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Hooksexup @ Sundance

January 19-29, 2006

by Bilge Ebiri

Epilogue
1/29/2006 9:00:00 PM

Jeffrey Wells is characteristically baffled by the final awards.

Todd McCarthy brings the pain, taking the Sundance fest to task for…well, pretty much everything. Ouch. Sounds like somebody had a pretty rotten time.

Attention, Dudes Who Won Awards Last Night. Don’t get too excited.

Half Nelson gets bought.

Since everyone’s so pissed about how frivolous the Sundance Film Festival has become, I figured I’d end this thing on a serious note. Just kidding.

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Final Drive-Bys...
1/29/2006 7:30:00 PM

There are some other films I saw from Sundance, but after something like 16,000 words in ten days, it’s time to wrap this puppy up. If the others get released, I’ll review them then. For now, enjoy.

Cargo (dir. Clive Gordon)

A perfect example of how to completely lose your audience with a piss-poor ending. Clive Gordon’s polished suspense film begins in Africa, where a young backpacker has his passport taken away by some tough-guy cops. Desperate to get out of the country, he stows away on a seedy ship headed for Europe, captained by Peter Mullan (I could have told him this was a bad idea) and crewed by a thoroughly unpleasant bunch of sailors. Things go bump in the night, the ship’s cargo of creepy birds squawks up a storm, people disappear, people go mad, strange pictures pop up, and the crew’s favorite hazing ritual seems to involve making chicken sounds at their object of scorn until said object breaks down and whines like a little girl. Somebody’s hiding something, that’s for sure. You’d think that after expertly turning the tension nob, and even dosing us with a good bit of surreal discord, director Gordon and director Paul Laverty would have a spine-chiling ending in store that would, y’know, acknowledge some of what you’ve been watching for the past hour and a half, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Dead wrong. Note: My feelings about the film might have been adversely affected by the mutinous shuttle bus ride back to Main Street after the screening. Those were some pissed-off patrons. Jesus.

Salvage (dir. Jeff and Josh Crook)

Another midnight screening, which is pretty much exactly where this cheapazoid DV-shot horror flick belongs. I say that, of course, with the best of intentions. In many ways, it’s strangely impressive work – the Brothers Crook certainly know where to put their camera to tell the story. But the story is a pretty standard-issue slasher flick -- a girl keeps dreaming that a creepy psycho from the salvage yard is killing her and her boyfriend -- notable primarily for the fact that these guys clearly did this thing on a fraction of a dime. That said, it’s got likeable leads, particularly Lauren Currie Lewis as the chief damsel in distress. Seems destined for midnight cult status -- which can be a mixed blessing, as it’ll play to an audience composed mainly of people who won’t have the patience for the electric edge of cheap digital video and other no-budget trappings. Nevertheless, I found myself curiously entertained.

The Secret Life of Words (dir. Isabel Coixet)

If you’ve got a hackneyed conceit, you better make sure you have actors that will bring enough conviction to offset the clichés. The victim (Tim Robbins) of a horrid oilrig fire is nursed back to health on the high seas by a mysterious, Eastern-European nurse (Sarah Polley). Through long discussions, our heroes gradually reveal their lives to one another; of course, it turns out there’s a serious reason why Polley’s character seems so reluctant to discuss her past. There’s nothing actually new here, but much like director Coixet’s previous film, My Life Without Me, Polley’s supernaturally compelling performance holds things together. Robbins is also great, but I suspect that select crew of detractors who’ve been down on him since Mystic River will be less than pleased. The central flaw of the film, however, turns out to be not the fairly obvious “plot,” but the fact that the trajectory of revelation eventually turns Words into a very different film, about very different subjects. (I'd reveal it, but that would be a bona-fide spoiler; turns out this thing's a mystery.) And I’m not sure Coixet is ever able to reconcile her film's two very different halves.

American Blackout (dir. Ian Inaba)
I approach these types of political documentaries these days with serious trepidation. I’m as pissed off at the Bushies as much as anyone, but the sooner America’s documentary filmmakers cease and desist trying to half-heartedly prove that the election in Florida was stolen, the better. (Not because it wasn’t stolen, but because the same old arguments get us nowhere. Just look at 2004.) American Blackout initially goes through the usual hit parade of allegations, and when it’s got its foot firmly in Robert Greenwald territory (see also Outfoxed, Unprecedented, Uncovered, and Unconstitutional) it pretty much blows.

But amazingly, it turns out that this is not just another by-the-book lefty agitation flick. At least, not entirely. Its primary concern is African-American Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, she of the totally-taken-out-of-context accusations that Dubya knew about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time. Flayed unjustly on the ceaseless cable news bandwagon for her statements, McKinney found herself in a deadly political race where Republican voters were encouraged to switch sides and vote for her opponent in the Democratic primary. When American Blackout chooses to focus on the always-engaging McKinney and her electoral battles, it’s fascinating – a verite political doc along the lines of Pennebaker and Hegedus’s seminal The War Room. Alas, this also makes its occasional trotting out of the usual paranoid talking points that much more of a buzzkill. However, it's better than it has any right to be...which is sadly still not as good as I wish it were. Try and figure that one out.

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Forget the Camera: An Interview with James Longley
1/29/2006 4:51:16 PM

Iraq in Fragments director James Longley

I first met James Longley at the 2003 Istanbul Film Festival, where we both had films screening. It was April, and the first, hot, brief phase of the American invasion of Iraq was coming to an end. Longley, who had been in Iraq preparing to film a documentary on “the lives of average Iraqis,” had left the country for security reasons right as the invasion was starting, and was now eager to go back in. The result of his work was Iraq in Fragments (my review is here), which premiered at Sundance to great acclaim, and which last night won three separate awards for the 33-year-old filmmaker (for direction, cinematography, and editing).

Fragments is perhaps less politically confrontational a film than Longley’s previous documentary, Gaza Strip (to get an idea of how controversial the earlier film is, check out its Amazon.com page here.) It’s also a surprisingly poetic, expressively filmed work that is at times immersive, reflective, and disconcerting.

The following is a Q&A I did with James Longley as the festival was starting up.

Describe your working method. I’m amazed by the fact that through so much of your footage, no one ever seems to look at the camera.

It’s a stylistic decision. First, you decide that you want to make a film where it’s as if the lens is not present -- as if you’re just there without a camera. Once you make that decision, you do everything it takes to get to that point where people are no longer looking at you. And usually it involves just shooting a lot of material and spending a lot of time with the subjects, so they’re at total ease around you.

How though are you able to spend so much time with your subjects?

Because I was producing the shooting period myself, I was completely independent. I was the director, the producer, the cinematographer, and the soundman. I worked with a local translator, usually just a university student. So I didn’t have to ask anyone for permission to keep on filming. As long as I had a little royalty check coming in every month from the Gaza Strip DVD sales, I could stay there. Because I had all that time, and because I had made that decision, I was able to do it.

Didn’t you ever feel threatened?

Yes. I received some death threats -- not directly, but indirectly. Three different times, I was told, “You have to stop filming here, or they’re going to kill you.” It’s good that they tell you, actually -- because a lot of people weren’t given that warning. I think around 65 journalists have been killed in Iraq. It’s the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, certainly. More journalists have been killed in Iraq in the first two years of this conflict than were killed in the entire Vietnam War, for example. And it’s not over yet.

While the American occupation is always present in Iraq in Fragments, it’s rarely the main focus of the story.

Americans like to hear about Americans. I think we’re a really inward looking society. Before I went into Iraq, I wanted to make a film about ordinary Iraqi people. I had contacts with people in the Ministry of Information and the Foreign Ministry. I tried to convince them it’d be good for the country for people on the outside to know more about Iraq.

But like most dictatorships, the Baathist regime didn’t care much about filmmaking or documentaries, or even their own population. It’s all about maintaining power. And on a micro level, it’s about individual people inside the regime who don’t want to get in any trouble with the machine of the state. It’s a lot less risky for them to not help you. The longer they can string you along, the better.

Sounds like a Hollywood studio.

[Laughs] It’s exactly the same! The difference between a Hollywood studio and the Sadam Hussein regime is less than either of us would like to believe, I think.

You seem drawn to children for your work – not just in Iraq in Fragments but also in Gaza Strip and your short, Portrait of Boy with Dog.

They’re better subjects for documentaries. They’re much less self-conscious and forget the camera faster than adults. In most cultures, adults don’t want you to hang out with them for nine months or a year. They might be polite about it, but at some point they’re going to be doing stuff they don’t want you to film. A child is fairly innocent. And it’s fascinating for them to have someone paying so much attention to them.

The child in the first episode, his father was missing, his mother had been thrown from the roof of he house and had brain damage. He was shy and introverted, but at the same time he had to grow up fast. By the time I’m filming him, he’s already been working with adults for six years of his life. He’s already taken on the body language of these adult auto workers. At the same time, he is a child. That still comes through in different ways. That’s what made him such a fascinating character.

The political perspective of Iraq in Fragments seems less confrontational than your previous film, Gaza Strip. Was that a conscious decision?

When I was filming Gaza Strip, it was the beginning of the second Intifadah, and the situation was a lot more polarized. The Gaza Strip is this little stretch of land with a million and a half people in it. They all knew that their biggest problem in 2001 was the Israeli occupation. You were never going to get people in the Gaza Strip saying, “You know, the Israeli occupation is fine.” Whereas in Iraq, there are people who will say that the US occupation of the country is fine.

I think Iraq in Fragments has a lot of politics in it, but it’s also more diverse. There wasn’t much diversity of opinion in the Gaza Strip. The material I was able to shoot in that film just by chance happened to be rather dramatic -- bulldozers coming in and demolishing houses and children being shot at on their way home from school. When I was in Iraq, I would have liked to have filmed in places like Fallujah and Ramadi while they were under siege by the US military. You would have had more of a sense of the intensity of feeling in the country.

The second chapter, set in Shiite Najaf, certainly seems to represent a lot of that chaos and intensity.

That intensity is there in the second chapter, but there’s a segment of the story that’s happening in Iraq that’s still not represented in the film. And that’s the Sunni Wahabbi insurgency. It’s simply not possible for someone like me to go and film there, security-wise. I mean, there were Palestinian medical students from Canada who were getting kidnapped by the insurgency when they went to volunteer at the hospital in Falluja. So myself, as an American filmmaker, I wouldn’t have been safe at all.

So, do you regret not having shot more in Iraq?

Bear in mind, I have 300 hours of material. I have three whole stories -- perfectly interesting, good stories -- that aren’t in the film. One of them, we actually edited a full 30 minute version of it. You’ll notice in the film that there are no main characters who are women. And the chapter that was cut out of the film has a woman main character. It’s a really strong, character-driven chapter. But it’s not there, so it looks like Iraq is just men and boys.

Can you describe what was cut out?

The full chapter we edited was about a woman living south of Baghdad on a small farm, with a mud-brick house and seven children. She was one of two wives. One of her children, a ten-year-old boy, had contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion during the Saddam Hussein regime. That chapter was about her struggle to get better health care from the Ministry of Health. It had her fighting with the Ministry, as well as her thoughts on the war, along with some very wise words on the occupation and resistance. All very interesting, and very beautiful scenes out on the farm. 40 hours of footage, filmed over nine months. Completely cut out of the film!
I also filmed many hours of interviews with survivors of the 1988 Anfal campaign, Saddam’s extermination campaign against the Kurds in the North. 150,000 people, it is said, were killed. I have a lot of first person accounts of people being rounded up out of those villages and taken to different camps. I have these interviews with these old men and women who were held in this camp near the Saudi border, in the desert. The Anfal campaign was not a very well documented event in the West. When it was taking place, the US was still backing Saddam Hussein. And Western media, whether we like it or not, is influenced by Western politics.

The final chapter, set in the Kurdish North, seems to be much more peaceful than the rest of Iraq in Fragments. It ends the film on a hopeful note.

I might just as well have put that chapter at the beginning of my film, except that chronologically it’s after the other chapters. The optimism you’re getting from that chapter is really just the optimism of the subject. Things in that section of Iraq are more optimistic. The security situation is a hundred times better at least than Baghdad. They have a functioning government, their own ministerial system, their own education system. They’ve been like that for ten years.

The Kurds are hopeful that they’re going to have more and more autonomy, and perhaps independence. So they’re quite happy about the Americans occupying Iraq, because the occupation doesn’t manifest itself in the North. You’ll see it in the South and Central Iraq. But you won’t see the Humvees and the helicopters in the North of Iraq. You won’t see a tank driving through Main Street and going over the median and breaking all the flower pots. It just doesn’t happen. The Kurds are responsible for their own security. The US has an agreement with the Kurdish government that they have to consult them before carrying out any kind of security operation. Everything isn’t wonderful, of course – their parties are actually often politically oppressive and corrupt. But it’s a lot better than the rest of the country.

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Tick Tock...
1/29/2006 2:16:27 PM

I realize I’ve been slow in updating today, the final day of the fest and the final day (I think) of this blog. I promise, there will be posts. There may also be blood, I don’t know.

In the meantime, entertain yourself with more of these.

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Winners...
1/29/2006 12:04:10 AM

Quinceanera

Well, the awards are in, and here they are:

Grand Jury Prize, Drama: Quinceanera (Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer)

Grand Jury Prize, Documentary: God Grew Tired of Us (Christopher Quinn)

Audience Award, Drama: Quinceanera (Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer)

Audience Award, Documentary: God Grew Tired of Us (Christopher Quinn)

God Grew Tired of Us

Grand Jury Prize, Drama, World Cinema Competition: 13 Tzameti (Gela Babluani)

Audience Award, Drama, World Cinema Competition: No. 2 (Toa Fraser)

Grand Jury Prize, Documentary, World Cinema Competition: In the Pit (Juan Carlos Rulfo)

Audience Award, Documentary, World Cinema Section: DeNADIE (No One) (Tin Dirdamal)

Best Direction, Drama: Dito Montiel, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Prize, Drama: Hilary Brougher, Stephanie Daley

Best Cinematography, Drama: Tom Richmond, Right at Your Door

Iraq in Fragments

Best Direction, Documentary: James Longley, Iraq in Fragments

Best Cinematography, Documentary: James Longley, Iraq in Fragments

Best Editing, Documentary: James Longley, Billy McMillin, Fiona Otway, Iraq in Fragments

Special Jury Prize, Best Ensemble Performance: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Special Jury Prize for Independent Vision: In Between Days (So Yong Kim)

Special Jury Prize, Documentary: American Blackout (Michael Cain and Matt Radecki) and American Blackout (Ian Inaba)

Special World Drama Jury Prize: Eve and the Fire Horse (Julia Kwan)

Special World Documentary Jury Prize: Into Great Silence (Philip Groening) and Dear Pyongyang (Yonghi Yang)

Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking: Bugcrush (Carter Smith) and The Wraith of Cobble Hill (Adam Parrish King)

Jury Prize for International Short: The Natural Route (Alex Pastor, Spain)

Honorable mention: Before Dawn (Balint Kenyeres, Hungary), Preacher With an Unknown God (Rob VanAlkemade, U.S.), and Undressing My Mother (Ken Wardrop, Ireland).

Phew. That’s a lot of prizes. I’ve even seen a couple of these.

I’ve got a full-length interview with James Longley I’ll post tomorrow. Till then...

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Correspondent

Bilge Ebiri reviews films for New York magazine, and has written for Time Out New York, Entertainment Weekly and Popular Science, among others. He is also the writer and director of the ultra-low-budget indie feature comedy, New Guy.

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