with doses of absurdist humor (one client petulantly tosses her tea drink at the lawyer/camera). Ying's film is based on actual details, but he's not averse to resorting to a freely experimental spirit--the final shot seems inspired by something Rene Clair did in Entr'acte (1924), only here it's meant to emphasize something else entirely different: no matter what all the king's horses and men will do, Humpty Dumpty will not be put together again.

Some critics have complained about the final revelation, how it seems a tad too optimistic for the film's overall tone, but I for one have no problem with it--I think that it too is representative of what's happening in this swiftly changing society. Wild coincidences and listless lives and great disillusionment and major disasters will commingle with crude slapstick and sudden success stories, and this isn't too much at all, it's China. Nor are they--or we, for that matter--out of it.

It took some discussion, but on our last jury meeting Mr. Menzel, Mr. Lee and I eventually agreed on the Indie Vision winner, and wrote our justification thusly:

"The motto for this year's JIFF is 'Freedom, Independence, Communication.' All 12 of the Indie Vision films are we believe exemplars of these elements--they are independent of mainstream cinema, they are expressions of the filmmakers' will towards freedom, and they communicate these values with a strong voice.

"For the winning film, we believe it is an excellent portrait of the problems faced by modern society, and that it carries a strong environmental message; we also believe it makes inventive use of the voiceover and stylized acting. For these reasons we give the Woo-suk Award to Ying Liang's The Other Half."

Jeonju, day 4: The Go Master (2006); Who's That Knocking at My Door? (2007)

You don't know what you have even when it's in front of you; that's the truism that popped into my mind after reading the amazing critical reception given to Tian Zhuangzhuang's latest film on Go-playing legend Wu Qingyuan, as typified by this short scribble by NYT's AO Scott. How many times have we complained about biopic cliches, especially sports biopics and in particular chess biopics? The hyped-up action sequences; the impossibility of giving the audience any sense of the game's shape and rhythms and strategies; the need for a big finish and win--or at least a Pyrrhic victory that shows the hero's a winner at heart.

And when we finally get a film that avoids all those cliches, finds a subject matter that sidesteps the need for such cliches and develops a whole other approach towards illuminating that subject? We get cliched complaints about 'lack of drama' and "dull 'n stately."

acquarello of Strictly Film School has it right, I think; it uses techniques similar to Hou Hsiao Hsien's to depict a "humble, yet remarkable life lived in the periphery of turbulent human history"--Bertolucci's anti-drama The Last Emperor, in effect, done on a far smaller scale, and this time done right.

Actually there's no lack of conventional drama unconventionally (and superbly) realized: when Wu steps into a roomful of cheering Japanese, he smiles uncomprehendingly until a board is paraded into the room displaying a map of China, the Japanese flag spread all over its northeast territories like small pox;when his wife informs him that she's leaving the religious sect they are both part of, Zhuangzhuang cuts to a long shot of the bus Wu is riding as it stops and lets Wu out; he starts walking back, hesitates, turns, walks towards the long-departed bus, hesitates, turns, and sinks to the ground in frustration.

Wu's relationship with his Japanese wife Kazuo is a prime example of Zhuangzhuang's obscure style. We never see the two kiss, or caress each other, or flirt or tease or whisper sweet nothings into the other's ear; instead, Zhuangzhuang gives us an episode where the two go buy a sack of potatoes--Wu lifts the sack up, has trouble, uncomplainingly accepts his wife's assistance. Not a word is said, and the two don't even come into direct physical contact (their bodies are more intimately involved with the sack), but a more sharply poignant image of love and shared hardship I have not seen in recent films.

Key to the film's approach is the way Zhuangzhuang shoots the matches: spare, zenlike sketches where every detail (the clack of stone on wood block, a flash of lightning illuminating the board) stands out in stark contrast to the surrounding serenity, then cuts away from the action to focus on his real concerns. The complexity of Go is suggested, never shown; a few brief details (shots of the bewilderingly complex game board; mention of Wu's innovative 'Four Corner Star' strategy, early in the film), but not much beyond that, which actually adds to the fascination: a sense of mystery surrounds the game (the rules are actually simple enough; it's the tactics used that are incredibly complex).

Zhuangzhuang not just shifts focus from the conventional priorities of a sports biopic, but shapes his storytelling to reflect the nature of the game--if in Go the goal is to 'take territory,' usually in the corners, where boundaries help make the conquest easier, then take the sides using the corners for boundary, then the center using sides and corners for boundary. his film follow a similarly elliptical arc. He begins by focusing on disparate physical details (sounds, shapes, textures, even smell (someone at one point farts during a game; the audience titters before turning full attention back on the board) and facial expressions (or relative lack of)), establishes their significance (at one point, a physically incapacitated player insists on getting up because he needs to "watch while my oponent ponders!") before making a stab at attacking the inner essence of a man playing the game.

Chang Chen's performance embodies the essence of Go playing. Outside of competition he's a geek with thick glasses, waddling around in a ducklike gait as he shuffles out of peoples' way. In competition he has the intensity of a world champion, with a laser beam stare and ears that shut out all other distracting sounds and voices. To understand his character you need to understand not the game but the kind of mindset focused on winning the game; any change of circumstance in his life (fallen opponents, unstable religious figures, a world war) he responds to with a blinkered look, incapable of understanding how such a thing--how such a betrayal--can be visited upon him.

Unlike recent examples such as Inarritu's Babel, Yang Heah-hoon's Who's That Knocking On My Door? does the we-are-all-interconnected bit (two couples and a renegade are tied together by a dead body and the internet) with deadpan flair and a genuine sense of perversity. The director creates characters interesting enough to draw you in--a bullied student who locks himself in his bedroom and plots revenge online, a hyperchondriac zookeeper with strong psychotic tendencies--and grounds them in enough realistic, understated detail that you find yourself accepting his rather unique sensibility, a mixture of roughly equal parts Larry Clark, Robert Bloch, Kurosawa Kiyoshi. Objects and motifs fly about--a flute, a dart gun, a cellphone camera, a ball of crumpled paper (the film gives the ball a fetishistic quality that recalls the fluttering plastic bag in American Beauty, only where Mendes' footage was mostly dull, Yang achieves real existential horror)--all overlaid by the tapping of computer keyboards. Online remarks creep across the screen, giving advice, offering condolence, threatening vigilante justice; at one point Yang fashions a terrifying episode involving a stolen light bulb and a gang of angry stall owners that has you by turns rooting for and crying out against the psychotic hyperchondriac.

But it isn't all clever plot twists and shock value; there's a sharp poignancy to the characters' loneliness, and a generosity of spirit to everyone, even the sexually predatory bully, that makes you confident whatever new wrinkle the plot may acquire, the director won't 'cheat'--that is, he won't twist without prior preparation, and said twist won't take the most conventional, least interesting direction.

The film ends as it begins, with a figure balanced precariously on ice. The figure, facing a hole in said ice, walks carefully around the hole, the ice around him creaking and threatening to give way. It's as neat an image as anything one might think of to summarize the director's view of life--as a creaking, threatening brittle medium on which to skate, carefully avoiding the open breaks.

Jeonju 8: Colossal Youth, Oshii's latest, shorts

 
Colossal Youth

Watching Pedro Costas' Juventud Em Marcha (Colossal Youth, 2006) is like diving off the deep end--I've not seen the previous two films of his Fontainhas trilogy, Ossos (Bones, 1997) and No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda's Room, 2000) or any other film by Costas, and this is probably not the best (read: easy, convenient) introduction to his body of work.

It's maddeningly, fascinatingly obscure, that much I can tell you. Shot in DV, the film is mostly two and a half hours of a 75-year-old man named Ventura (played by an actor of the same name) wandering about, talking to what he fondly calls his 'children' (they may or may not be--the film doesn't confirm one way or another (and if they are his children, he must have been the busiest man with the most number of women this side of Noah post-deluge)). Actually, 'talk' is something of a misnomer: Ventura enters a room, exchanges a few lines of dialogue with the person in the room, and either he or that other person will relate an anecdote, usually some five to ten minutes long, on some past episode in his/her life.

The framing is almost always odd--indoors, Ventura and his fellow inmates (the term seems appropriate, given their circumstances and behavior) are often to one side of the frame, at a slightly skewed angle, the shot held a beat after or a beat before anything significant happens (one thinks of Bresson's equally off-kilter camera angles, and odd timing). At one point Ventura and a man play a game of cards, a brilliant beam of sunlight on the card table the only source of illumination (one thinks of a prison guard visiting his charge in solitary); other times Costas plays his characters off the featureless whitewash of new apartment walls, blank slates against which the people seemed poised to write their lives. Outside, we get repeated images of Ventura sitting on a red chair outside one daughter's apartment (she goes in and out without saying a word to him), or standing with an extremely patient government housing agent (you wonder why he humors Ventura, who clearly has no money with which to pay for all his vaguely ambitious plans) before the housing development into which he's moving, the building looming up behind like some modern ziggurat marking dead and buried lives.

The various monologues are not quite dull--many of the anecdotes are lovely, especially those of Vanda (Vanda Duarte, the eponymous heroine of Costas' previous film) and her tale of salvation from drugs through her husband and baby (Is this actual testimony, or a whitewashed account of how she wished her life would be like? Are any of these people--often shot with a ghostlike aura by Costas--real, or figments of Ventura's wish-fulfilling imagination? Again, the film doesn't confirm). And there's this one migrant worker (Alberto 'Lento' Barros, as Lento) who asks Ventura to transcribe a letter to his estranged wife, an assignment Ventura gradually takes over and makes his own, reciting over and over again an extravagant declaration of love that gets more and more elaborate with each repetition (a late version reads something like this):

Nha cretcheu, my love,
Being together again will make our life beautiful
For another thirty years.
As for me, I will come back full of love and strength.
I wish I could give you a hundred thousand cigarettes,
a dozen of those fancy dresses,
a car, the little lava house you've always wanted,
a threepenny bouquet.
But above all else,
Drink a good bottle of wine,
And think of me.

Here it's all work.
We're over a hundred now.
I still don't have anything from your hand.
I will soon...
Sometimes I'm afraid of building these walls,
Me, with a pick and cement
And you, with your silence.

The letter is richly referential (the title of his 1995 film Casa de Lava translates literally to "House of Lava") and in part, plagiarized: Ventura doesn't admit it to the poor man, but he takes details from a love letter written by Robert Desnos (note Desnos' at one time close ties with the Surrealists--and keep in mind that Costas' film is filled to brimming with surreal imagery, vivid in their unnerving stillness).

The letter is also, like much of the film, stunningly beautiful. Ventura repeats the correspondence /poem over and over again, and it gradually comes to be the film's stanza--one man's forlorn plea for hope and love, in these hopeless, loveless slums, its extravagance inversely proportional to the man's powers to fulfill it, more an expression of his desperation, his will to imagine a better life for his beloved, than of anything else.

Susan Griffin in her article on a photo exhibit on Tina Modotti tells a story about Desnos (I won't repeat it, it really belongs in that article); could Costas be thinking in the same spirit, having these lost men and women declare through their reminiscences--incantations, really--a better reality, perhaps a better future that they hope to bring about, mainly by utterance and repetition because they have little else? I don't know, I don't know; but the Desnos story is such an unlikely little anecdote you want to believe in it, the way this film and its focus on these characters seems like a willed hallucination, hoping against hope to change reality through its/their very existence.

After the near-unbearable weight of Juventud, it's tempting to say Mamoru Oshii's Tachiguishi retsuden (Amazing Life of the Fast Food Grifters, 2006) is an abrupt change of pace, but that would be perverse.

The scene: a noodle shop in Tokyo. The time: an hour before closing. Under the light of a full moon appears Moongaze Ginji, who orders a bowl of soup (the camera at one point revolves around the counter to reveal that the near-photorealistic noodle shop owner and Ginji are both digitally animated paper-thin constructs).

Ginji has specific instructions: "Put the raw egg on the noodles. Pour soup into the bowl." He swirls the soup, watching the egg--golden strands in the clear broth--quickly cook. "Nice landscape," he says. The noodle shop owner's reply: "It's only a bowl of noodles."

A narrator explains that the maverick ethonographer (his words) chooses the hour before closing because this was when the owner's psychic self breaks through his businessman's persona, when his very philosophy is apparent; the narrator goes on to note that soba was a commoner's food in the Edo era, and accompanied the spread of Buddhism.

When the noodle owner snorts "it's only a bowl of noodles!" Ginji replies that not only is it just a bowl of noodles, it's noodles made from bogus ingredients. Despite which Ginji is able to devour the bowl's contents at the zenith of its splendor, fully appreciating it the very instant before it vanishes forever. Only words can bring back the intensity of the original experience, in a manner surpassing the original.

The film (of which that opening sequence was but a sample) is a heady, dense, near-incomprehensible mix of Japanese fast-food lore, faux superhero mythology (think Justice League Unlimited animated as if it were South Park and hosted by the Food Network), postwar Japanese history, and postgraduate philosophy. It's some kind of history of con-men with absurd nicknames (the aforementioned Moongaze Ginji; Foxy Croquette O-Gin; Beefbowl Ushigoro; Hamburger Tetsu; Frankfurter Tatsu; Medium Hot Sabu--Tarantino can only dream of inventing aliases as wildly colorful as these) who put on elaborate, even philosophically didactic scams to avoid paying for their meals. Blink or be distracted for even a second, and you lose the thread of the intricate narrative; fail to see this, and you'll miss what I consider to be one of the funniest--and tastiest--films I've seen recently.

Japan-based film critic Mark Schilling seems to have the clearest take of any non-Japanese on what the film's all about, yet is less than enthusiastic about the final product (For sources of inspiration he cites kamashibai, picture cards used to tell a story, and mentions (but carefully refrains from including) South Park (But why? Couldn't Oshii be a fan, or at least a casual viewer?). And I'd include the more recent Aqua Team Hunger Force and Terry Gilliam's animated sequences in the Monty Python series as possible influences). "Why a movie?" Schillling asks. "The short answer is that, after three largely successful decades in the animation business, Oshii can make nearly anything he wants, including this elaborate private joke. Which is, for the audience, the ultimate grift." Point taken, but it's still funny, I submit; the joke only gets better when you learn it's also on you.

*the longer answer, according to Production I.G. President Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, was that they didn't want to spend a lot of money on Oshii's next film, so they had college students do the post-production work, mainly for the privilege of doing so, and famous animators do the acting (the animators' contracts stipulated that they would help publicize the film (if they didn't their scenes would be cut), so promotional costs were small).

Europa 2005 - 27 Octobre 

Italian public television executive Enrico Ghezzi commissioned Europa 2005 - 27 Octobre from the husband-and-wife team of Danielle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub to commemorate Roberto Rosellini's centenary . The result is this 12 minute short, a "sequel" to Rossellini's Europa '51 that at the same time refers to October 27, 2005--the day two Parisian youngsters (Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17) who were fleeing the police hid in a high voltage electric transformer and burned to death, sparking an uprising in France.

It's difficult to say anything about the film (and if I didn't know anything about the context, well nigh impossible), but the entire short consists of the camera panning right from a huge graffitti on a wall with a bloody handprint, to stop at some building. Cut to a shot starting from the building, panning left past the graffiti (the camera is now several feet further away), ending at the fateful transformers. Repeat several times.

Again, what to say? The walls, the barred gates, the silence interrupted by a barking dog, all connote private properties, to be trespassed (as the youths had done) at one's peril (which the boys were in, actually); the only sign of protest are the graffitis spray-painted on the wall. The filmmakers repeat this searching, probing movement again and again, trying to find meaning in the deaths; one thinks of Ingrid Bergman's anguish in Europa '51, and one realizes that their mute repetitions imply an answer to their probing.

Manoel de Oliveira's O Improvável Não é Impossível (The Improbable isn't Impossible, 2006) is another commissioned work, this one from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to commemorate the 50th year of their musuem. Oliveira cuts images of the museum's treasures--from sculptures to artifacts to paintings to live concert performances--together without any comment save by the museum's officials. Like any master, he homes in on the tiny detail none of us would think of pointing out--the endless doors opened and closed in such institutions, implying necessary categorizing and compartmentalization (a museum's exhibits must be organized to make sense) at the same time there's access (the doors are constantly opening and closing, as prelude to and transition between galleries). Wonderful, puzzling little film.

Sherad Anthony Sanchez's "Imburnal" wins the JIFF Woosuk Award

Sherad Anthony Sanchez's Imburnal (2009) which screened in the just concluded Jeonju International Film Festival has won both the Woosuk and NETPAC award.

The film is an over four hour long nonlinear digital film about two boys who spend (or misspend) their childhood hanging out in a sewage ditch in Barangay Matina Aplaya, Punta Dumalog, in Davao. They curse, talk about sex, collect cockroaches in jars, and (arguably the most disturbing image of all) bathe in the ditch's filthy waters.

The film has had its share of controversy. It was rejected three times by the Movies and Television Ratings Board (MTRCB) for its "objectionable presentation" of poverty (Which makes one wonder what the board would have thought of the films of Lino Brocka--most of which portray poverty, and which former First Lady Imelda Marcos objected to because they portrayed the Philippines in an unfavorable light (the board also seems to have inspired other government agencies on their policies regarding the encouragement of intellectual and cultural freedom).

The NETPAC and Woosuk Award jurors must have seen more than mere shock value in the film, however. The film was chosen "because it fulfills the progressive spirit of the JIFF: it is an innovative, experimental, even miraculous work, a unique blend of documentary and fiction, which returns us to the fundamental question of the past and the future: what is cinema?"

The Woosuk Award comes with a $10,000.00 prize. The film also won the Best Picture at the 4th Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival, and the Lino Brocka Grand Prize at the 10th Cinemanila International Film Festival.

Brillante Mendoza in New York

New York Times' Manohla Dargis reviews Brillante Mendoza's Serbis (Service, 2008)

And for good measure, Dennis Lim writes about Mendoza and his films.

Have unjustly neglected Mendoza, I think; while I've seen some of his films, for one reason or another I've put off writing about him in-depth--a disservice, since he is the internationally best-known Filipino filmmaker since Lino Brocka.

His Kaleldo (Summer Heat, 2006), which incidentally won the NETPAC Award at the 2006 Jeonju International Film Festival is a lovely slice-of-life melodrama, the three interweaving stories of three daughters, as captured in bits and pieces over seven summers in the daughters' lives. Of the daughters it's Cherry Pie Picache's story that leaves the strongest impression--Cherry Pie, a character actor of considerable skill who has played supporting roles in films often unworthy of her talent, shines as the quietly suffering tomboy, unwanted and largely ignored by the family patriarch. Mendoza's handheld camera, much in the fashion of the Dardennes brothers and cinema verite, gives the stories a distinct caught-in-the-moment feel.

His Manoro the same year makes the initial misstep of inserting a slightly condescending tone towards tribal people in the opening titles of the film, then goes on to be to my mind Mendoza's finest work. The film--again with his trademark handheld camera, shooting in lengthy takes--makes little comment, and barely even has a plot (basically it's about a young woman named Jonalyn, and her attempts to educate her Aeta family and neighbors on how to read and write mainstream Filipino, at least enough to cast their ballots in the elections to be held the next day--that, and her search for her grandfather, who has disappeared into the forests to hunt wild boar).

Jonalyn is not a little inventive (to help her pupils remember the alphabet she resorts to describing their geometrical shapes and swoops and lines) and a bit of a bully, wheedling, nagging, pushing people towards political participation. Mendoza stubbornly refuses to comment on the relevance of the election process to a people barely out of the Paleolithic Age, technologically speaking. Aside from the opening titles, he refuses to pick sides on the issue of integrating with modern society, and I think the film gains greatly from this--we're left as silent witnesses to the Aetnas' lives, drawing our own conclusions as to their seemingly sad isolation from the rest of society, their seemingly quiet dignity, clinging to the tatters of their cultural identity.

Foster Child (2007) is Mendoza's take on the system of foster child care and adoption set up in the Philippines, so well-oiled and organized it's practically down to a science, thanks to adoptive parents like Thelma (again Cherry Pie, again terrific). Thelma may live in the heart of Manila's slums, but she runs her crowded household with a quiet if quietly chaotic efficiency, and she takes proper care of John-John (Kier Segundo), her adopted son, raising him as if her own.

The film is an admirable exercise in slice-of-life filmmaking; all the minutiae of slum life is captured but rarely to the point of tedium, showing us how the slum dwellers feed, bathe, pass the time; it goes on to show us the various duties of foster mothers, how they are paid, how their umbrella organization is organized (Thelma is like a subcontractor who earns commission for every child she successfully brings in for adoption). The film errs in perhaps only one or two details--a schoolteacher snapping at John-John (who suffers from stage fright during a school theater production)sounds loudly out of place (most Filipino parents would snap back at the teacher's unheard-of rudeness)--but overall the tone is authentic (Thelma puzzling out the mysteries of modern hotel plumbing is surprising and funny and--well, it feels true).

In the end the film becomes some kind of domestic thriller: can Thelma keep her composure, even when about to lose the child she raised for three years? Will she lose her composure--was all that care and loving poured into John-John mere professional childrearing, or does she beneath her serenely maternal demeanor truly care for the boy after all? Mendoza holds his cards close to his chest; you wait with baited breath, wondering when if ever will he (or Thelma) show his (or her) hand.

Tirador (Slingshot, 2007) is arguably Mendoza's attempt at urban noir; more, at that subset of urban noir great Filipino filmmakers can't seem to resist--that is, noir films set in Manila. Lino Brocka did his (Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975)); so did Ishmael Bernal (City After Dark, 1980) and Celso Ad. Castillo (Burlesk Queen (Burlesque Queen, 1978)). Mario O'Hara did what might be considered a trilogy (Condemned. 1984; Bulaklak sa City Jail (Flowers of the City Jail, 1984); Bagong Hari (The New King, 1986)).

Mendoza also evokes echoes of another subgenre, that of urban youth dramas, and again the roll call is intimidating--Fernando Mereilles and Katie Lund's Cidade de Deus (City of God, 2002); Hector Babenco's Pixote (1981); Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados (1950); even Vittorio de Sica's Sciuscia (Shoeshine, 1946).

Kudos and due respect to Mendoza for trying to throw his own hat in such a prestigious ring. The results of his attempts are memorable, if somewhat mixed--the Manila slums are introduced early on in an unstoppable police raid, with the city's finest breaking into an endless number of shanties and plywood bedrooms, exposing any number of crimes and sexual acts in progress. Not too crazy about some of the filmmaking--the jump-cuts, the swinging handheld footage (so serene in his earlier films, so violent here), the in-your-face staging.

Mendoza seems to be experimenting in the language of noir, and some of the experiments work (a nicely elliptical interrogation scene involving a police officer and his student suspect), some I feel don't (the aforementioned jump-cuts). He is developing as a filmmaker, however, and one can't begrudge him the freedom to attempt new styles, new subject matter. Easily an important new voice in a remarkably vigorous and varied independent Filipino digital cinema.