LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: A SMALL ACT

Hilde Back and Chris Mburu in A Small Act.

To save one life really is as if to save the whole world

By Ed Rampell

Jennifer Arnold’s A Small Act is a genuinely heartwarming documentary that could be subtitled “Karma.” As a small boy growing up in rural Kenya in the 1970s, Chris Mburu had plenty of brains but few shillings with which to pay for his school fees. Enter his benefactor from Sweden, Hilde Back, whose monthly $15 donations enabled Mburu to not only go on to high school, but to university and ultimately to Harvard on the graduate level, earning a Master’s in human rights law. Mburu went on to work for the United Nations at Geneva, where he continues to combat genocide.

As a recipient of largesse Mburu decided to pay it back, and created a foundation to endow bright but poor Kenyan students, so that they too could continue their schooling. Mburu named the scholarship after the supposed “philanthropist” who had helped him out when he was a lad, and the Hilde Back Education Foundation was born.

Eventually, curiosity got this cat, and Mburu decided to seek out the woman who had made his education a possibility. Eventually, he found Hilde Back, who was indeed still alive and well and living in Sweden. However, much to Mburu’s amazement, he discovered that far from being a millionaire philanthropis, Hilde was merely a (now retired) school teacher. Furthermore, he learned that Hilde was not Swedish, but rather a German Jew, who escaped the Holocaust by emigrating to Sweden during the 1930s, although her parents perished at Nazi death camps, including at Auschwitz.

This beautiful, moving film goes on to show the eventual meeting(s) of Mburu and his benefactor, who had no idea a charity was named after her. Nor that this Holocaust survivor’s small act of generosity would enable Mburu to play a role in campaigning ethnic cleansing around the world as a U.N. international civil servant, including at his native Kenya.

Kenyan rapper Gleam Joel’s life story is strikingly similar to the one told in A Small Act, a saga we dramatized together in the musical we co-created and recently presented in Switzerland called Still Standing. Gleam, who is creating an anti-violence movement, was perhaps the only Kenyan at the LAFF screening of A Small Act, and he was visibly touched by its humane message of solidarity.

The philosophy of A Small Act shows how individuals can affect the world, like the ripple effect caused by tossing a pebble into a pond. In keeping with its ethos, audience members were given a $10 gift card to donate to a favorite cause at: www.networkforgood.org/asmallact.

One of LAFF's best film this year, this lovely, uplifting, transcendent documentary airs July 12 on HBO.

 

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: SPACE TOURISTS

A $20 Million ride.

Money ruins everything

By Ed Rampell

Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei’s documentary Space Tourists is about rich Americans who are privatizing the former Soviet Union’s much-vaunted outer space program, which in the 1950s launched Sputnik and the space race. Today, due to the collapse of the USSR, the industry that put the first creatures and human into the cosmos has largely been reduced to providing Yankee billionaires with an extraterrestrial playground –- for, of course, a fee: $20 million per launch. (Apparently the ability to defy gravity also makes one lightheaded, while it lightens these capitalists’ wallets.)

Space Tourists takes us to the Baikonur Cosmodrome at Star City, Kazakhstan, where the proud, secretive Soviet space program had long been hidden away from prying western eyes. We see the kitschy cosmic art and faded glory of this now partially deserted metropolis in the middle of nowhere in Central Asia. In addition to following the exploits of American moneybags who can afford to blow big bucks to be blown out into space, Space Tourists also shows us Kazakh “garbage collectors” who reclaim, recycle and sell the heavy metal of the rockets that fall back to Earth in Kazakhstan’s vast deserts.

Frei’s thoughtful but disturbing doc is, among other things, a rumination on how money ruins everything. The once noble space program that aimed at interstellar exploration is now largely a private preserve of profiteering. Just as the end of the Cold War meant that U.S. imperialism was no longer restrained by a countervailing force, the defeat of the Soviet Union has also signaled a major decline in man’s quest for the stars. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Cold War, instead of the promised “peace dividend,” we got the Gulf War and more of America’s endless wars, unchecked by the East Bloc. What happened to the USSR’s space program is a metaphor for capitalism’s triumph over a form of "socialism," as the anything-for-a-buck ethos of space buckaroos invades the pristine realm of science.

Archival footage in Space Tourists shows the animals Moscow first launched into outer space before Yuri Gagarin began manned space flights in 1961. This made me think that the mystifying ending of the 1968 sci fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, may have actually been Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s rendering of the universe as seen through a monkey’s eyes. Be that as it may, Space Tourists reveals another type of space chimps, wannabe astronauts with far too much money and time on their paws, as well as the Kazakh garbage men who pick up after them in order to pawn their rocket refuse for a handful of rubles.

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: DOG SWEAT

Underground Iran: Dog Sweat.

Filmmakers boldly go where imams fear to tread

By Ed Rampell

Hossein Keshavarz’s Dog Sweat, which he says was clandestinely shot in Iran, was one of the LAFF's four films with LGBT themes. It follows eight young rebels who dare to not follow the party line and made me reflect on how difficult it must be to break taboos in a so-called Islamic Republic. Whereas political, religious and sexual transgressors in the West often confront customs and culture, as well as sometimes the government itself, imagine what it must be like to resist a theocratic system where religious zealots rule and run the state apparatuses of repression, enforcement, etc.

The German Communist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich wrote about how a key for totalitarian control of the individual is through manipulating his/her sex life, and we clearly see this in Dog Sweat. Two of this underground feature’s characters are young would-be lovers simply looking for a private place to have sex. But far more daring is the film's candid look at the love that dare not whisper its name in Iran. Readers may remember Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dubious remarks about gays at a Columbia University forum in 2007, and in Dog Sweat Keshavarz dares point his camera directly at the homosexual scene in Tehran, where same sex relationships are probably more controversial than gay marriage is here.

Hooshang (Rahim Zamani) and Hooman (Bagher Forohar) appear to be more than “just friends,” although their relationship is never clearly defined and remains ambiguous. Are they same sex lovers or is theirs a non-consummated homoerotic type of relationship? Be that as it may, in theocratic Iran parents seem to have lots of control over their children, and Hooman’s mother pressures him to marry (and I don’t mean to Hooshang). He enters into a more or less arranged marriage with a female singer, Mahsa (Maryam Mousavi), whose musical career is frustrated by theocratic limitations on women and singing. (I wonder what the Islamic Republic’s ayatollahs would make of Lady Ga Ga?) Without knowing each other very well, and seeking a measure of freedom from their meddling parents, they wed and move into their own apartment.

Hooman avoids Hooshang, whom he has trouble facing. There is an interesting glimpse of Iran’s underground gay life at a park which seems like a gathering point for Tehran’s persecuted homosexuals. In any case, Mahsa eventually realizes she has “made a mistake,” but the film is unclear. Did she make a mistake by giving up on her recording career or does she realize she’s married a gay man? Dog Sweat remains ambiguous on this and other points, and it’s difficult to follow eight different characters, especially for non-Persian audiences who don’t speak Farsi (The susbtitles sometimes whiz by).

Presumably set against the backdrop of the mass protests of the so-called “Green Revolution” which is never actually seen per se, the film deals with other forms of rebellion, such as drinking. The title seems to refer to alcohol, another taboo topic in the Islamic Republic. Adulterous characters also stray from the straight and narrow path prescribed by the imams. The most direct form of resistance comes from Massoud (Shahrokh Taslimi), a heterosexual pal of Hooshang and Hooman who confronts religious zealots for cramming their ideology down people’s throats.

Overall this supposedly secretly made feature provides a fascinating inside glimpse at today’s Iran and youthful rebellion there. What a pity that one of the main opponents of U.S. imperialism and policies is a society that so represses its own citizens. After the film's screenings Keshavarz participated in Q&A with screenwriter Maryam Azadi.

By the way, Dog Sweat was so well received at LAFF that a fourth screening was added.

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: FREAKONOMICS

A scene from Freakonomics.

Proving truth really is freakier than fiction

By Ed Rampell


Freakonomics is a great documentary adaptation of Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt’s bestselling book that applies statistical and economics theory to various phenomena, finding extraordinary explanations and insights. Master documentarians direct various segments linked to interviews with the co-authors.

Morgan Spurlock of 2004’s Super Size Me fame puts down the Big Macs to explore the Big Moniker question: Does a child’s name determines his/her destiny? The film delves into the cultural divide between white and so-called ethnic names, and if naming offspring say, Todd, instead or DeShawn, or Emily instead of Shaniqua, will affect his/her future career or even incarceration prospects. The doc shows that the trend of African Americans using “unique” names for their babies arose during the Black Power movement, with its “Black is beautiful” aesthetic. However, Spurlock’s segment inexplicably omits the salient explanation for why this is, something that Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little) indicated: African Americans’ last names are often derived from their slaveowners’ family names, so in order to compensate, U.S. blacks place special emphasis on often Africanized sounding first names. Why the super sizer missed this essential fact I don’t know. It’s like neglecting the fact that blacks consume more junk food per capita than whites because as an oppressed minority, they have less discretionary income and eating at MacDonald’s, et al, is cheaper than dining out at Spago. I would also have liked to see an examination regarding how naming an infant after someone -- especially a prominent person -- eventually affects him/her. For instance, your humble and most obedient scribe was named after none other than CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow, and voila!, I became a journalist. Spurlock is a great filmmaker but his segment also incorporates obviously dramatized portions mixed in with nonfiction footage, and there should be disclaimers or labeling pointing this out in an otherwise so-called nonfiction production.


Alexander Gibney is also one of the documentary world’s top talents; he won an Oscar for 2007’s Taxi to the Dark Side, about torture in Afghanistan. Gibney’s Freakonomics segment uses statistical data to explore alleged corruption and cheating in the world of sumo wrestling. Gibney notes that as sumo has divine origins related to the Shinto religion, its sacred aura conveniently masks, and deflects from probing, wrongdoing. Among the interviewees are Konishiki and Akebono Taro, the now retired wrestling champions from Hawaii. (Gibney doesn’t look into whether recruiting Polynesians, who are traditionally far larger than men of Japanese origin, to the sumo ring is in itself a dubious practice, as some purists have maintained.) Gibney, who produced/co-wrote 2005’s superb Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and produced/directed 2010’s Casino Jack and the United States of Money, goes on to perceptively compare sumo’s purported monkey business to that of Big Business and Wall Street’s fiscal fiascoes, and how media worship of the supposed “masters of the universe” and the free market served to cover-up financial hanky panky. Gibney also notes the doubletalking dark side of The New York Times, which uses terms such as “enhanced interrogation techniques” when referring to harsh questioning methods by U.S. inquisitors, but uses the word “torture” when the purported perpetrators are, for example, Chinese. All the propaganda that’s fit to print and Orwellian “Newspeak,” indeed.


Another documentary powerhouse, Eugene Jarecki -- who directed 2005’s Why We Fight and 2002’s The Trials of Henry Kissinger -- helms what may be he segment with Freakonomics’ most controversial analysis: That legalization of abortion is directly responsible for the lowering of the U.S. crime rate in the 1990s. The statistician’s thesis is that unwanted babies are more likely to grow up to be not only cowboys (as the Willie Nelson song puts it) but criminals, too. The doc segment argues that unwanted children are more likely to become criminals, and providing women with the legal means to terminate pregnancies led to the elimination of much of the pool of potential wrongdoers. Jarecki imaginatively deploys clips from Frank Capra’s 1946 classic, It’s a Wonderful Life to make the film’s point.

The prospect of how giving students materialistic incentives affects their test scores and school performance is certainly worthy of investigating. Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (co-directors of 2006’s powerful documentary, Jesus Camp) document suburban Chicago ninth graders who are essentially bribed with offers of money, limousine drives and status to induce them to study and work harder at school. Interestingly, these capitalistic incentives have nominal affect on the teens’ learning process. One of them typifies the ignorant dolts who fill the U.S. armed forces, a by-his-own admission clueless person who ponders joining the Marines as an alternative to continuing his schooling. Of course, mindless ignorami are easier to manipulate to fight despicable wars, as they are less likely to have the critical capacity to discern the complexities of U.S. foreign policy and to question orders. (I know that not everybody serving in the U.S. military is an idiot but, let’s face it, many recruits are, and the lowering of scholastic and criminal standards for a “voluntary” military desperate for personnel as it continues to fight dubious wars has exacerbated this problem.) The problem with Freakonomics’ final segment is that Grady and Ewing never explore other “incentives” for education: The sheer joy of learning, the attaining of wisdom, the eventual role a good education can play in the highly competitive 21st century job market and so on. The doc’s last song – the Moody Blues’ "Question" -- during its credit sequence seems to come out of nowhere, but in reality it subtly rebukes the concept of applying the market ethos to the educational process. The Moody Blues stood for the counterculture’s quest for Enlightenment, and playing this song serves to remind us that the attainment of wisdom cannot be done with bribery and a dollar sign in the hearts of pupils.

If you want to get your nonfiction freak on, don’t miss Freakonomics.

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: ONE LUCKY ELEPHANT

David Balding and Flora during better times?

This pachyderm pic packs a poignant punch.

By Ed Rampell

Lisa Leeman’s documentary, One Lucky Elephant, is similar to the 1990s fact-based features Buddy and Gorillas in the Mist starring, respectively, Rene Russo and Sigourney Weaver, as humans living closely with wild animals. All three films study the paradigm of inter-species relationships. In One Lucky Elephant David Balding, who is childless, adopts a baby African elephant named Flora, and makes her the star of the circus he owns, naming it after the tusker: Circus Flora.

The doc follows the touching bond between human and pachyderm, and what happens when the two must inevitably go their separate ways. After Flora demonstrates belligerent behavior, like Iraq War veterans and the ex-Panthers of LAFF's Night Catches Us, she is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Can elephants caught in the wild after supposedly witnessing their parents’ murder by poachers suffer from this syndrome, like their afflicted Homosapiens counterparts? Well, they say that an elephant never forgets.

This nonfiction film, co-written by Leeman and Cristina Colissimo, poses, but does not answer, this and other questions. I have experienced elephants firsthand several times in Thailand, such as at the Elephant Hills camp near Khao Sok National Park, and found this doc to be compelling and intriguing. Flora may be lucky, but due to his interaction with her, Balding is also one lucky human. In a sensitive, moving way One Lucky Elephant shows the love that can exist between man and beast, explores the nature of that affection and is a worthwhile picture for children of all ages.

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: MAHLER ON THE COUCH

Alma (Barbara Romaner) and Gustav Mahler (Johannes Silberschneider).

When a marriage is not just a marriage

By Ed Rampell

Mahler On the Couch is co-written and co-directed by that rarity, a father and son team, Percy (1987’s Bagdad Cafe) and Felix Adlon. Their German language movie reminds me of 1976’s The Seven-Percent-Solution based on Nicholas Meyer’s novel about Sherlock Holmes (Nicol Williamson) being treated by Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). Unlike that invented encounter between the make believe British detective and the Viennese psychoanalyst, Mahler opens with a disclaimer, asserting that while Freud’s meeting(s) with the musician actually occurred, the movie’s treatment of Mahler’s treatment by Freud is fictionalized.

If Holmes’ cocaine abuse prompted Dr. Watson to send his friend to see Dr. Freud, Mahler’s (Johannes Silberschneider) troubled marriage to Alma Mahler (Barbara Romaner) compels the composer to seek the father of psychoanalysis (Karl Markovics) out while he’s on holiday in Amsterdam. Alma has been depicted as the uber-groupie of all time (move over Pam Des Barres!), who worked her charms on Europe’s top intellectuals in early 20th century Europe. I first heard of this enigmatic femme fatale in the 1960s, thanks to that peerless parody songwriter Tom Lehrer, whose droll song Alma includes the lyrics:

“Alma, tell us!
All modern women are jealous.
Which of your magical wands
Got you Gustav and Walter and Franz?”




The Gustav, of course, refers to Mahler, who was about 19 years his wife’s senior. Ignored by her workaholic genius husband and sexually dissatisfied, Alma has a passionate affair briefly but fairly explicitly depicted onscreen with Walter Gropius (Friedrich Mucke), the Bauhaus architect. (The “Franz” refers to the novelist Franz Werfel, who is not portrayed in Mahler On the Couch -- to show all of Mahler’s many amours would require a mini-series.)

To me, Mahler is more about Alma than the composer or the shrink. Far more than a groupie, Romaner’s insightfully drawn Alma is portrayed as a forerunner of the emancipated woman, liberated sexually, as well as intellectually and artistically. However, this free spirit had the misfortune of being born in pre-feminist times in 1879, and was pressured by patriarchal society to submerge and sublimate her own creative drive to that of her husbands’ and lovers’ (who included the painter Oskar Kokoschka). The budding composer stopped writing music when she married Mahler, and this movie suggests that this more than sexual frustration drove Alma into the arms of others. After all, as Lehrer astutely noted in his witty ditty: “The loveliest girl in Vienna Was Alma, the smartest as well,” combining talent, brains and beauty.

Mahler On the Couch also has humor, as well as high drama and Mahler music conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Markovics’s Freud has a sly wit, but none of the compassion that marked Arkin’s incarnation of the psychoanalytical pioneer who sought to save civilization from its discontents and illusions. Romaner, a stage actress, is stunning in her first major screen role, and one suspects that if Barbara pursues a film career she shall conquer a cinematic Roman empire. The real Alma was a Jew who eventually fled the Nazis (who had no use for Jews or liberated women), crossing the Pyrenees Mountains on foot, escaping to L.A., where she established an artsy salon and Hollywood adapted Werfel’s Song of Bernadette in 1943 starring Jennifer Jones (who won the Best Actress Oscar). So it seems that women named Alma (which means “soul”) make the most extraordinary lovers.

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: LIGHTS, LAOS, STALLONE

A few subjects of Camera, Camera

A doc, an animated short and a conversation with Rocky

By Ed Rampell

The best film I’ve seen so far at the LAFF is Bastien Duboi’ Madagascar, A Journey Diary, an animated short set in that Indian Ocean island off of the African continent. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the “exotic” subject matter exploring the culture, flora and fauna of this onetime outpost of French colonialism, what thrilled me most about it was the 12-minute picture’s unique style. How often do you go to the movies and see something totally new that you’ve never seen onscreen before? Madagascar’s film form looks like the animation is done not by CGI, et al, but via a watercolor type process, along with some impressive looking 3D-ish imagery.

This refreshingly formal elegance compliments Madagascar’s content, as a visitor is invited by natives to witness and participate in some sort of indigenous rituals that have to do with something like raising the dead. The short reminded me a lot of my time in another French colony, Tahiti, in terms of its delightful ukulele-sounding music, “bizarre” (to outsiders’ eyes) customs, language, local people, etc. I had the joy of discovery watching this one of a kind cinematic spectacle about the joy of discovery.  Bravo, Mssr. Dubois. Formidable!

Madagascar played on a double bill with Malcolm Murray’s Camera, Camera, a motion picture meditation on picture taking by tourists in Laos. This documentary is somewhat similarly themed, in that, like the far superior Madagascar, it deals with how foreigners interact with and see the people, culture and nature of this beautiful Southeast Asian nation. Camera, Camera’s style veers from avante garde formalism to conventional narrative techniques (I guess Murray and writer Michael Meyer wanted audiences to actually see their work), as it looks at how Westerners perceive and live with Laotians. Along the way it reveals much about tourism, as Westerners romp in a low cost rural society.

Some are enthralled by Laos’ Buddhist culture, largely unspoiled tropical beauty, inexpensive prices ($2 per night for a thatched bungalow over the Mekong River!) and/or, but of course, sexually affordable and available people (perhaps, including children). At a series of bars along the Mekong Western youths frolic, swinging Tarzan-like over the water, wrestling and playing tug of war in mud pits, like female mud wrestlers or hippies at Woodstock.

Camera, Camera is self-reflexive: filmmakers with far superior gear film tourists shooting digital photos and some video of the “exotic” Laotians and their society. It made me think that perhaps there’s something to that old saying regarding Westerners photographing Third World people (especially without their consent): “White man’s magic steals souls.” This doc has a very American sensibility in that it shows people traveling abroad to get away from it all, only to bring “it all” with them.

This especially includes the filmmakers. They are thousands of miles from home, apparently by their own admissions breaking that country’s laws with unauthorized filming, and instead of really focusing on the society at hand, the film is, but of course, primarily about us. How we react to “foreigners” (when we are really the foreigners there), in particular by incessantly taking digital snapshots of them. It is fixated on self, like so many narcissistic Yanks, instead of on the other, even when we are in the other’s homeland. We learn little about Laos, such as, for instance, does it still have some of the characteristics of a socialist state? If you want to find out, don’t look for the answer regarding this and so many other questions in this self-absorbed doc. Its sensibility reminded me of that early 1960s Marlon Brando movie, The Ugly American.      

Sylvester Stallone may have made Ugly American movies promoting U.S. imperialism and adventurism in another Southeast Asian nation – Vietnam – but he looked dapper and handsome at LAFF. For someone about to turn 64 Stallone could pass for a 40-something. Although I enjoyed some of the Rocky flicks, including the 2006 installment Rocky Balboa, Rampell hates Rambo and its militaristic messages. So I have to admit to having been inclined to consider him stupid him prior to Stallone's sold out conversation with the excellent critic Elvis Mitchell at the Downtown’s Regal Cinemas.

However, Stallone revealed himself to be quite bright, thoughtful and an excellent raconteur. The 90-minute or so talk was extremely entertaining as a screen legend discussed his life and career with a topnotch film journalist. The conversation was preceded by Stallone’s “reel,” with clips from his various films, and later included clips from his newest action production to reportedly be released this August, the typically bloody mercenary movie, The Expendables, which Stallone directed, co-wrote and co-stars in as Barney “The Schizo” Ross, along with other actions stars such as Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke plus Eric Roberts, etc.

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: FAREWELL

Lady Grace Drummond Hay and Karl von Wiegand aboard Dornier DO-X flying boat.

Farewell, my lovely

By Ed Rampell

Pablo Picasso was fond of creating art out of found objects, such as famously transforming a bicycle seat and handlebars he’d stumbled upon into a modernist bust of a bull. Dutch director-screenwriter Ditteke Mensink has done something similar with Farewell, using found archival and newsreel footage to reconstruct the real life story of the first around the world flight of an airship, the Graf Zeppelin. Using a private diary and presumably letters, Mensink also reconstructs the personal story of the only woman aboard the historic 1929 flight, Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, a correspondent for William Randolph Hearst.

Some 80 years later Mensink has managed to recreate Hay’s inner angst as she discovers that an ex-lover who’d recently jilted her, journalist Karl von Wiegand, is not only part of the press corps flying aboard the dirigible, but the Hearst editor she must report to. Like Led Zeppelin, Hay has a "whole lotta love," but it is unrequited by this married older man.

But more important and interesting than this love story is the fractious pre-war world Farewell reveals as it floats around the planet. Because Hearst actually financed the flight of the German-built zeppelin, the voyage started and ended near New York. Its stops included Germany, and there are fascinating glimpses of the Nazis and of a riot there that the inter-continental journey caused.

The Graf Zeppelin, which counted among its passengers an ardent Bolshevik, then appeared to snub the Soviet Union, diverting its course away from Moscow, purportedly due to weather conditions there. Glimpses of the USSR include a sort of personality cult balloon bearing the image of Josef Stalin being blown up that I’d seen before (perhaps in a Dziga Vertov newsreel?) and the endless vastness of what Vertov had called in the title of one of his documentaries “one sixth of the Earth.”

Farewell’s most compelling footage is of pre-war Japan, where the dirigible made one of its few scheduled stops. There are twirling parasols, pagodas, geishas, kimonos as well as banzai cheers for the crew and passengers at the “mysterious East.” On the other hand, the shots of 1929 L.A. -- of which there must be an abundance to choose from -- are quite disappointing. After a reputedly hazardous flight across the Pacific, the Graf Zeppelin touched down at the City of the Angels, which here looks pretty much like “Anywheresville, USA.”

After an LAFF screening of the Documentary Competition selection Mensink said it took her up to 13 years to make what she called a “puzzle” of a film, piecing together the jigsaw motion picture pieces of found footage, including shots from only one feature film, Dirigible, a 1931 thriller made by Frank Capra. Farewell is a fascinating filmmaking exercise in making something out of nothing to present a lost reality Mensink would probably make a brilliant propagandist or maker of TV commercials.

(Farewell screens June 26, 7:30 p.m., Regal Cinemas.)

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: PRESUMED GUILTY

Jose Antonio Zuniga Rodriguez is not playing dumb in Presumed Innocent. 

An unconvincing conviction

By Don Simpson

Directed by Roberto Hernandez and Geoffrey Smith, Presumed Guilty (which is kind of a sequel to Hernandez’s 20-minute documentary, El Túnel) bombards us with staggering facts about the Mexican judicial system: 93 percent of defendants never see a judge; 93 percent of inmates are never shown their arrest warrant; 95 percent of verdicts are guilty; 92 percent of verdicts are based on no physical evidence; police officers are rewarded for the amount of arrests they make; and any court official can preside over court hearings (not just judges).

Presumed Guilty focuses specifically on the case of Jose Antonio Zuniga Rodriguez (a.k.a. “Tono”), whom we first see break-dancing in prison. In 2005, Tono was incarcerated; accused of killing someone he did not even know and who was never linked to him in any way. At the time of his arrest, Tono had no idea regarding what the case was about or why he was accused. He also had no idea of what his rights were; Tono was told repeatedly by the arresting officer: “You did it and don’t play dumb.”

But, on the day of the murder, Tono was working at his market stand where he sold video games and fixed computers from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. There are countless witnesses that can attest to his whereabouts, but those witnesses were never questioned by the police or prosecutors. Tono was sentenced for 20 years in prison, despite the fact that the prosecutor never proved that Tono fired a gun (his gunpowder test was negative).

Tono believed that his arrest was fate. He had recorded a gangster rap-styled music video (Tono also provides the soundtrack for Presumed Guilty) about murdering someone in cold blood (the song turned out to be a premonition – could this song be the reason Tono was targeted by the police?). Also, a week before he was arrested for homicide, Tono found himself heartbroken (we’re not sure why) and he prayed to God: “Kill me or put me in jail. Do as you will but take me away” – his prayers were answered by big brother (the Mexican police) rather than God.

Tono resides in a small prison cell with 20 other inmates -- all young men, most of whom are presumably innocent. He sleeps in “the tomb” -- a cramped space located under a bunk bed on the cold concrete floor. Tono’s girlfriend must work in order for Tono to survive in prison (78 percent of inmates are fed by their families); she faithfully delivers food to Tono, despite exposing herself to recurring sexual misconduct by some of the prison guards (they repeatedly lift her shirt and feel her up).

Upon researching Tono’s case, the filmmakers discover that Tono’s lawyer was not adequately licensed -- which, luckily for Tono, proves to be adequate grounds for a retrial (but Tono has to wait an additional three months for the retrial to occur). The retrial will be in front of same judge, but this time the trial would be videotaped by Hernandez and Smith. A respected and qualified attorney, Rafael Heredia, agrees to work pro bono as Tono’s Defense Attorney.

One of three selections of LAFF's Documenting Mexico picks, Presumed Guilty is by no means an easy film to watch with content that is simultaneously frustrating and heartbreaking. Nonetheless, Hernandez and Smith do a tremendous job with the material, conveying it flawlessly in a straightforward and easy to understand manner. Most importantly, Tono’s innocence is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. The question remains: is the film convincing enough for the Mexican judicial system to release Tono? (If the answer to that question is yes, I can not think of clearer proof of a documentary’s success.)

Recommended.

(Presumed Guilty screens June 25, 7:45 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 26, 1:45 p.m., Regal Cinemas)

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: SECRETS OF THE TRIBE

Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon with a Yanomami Indian.

De-virginized territory

By John Esther

Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha, who co-directed the award-winning documentary, Bus 174, digs deep into the walls of latter-day anthropological study with Secrets of the Tribe by taking a look at how a team of perhaps too many Occidental anthropologists conducted research on the Yanomami Indians of the 1960s and 1970s.

Viewed as a “virgin” society, the Yanomami Indians lived in seclusion for centuries before becoming the most filmed and studied tribe on the planet.

Moreover, as subjects, the Yanomami Indians were often subjected to humiliating acts of pedophilia and exploitation. One of the most notable cases is lodged against French anthropologist Jacques Lizot (a disciple of the late world-renowned anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss), who is accused of all sorts of molestations and rapes by the Indians and others interviewed for the film.

To the film’s delightful credit, Padilha meets with a vast array of experts to discuss the ethnographical ramifications of the anthropological study. Napoleon Chagnon, whose seemingly patriarchal book, Yanomamo: The Fierce People, is the best-selling anthropological text of all time, gave weapons of destruction (e.g., machetes) in exchange for cooperation while Kenneth Good was viciously criticized by many — including his archenemy, Chagnon — for marrying an underage girl (by Occidental standards) in order to, laughably, further his career.

In between the academic bickering, Padilha speaks to the Yanomami Indians, whose accounts offer some serious testimony against many of their former “guests.”

While there is plenty to be appalled about here, Secrets of the Tribe is actually quite funny, insightful and entertaining. The egos, the inconsistencies and the battle of the minds keep the narrative of this International Showcase selection moving forward at superb speed, raising questions about motive, opportunity and objectivity along the way.

Recommended.

(Secrets of the Tribe screens June 25, 9:45 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 27, 3:45 p.m., Regal Cinemas.)

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: WELCOME TO THE RILEYS

Kristen Stewart plays a lonely stripper in Welcome to the Rileys.

Family tries

By John Esther

In response to the death of their 15-year-old daughter Emily, Doug Riley (James Gandolfini) plays poker and poke-her every Thursday night while his wife, Lois (Melissa Leo), jails herself inside their Indiana suburban home.

During the first and only business trip we see him take — although it is hard not to assume he takes many — Doug meets a 16-year-old stripper with multiple pseudonyms (Kristen Stewart) at a shady club in 2009 in New Orleans.

At first Doug cares very little about the young girl but then, when she is out of her work garb, she suddenly reminds him of Emily. So Doug calls up Lois and tells her he is not coming home, sells the business and begins life with a new sense of paternity.

At a rate of $100 per day, Doug pays “Mallory” to let him stay with her. Although she now makes approximately $3,000 per month for doing nothing, this does not stop her from stripping and prostituting herself.

Meanwhile, startled by her husband’s revolt, Lois gets in the car and, after a series of lame driving scenes meant to be facetious, heads south to the Big Easy. Once there, the three attempt to forge a new family, but it may be too late.

When the story does work, Gandolfini and Leo give us some of their best work. Unfortunately, Stewart, who cannot find a credulous rhythm to her performance, is noticeably bad during quite a few scenes, especially the ones she shares with Leo. (Stewart also stars in LAFF's World Premiere of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.)

A Summer Showcase selection in search of another draft or two, director Jake Scott and writer Ken Hixon’s Welcome to the Rileys does have its charming moments, but the primary narrative is simply too contrived to be believable.

(Welcome to the Rileys screens June 25, 7:30 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 27, 4 p.m., Regal Cinemas)

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: NIGHT CATCHES US

Jimmy (Amari Cheatom) has had it with Philadelphia's racist cops.

From the City of Brotherly Shove

By John Esther

Eleven years in the making, writer-director Tanya Hamilton’s “Night Catches Us” captures a tumultuous time in Philadelphia history.

It is 1976 and America is experiencing the commemoration of the bicentennial, yet in the city where the law of the land was written 200 years prior, much of the population is treated as second-class citizens.

Marcus (Anthony Mackie) has just returned to an unwelcome homecoming. Considered a snitch by his former Black Panther comrades, he has to watch his step. The only one he can trust is Patricia (Kerry Washington), who has become a sort of pillar in the neighborhood as it deals with constant harassment by the cops and the rampant anger and rebellion of many young African-American men and women who have had enough of police brutality -- namely Patty's cousin, Jimmy (Amari Cheatom).

As tensions mount, violence and mistrust between cops and citizens grows, as does trust and love amongst the oppressed. Naturally, something has to give, and it is not the police misconduct.

Well-made and capturing the City of Brotherly Love with considerable care and craft, this Summer Showcase selection offers an insightful look at what it means to be black in America during some of its worst times.

Recommended.

(Night Catches Us screens June 25, 7:45 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 26, 4:30 p.m., Regal Cinemas)

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: REVOLUCION

A scene from Revolucion.

Start the Revolucion without them

By Ed Rampell

The problemo with Revolucion is that its, well, just not very revolutionary.

Prior to the Norte Americano premier at LAFF one of the 10 young Mexican filmmakers said he was given money to make a short film to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. Unfortunately, few if any of the directors have done precisely that in any of the vignettes strung together to make this 105-minute long Gala selection.

The one with the most ties to the 1910 uprising depicts a young woman who inherits a pistol from her grandfather, who rode with Pancho Villa and/or Emiliano Zapata back in the day. Actor Gael Garcia Bernal shot a short about a boy who resists the Catholic church and its obsession with images, and a few of the other brief pics evince some sort of rebellious spirit. In one a grocery store employee takes on her bosses’ antiquated practice of paying with vouchers instead of cash.

In another a fiesta devolves into a raucous riot a la the beggars’ feast in Luis Bunuel’s “Last Supper” sequence in 1961’s Viridiana. Indeed, the shorts stylistically veer from social realism to surrealism, and many do have a Bunuelian sensibility. The vignettes are fine from an artistic point of view and it’s nice to see imagery of Mexico that has nothing to do with drug lords, gangs and undocumented immigrants. But the problem is these shorts have little, if anything, to do with that great upheaval a century ago. Simply put, Revolucion doesn’t live up to its grandiose billing.

In the last short Zapatista type ghostly horsemen with sombreros, rifles and bandoleros ride through L.A.’s Olivera Street. Perhaps to these filmmakers Villa, Zapata, etc., are mere ghosts from the past. I’m no expert on Mexican politics, but it seems to me that this notion seems to be part of the problem. If anything, 21st-century Mexicans need a powerful filmic reminder of their revolutionary heritage, from Zapata to the more recent Comandante Marcos.

As for me, when it comes to Latin American movies and politics, I prefer Sergei Eisenstein’s 1933 Que Viva Mexico! (aka Thunder Over Mexico) and Oliver Stone’s new doc, South of the Border. Because, as the socialist Eugene Debs put it, “Revolution is the boldest word in any language” –- including Spanish.

(Revolucion screens June 23, 5 p.m., Regal Cinemas.)

THEATER REVIEW: CARMEN MIRANDA

The soul of Carmen Miranda

By Ed Rampell

Here’s your Miranda warning: You have the right to be charmed, beguiled and to go bananas during the Hollywood stage production of Carmen Miranda, The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat. Magi Avila incarnates the 1940s dancing and singing sensation of stage, screen and nightclubs who personified Latin America for many Americans. Like the more risqué Josephine Baker clad in her banana leaf skirt (and little else) who represented “deepest darkest Africa,” Carmen was garbed in often midriff-baring garments and outrageous haberdashery with, and was surrounded by, fruit motifs, suggesting the supposed agricultural bounty of those sun drenched lands south of the border.

Tutti Frutti as originally written by playwright Sam Mossler has undergone a number of permutations; its current version is pretty straight forward, taking the form of one of Carmen’s fabled acts at Las Vegas’ El Rancho club. Avila uncannily impersonates the star from Brazil, expertly performing various rhythmic Miranda dance and song numbers from her live acts and films, such as “Chica Chica Boom Chic” and “I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi, I Like You Very Much” from 1941’s That Night in Rio. There are more costume changes than at a runway show, and between musical routines performed live by the six piece “Carmen Miranda Orchestra” led by musical director Dennis Kaye, Avila/Miranda recalls Carmen’s rags to riches life story.

A humble barber’s daughter, she rose to stardom in Brazil and was brought to Broadway in 1939 to appear in Streets of Paris. After a star-crossed return to Rio, Miranda realized that, as Thomas Wolfe put it, you can’t go home again. La-La-Land beckoned, turning her into one of moviedom’s most popular and (along with her nightclub shows) one of America’s (North as well as South) wealthiest women.

How does Avila -- a Mexican actress with big and little screen credits, such as guest starring in the cable police drama, The Shield -- stack up against the real Miranda? Well, the voluptuous Avila is more, uh, stacked than Carmen, who was slimmer. Like many comics Miranda had a sort of funny face, while Avila is prettier, but with her winning ear-to-ear smile (which threatens to slice her low hanging earrings off) Magi succeeds in projecting Carmen’s easygoing humor and warmth. Avila can samba and mambo with the best of them, and has Carmen’s kitschy choreography down pat, along with her lovely singing and accented voice. (Although the Tutti Frutti lady reminds us that it’s really all those Norte Americanos who speak with funny accents.) Magi does Miranda proud, and is to Carmen what Hal Holbrook is to Mark Twain.

Beneath Carmen’s perpetual grin and obsession with gaiety and laughter, one senses she may have had a sort of manic personality using frivolity to shield her from life’s slings and arrows, which Tutti Frutti hints at, but doesn’t dwell on. Magi/Miranda relates her disappointment at returning to Brazil after her Broadway debut, only to be criticized in the press and high society for being “Americanized” and an “over-sexualized” misrepresentation of Latinas.

Yet, Carmen Miranda actually was not actually Brazilian – as a 1995 documentary subtitled Bananas Are My Business pointed out, she was a European born in Portugal, whose family migrated to Brazil. In addition, during that homophobic period, as Tutti Frutti alludes to, she was accused of being a lesbian because she was an unmarried woman in her early thirties (absolutely scandalous!) and was derided as a “queen” by the tabloid press. Toward the end of her career, Carmen became a campy caricature, if not a figure of ridicule. Perhaps these contradictions led to Carmen’s unhappily ever after ending and early death. She burned briefly but brightly.

In any case, it’s hard for a stage play, especially a low budget one in a 99-seater, to compete with the big screen’s big casts and bigger budgets, production values and special effects, epitomized by Busby Berkeley’s eye-popping, colorful extravaganza in the number where Carmen sings "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat" in the 1943 musical, The Gang’s All Here. Nevertheless Magi Avila’s version of Carmen Miranda acquits itself well, providing an unforgettable, highly enjoyable evening at the theatre.

Carmen Miranda, The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat runs through June 27 at the Hudson Backstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A., CA 90038. For more info: 323/960-7740; www.carmenmirandashow.com or www.plays411.com/carmen

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: ANIMAL KINGDOM

Guy Pearce plays the only honest cop in the Animal Kingdom.

All in the family

By John Esther

Seventeen-year-old Josh Cody (James Frecheville) has come to live with his four uncles (Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton) and grandmother (Jacki Weaver) just about the time they become enemy number one to the Melbourne police.

A brotherhood of bank robbers, the police cannot nail the Cody clan so they decide to kill one of the uncles in broad daylight in a crowded parking lot. This ridiculous act is countered with the brothers doing something equally preposterous.

As the tensions and bodies mount, momma bear swarms around her cubs to demonstrably demonic effect while Leckie (Guy Pearce) struggles for justice in the concrete jungle.

Ridiculously awarded the Sundance Grand Jury prize for best international film, this mediocre Gala selection about a Melbourne crime family has its moments – the actors are quite good -- but it is down under inconsequential.

(Animal Kingdom screens June 23, 8 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 25, 4:45 p.m., Regal Cinemas)

LA FILM FESTIVAL 2010: CLIMATE REFUGEES

A warning of the space ahead.

Floating away

By John Esther

According to several scientists, partisan politicians, Nobel Prize winners and the testimony of many people around the world — including one sad 7-year-old boy — if we do not drastically do something about climate change within the next 100 months or so, many countries and their citizens will be headed to oblivion. Many more people will flee to other lands.

Rather than regurgitate David Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth that starred former Vice President Al Gore, director Michael Nash’s documentary, Climate Refugees, puts the issue of climate change in terms of nationalist geopolitics.

The last drastic climate change occurred 8,200 years ago when there were no borders. Today, seawater is rising, and, as most people live by the sea, they will be forced to relocate.

An estimated 50 countries will disappear within the next 20-30 years, and “ground zero” is the impoverished country of Bangladesh, where 150 million Bangladeshi live at sea level. As the water continues to rise, what are nations going to do when 50-100 million Bangladeshi start fleeing to foreign lands? What can they do?

From there, Nash travels the globe visiting other nations going under, eventually winding up in the United States where we already have had our own climate refugees in the form of those thousands of Louisianans who fled their state during and after Hurricane Katrina.

Nobody is immune. Destroyed crops, lack of clean water, less land and an increasing human population leads to lack of resources for more people. Something will give.

Offering more empirical examples than Gore’s grand scientific proofs, Climate Refugees illustrates how climate change can no longer remain an abstract notion. We must look at it head on. Otherwise, the world will be facing by the multimillions those beautiful yet tragic human beings Nash captures in his splendid documentary.

There will be no charge for this Community Screening.

Recommened.

(Climate Refugees screens June 20, 2:15 p.m. Regal Cinemas)