Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould 2009 (Grade B+)

Director: Michael Hozer & Peter Raymont

ABOUT: Glenn Gould -- Canadian musician

Featuring: Glenn Gould; Vladimir Ashkenazy; Frances Batchen; Kevin Bazzana; Petula Clark; Victor Feldbrill; Christopher Foss; Cornelia Foss; Don Hunstein; Fliza Foss

sez says: I knew nothing of this man till I watched this--and I was glued to the program once it began.  It is not about his music--which I admit still knowing little about--but what grabbed me was 1) how a person can take something everyone things they know and turn it into something else entirely.  As Gould said--my paraphrase--with practice anyone can play this music perfectly, what it the point of that, I want to find something new in it that no one else has found. 2) I was taken by this life of obsession--that seemed to void all else in his life.  It seems that he still wanted some of the 'normal things' -- like a family-- but he couldn't accommodate them becasue of his obsession. Something in that seems to be a clue to the ways and means and costs of genius. Enough said....leave it that, I like this...not enough to watch it twice--but glad I saw it. 

Strange Culture: 2006, (Grade B)

Director: Lynn Herschman Leeson

Cast: Tilda Swinton; Thomas Jay Ryan; Peter Coyote; Josh Kornbluth; Beatriz da Costa; Steve Kurtz; Shoresh Alaudini, Cassie Powell; Larissa Clayton

Plot: a true story--done as docu-drama--but with the end not revealed-- about artist/professor Steve Kurtz, who, on the eve of an exhibit finds his wife dead from a heart attack. He calls for help and medics, suspicions of his art media, which included genetically modified foods, calls in the FBI . Kurtz is accused of bio-terrorism and his life is turned into a horrifying circus for the next few years.

sez says: not the best done documentary I've ever seen--but well enough done to get the story out--and what a bizarre and horrifying story it is!  It suggests our government is WAY out of touch with the intellegencia in the US --and if you want to buy into conspiracy theories--it suggests the government is seeking to censor, to dominate, the frighten, to control our society.

mjc says: I had no idea about this incident It was a sober reminder of the consequences of the Bush Years that still reverberate 

The Athlete, 2009, (Grade B)

Directed by Rasselas Lakew and Davey Frankel
Ethiopia, 2009 , 93 min.
Shown at the African Film Festival, Portland 2011

PLOT: Per the festival organizers... "Ethiopian track and field athlete, Abebe Bikila (1932-1973), was the first black African to win an Olympic medal, and ultimately the first man ever to win two Olympic marathons. This soft-spoken son of an Ethiopian shepherd shocked the Western world when he crossed the finish line barefoot at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Mr. Bikila became an inspiration and a model for Africans everywhere, and the world of distance running would never be the same. But as The Athletedemonstrates in a seamless blend of documentary footage and dramatic rendition, Abebe Bikila’s greatest personal challenges still lay before him. The Athlete is Ethiopia’s first Oscar contender in the Foreign Language Film category, nominated for consideration for 2011."

sez says: exactly what the festival organizers said -- and well done--wonderful story--beautiful presentation. Uplifting all the way. 


mjc says: this is a story I did not know and was glad to see it told so well, and with a glimpse at Ethiopian landscape

STOLEN, 2009 (Grade B)

Directed by Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw
Western Sahara, 2009 , 75 min.
Shown at the 21st African Film Festival in 2011, Portland Oregon

per the festival "Directors Ayala and Fallshaw set out to make a simple documentary about family reunions in Saharawi refugee camps controlled by the Polisario Liberation Front. Their project became much more complicated when they discovered that many of the dark-skinned refugees were in fact the slaves of those with lighter complexions. Or were they? Was there really widespread servitude or was it something more culturally subtle? The Polisario denied the filmmakers’ assertions, labeled them cultural imperialists, and tried to stop the project. The result is a powerful, suspenseful film, which raises thought-provoking questions about the possibility of documentary objectivity. The film has provoked an ongoing international controversy. Winner of the Best Feature Documentary Prize at the 2010 Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles.  In Hassaniya, Spanish, and English with English subtitles."

sez says: fascinating --this can be understood in so many ways that it is hard to even start to discuss it here.  Is this just a naive look at one example of actual slavery?  (It exists all over the place. It pops up regularly here in the US.  Sex slaves are on the rise again.  And what of wage salves?)  Or are they pawns in an international dispute between Morocco and the Polisario Liberation Frount?  Why dod so may people recant the stories they told the film makers?  Were they not understood --and paid to lie as they are accused of..or are those people under pressure from powers within their own communities and must recant to keep their families safe?  This list of questions is endless...but the  film is worth seeing becasue it will make you ask these questions about a pressing and often ignored social reality: THere are still salves in the world.  Humans still are bought and sold--and even STOLEN.  


mjc says: truth is slippery and slides sideways and creeps out from under rocks and bursts from the mouth's of children. I believe the filmmakers were searching for truth and I don't know if they found it.

Exit Through The Gift Shop, Grade A

Director: Banksy

Awards? none I know of--but it is still early in its life --YES is nominated for an Academy Award

cast: Banksy; Shepard Fairey; Thierry Guetta; Rhys Ifans; Space Invader; Jay Leno; Joshua Levine

sez says: What is art? Can the market place taint art? Is "Street Art / aka Graffitti" as valid of an art form as the "fine art" that hangs in a museum?  Who decides?  Does the market place determine the 'true value' of art?  All of this and ever so much more is tossed up for us to look at in this wonderful documentary.  It features a Frenchman who starts off with a video camera capturing every thing around him, obsessively recording life as he encounters it.  He eventually gets some focus and starts recording 'Street Artists" in action.  He watches them as they get public attention and begin selling their work for BIG $$  -- then he decides to make some art himself--or to hire people to produce images he wants made --and he has an 'opening' that is a gigantic event--hyped to the hilt--- and he becomes rich.  This makes the 'old school' street artists very uncomfortable---and we get to watch.  

mjc says:  What is art--is it cash or consciousness.

Emergency Mine Rescue, NOVA, (Grade B)

Directors: Kate Dart, Nick Evans, Tom Stubberfield

Topic: Rescue of 33 Chilean Miners 2010

This documentary begins in September 2010, following the August collapse of a deep spiral copper and gold mine in Chile in which 33 miners were trapped.  The Chilean government had announced it would takes months to rescue these men--and it promised to do everything possible toward that end.   The film chronicles the fate of the miners, and explains the multitude of challenges faced by both the miners and those working around the clock to bring them safely to the surface.  Via interviews with engineers, NASA experts, medical personnel, and key figures from the companies that provided drills and crucial rescue equipment, the film gives a detailed and scientific account of the events as they unfolded.  Even knowing the outcome in advance --the story manages to build some tension as you see the stress the participants suffer. It is a story of people doing what appears to be impossible and succeeding.  Uplifting stuff. 

DOGS: Decoded NOVA (Geade B)

Director: Dan Child

 TOPIC: DOGS

 "Dogs Decoded" says it is is going to tell us about "the science" that creates the bond between humans and dogs. Evidently dogs are now being taken seriously as a subject to study--and there is some pretty interesting information/ideas that are coming out of that.  An example is the genetics research that illuminate the origin of dogs. More interesting to me is the research that suggests that dogs have an ability to read and respond to human emotions. and that some humans, in turn, respond to dogs with the same hormone responsible for bonding mothers to their babies. Also, Dogs and wolves--while both canine--are NOT the same in their response to humans--no matter how hard humans try and create that bond.  Fun stuff...not sure it all qualifies as science.. but people in universities have begun to look at the relationship between humans and animals --and I am glad to see that trend.

The Vikings, NOVA 2000 (Grade C+)

sez says:  Vikings have long been portrayed as horned-helmeted barbarians. Well their helmets didn't have horns and their major accomplishment was that they were master boat builders.   This"Nova" episode shows the Vikings to have been civilized and sophisticated people. Startling new research indicates that the 8th century Norsemen were, in fact, also shrewd merchants, accomplished artisans and superbly creative. They traveled extensively and colonized large sections of eastern Europe, all the way to Constantinople.They also populated the British Isles, Northern France, Iceland and Greenland--and made their way into the Mediterranean.   Part of the time they were raiding, even more of the time they were trading--and regularly they settled and melted into the local population--often dominating.  You come away from this thinking they played a much bigger role in the history and peopling of Europe than is generally taught.  Interesting stuff. Fairly well presented--but no where near brilliant.

The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia, 2002 (Grade B)

Director" Jennifer Baichwal
Topic Photography - manipulation of images

sez says: this explores some heavy philosophical terrain. Shelby Lee Adams, a photographer, who grew up in Appalachia, takes photos of people in the far-back hollers of Kentucky -- and presents those photos to the world via galley showings and books. He says he is just presenting these people to the world, as they are, and he is not exploiting them in any way. The film talks to many of the people who have had their pictures in his books,  and only a few have any problem at all with the pictures or with him.  But the pictures do, undeniably, perpetrate stereotypes about inbred simpletons who are immersed in poverty and misery.  The people in the photos are more complex than the pictures--and the pictures are sometimes rather shocking.  Did the photographer intentionally make the pictures shocking to sell the photos?  Are the photos art, or documentary materials?   Critics point out that he posed the pictures--and in so doing he makes them something other than documents--one man called them "Shelby Lee Adam's Picture Poems" -- and had no problem with them as 'visual poems' but stood firm against their being accepted as documentary photos. There are a lot of voices in this...and questions about morality, ethics, cultural elitism, what is art and more..are churning around the discussions. It is well done. (Grade B)   

Art & Copy, 2009 (Grade B+)

Director: Doug Pray
Producer:
Topic: Advertising

featuring Lee Chow; Cliff Freeman; Jeff Goodby; David Kennedy; George Lois; Charlie Moss; Hal Riney; Phyllis K Robinson; Ed Rollins; Rich Silverstein; Mary Wells; Dan Wieden.and others

this documentary explores the world of advertising and features a host of interviews with some of the biggest names in the business. Meet the talented minds who created tag lines forever embedded in the American psyche, including "Just Do It," "Where's the Beef?" and "Got Milk?" Hal Riney, Ed Rollins and many others share their insights. Used for fun and entertainment--in the name of selling stuff--and for insidious ends--like manipulating emotions and lying to get a candidate elected, the power of images and the right mix of just a few words can turn heads and shape our world.  This is really worth seeing.

The Spy Factory, 2009 (Grade D)

Producer Scott Willis & James Bamford
Topic: NSA / National Security Agency

this program  claims to exposes the NSA, an "ultra-secret intelligence agency" and its role in the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent eavesdropping program that listens in without warrant on millions of American citizens.  The program is alarmist, wanting you to hold your breath to hear what you already know --- that is, you know it if you pay attention to the news.  Yes the NSA operates in the shadows, and it may well be doing things that are 'unconstitutional' and we ought to be aware that it exists. So if you didn't know any of this, well then, this docu-drama will tell you these things.  But what it doesn't talk about is do we need this organization..and if so, how do we have an organization that can do what it does and also not have it cross lines pertaining to civil liberties.  This documentary both criticizes the agency for not being invasive enough (stop 9/11) and for being too invasive. So which is it you want?  We could use a serious discussion about this topic--but it is not available in this documentary.

Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues: A Musical Journey Vol 7, Piano Blues Grade B

Director Clint Eastwood
Producer Martin Scorsese
Topic Piano Blues

Disc 7 -- the last in the series

Clint Eastwood takes an in-depth look at piano-blues music through rare video footage, interviews and performances by greats such as Ray Charles, Jay McShann, Pinetop Perkins, Dave Brubeck and many more -- He tends to take us into jazz and classical works--but keeps trying to tie them back to the blues. It is clear that Eastwood love the piano -- and I enjoyed this a lot.. but I really wold have preferred it if he would have stayed a little closer to the music I do so love-- the blues.

Storm That Drowned A City, 2005 (Grade B+)

Written Directed and Produced by Caroline Penry-Davey and Peter Chinn
Topic: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Geography & Politics

sez says: This is well done. It was helpful to at last get a full understanding of the exact geography of the area hit by Katrina--and to see where, how and why the levies failed. It all could be predicted--and it was predicted--so you have to realize we don't always do what we know we should do and we pay the consequence. Or, in this case the people of New Orleans paid the consequence of inadequate levies. Is anyone checking to make sure the new ones are being done right? (grade B+) 

A Walk to Beautiful, 2008 Grade A+

Producer  Mary Olive Smith
Topic: African Women with Obstetric Fistula

Awards: This film took top honors at the 2007 International Documentary Association Awards Competition, where it was named Best Feature Documentary. It also won the People's Choice Award for Best Documentary at the Starz Denver Film Festival, the Audience Award at both the San Francisco and St. Louis international film festivals, and the Best Human Rights Film Award at the International Documentary Festival of Barcelona.

sez says: this is as perfect of a documentary as I have ever seen. There is no hyped-up dialogue. It is just a straight forward telling of a story about people facing an horrendous problem and good people trying to help those people.  It is about African women who, due to malnourishment, stunted growth, early child bearing, and lack of medical facilities, develop fistula while they are in labor.  They are then outcast.  There is a small clinic they can go to the get the fistula repaired--and the operation is generally helpful--but it can only help a very few of the large number of women with the problem. This is heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. Grade A for perfect job.

Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues: A Musical Journey Vol 6, Red, White & Blue- Grade A

Director Mike Figgis
Producer Martin Scorsese
Topic The Blues -- British Impact

sez says --this is the best in the series (so far) It includes people like Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Tom Jones who perform and talk about how American Blues came to England, the impact it had there and how it morphed and than returned to the USA as part of the wave of British blues music that hit the United States in the '60s. These are mostly talking head interviews--interspersed with some fine music. It gave a strong sense of time and place and personality. John Mayall, Steve Winwood. Georgie Fame, Albert Lee,  Mick Fleetwood, Humphrey Lyttleton, Lonnie Donnegan, Chris Farlowe,  and John Porter, plus some very special foot age of performances by Cream, the Mick Jagger / The Rolling Stones and more.  The point that is made, is that Black Blues Music was introduced to  American White Audiences via English performers.  Had they not 'discovered the blues' we Americans might have continued to ignore it. (Grade A)

This So Called Disaster: (Grade B)

Director: Michael Almereyda
Cast: Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Cheech Marin, Sheila Tousey, T-Bone Burnett, Sam Shepard, Woody Harrelson
Topic: Theater --producing a Sam Shepard Play

sez says: fun to watch these actor at work --it gives you a sense of what it takes to produce a play. The relationship between the writer-director and the actors is had to describe in words--but it is something you can watch and  pick up clues about. It sure entertained me... but I have to wonder what kind of mass appeal it might have.  (Grade B)

The Sucide Tourist (Grade A)

Director: John ZaritskyProducer FRONTLINE
Topic: Right to Die / Sucide

sez sys: I thought this was a perfectly crafted documentary. We follow a man with Lou Gehrig's Disease as he decides to take action and bring on own death before he has to experience extreme suffering--and then die anyway.   Dignatis, a Swiss Organization, aids him and his wife, providing the assistance they need.  It is a strong piece for anyone, both those who are pro-and those who are cob assisted suicide-- to observe and consider the issues at hand.  We all will die: Some of us will travel the hard road to making a decision about when and how.  This is a helpful perspective. (Grade A)

Trudell: Independent Lens, 2006 (Grade C)

Director: Heather Rae
Awards? None that I know of
Cast: Robert Redford; Kris Kristofferson; Bonnie Raitt; Jackson Brown; John Trudell; Wilma Mankiller

sez says: If you know noting of the AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT --aks AIM --you might find this really interesting,  The backdrop to this man's story is the history of that movement:  It is something we should all know about. And Trudell is an interesting man. He has led a life of commitment to making the world a more fair and equitable place for all.  He speaks loudly and clearly about the contradiction that we all live with--and we can never be reminded enough of that. He has many admirable qualities.  He has also suffered great loss and tragedy--which is told about in this film.  But here is my gripe.  Once the tragedy is told -- the documentary wants to lift him into a god-like status and super poet.  That is a shame. It is quite enough that he survived and continues to engage the world  with a passion to be heard. That is an accomplishment and it is a worthy story on its own--and it seems more respectful to me than making a pedestal for him stand on.  People can be pushed off pedestals--and if what he is supposed to be remember for is his poetry--well ,I think he will be forgotten. What we need to remember him for is his passion, his commitment his accomplishments in the name of justice and that should have remained the focus of the documentary.  Grade C

Bettle Queen Conquers Tokyo (Grade C+)

Director: Jessica Oreck
Producer: Jessica Oreck
Topic: Insects as pets in Japan

sez says:  this documentary wonders around the web of cultural and historical ties underlying Japan's relationship with insects...INCLUDING the new market for Bug as PETS.  This is strange stuff.. about 20% will put you to sleep--and 20% is really great--the remaining 60% is nothing less than weird. It could have done with less 'arty' ramblings. But it did a great job weaving layer upon layer of material that seemed disconnected at times and then would snap into place to form understandings of Japanese culture. Here you find kitsch meeting science, meeting philosophy, meeting ecology, meeting music and poetry and on and on. This is not linear--but it eventually takes shape..even if you take a nap in the middle.  Grade C+

Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues: A Musical Journey, Vol 5: Fathers & Godsons (Grade B)

Director: Marc Levin
Topic: The Blues --Chicago, Chess Records, Rap

Includes rapper Chuck D, Marshall Chess (of Chess Records) Bo Diddley, Pinetop Perkins, Sam Lay, Lonnie Brooks, Chuck D and Public Enemy, Common, Ike Turner, Koko Taylor, Magic Slim, Howlin' Wolf and more

sez says: we are sticking with this series because it is a joy to listen to the music and to be learn more about the history of our favorite music.  This disc focuses on Chicago and Chess Record. It tells about Maxwell Avenue and about how it came to be the "Black+Jews=Blues" in the windy city. The organizing structure of this film is Rapper Chuck-D (of Public Enemy) came across an old Chess record (Electric Mudd) and contacted Marshall Chess (son of the founder of Chess Records) to learn more about the record. So Chess and D wonder about the city talking about and listening to old and new Chicago Blues and eventually build a bridge from the blues of old to the rapper of today--It all ends in really pretty amazing recording section where the original musicians from Electric Mudd (which is a psychedelic version of Muddy Water's music that was panned when it was released in the 1960s or 1970s) join forces with rappers of the early 2000s era,  It is a little slow in places in the middle..but it is still a fine ride. (Grade B to me)