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Live & Learn
Contributed by Sara Schieron
Saturday, 29 April 2006
LIVE & LEARN is an aptly named short film compilation about
characters who undergo live changing events. Rather diverse in
aesthetic and content, these shorts survived the rigorous process of
acceptance into this festival program. International in origin, these
shorts include both documentaries and narratives.
LOT 63, GRAVE C is a documentary by Sam Green, the director of THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND. Largely photographed in the Skyview Memorial cemetery in Vallejo, the film is a document for Meredith Hunter, the man who's stabbing tragically ended the Altamont Music Festival in 1969. A festival many hoped would be California's answer to Woodstock, Altamont took a tragic turn that didn't just symbolize the end of what should have been a peaceful celebration, it seemed to end the security and hope that surrounded the youth culture of the 60's. An addendum to the American verite classic GIMME SHELTER, the film attempts to complete mulitple plotlines, all of which can lead to the man who rests in an unmarked grave at the Skyview Memorial Cemetery: lot 63, grave c.
CHEATING DEATH, is the story of a "born again" crack dealer from Trinidad. Transported with his family to Canada when he was 14, Gyasi Ferdinand found a home in the streets and began selling drugs. After surviving four close range bullet wounds, Gyasi was literally and spiritually born again. Now, working to become a minister in his local church, Gyasi preaches to parishioners and talks at schools. Using dramatized reenactments and constant soundtrack, the film posits the question: "what is it to be born again". Though offering a circular path to "rebirth" is intelligent to say the least, the film takes a little longer than is needed to put it's point across.
LOST AND FOUND by Natalija Vekic follows Lolly, a pre-teen girl during an idyllic summer vacation. Living with her brother, Lolly covertly archives found objects around her town. When she finds a book at a junk shop with a letter in it, she decides to find the addressee and bring the lost item back to its owner. Learning the addressee, like Lolly, has lost her mother, the two share in grief and reverie for the lives of precious objects. Sweetly, because of the imagination of a 12 year old, all the detritus of the world is again given breath.
BIG GIRL by Renuka Jeyapalan tracks recalcitrant, 9-year-old Josephine, as she launches protest against her mother's new boyfriend. Intelligent, the boyfriend transforms her protest into a contest: the winner gets the mother to him/herself. Warm and bittersweet, the film is a beautiful exploration of the desires we have as children and how those desires betray gently betray us.
RAZAN, by Aslihan Unaldi, begins with the point of view of the camera as it captures the video threat of a suicide bomber. Outside of the assurances by her videographer that martyrs go to heaven, or the cautions of the man who straps her with bombs, Razan says little to give her emotions away. When she enters the subway at Hunter College, she can't bring herself to get on the train, and this creates an interesting tension because we want her to get it over with as much as we want her to turn around and go home. Unable to go through with it, she leaves the subway but not after the video threat has been turned into the local news station. The next morning, she goes to the subway, sees a surveillance officer, smiles, and passes safely onto the train. We're left understanding there is still much we don't know about the bombing.
LUCKY, a South African/British co-productions, was screened in Cinequest and won a good deal of attention with audiences, and for good reason. Named for its protagonist, Lucky is an AIDS orphan in a rural village. Excited by the prospects of becoming a man, Lucky is sent to his uncle in Cape Town for an education, and it takes him some time to be daunted by his uncle's neglect and selfishness. Given a tape made for him by his mother, the uncle leaves for work and tells Lucky not to talk to the Indian lady at the end of the hall because she'll "eat him with curry". As the uncle's tape player is broken and the only working tape player is with the Indian Widow, Lucky tries to make friends. After a bit of growing pain, the Widow accepts Lucky into her home. Alone and in need of each other, the two find unlikely safety in each other's company. The parallel of abandonment from disease (by Lucky's mother and the Widow's presumed husband) is a reminder of the devastation of the AIDS epidemic and the fine line that ties us to our breathing loved ones.
JELLYBABY is a great example of a UK (Irish, technically) comedy that refuses moralization. The protagonist (Jack) and his aptly named wife (Jill) have a baby. Only referred to as "the noise", Jack's baby is characterized as a relentlessly, hazardous, demon spawn. Jack is dryly aware of the unexpected consequences presented by "the noise". To offer his beloved Jill a weekly break, Jack takes the child out for a few hours every Saturday. He uses this time to cathartically list all the things he does that no regular 22 year old should be subjected to (male hair dye for example), and as he takes a sit with his screaming baby in the park, a hard of hearing middle aged father sits with his child and stroller alongside. When the blowhard father decides to chat up a young mother, Jack notices the identical appearance of their babies: same onesie, same hat, same stroller. The only distinction between is that Jack's screams and the blowhard's is stolidly silent. At this point, Jack realizes his golden opportunity. Unawares, Jill meets the new child and is so pleased by it's silence that Jill comes tumbling after.
Reportedly based on true events, I AM (NOT) VAN GOGH, is director David Russo's pitch to a recalcitrant arts board for a grant to make his film, I AM VAN GOGH. Integrating animations into rapidly edited sequences of fields and crowds moving, the film uses Russo's narration as he pleads with the grant board and explains what the film is about. "There's this mouth in the crowd", he says, as a the drawing of a disembodied mouth is animated moving through a crowd, synchronized with Russo's speech, "the mouth is disembodied and just moving through the crowd". What's funniest about the piece is its disinterest in reason or sense. The film flagrantly laughs at the possibility that it could be any kind of masterpiece, and gratefully, in the process, it has its moments of flawed beauty.
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