![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakActually, I watched Andrzej Wajda's Walesa: Man of Hope in between these two, which was a good thing, because while it's not a must but an entertaining biopic, it provided a breath of air between emotional pummelling by more original films for me. If you want a review, basically: what he said .
On to more directing debuts which are currently going through the film festival circuits, only one of which has already a release date and a distributor but both deserve to be watched by many people of many nations:
L'Chaim!: The title is a pun between the Jewish toast "To Life!" and the name of the subject of this captivating documentary, Chaim Lubelwski, shot by his cousin, first time director Elkan Spiller, over a period of about seven years, according to the Q & A afterwards. At its heart is the relationship between Chaim and his mother (Ne)Chuma, who was a concentration camp survivor (as was his father; their parents and a good deal of the rest of the family perished), whom he took devoted care of until she died at age 97. The movie follows Chaim between Antwerp - where he lived with his mother, because the climate in Israel was too hot for her -, and Israel, where he also spent and spends part of the time. He used to travel the world as a young man, seeing no point in regular life and employment, and still manages to be both a hippie and religious, passionate about chess, dope (Antwerp in Belgium also had the advantage of being close to Holland, where you can get it legit) and above all his parents. At the start of the film, his sister Lotti had died of an overdose which the mother never found out because he pretended to her Lotti was in a rehab clinic in Israel; the truth, says Chaim, would have been unbearable to Chuma, who at night when insomniac talked to her parents all the time. Chuma in the first half of the film is coherent and alert, and she and Chaim make each other laugh repeatedly, but the sense of what was done to her and her family is there all the time, too. Late in the film, there is a point where she sings the first few lines of our former national anthem (explanatory note for non-Germans about the national anthem: post World War II, the national anthem as sung by Germans starts with the third verse - "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit" etc. -; the first verse, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" etc. having been irrevocably tainted by the Nazis, it goesn't get sung by anyone but Neonazis, or American and British tourists on occasion who make one cringe that way; but of course the original form was used pre-Nazis already by both the second Empire and the Weimar Republic), and adds "we believed that; we were doing good, weren't we? But they beat us, they beat us and killed and why...". And the entire horror of the Holocaust and its legacy hit me all over again. The film is very much about what it means to be the child (the by now senior-citizen-aged child) of a Holocaust survivor. Chuma was born in Poland, but she and Chaim - as well as Chaim and his cousin Elkan, the director, who lives in Cologne - talk German to each other -; there's the occasonal Hebrew and Jiddish in Israel and New York, and some English and French later when Chaim visits friends in France, but mostly the film is in German, and it made the emotional rawness of such scenes as Chuma's memories or later, after her death, Chaim's loss hit me double and triple. Also, in a different way, the humor with Chaim's chatty interactions with everyone, and that sense of warmth in the voice. For the Q & A after the film, we got both the director, Elkan Spiller, and Chaim Lubelswiski himself, and it was there as well. (He also got to comment on the film, which he'd seen for the first time during this festival; he said the only thing he wished his cousin hadn't filmed were the scenes from his mother's funeral; at the time, he was too out of it to notice but now they feel too intimate to have on film. The rest was okay for him since having a relation around with a camera wasn't that unusual; it happens, in families.) The film strikes a delicate balance: there is no pat assurance of an happily ever after because Chaim's central focus in life was his mother, and with 70 something there won't be a new one, and he says he's "vegitating", but when in the final scenes you watch him playing chess, meeting friends and contemplating nature, you're glad this remarkable person is still around. Since this is the film without a general release date (yet), I hope the festival will get it the necessary attention from the companies because it's certainly so very much worth watching.
White Shadow: shot in Tanzania, starring exclusively Tanzanian actors (professionals and lay people), with an Israeli Berlin based director, Noaz Deshe, and both Italian and German money involved in the production, so it's tricky to name a country of origin, but: it's disturbing and gruelling and captivating. Sometimes hard to watch, both because of the content and the style - it's not linear in the middle section, and frequently makes you feel trapped in a hallucination -, which, however, matches the point of view, that of teenage boy Alias who is one of the ca. 150 000 albinos in Tanzania and who has to watch his father, also an albino, getting slaughtered in the opening minutes. The lucrative trade with albino body parts is a real problem, to use a awfully euphemistic term, not just in Tanzania but all over East Africa. Post-flm, the director, present for a Q & A, said the most recent known (and there are far more unknown than known) case in Tanzania happened only two weeks ago, and one of the people in the film's production was approached with a "can you get me one of the albinos?" question. The young actor playing the main character, Hamasi Bazili, was 15 at the time of shooting, and had a backstory not dissimilar from his character in that he, too, had to flee his village and go to the city. He also was abandoned by his father, while in the movie Alias' mother, fearing for his safety, sends him with her brother in the big city (not named, but presumably Daar-as-Salaam). Alias' uncle has debts which gave me a bad feeling from the start, and while Alias temporarily ends up in a community with some other albino children and also has a tentative romance with his cousin Antoinette - their reconciliation scene in the middle of the big city garbage heaps which are scavanged for useful computer parts by traders, and Alias' playing with his friend, the Albino child Salum, are among the film's brief joyful interludes where Alias has the chance to be just a kid - , but the sense of menace waiting never really leaves. And sure enough, the hunters are there.... While this movie has some terrible things to say, it is, amazingly enough, anything but cynical. It's one of the very few stories I can think of where the big catharsis, in as much as there is one, is for the main character to not do what's been done to him. It is, like I said, not an easy to watch, and definitely not one where you can go on to have pizza afterwards. But it's definitely one watching nonetheless.
Sidenote: I couldn't help but wonder about the main actor and what future he'll have because I thought: he's so good in this, but how many roles are there for an adolescent albino Tanzanian actor? Then again, the director during the Q & A mentioned that the adult actor who plays his father at the start of the movie, Tito D. Ntanga, leads an acting/dancing/storytelling company for albinos in Tanzania. So there is a possible professional future, and that's good to know - if he won't become one of the victims of the body parts trade.
On to more directing debuts which are currently going through the film festival circuits, only one of which has already a release date and a distributor but both deserve to be watched by many people of many nations:
L'Chaim!: The title is a pun between the Jewish toast "To Life!" and the name of the subject of this captivating documentary, Chaim Lubelwski, shot by his cousin, first time director Elkan Spiller, over a period of about seven years, according to the Q & A afterwards. At its heart is the relationship between Chaim and his mother (Ne)Chuma, who was a concentration camp survivor (as was his father; their parents and a good deal of the rest of the family perished), whom he took devoted care of until she died at age 97. The movie follows Chaim between Antwerp - where he lived with his mother, because the climate in Israel was too hot for her -, and Israel, where he also spent and spends part of the time. He used to travel the world as a young man, seeing no point in regular life and employment, and still manages to be both a hippie and religious, passionate about chess, dope (Antwerp in Belgium also had the advantage of being close to Holland, where you can get it legit) and above all his parents. At the start of the film, his sister Lotti had died of an overdose which the mother never found out because he pretended to her Lotti was in a rehab clinic in Israel; the truth, says Chaim, would have been unbearable to Chuma, who at night when insomniac talked to her parents all the time. Chuma in the first half of the film is coherent and alert, and she and Chaim make each other laugh repeatedly, but the sense of what was done to her and her family is there all the time, too. Late in the film, there is a point where she sings the first few lines of our former national anthem (explanatory note for non-Germans about the national anthem: post World War II, the national anthem as sung by Germans starts with the third verse - "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit" etc. -; the first verse, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" etc. having been irrevocably tainted by the Nazis, it goesn't get sung by anyone but Neonazis, or American and British tourists on occasion who make one cringe that way; but of course the original form was used pre-Nazis already by both the second Empire and the Weimar Republic), and adds "we believed that; we were doing good, weren't we? But they beat us, they beat us and killed and why...". And the entire horror of the Holocaust and its legacy hit me all over again. The film is very much about what it means to be the child (the by now senior-citizen-aged child) of a Holocaust survivor. Chuma was born in Poland, but she and Chaim - as well as Chaim and his cousin Elkan, the director, who lives in Cologne - talk German to each other -; there's the occasonal Hebrew and Jiddish in Israel and New York, and some English and French later when Chaim visits friends in France, but mostly the film is in German, and it made the emotional rawness of such scenes as Chuma's memories or later, after her death, Chaim's loss hit me double and triple. Also, in a different way, the humor with Chaim's chatty interactions with everyone, and that sense of warmth in the voice. For the Q & A after the film, we got both the director, Elkan Spiller, and Chaim Lubelswiski himself, and it was there as well. (He also got to comment on the film, which he'd seen for the first time during this festival; he said the only thing he wished his cousin hadn't filmed were the scenes from his mother's funeral; at the time, he was too out of it to notice but now they feel too intimate to have on film. The rest was okay for him since having a relation around with a camera wasn't that unusual; it happens, in families.) The film strikes a delicate balance: there is no pat assurance of an happily ever after because Chaim's central focus in life was his mother, and with 70 something there won't be a new one, and he says he's "vegitating", but when in the final scenes you watch him playing chess, meeting friends and contemplating nature, you're glad this remarkable person is still around. Since this is the film without a general release date (yet), I hope the festival will get it the necessary attention from the companies because it's certainly so very much worth watching.
White Shadow: shot in Tanzania, starring exclusively Tanzanian actors (professionals and lay people), with an Israeli Berlin based director, Noaz Deshe, and both Italian and German money involved in the production, so it's tricky to name a country of origin, but: it's disturbing and gruelling and captivating. Sometimes hard to watch, both because of the content and the style - it's not linear in the middle section, and frequently makes you feel trapped in a hallucination -, which, however, matches the point of view, that of teenage boy Alias who is one of the ca. 150 000 albinos in Tanzania and who has to watch his father, also an albino, getting slaughtered in the opening minutes. The lucrative trade with albino body parts is a real problem, to use a awfully euphemistic term, not just in Tanzania but all over East Africa. Post-flm, the director, present for a Q & A, said the most recent known (and there are far more unknown than known) case in Tanzania happened only two weeks ago, and one of the people in the film's production was approached with a "can you get me one of the albinos?" question. The young actor playing the main character, Hamasi Bazili, was 15 at the time of shooting, and had a backstory not dissimilar from his character in that he, too, had to flee his village and go to the city. He also was abandoned by his father, while in the movie Alias' mother, fearing for his safety, sends him with her brother in the big city (not named, but presumably Daar-as-Salaam). Alias' uncle has debts which gave me a bad feeling from the start, and while Alias temporarily ends up in a community with some other albino children and also has a tentative romance with his cousin Antoinette - their reconciliation scene in the middle of the big city garbage heaps which are scavanged for useful computer parts by traders, and Alias' playing with his friend, the Albino child Salum, are among the film's brief joyful interludes where Alias has the chance to be just a kid - , but the sense of menace waiting never really leaves. And sure enough, the hunters are there.... While this movie has some terrible things to say, it is, amazingly enough, anything but cynical. It's one of the very few stories I can think of where the big catharsis, in as much as there is one, is for the main character to not do what's been done to him. It is, like I said, not an easy to watch, and definitely not one where you can go on to have pizza afterwards. But it's definitely one watching nonetheless.
Sidenote: I couldn't help but wonder about the main actor and what future he'll have because I thought: he's so good in this, but how many roles are there for an adolescent albino Tanzanian actor? Then again, the director during the Q & A mentioned that the adult actor who plays his father at the start of the movie, Tito D. Ntanga, leads an acting/dancing/storytelling company for albinos in Tanzania. So there is a possible professional future, and that's good to know - if he won't become one of the victims of the body parts trade.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-03 07:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-03 12:40 pm (UTC)