MILL VALLEY 29: Valley of the Docs, World Cinema and Six-Degrees of Rob Nilsson
Contributed by Sara Schieron
Tuesday, 03 October 2006
With over 120 films screening and two films opening the festival, Mill
Valley's 29th annual run will offer some memorable gems to its
audiences, regardless of their cinema selectiveness. Opening night
(October 5) is a night of options, with Kevin Macdonald's THE LAST KING
OF SCOTLAND (10/5 7pm) playing opposite two separate screenings of the
fest's gala film, Anthony Minghella's BREAKING AND ENTERING (10/5 7pm).
Both films see wide theatrical release and, as is the benefit of big
fests, you can see them even before America even hears about a
QuickTime teaser trailer. Additionally, Forest Whitaker from KING and
both Sydney Pollack and Robin Wright-Penn from BREAKING will be in
attendance.
Though MVFF will screen THE QUEEN (10/7 6:30pm, 10/9 9:30p), and BABEL (10/8 4pm), among other high profile films set for theatrical release in the coming year, Mill Valley's greatest offerings are their small, undistributed fair: the meat and potatoes of the fest, if you will.
True to tradition, MVFF is also offering a series of locally produced films, in celebration of the Bay Area Film community. Films like READ YOU LIKE A BOOK (10/13 9pm, 10/15 1:45pm) featuring Rob Nilsson and Danny Glover, and Rob Nilsson's newest film PAN (10/8 8pm), not only take place in the Bay Area, using professional and non-professional casts, but they deal with issues resonant with our local politics. READ YOU LIKE A BOOK features discussions about losing faith in the power of protest, after Berkeley in the 60's and how to survive the ubiquitous Corporate America. In counterbalance, CINE MANIFEST (10/8 6pm, 10/14 9:15pm) about the titular communist film collective from the 70's, enforces the Bay Areas political past by documenting the successes of the collective's filmmaking and communal living. Celebratory of the activist inclination, Berkeley's Connie Fields directed a six part series on America's activism against Apartheid. The fourth of the series, HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG? screens the 14th at 5, and the 15th at 6:30pm, and successfully reminds us that protest and dissent are patriotic acts and have changed our nation and our world.
MVFF"s Valley of the Docs category has been programmed to balance human interest and international politics. BLACK GOLD (10/8 2pm, 10/15 2pm), which opens at the Roxie later this fall, is a marvelously balanced doc about the damage the international coffee trade is having on Ethiopian farmers and their future of sustainability. Also about the importance conscientious commerce is DR. BRONNER'S MAGIC SOAPBOX 10/10 9:15pm, 10/11 9:15pm). A doc that begins as the life story of the inimitable founder of Bronner's 18-purpose, All-One, Peppermint Castile Soap, SOAPBOX eventually takes a turn to track Bronner's son, Ralph as he spreads humanity and soap to the common folk of America. It's good for your soul if ever a film could be. Though the most self-possessed of this lot of docs, WALKING TO WERNER (10/8 9pm, 10/15 7:15pm) depicts the endearing and meaningful journey of a filmmaker to "find" his inspiration. In homage to the film made by Werner Herzog in commemoration of his walk to his dying friend, film critic Lotte Eisner, WALKING TO WERNER tracks director Linas Phillips' 1,200 mile walk from Seattle to the home of Werner Herzog in Los Angeles.
Mill Valley's international assortment is also littered with stellar bits. MOON ON THE SNOW (10/14, 845pm, 10/15 5pm) is a slow and poignant exploration of memory set in a Swiss country chateau during a mother's decline. As their mother lays defenseless on her deathbed, her three children try to uncover the history she kept secret. Featuring Julie Depardieu and Nicolas Rossier (director of ARISTIDE AND THE ENDLESS REVOLUTION), it's a fun, moody pick for a stormy afternoon. Danish drama 1:1 (10/7 5:30pm, 10/11 4:30pm) is also good and interesting in that "aren't European films different" kind of way. 1:1 is a terse social drama about crime and racial tension in a modern day "council-estate" in Copenhagen. The direction in 1:1 is really interesting and the nature of conflict in the working class tenement, though familiarly routed in a fear of immigrants and minorities, plays out in ways that are less explicit than might be expected of an American release. This is, of course, part of why the film is so interesting.
Outside of the Tributes to guests as recognizable as Helen Mirren (10/7 6:30pm), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (10/8 4pm), and Tim Robins (10/11 6:30pm), the fest boasts a cadre of opulent, parties: some so lavish the festival guests are libel to attend. And who doesn't want to be able to sip martinis next to the only actress ever to play Two British Queens? Glamour abounds!
All available schedules, parties, events, film categories and filmmaker guest listings available at the Mill Valley Film Fest website at http://mvff.com/
BLACK GOLD Coming to the Roxie this season, BLACK GOLD is an internationally conscious documentary by UK doc team Mark and Nick Francis. Reporting in a style both slick and evocative of the sense of balance traditional to the BBC, BLACK GOLD explores the plight of the Ethiopian coffee farmer and the work of free trade union organizers in the context of the coffee market. The line separating the world of specialty coffee and the famine fraught reality of the coffee farm is astounding and represents an iron curtain of sorts that can also be found at the level of government. From the farm and trade coops, the filmmakers head to the WTO talks of 2003, where we see the first world countries quickly muscling out the third world in a brand of elitism that proves the struggle over coffee prices are in fact a symptom of a greater disease. Subtitled.
CINE MANIFEST About the left wing, film collective Cine Manifest, the film bearing the same name is a loving and honest honorarium to the work of the collective and it's members during and since their disbanding in the late 70's. Ideologically motivated and passionate, the seven filmmakers of Cine Manifest lived, worked and raised families collectively, following the Marxist model well, but like any band of artists, personal and professionals tensions grew until the seven determined it time to work apart. Filled with clips from near forgotten political pictures from the mid 70's,the film is a sweet and engaging tribute good for the film student and the cinefile.
DR. BRONNER'S MAGIC SOAPBOX As quirky as it is eclectic, Sara Lamm's look into the universe of the "All-One" Soap maker begins as a sweet reverie to a character that is at once admirable and at other times suspicious. Mixing older footage of the now deceased Dr. Bronner with recent footage of Bronner's son Ralph, Lamm goes through the kooky family stories into the ideology of the company and the agenda of the man known for his universally useful soap. Lamm begins with pieces of a puzzle and the way she puts them together feels at once undirected and at other times slow, but the agenda of the film seems to come full focus in the last 15 minutes, when a strange and profound conversation between Ralph Bronner and a sad pianist blossoms into an exposition on the virtues of being eccentric and seeing the world as a place bigger than your backyard. The politics of the soap company, what Ralph calls "Conscientious Capitalism" is a fully integrated method of managing labor and resources that is not only sustainable, it's humane. This film, like it's subject, could be the quiet and constant revolution the nation seeks.
HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG? Part four of a six-part TV style, documentary series, HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG? is a celebratory look at America's grass roots campaign against South African Apartheid from the 70's to the late 80's. Director Connie Field interviews a host of relevant activists, from Stanford Out of South Africa's Amanda Kemp to TransAfrica's Cecelie Counts, to international representative of Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Fields establishes America's widespread involvement in the abolition of Apartheid as an uphill battle with roots in Civil Rights. Barely a generation after the era of Civil Rights marches and protests, America hadn't forgotten the value of civil disobedience and citizens from Universities to unions banned together to instigate sanctions and embargo on South Africa. The film offers inspiring proof that protest and grass roots activism are patriotic actions and that the work of people can change the world.
1:1 Brilliantly directed by Annette Olesen, the film follows two family melodramas as they intersect and diverge under the roofs of a Danish public housing complex. Mie, the daughter of a Danish social worker, and Shadi the son of a Palestinian cab driver, appear to be a happy teenage couple. When Mie's brother Per is found beaten and unconscious on the street, the complex degrades to rumors and fear. Per's friends go out seeking "an eye for an eye," but they don't honestly plan to take their retribution out on a Dane. Amidst requests by her family to move away, Mie's mother is the only character who holds to her own set of floor plans and chooses to stay in the complex. Olesen makes repeated visual reference to the blue prints of the utopian, 50's era "council-estate" and compares these idyllic floor plans to the locations and events that actually take place today - showing that our ideals, our actions and our plans could stand some revision.
GRETCHEN (This one's my favorite feature narrative in fest and I'm telling the world to go see it.) A crossbreeding of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, (but far more personal and affirming) GRETCHEN has an awkward beauty that is as timeless as it is stuck in the mid'80's. GRETCHEN's title character is suffering through adolescence. She's sensitive and seeking a love that is as confusing to her as it is to us...until we meet her father. Quiet and offbeat, GRETCHEN's is layered with beautifully awkward moments. My favorite scene has to be her gesture of understanding with her second love. In an art class he's written the word "Fuck" on a piece of cardboard with charcoal. Sent away from class, she seeks him out to give him a corresponding piece of cardboard that reads "you." From there, it's all rose thorns. One smell's brilliance during the stalwart, long shots that let drama play out in slapstick proportions. Writer director Steve Collins has made a strange and virulent elegy to adolescence: one of discomfort, nostalgia and very touching absurdity. I laughed in shock and awe.
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