MONTHLY COLUMN: Yes, But is it Art?
(SCROLL DOWN FOR PREVIOUS MONTHS ARTICLES)
The 2004 San Francisco International Film Festival is on now, through April
29, and has tickets on sale. The SFIFF is an important annual event for the
San Francisco film community as well as a tremendous opportunity to meet peers
from around town, the country and around the world. The screenings and seminars
are world class. Dont be left out. See whats on the horizon. http://www.sffs.org
The Digital Independence conference, presented by ITVS, was a unique gathering of media makers, scholars, artists, NGOs, teachers and businesspeople to explore cultural expression interfacing with technology and the future. Art. Piracy, Funding, Journalism, Distribution, Mass Media, the Indie Film World, Privacy, Policy and new Storytelling were subjects of panels peopled by some of the best media minds in the country.
Conference sessions were mired deep in the fluorescent corporate bowels of the jukebox SF Marriott Hotel. After an overdose of language, inference, image and futurespeak, some assorted wisdom: "Were witnessing the death of mass media";"Without hard product no one will support your project, idea or story;"Our threat is not media, its the business model."
Oddly, one of the most provocative presentations was a casual late afternoon session by DJ Spooky, effectively summing up the conference by rapping a mix of commentary, images, music and vintage 1970s Marshall MacLuhan clips which proved remarkably prescient of our current overwhelmed media/advertising/news/propaganda mindscape.
Some Spookyisms: "Art is inescapably connected to politics. The U.S. is a
brand. Since theres no longer a need to control the land, control the imagination."
From Marshall MacLuhan: "Saturation is a distinct possibility. We may lose the
ability to be an individual human being. All forms of violence are a quest for
identity. You have to prove you are somebody. The threat to identity makes violence.
People are conditioned to want someone elses identity."
Again, DJ Spooky:"Identity is remixable. Always give yourself room to think
about the next thing, which will always get absorbed by the main culture. As
for branding: what interface? Own media, own films, dont be passive, be active.
Peer to peer culture only operates on cultures of scale." Random quotes overheard
in and out of panels:"The death of marketing will lead to the rise of collective
consciousness." "In an information society, everything is plentiful
except attention."After the novelty of tools wears off, break the interface
through community and real people." "Story is a critical point in
the transformation of lives." "It is a human right to communicate.""The
source of violence and oppression is you, the passive consumer. Think about
yourself as agents and work for change. Break the coming passive relationship."
Where does this leave us in 2004? In charge of our own destinies and stories.
The media available to tell stories has never been as varied and as cheap as
it is today. Even the distribution channels are far more expansive than ever
before. All of us can rationalize why we cant or shouldnt create our stories.
But the responsibility for those stories lies with us. And responsibility means
nothing more than the ability to respond. So make those stories and put them
out there, so others can respond.
The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival hosted over 120
films and video in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose. In San Francisco, the
Kabuki theater venue was frequently sold out, so the huge Castro Theater hosted
some very popular weekend programming. The SFIAFF chose to honor the groundbreaking
Chinese American actress Anna May Wong with a selection of her films, including
a stunning new print of SHANGHAI EXPRESS, the Josef von Sternberg film starring
the luminous Marlena Dietrich.
At the Castro, Chinese director Lou Yes (SUZHOU RIVER) PURPLE BUTTERFLY wove a stunning, atmospheric tale of ordinary Shanghai caught up in terrorism against the Japanese occupying their city. Mixing emotions and violence in a lush setting, Ye fractures linear time and place to reflect the surreal effect of war on human consciousness.
One of the most raucous Castro showings was KAL HO NAA HO, the Karan Johar and Nikhil Advanis Bollywood film, KAL HO NAA HO. twisted the standard Bollywood Indian locations for New York City, with exuberant dancing and singing on the not-so-mean streets. It was the usual happy and sad Bollywood ending, but I prefer Johar and Advanis, KUCH KUCH HOTAI HAI, shown at last years SFIAFF. Also of note was Kyoshi Kurasawas BRIGHT FUTURE, an ironic and metaphorically chilling look at dislocated youth in Tokyo.
If you havent seen Errol Morriss Academy Award winning documentary THE FOG OF WAR, by all means, head for the theater. Its a stab into the heart of policymakers like Robert McNamara who have given us such human efforts like: the firebombing of 90 Japanese cities in 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War and now our Iraq adventure. Some of the more frightening subtext of The Fog of War echoes from McNamaras own mouth. McNamara all but accuses the American people of allowing policymakers like him to get away with their often-terrible actions because of our own fears, which our power-greedy politicians play for their own shortsighted ends.
Keeping with the foreign adventurism theme, try and see BATTLE OF ALGIERS or rent the DVD. Battle is one of the most effective explorations of political violence in a revolutionary context. It raises as many questions as it answers. Also notable is Gregor Jordans Ned Kelly, an Australian epic movie about the 19th Century Irish mythic bandit or hero, starring Heath Ledger and Naomi Watts with almost a cameo by Geoffrey Rush. Ms. Watts and Mr. Ledger are well worth watching.
*****
Mill Valley Film Festival 2003 offered crisp fall cultural breezes with filmmakers showing new works, telling new stories and informally holding court outside theaters, in restaurants and at Mill Valley's Outdoor Art Club. MVFF's vibrant audiences grow more film savvy by the year, due in no small part to the excellent year-round programming of the incomparable Rafael Theater. This year's festival opened with a trio of independent offerings: Carl Franklin's OUT OF TIME, new director Tom Mc Carthy's THE STATION AGENT, now in current release, and John Sayles' CASA DE LOS BABYS. John Sayles thrives as an actor's filmmaker.
CASA DE LOS Babys' features a half-dozen vulnerable middle-aged women waiting out their Mexican residencies in an Acapulco hotel in order to adopt babies. Marcia Gay Harden's difficult, but sympathetic Nan, alternately acts catty and kind. Darryl Hannah's sweet Skipper subsumes anxiety through a regime of constant exercise and New Age platitudes. Maggie Gyllenhaal's Jennifer inhabits a constant upbeat tension that prevents her from falling apart. Lily Taylor's Leslie conceals immense vulnerability through brashness. Mary Steenbergen's sweet Gayle is the closest thing to a gently driving force in the movie. Unfortunately, Sayles doesn't really craft a compelling story out of all this waiting to jell all his acting talent, though CASA DE LOS BABYS is fine to watch and at times very emotional, especially Vanessa Martinez' monologue as a Mexican maid who tells of putting her own baby up for adoption.
In contrast, Canadian director Denys Arcand's tightly-scripted (best script
at Cannes 2003) THE BARBARIAN INVATIONS offers ensemble action in another well-paced
story of waiting for a death instead of newborn life. INVASIONS revisits many
characters from Arcand's award-winning 1986 the decline of the American Empire.
In INVASIONS, an academic, randy patriarch played by Remy Girard, has distanced
himself from friends and family until he finds out he's soon to die. Remy and
his estranged wealthy banker son, Stephane Rousseau, tangle at center stage
during this festive deathwatch, only bonding under the compelling force of mortality.
Superb ensemble playing evokes many varying emotional tones in INVASIONS with
humor taking precedence over the poignancy.
In SHATTERED GLASS, first time director Billy Ray exacts a compelling inquiry
into the nature of a character fiercely denying his own corruptibility. Based
on the true story of young New Republic Magazine writer, Stephen Glass, actor
Hayden Christiansen shines in Ray's smart script, invoking the audience's predilection
to identify with successes and struggles -- even as the face of his immense
and eventually overwhelming dishonesty. Peter Saarsguard, Hank Azaria and the
prolific Chloe Sevigny round out this subtle, wonderful cast. Peter Saarsguard
should be nominated for an Academy Award.
Australian Sue Brooks' JAPANESE STORY speaks to the real, rather than the perceived,
nature of filmmaking. Far from being a medium in the exclusive purvey of a director,
as William Goldman says, a good film must have at least eight principal craftspeople
working at the top of their game. Japanese Story is almost a two hander Toni
Collette and Gotaro Tsunashima wander the stark stunning deserts of western
Australia and bond into unlikely allies. I won't reveal the plot and its wonderful
turns. Superbly crafted in cinematography, editing, direction, sound, production
design and music, Japanese Story's acting is abrupt and truthful, confronting,
then transcending stereotypes.
Features garnering Buzz at MVFF include: Tunisian Nadia El Fani's BEDOUIN HACKER, Argentine Pablo Trapero's EL BONAERENSE, English director Peter Webber's GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, Neil Young's GREENDALE, Peter Hedges' PIECES OF APRIL, James Redford's SPIN, Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun's SPRINGTIME IN A SMALL TOWN, Elliot Greenbaum's ASSISTED LIVING and Christine Jeffs' SYLVIA.
Documentaries were strong this year. Local filmmakers Will Parinello and John Antonelli's DREAMING OF TIBET sold out screenings with their tale of Tibetans in exile. Brigitte Brault's AFGHANISTAN UNVEILED featured fourteen newly-liberated young Afghan women capturing remarkable digital video footage of the fierce legacy of haunted, impoverished land where women still experiencing cultural and gender strife amidst bare-bones survival. PRISONERS OF PARADISE charts the fall of German actor Kurt Gerron, a co-star of Marlene Deitrich's, whom the Nazi's persuaded to film their showpiece ghetto in exchange for not sending him to Auschwitz. Karina Epperliein's emotionally-charged WE ARE HERE TOGETHER charts a year in the life of the only youth-initiated charter high school in the country.
Among the short films, first time San Francisco filmmaker Susan Hoffman's fine mythic tale, SOUND OF A VOICE played in a program called WOMEN ON THE VERGE. Mill Valley always stages a lively series of panels about the state and craft of the film business. The Character Building panel was one of the most provocative, including filmmakers Peter Hedges (PIECES OF APRIL), Shrek director Vicky Jenson and ASSISTED LIVING writer-director Elliot Greenebaum. As far as writing goes, the panelists insisted: nobody is like you you have a distinct point of view of the world and a specific story to tell. Write stories that you would want to be told to you. What drives the character is what makes her consistent -- a conscious want, an unconscious need and then pursuing something throughout the film. Sometimes, what characters want is very simple, as in PIECES OF APRIL, where the main character just wants to cook a turkey. Remember, words on a page tend toward the universal because the reader can imagine his own unique king, whereas in film, the king is literally seen, so it's harder to achieve the universal. Elliot Greenebaum thought that the reason he made films is "to answer the question: why is being alive valuable?" Further, Greenbaum suggested that the cinema examines space and time and that location is a fantastic way to explore time. Think about it: the way that people move through and use space is cinema.
The panel also conceded that character building in screenwriting overlaps into the acting field. Some of the best advice came from Peter Hedges quoting the acting master Sanford Meisner, who said: "Character is how you do what you do -- think about what you do," and "The most important person in the room is the other person you're acting with, and If you don't know what to say, then WAIT, and Anything worth doing well will take twenty years to do."
So if it takes twenty years to make something well, then we best get on with the storytelling. The films and panels this fall at Mill Valley Film Festival prove that film/video world is experiencing a time of tremendous flux and transition. Technological challenges are solved weekly. Editing systems and cameras that cost a hundred thousand dollars ten years ago are available for a few thousand dollars. Stories, however, remain universally unique, though they are difficult to capture well. You have to imagine and act out and tell and edit your stories over and over to get them right. Storytelling is the process of transmitting universal truths on to the next generation, so whether acting or writing or filmmaking what cultural truths that will be passed down, is once again in the hands of each maker.
What can I say about the 2003 San Francisco International Film Festival? If you're a filmmaker or an actor, it was two weeks of fine craft, two weeks to see an impossible number of films and this year, two weeks of war. Some flash points, some images, some films: In the SFIFF Hospitality Suite at the Kabuki at the beginning of the festival (and the end of the formal ground war in Iraq) Michel Ciment, writer and director of the French film journal, Positif, passionately discussed the war with a number of French speakers including director Emmanuelle Bercot (CLEMENT). Like many foreigners, the French bemoaned the loss of objective journalism in America' under the cheerily biased coverage of Fox and MSNBC. I suggest that Iraq 2003 was the first true post-modern war that the full spectrum of views were instantaneously available on cable and satellite with Abu Dubai TV, Al-Jazzera, CNN, etc. and offer that it is the duty of the viewer to construct the narrative.
Today, more than ever, we are all bombarded with powerful, emotionally-laden imagery, selling us everything from toothpaste to movies and political empire. Now more than ever, the artist's duty to represent the truth is co-equal to the viewer's duty to sift out the truth from page and screen.
DOCUMENTARIES: This year's SFFIF documentaries were extremely strong.
The most powerful film I saw was BUS 174, director Jose Padilha's feature about a famous Rio de Janeiro bus hijacking. BUS 174 painted an intricate portrait of how the violence inflicted on one man's life ripples outwards, encompassing an entire society.
COMMANDANTE is graying Oliver Stone's marathon interview of Cuba's 75 year old Fidel Castro, who appears surprisingly benign and reasonable. COMMANDANTE also intercuts historical footage with the Castro interviews, providing powerful context.
Director Paul Devlin's POWER TRIP charts the American takeover of the power industry in the former Soviet state of Georgia. POWER TRIP offers both frightening (monthly power bills exceeding monthly wages) and comic insights (large industries collude with bureaucrats and won't pay) into this new beast of globalization.
San Francisco director S. Smith Patrick's THE CHILDREN OF IBDAA: TO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING won a Golden Gate Award for Best Bay Area Short Documentary. IBDAA charts the lives of Palestinian children struggling to express themselves politically and non-violently through their West Bank dance troupe.
Other worthy docs in SFIFF included: Best Documentary Feature, THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, Jennifer Dworkin's LOVE AND DIANE, MC5 A TESTIMONIAL, John Shenk and Megan Mylan's THE LOST BOYS OF SUDAN, which won Best Bay Area Documentary Feature and THE DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET, Kim Loginotto's searing look at the cultural reasons underlying female genital mutilation. CENTURY OF THE SELF, British director Adam Curtis' four hour BBC is a must-see, unveiling how governments from the Nazi's onward emotionally manipulated mass societies to maintain the status quo. The Freud family plays a provocative role.
DRAMATIC FEATURES: No single feature film at SFIFF emerged as singularly inspirational, but there was a strong and varied showing of new French films. This suggests that France's 10% movie admission tax that finances low budget (under 3 million $) films might not be a bad idea even in this country.
Lucas Belvaux' THE TRILOGY was quite interesting, an attempt to bridge the distance between feature film and series. THE TRILOGY'S three films included a thriller, a farce and a drama, with shifting protagonists and viewpoints forging a unique perspective of a provincial society reminiscent of The Alexandria Quartet.
Alain Corneau's FEAR AND TREMBLING charted the black comic journey of a dreamy red-haired Belgian girl into the mysterious and dark heart of a Japanese corporation. Another must see, subtly powerful.
Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST slyly charts an amnesiac's re-entry into the edge of society.
MUSIC FOR WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS, directed by Unni Straum, offered a poignant and hopeful look at a grieving Norwegian novelist and the Serbian musician whose vibrancy transforms her.
Some of the features garnering buzz at SFIFF included: HISTORIAS MINIMUS, GIRLIE, BLISSFULLY YOURS, THE BARONESS AND THE PIG, A PECK ON THE CHEEK AND WOMEN'S PRISON.
The Iraq war and the San Francisco International Film Festival, running side by side, simultaneously enforced the ideas that we are surrounded by images, are manipulated by images, create images, shatter and consume images. As artists - as actors and filmmakers - we continually explore this relationship between truth and image for the rest of the culture. And we have a powerful duty to reflect our perceptions back onto our audiences, no matter what they reveal about us, and about them.
It's an odd thing to be experiencing gorgeous spring weather while waiting
for a war and watching movies. Your sense of truth gets sorely tested, but that's
the realm of the actor and the filmmaker. To test your personal truths against
the universals is what we strive for. Unfortunately, the experience of war is
an all too intimate part of American lives and therefore part of our character
and our expressions. American culture is defined in many ways by armed conflict.
Artists must explore the complex issues and feelings that give rise to war.
How our day to day actions and emotions connect with larger social movements
is being driven home as the latest American conflict unfolds on television.
And how these powerful emotions find expression through the mediums of film
and television is our business.
A flurry of independent films were released this past month among them:
Gus Van Zant's GERRY is a powerful comments about the state of things in America
albeit in beautiful visual metaphor. The critics are split 50/50 on Gerry
(the intellectuals love it and the populars hate it) Unfortunately, Mick LaSalle
doomed the picture in San Francisco, so you may have to wait for video to throw
yourself up against this existential jewel of twenty-something men lost in the
desert.
David Cronenberg's SPIDER is a classic, beautifully acted feature about the
power of the mind to enfold horrors for decades. Ralph Fiennes adds another
stunning performance to a rich career his moment to moment work is as strong
as anyone working. With Miranda Richardson, Lynn Redgrave and Gabriel Byre supporting
Fiennes, you should brave the difficult subject matter and take this ride.
Belgians Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's THE SON carves another facet of modern life into a redeeming tale of a master woodworker embracing a delinquent apprentice. The Dardennes' gritty, claustrophobic realism is always suffused with so much humanity that their stories break your heart, Tremendously intricate character portraits are offered by Olivier Gourmet and Morgan Marinne.
AMANDLA is first-time director Lee Hirsch's film about the confluence of music and politics in the South African revolution. Stunning crowd footage, interviews with musicians and political events intercut to make a good but not great film about a great subject. The lyricism never really soars and the wonderful moments never build into that great drama of one of the 20th Century's greatest revolutions, though it wasn't for lack of budget.
Kurt Voss's DOWN AND OUT WITH THE DOLLS is a hip, hyperactive piece of Portland fluff about the Paper Dolls chick band. Dolls is a rags to riches to rags tale of basement rock, the wannabes and hangers-on with a great performance by Zoe Poledouris as lead singer Fauna.
Adam Shankman rightfully should have shanked one with the nearly-forgettable BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE Steve Martin's edge has almost collapsed under the weight of his mainstream Court Jester persona. Queen Latifah is wandering the Whoopi Goldberg path, submerging her identity into a PG cultural stereotype. But House will gross 100 Million, so who cares, right? Sequel anyone?
The 21st San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival ended this month. Successful as always, the Asian sold out many shows and filled up the Castro.
Gurinder Chadha's opening night film (and Sundance favorite) BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM is not to be missed. Beckham is a tight Bollywood melange of good-natured culture clash and good humor, satire and family drama. Like Chadha's earlier film Bhaji On the Beach, Anglo-Asian life is shown in all it's richness.
I've never specifically been a fan of Bollywood films, but Kuch Kuch, Hota Hai won my heart and the thousand others who viewed this three-hour extravaganza at the Castro. The trick with these good natured Bollywood pictures is that everything can be solved with a song and the marriage at the end will take care of everyone's problems.
Unfortunately, Mahesh Dattani's MANGO SOUFFLE that same night at the Castro was a textbook case of how not to direct a film: be the playwright and first-time director and listen to no one. I've actually seen the play and it's rather funny a quality that never made it to the screen.
A distinguished panel of filmmakers discussed the Intimate Art of DV filmmaking - SF's Rob Nilsson, Eric Byler (director of the wonderfully-acted Charlotte Sometimes) Greg Pak (Robot Stories) and surprise addition, Wayne Wang.
Other films garnering buzz at the 21st SFIAAFF were: Indonesian Riri Riza's mother-daughter story, ELIANA, ELIANA; Singaporean CeeK's romantic comedy CHICKEN RICE WAR; and Sundance favorite, Chinese director Ren Xiaoyao's UNKNOWN PLEASURES.
One of the only downsides to the Asian is that one of the most dynamic parts of the festival --the short film programs -- all sold out, so I couldn't see them. Maybe the Asian should consider packaging the short film programs and distributing them.
It's a strange vibrant time to be a film artist. So much is in the air, so many images, disturbing and poetic. So much life to make sense of, to feel and express, through your body and through your images. Be well, work well.
What is this mysterious thing we call presence? Actors make art and their living from intensely communicating the presence of a distinct human character flowing through their veins. Presence on stage or screen involves a deep recognition of a human being's truth, instantly perceived by the spectator's eye and ear. Presence implies a fearlessness that allow emotions to course through the body and manifest in the voice, posture, gesture and in the cinema most powerfully, through the eyes, the face and the hands.
The 2003 Berlin and Beyond Festival at the Castro offered new (and a few classic) films from Austria, Switzerland and Germany, which awarded me an opportunity the way actors employ presence in varying cinematic styles.
In director Caroline Link's award-winning NOWHERE IN AFRICA, a Jewish family flees from the Nazi's to Kenya during World War Two. Young daughter Regina (Lea Kurka) adapts easily into African life. A child actor offers a pure truth of presence without resorting to obvious acting techniques which can muddy the presence of older actors. This is a key for actors the looseness and simply purity of a child's expressions, voice, gestures and actions strongly committed to basic human objectives.
German director Ulrich Kohler's humorous BUNGALOW, a tale of 19 year old Paul's spiral into ennui, won Berlin and Beyond's Best First Feature Award. Actor Lennie Burmeister employs shambling postures, an expressionless voice and underplaying to evoke a teenager unable to commit to anything while at the mercy of his random desires.
DOG DAYS by Ulrich Seidel is a brutal indictment of suburban Austrian life during a heat wave. Many of the actors' ruthless characterizations find power in broad gestures and postures, combining absurd leisure costumes and overplayed looks to create a dark comedy of indifference.
In Doris Dorrie's NAKED, three couples strip away down to their outer (and inner) skins. The actors create a brittle sophistication of movement and gesture within a comic framework of articulate speech, stylized sets and revealing costume.
Director Andre Dresden's GRILL POINT explores a working class suburbia via video camera in documentary style that explores infidelity among friends. The ordinariness underlying this life is emphasized by the actors rote movements shuttling through their daily tasks of work and family. Fortunately, the actors find moments of epiphany that shine brilliantly, contrasting their plodding humanity with tiny slices of truth that are both universal and endearing.
SOMETHING TO REMIND ME OFby Christian Petzold mines the Hitchcock genre of psychological thriller with a touch of German comedy. Nina Hoss employs the requisite Sir Alfred femme fatale tools cool, blonde, stylish, mysterious, evasive to startling effect before the illusion fails from a less than perfect ending and a tone that never really deepens into dread.
Ernst Marischka's1955 film SISSI is a charming and airy reworking of the Cinderella myth. Romy Schneider plays a Bavarian Princess who meets, falls in love and marries the Austrian emperor. Ms. Schneider is luminous in voice and gesture, breezing through this costume epic with an appealing lightness.
Yes Marlene Deitrich was popular before the BLUE ANGEL in a silent film with a stunning original organ score by Dennis James. The Woman Men Yearn For shows the beginnings of classic Deitrich the steady and unwavering gaze, the luminous halo of light on her hair, the classic stillness of gestures, the lush costumes, the sheer star power.
All of these techniques use the strength of the actor's presence to seek the same result. Whether screen goddess or ordinary people the powerful truth of what a human being is and could possibly be emanates from the actor and inspires the audience.
Two recent film festivals captured some of the feelings currently being expressed outside the Hollywood mainstream flooding our screens this holiday season. As always, it's important to be explorative in your film going if nothing more than to challenge the ideas and beliefs you hold.
The Arab Film Festival celebrated its 6th year of presenting a different take to Bay Area audiences. Their offerings continue year-round in monthly screenings at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. For your own sanity and clarity after wading through the often biased and usually incomplete daily network news on the Middle East, it's helpful to listen to quieter, deeper voices.
Palestinian director Elia Suleiman's DIVINE INTERVENTION, (reviewed in this column last month) was one of the jewels of the festival with its searing love story and iconoclastic flights of odd parallels, intersections and fantastic imagination.
American James Longley's feature documentary GAZA STRIP is simply not to be missed. This film's evocative, impressionistic voyage through this teeming war zone transports the viewer like a helicopter into the heart of daily Palestinian life, a life struggling against the blind face of a brutal occupation. Beautifully shot in digital and transferred to film, the sights and brilliantly captured sounds of Gaza will haunt you for days.
The Arab festival also honored the great husband and wife filmmaking team of Mai Masari and Jean Chamoun, featuring their works documenting struggles against occupation: HANAN ASHRAWI: A WOMAN OF HER TIMES, FRONTIERS OF DREAMS and FEARS AND SUSPENDED DREAMS, as well as Jean Chamoun's haunting new feature about the Lebanese civil war, IN THE SHADOWS OF THE CITY, which should garner distribution. Local filmmaker S. Smith Patrick's half-hour documentary CHILDREN OF IBDAA: TO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING, also played the festival.
Tom Weidlinger's A DREAM IN HANOI opened the 26th annual Film Arts Festival with a bang. This film documents a Vietnamese-American co-production of Shakespeare's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM played in both Vietnamese and English. The "play within a film" reflects Shakespeare's theme of transcending cultural, personal and linguistic misunderstandings which paving the way for deeper connection. For those of us in show business, we get the added bonus of objectively watching actors in the rehearsal process with all the warts of ego exposed.
For my money, the hit of the festival was local hero Brien Burrough's new feature film, SECURITY. Burroughs, who is thoroughly committed to San Francisco, investigates the premise that dialogue and story can evolve through actors' exploration of character using improvisation. SECURITY is a dark, often hilarious tale of two graveyard security guards bumbling their way through a chocolate factory mystery. Stephen Kearin and Tim Orr, veterans of the Bay Area Theatersports improv-mafia are often stunning and always deep into the clueless struggling of their very human characters. Stephen Kearin uses a non-judgmental commitment to moment to moment truth and creates so much unconscious dignity for his comically unsympathetic character's by-the-book life that the audience experiences a surprising compassion for his very human struggle.
Also garnering buzz around the festival was Nancy Kelly's ITVS-funded DOWNSIDE UP, exploring the effects of the big time art world revitalizing and shifting the norms of the formerly working class town of North Adams, Massachusetts.
Tim Green's controversial WEATHER UNDERGROUND closed the FAF festival. It's provocative story documents a radical faction of the 1960's-70's Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, who engineered dozens of non-injury bombings in protest of social injustice and the war in Vietnam. The bombers were never caught but voluntarily gave themselves up. This fascinating premise of the morality and effects of violence forcing political change is still a question we struggle with, individually and as a country.
As actors and filmmakers, change is what we seek out and express. Our job is to explore and welcome these changes, so our expressions vitally influence the social and political dialogue going on all around us. Add your voice, form your feelings into creative action and present your work to the matrix. And see what happens. Watch films, make films, change society and yourself.
The 2002 Mill Valley Film Festival showcased another dynamic parade of new features, seminars, documentaries, workshops and shorts. For those cinephiles and actors who attended this year's festival, there were rare treats from old and new artistic friends, through both the beauty of traditional film stock and the dynamic electricity of the digital medium. Artistically, one of the most challenging feature films in the lineup was Irit Batsury's, THESE ARE NOT MY IMAGES (neither here nor there). IMAGES entranced the heart and boggled the brain with its expansive use of narrative and POV, woven through layered textures of images and Stuart Jones' incomparable soundtrack. Despite Batsury's underdeveloped sense of drama, IMAGES is a worthy viewing.
Julie Taymore's beautiful opening night film, FRIDA, featured a stunning performance in the title role by Salma Hayek. Also praised in the parallel opening film, WHITE OLEANDER, was acting by Robin Wright Penn and newcomer Alison Lohman. Rebecca Miller's closing film, PERSONAL VELOCITY, was less successful. Precisely shaded by Ellen Kuras' intimate shaky cam, Velocity's aesthetic takes getting used to. Kyra Sedgewick, Parker Posey and Fairuza Balk all conjure their characters with verve.
Director Paul Greengrass's, BLOODY SUNDAY, is a knockout piece of filmmaking. It is not to be missed for its complexity, style, narrative grace and splendid performances from both actors and non-actors, and especially James Nesbitt. Also a must-see is Michael Moore's, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, a vibrant and vital work that explores the humorous and shocking congress between weapons and American lives.
Rounding out the theatrically-distributed features was Phillip Noyce's, RABBITPROOF FENCE, a lyrical tale capturing the confinement and freedom of young half-aboriginal girls. Christopher Doyle, among the most dynamic cinematographers working, fully evokes the haunting landscapes of the bush, and the humans inhabiting Australia for the last 50,000 years.
DIVINE INTERVENTION, Palestinian Director Elia Suleiman's subtle, provocative and witty feature, explores more untrodden terrain for American eyes the life in Palestine underlying the crass headlines and sound bite judgements. Also in this vein was local filmmaker, S. Smith Patrick's, THE CHILDREN OF IBDAA: TO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING, a documentary chronicling the complex lives of a Palestinian children's dance troupe in the West Bank. Many documentaries garnered attention at Mill Valley. LOST IN LA MANCHA captures the sad journey of director, Terry Gilliam's, stillborn (but not final) attempt to make a Don Quixote film. STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN is a must see for any lover of music, and a testament celebrating the notion of artistic ensemble over the illusion of individual stardom. The film's revelation as it documents the musicians that created the Motown sound, is that the singers of most Motown hits quite possibly could have been interchangeable, but the band was most definitely not. Other documentaries generating buzz included Beth Harrington's, WELCOME TO THE CLUB THE WOMEN OF ROCKABILLY. Also notable was Richard Ray Perez' and Joan Sekler's, UNPRECEDENTED: THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Among the local SF Bay filmmaker offerings (a Mill Valley specialty) were Rob Nilsson's, NOISE, Tom Weidlinger's, A DREAM IN HANOI, David Chalker's short, HYPOCRITE, and Sara Feinbloom's, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?.
The most provocative seminar at Mill Valley, was, as usual, the Digital Production Roundup. As anyone with a computer knows, despite the economy, technology hurtles ahead. And each year brings vast leaps in resolution, projection and the acquiring of digital images.
Some notable quotes from this seminal panel: "The audience has a high degree of visual literacy." "You can choose some pathways. Some pathways choose you." "No barriers between the having of knowledge and the sharing of knowledge is democracy." "We need to understand the tools of art and the tools of war." "Each digital format has its own unique signature." "We'll have some digital exhibition within 2-3 years. The first foray by exhibitors will be replacing the pre-show slide projectors with digital projectors and this will open up a whole new arena for shorts and independents in the off-prime theater hours. Film will be dead in 15 years, on life support in 7." "Seek to pursue something worth saying and say it well."
Maybe that's the theme of the Mill Valley Festival and the theme of these dangerous times. Seek to produce something worth saying and say it well. That is the code phrase for these digital and independent times. There are no more excuses for not making your own artistic visions. There is no more Hollywood. The tools are in your hands.
Summer is upon us, and with the warm weather, the vacation movies: comedies, beach movies, giant cartoon epics, special effects and big action pictures. The chief idea is entertainment, though a few dark dramas and character-driven films manage to slip through the summer heat.
Joel Schumacher's, BAD COMPANY, is a big action movie that exemplifies the current excesses of the genre by stressing action over character. BAD COMPANY is a decent action movie - if you cherish feelings of being hyper-caffeinated while narrowly avoiding an automobile accident. Bad Company's emotional payoffs never match the strident actions taken by the characters. As always, Anthony Hopkins is on target, and Chris Rock is held back. Both actors are directed to work beneath their potential. Bad Company's action sequences are thrilling, but not memorable - like seeing roller coaster tracks ahead and knowing exactly where you are going. The film offers no real surprises, and no creative pauses to let the audience catch their breath and contemplate the characters' lives, and perhaps even the social issues lurking beneath the surface of these big quasi-political action pictures.
Malcom D. Lee's, UNDERCOVER BROTHER, features Eddie Griffin sporting shades, an eight inch Afro, and channeling Shaft. This goofy 1970's private eye spoof plays its comedy right down the middle, Austin Powers style. UNDERCOVER BROTHER is a fun, tongue-in-cheek ride, good for laughs.
COFFEE AND LANGUAGE is an intimate little movie by San Francisco director, J.P. Allen. The film is incisively acted and wittily composed and shot. It's a dialogue-heavy movie which actually engages the audience in the ideas of language, even though the spoken word is not cinema's principal strength. Kudos for the cast: Chopper Bernet, J.P. Allen, Janis DeLucia Allen, Charles Blackburn, Terry Bamburger, Kate Sheehan, Scott Norquist, Fred Pitts, Chris Pflueger and Pat Everett.
Henry Bean's, THE BELIEVER spins an edgy, engaging tale of a violent, Jewish neo-fascist in deep philosophical conflict. This 2001 Sundance Audience Award winner features a stunning performance by Ryan Gosling, whose face and body perfectly mirror the internal agony of a man who loves both Torah and Hitler. Gosling's lanky, leering physicality rips up against his own considerable powers of thought. Based on true events, this film is provocative and highly recommended.
Director Ashutosh Gowariker's, Lagaan, is a charming three hour Indian epic where you experience the dark underbelly of British occupation, while learning how the game of cricket is actually played. Replete with Hollywood dance numbers, swooning lovers and beet-faced Englishmen (and a sweet Englishwoman), Lagaan is a pleasurable slap in the face and perfect antidote to those faux-romantic Anglophile epics PBS audiences so love.
John Sayles' SUNSHINE STATE is a jewel of a movie, perfectly weaving character, storyline, humor and plot with sharp episodic delights that accurately reflect the complex, diverse lives real Americans actually lead. The Sopranos' Edie Falco does a marvelous lead turn as Marly, a middle-aged Florida beach woman searching for her life. SUNSHINE STATE is also the tale of a town, Delrona Beach, with all its philandering, false pride, decent human beings, real estate scams, cheezy pageants, good intentions and bad, breezing through the balmy latitudes. There are wonderfully mature and talented faces to look at: Jane Alexander, Ralph Waite, Mary Steenburgen, James McDaniels, Bill Cobbs, Mary Alice, Angela Bassett, as well as John Lurie in a wonderful deadpan comic role. If there's any justice in the universe, there's got to be at least one Academy award for this movie.
The highly successful 20th Annual San Francisco Asian Film Festival has just closed, with many films having sold out. For actors and filmmakers, this festival is a great chance to see diverse films created by your Asian peers working both sides of the camera, and affecting the images on the screen. The theme of identity, which is a necessary exploration for any artist, often emerges in Asian and Asian American work.
The grand dame of Asian American mainstream filmmaking is FLOWER DRUM SONG, a 1961 musical based on the bestseller by C.K. Yang. Though sprinkled with 1950's stereotypes, FLOWER DRUM SONG employed hundreds of Asian actors in this tale of generational conflict and assimilation. After forty years, the packed Castro Theater exuded a palpable sense of community and a powerful appreciation for just how far the Asian-American community has come in the media (and the real) world.
A quite different look at assimilation was generated by Gail Dolgin and Vincente Franco's (and edited by the sterling Kim Roberts) powerful documentary, DAUGHTER FROM DANANG, a 2002 Sundance Film Festival winner. DAUGHTER... tells the story of an Amerasian child given up for adoption in 1975, and then reunited with her Vietnamese birth mother in 2001. Mother and daughter confront a cultural gulf that underscores the searing and endless consequences of war.
Wayne Wang's, CHAN IS MISSING, was shown in a beautiful archive print. CHAN is one of the great American characters who is never seen on screen, but who emerges as an enigma during his two business partners' search for him by taxi in San Francisco's Chinatown. Chan, made for $20,000 in the early1980's, is a subtle and powerful narrative examination of character.
One of my favorite features was Korean director Moon Seung-wook's, NABI THE BUTTERFLY. NABI is set in the near future, where pollution has caused flooding and caustic acid rain, and exists along with a virus that causes forgetting.
Director Tony Bui and his producer brother, Tim (THREE SEASONS), have combined again for the remarkable, GREEN DRAGON, an emotional tale set in the Camp Pendelton refugee camp in the waning days of the Vietnam War. DRAGON is subtly, stunningly acted and features Hiep Thi Le, the wonderful Don Duong, and Forrest Whitaker, solid as always.
If you get a chance, go see any of these films, along with Justin Lin's, BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, a hip, dark, high school film with teeth, showing the real character breadth of the young Asian community. Examining another culture's struggle for identity is a good way to consider your own struggle for identity, as an artist and as a human being.
The 12th Annual Cinequest, San Jose's film festival-
Things are picking up this spring in the Bay Area. Like our blooming plum trees, change breezes in with the warmer weather, inspiring us to re-dedicate our resolve to work in a difficult business in difficult times. There's a huge shift of energy in the air political, social, moral and economic. As actors, we feel it first and then express it in our work, often defining how the rest of the culture will act. There's a new set of behaviors and truthfulness demanded, and we must see our way through it with integrity. Our work as interpreters of human behavior is vital to the health of this runaway culture, constantly bombarded by ever more complex sets of images. As always, there is, as Werner Hertzog said "a lack of adequate images."
The 12th Annual Cinequest, San Jose's film festival, which specializes in the Maverick Spirit, has just ended. You shouldn't have missed it Cinequest stands head and shoulders with the other large Bay Area festivals, San Francisco and Mill Valley. Cinequest brought their usual wide range of provocative films and filmmakers to the South Bay for ten days of screenings, seminars and special events.
Seeing great actors up close is one of the great thrills of Cinequest and this year Sir Ian McKellen (LORD OF THE RINGS and many others) led the parade. Sir Ian spoke of working in the theater for years, and then with a production of Macbeth for only a hundred people, found himself much more excited by the possibility of "not projecting" to a large audience and instead, "just letting the character be." He repeated Michael Cain's great dictum: "Don't act. Think." Sir Ian suggested that "not rearranging, but remembering appears on your face" for the camera. Sound advice. "The secret of life and acting," Sir Ian said, "is to be as truthfully and totally yourself as you can be."
Cinequest also hosted tributes and lively talks with David Strathairn, the great film composer, Lalo Schifrin, and the ever-so-independent and talented, Lili Taylor. Cinequest screened their usual great variety of feature films. Some features garnering decent buzz were: Junichi Mori's, LAUNDRY, Jacque Thelemaque's, THE DOGWALKER, Karen Moncrieff's, BLUE CAR, Sean Garrity's, INERTIA, Zhong Quiang's, METAMORPHOSIS, Paul Sarossy's, MR. IN BETWEEN, and Maryse Sistach's, VIOLET PERFUME.
My personal Cinequest favorite was a feature out of Chicago, DESIGN, directed by Davidson Cole. In these days of forcing digital video to fit every kind of story, it's rare to see the precise visual quality of a movie reflect so accurately and profoundly, the theme. Shot by the talented cinematographer, Pete Biagi, on Super 16mm reversal blown up to 35mm, DESIGN tells a tale in which cosmic destiny prevails over free will in the lives of three individuals. Reflecting this theme of fate, DESIGN is composed, shot and edited so that a precise mystery of images arises, illuminating these three lives, so dark yet familiar. Just as fate connects us all, DESIGN's cinematography, composition, cutting and acting constantly vibrate in tune with the perceptible bits of film grain, never letting us forget the characters' connections to the unseen world. DESIGN is a stark and stunning work don't miss it, or the next Davidson Cole film.
Striking documentaries in Cinequest included: Liz Garbus' THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN (THE FARM: ANGOLA USA), TRIBUTE, and LIVERMORE.
Cinequest is maturing into a dynamic venue for new filmmakers. This year, with the addition of San Jose Rep's space, more films screened in downtown San Jose, making it more convenient for out-of-towners. Take a chance next year at Cinequest, you won't be disappointed. As actors and filmmakers we make choices that show up on the screens and stages. Our ideas, our feelings are reflected in our work. It's important that we go to the deepest parts of ourselves to find our work, so that it will most accurately record the full depth of our humanity. When we show our deepest feelings, the audience is taken beyond mere imagery, into inspiration.
With February comes the lightness of winter's end in California. The film business is regenerating, redefining and reforming itself, as it has been constantly, from the very beginning. With each major technological advance and social upheaval, the cinema reacts and reflects our society's hopes and fears. As actors and filmmakers, its our duty to observe and deeply feel these changes and reflect them back in our work. Now is the time to make yourself clear, in behavior and thought and action. Practice your craft, because you are the one who will reflect these difficult times in ways that can inspire audiences to bring forth their deepest humanity and banish needless fear.
The 4th annual San Francisco Independent Film Festival (Indie Fest) has matured
into the lively wild duckling of Bay Area festivals. Indie Fest overflows with
brash energy - emerging filmmakers, actors, a few veteran outlaw auteurs and
assorted characters like Oakland's Dr. Dangerous, a self-mutilation artist,
fresh off the latest OZZfest tour. Indie Fest's 2002 films were ambitious, but
uneven, although heads above previous years offerings. The short film programs
are not to be missed. Worth mentioning is COPY SHOP, an Expressionist animated
work crafted out of 18,000 photocopies.
My favorite feature was Penelope Spheeris' WE SOLD OUR SOULS FOR ROCK N' ROLL, an energetic doc about OZZfest, the annual heavy metal tour headlined by Ozzy Osbourne and the incomparable Black Sabbath. For those of us who delude ourselves into thinking that San Francisco is the soul of a troubled nation, take heed. America is Heavy Metal country. Worth a look even if your taste runs to Puffy's hits, Dylan, Indigo Girls or even Mississippi Fred MacDowell.
Bay Area features abounded, yet disappointed: Tom Edgar's, ALCATRAZ AVENUE, is a decent effort of a great idea (writer moves in with family and stirs up trouble just to write about it) that is plagued by such unimaginative style and tone as to render the film (shot in 16mm) almost generic. Shooting cheaply in LA with LA actors and exteriors in Berkeley doesn't help a vague feeling of placelessness. Calum Grant and Joshua Atesh Litle's, EVER SINCE THE WORLD ENDED, is another great idea (depopulated San Francisco after a plague) that suffers from unclear production design and uneven talking-heads staging, as well as an overly episodic, improvised storyline. The actors played truthfully, but the directors often didn't make them go deep enough for the imagined circumstances. Despite the financial ease of shooting on digital video, a feature effort is still Herculean and directors shooting under-developed ideas, do so at their own (and the audience's) peril. Crafting good stories with production styles that illuminate and convey ideas, is a complex task and you'd better do your homework or suffer the fate of a home video.
SW9 is an energetic first feature by first-time English director, Richard Parry, examining London's Brixton subculture in the Trainspotting style. SW9 sports good performances and is well directed, although the ending is a bit anti-climatic, with sub-plots that don't quite pay off. Director Jeff Ross' chutzpah and energy has assembled a vigorous, savvy Indie Fest board with numerous sponsors, good talent and nightly after-parties. This is a venue to watch. Go next year.
Cinemayaat, the 5th Annual Arab Film Festival, like many things, was broken in two by September 11th. Recently, the last half of the festival finished up at the Fine Arts Theater in Berkeley. What is most obvious about September 11th, is that Americans know very little of the cultures, ideas and feelings of the Middle East. Executive Director, Khalil Benkirane, has built this festival into a solid, broadly appealing, mix of cinema and video, showcasing the considerable Arab filmmaking talent.
My favorite features included: NO MAN'S LOVE, first time Tunisian director, Nidhal Chatta's visually stunning examination of duty and sacrifice by a scuba diver living in an abandoned lighthouse; THE NIGHT, veteran Syrian filmmaker, Mohammed Malas' autobiographical exploration of his village near the Golan Heights in the 1930's and 40's; and THE TORNADO by Lebanese, Samir Habchi, about an artist's poetic return to Beruit during the civil war.
Of the shorts, Hakim Belabbes' WHISPERS, is a visual jewel of a search for lost childhood. Morocco's Hassan Legzouli's, WHEN THE SUN BURNS THE SPARROWS is a brilliant wide screen evocation of village life in the precise, understated style of Iranian master, Abbas Kiarostami. The most haunting image occurred in displaced Iraqi director, Amer Alwan's documentary, CHILDREN OF THE EMBARGO. A ten-year-old boy, suffering from depleted uranium exposure from the Gulf War, has the face of a sixty-year-old man. The off-screen filmmaker asks: "Do you like Saddam Hussein?" The boy's answer: "As much as you like this country."
Cinemayaat will host screenings all this spring at Yerba Buena Center and Pacific Film Archive. You won't make a mistake by going. You'll learn much about these ancient cultures and see actors and directors confronting the same artistic problems you face being in the moment and exploring shifting personal, family and political boundaries in a rapidly changing world.
Do the work, practice your craft and always do your best. Your artistic imagination, your truth, is in demand. There's never enough of it.
The season of light usually ends up being a dark time for actors this year
particularly so,
with the economy struggling towards a new definition and the uncertainty of
conflict and
change clouding our national and cultural lives. As artists, it's our duty to
mirror the way
our peers act and to discover insight, inspiration and comedy in odd places.
This change,
this new political warp is ours to explore through our characterizations, both
subtly and
broadly. Fear, patriotism, rumors, pride, overactive imaginations, sensationalism
and
vengeful anger abound, along with lesser amounts of compassion and re-evaluating
long held attitudes. It is up to us to weave these elements into the life of
our characters.
We don't create in a vacuum.
On the purely commercial front, this slow time of year is the time to make
your materials current
reconsider headshots, update resumes, get your voice tape and reel in order,
get picture cards,
a website, check your database of producers and directors, reconnect with agents.
Get together
with actors and consider shooting a short piece in digital video. Evaluate your
strengths and
weaknesses as an actor and work on the weaknesses classes, self-study, marketing,
etc. This dark
time for the profession can sow the seeds of your next creative rebirth the
business is changing
rapidly with all the dynamic new technology. The more you consider and explore
and embrace
these changes, the more you'll be able to use them to your advantage.
The San Francisco Film Society, together with the Italian government's cultural
institutions,
have been promoting New Italian Cinema Events (NICE), with annual screenings
of new
features and shorts a week of them at the Kabuki theater. Unfortunately, it
wasn't the most
dynamic lineup of films. Most of the films I saw were conservatively crafted,
with good lighting
and cinematography and decently acted, but nothing in the brilliant artistic
spirit of the Italy that
produced Fellini, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Visconti, Rossellini and
de Sica. There were
no provocative digital explorations like Lars von Triers' or various American
directors,
no innovative narrative explorations as in Iranian cinema and no films with
broad
worldwide appeal as in American cinema. These Italian features seem the products
of a satisfied status quo, fraying slightly around the edges without any provocative
social, political or spiritual pressures to spur directors into plumbing the
depths of
Italian life, systems and religions.
As for acting, Marcello Mazzarella, Vincenzo Albarese and Gioia Spazzini showed
flashes of passion in PLACIDO RIZZOTTO, a 40's Mafia corruption film whose
conclusion didn't quite pay off. Fabrizio Gifune gave a surprisingly sympathetic
portrait,
while committing patricide in EMPTY EYES. OFF TO THE REVOLUTION IN A 2CV
was a pleasant film about a trio of young idealists' journey to Portugal's 1974
revolution,
but a featherweight in its impact and emotional story. The best film for my
money was a short
LE FOTO DELLO SCANDALO an animated journey of the consequences of a lurid
photo,
with sweeping transitions leading to pungent snapshot moments, that constantly
illuminated new story points.
This is the season of movies so check them out, big and small, pop and Oscar
contenders.
Study your craft up on the screen. Try to figure out how the actor is achieving
the truth
see what contributions the editor, the cinematographer and the sound designer
make to
the actor's performance. Be well and work well.
The summer that never came to San Francisco is gone, and with it a heady innocence made suddenly frivolous by a horrific, instantaneous act of momentous change. As artists, we are filled with questions of meaning. What's appropriate? What's necessary? What's funny and what's not? What is essential to our world and the cultures beyond it? The answer is always the same: truth, connection. We must discover the new artistic truths, uncover new meaning in old works, cast out the superfluous and the ignorant, and expose those manipulations and half-truths which shroud our understanding of the world and those in it.
Actors must deeply connect to illuminate those grand, odd, tortured and very human lives we portray on stage and screen. People need stories and what Werner Hertzog calls, adequate images, more than ever before. It's not enough just to get a part and phone it in. If we are truly deeply connected with our characters and their stories, then our culture will embrace them, too. That's our job and it's more important than ever before. The art of acting is an art of conscience, of truth and of risk that may never pay off, except in terms of the work itself.
The 24th Annual Mill Valley Film Festival was a whirlwind of screenings, parties, seminars, chance meetings and short conversations with filmmakers, local and international. Some highlights:
In the Actor-Director Relationship Seminar, prolific producer and director, Ismail Merchant, suggested that the best casting "came from the heart." In the Screenwriters Seminar, truth and the heart were also mentioned. A quote: Screenwriter, Pam Gray (A Walk On The Moon), "If you're in a truthful place, when you use autobiographical material it will be of interest to others. The trick is pushing yourself to find out what really happened and not lie to yourself." An anecdote: When David Mamet is asked how to get ideas, his answer is always "Think of them." The panel also suggested screenwriting techniques: "Make scenes specific and emotions universal." "Write something you can truly believe." "Ask: who you are in relation to yourself and your material?" "Don't be rigid especially cinematically." "Mess around with true histories, especially in regards to real time." "Play 'what if' games with your script." "Be aware of the playful, cinematic, funny things of daily life." "Steal, but make it your own." In the Digital Film Seminar, as usual, technology talk mixed with art. Rob Nilsson spoke of capturing "the miracles of everyday experience, close to the ground, simply," and asking: "Who am I?" "Who do I love?" "What horrifies me?" Nelson has recently been involved in Jordan, helping young Jordanian filmmakers bring their stories to life on digital video. With ever-cheaper and increasingly digitized technologies, filmmakers around the world are re-inventing production and distribution to fit their own needs, rather than those of the studio system and theater chains.
Films accruing buzz at the festival included: Amelie, Italian for Beginners, Ismail Merchant's, The Mystic Masseur, The Bank, Deborah Winger and Arliss Howard's, Big Bad Love, Jack the Dog, La Cienaga, No Man's Land, Novocaine, Reunion, David Mamet's, Heist, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Lantana, and the Coen Brothers' The Man Who Knew Too Much. It should be an interesting Fall. As creative people, we should take heart that radical change electrifies the entire culture and opens people's eyes to subjects, emotions and viewpoints they wouldn't ordinarily approach.
Be well, work well and create full, complex human beings for your audiences.
Summer is often quiet for actors in San Francisco, especially with the current economic slowdown. It's a good time to update pictures and tapes, to sharpen techniques, and to learn new skills. The digital revolution is just beginning, so be prepared. Mediums, skills and opportunities are rapidly changing, so actors and filmmakers should invoke their creativity and position themselves to weather these changes. As August closes, the lumbering blockbuster movies are fading from the screen and mind.
Fortunately, a few good films flicker brightly on the artistic horizon. Francis
Ford Coppola's, APOCALYPSE NOW, REDUX, re-emerged to new audiences and critical
acclaim. Apocalypse, a milestone of American wartime excess in Vietnam, explores
the perils inherent in blind idealism and the destructive forces unleashed when
good judgement is abandoned by political leaders. The film's performances are
legendary. Like many Coppola films, APOCALYPSE offers an operatic reality. Study
Marlon Brando's duty-inspired madness, Martin Sheen's moral questing, Robert
Duvall's strident enjoyment, Larry Fishburne's adolescent innocence, and Dennis
Hopper's drug-addled searchings all of which explore the moral universe of America's
Vietnam.
THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION is Woody Allen's latest - a fine light comedy
set in 1940. This time the actors don't all sound like Allen and they're wonderful.
Helen Hunt is stunning and furthers her considerable range playing a sharp-tongued
efficiency expert. Dan Ackroyd offers a solid straight man turn as an insurance
company president, while Wallace Shawn plays a fine investigator.
See SCORPION for comic timing, ensemble playing and Helen Hunt's subtle switches
of character. Also note how the actors use posture to characterize. Jennifer
Jason Leigh and Alan Cummings', The Anniversary Party, illuminates both the
prizes and the perils of digital filmmaking. The ensemble acting is often wonderful,
as nouveau
Hollywood is dissected and skewered. THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY is entertaining,
though sadly, the images don't linger. I guess the practical lesson is that
even though you have a deft script, good actors, and the swiftness of digital
filming, powerful imagery is much harder to create. And maybe the personal perils
of Hollywood stars really aren't all that interesting to us commoners. We don't
mind watching them for two hours just don't expect us to remember anything that
might be useful to our daily struggles.
THE DEEP END is out and previously mentioned. See it, if only for Tilda Swinton's
performance if there's any justice she should be nominated.
Prolific Israeli director, Amos Gitai's, KIPPUR, offered one of the strongest
films at the recent San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. KIPPUR tells the tale
of three young Israeli medics caught up in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Often
silent, save for the monotonous sounds of war, Kippur evokes the weary senselessness
of Golan Heights combat, in sharp contrast to the idealism preceding armed conflict.
The acting by Liron Levo, Tomer Ruso and Uri Rankaluzner is powerfully understated.
Watch how easily this film unsettles you and examine how the performances underscore
that.
Rhythm, movement, voice, looks, gesture, stillness, posture, presence, costume these are the actor's vocabulary. Cultivate them, explore them, watch how other actors use these basics to invoke the truth. Act well.
Summer films are already upon us with a notable lack of inspiration. Since the weather has turned warmer, LA film crews and Craft Services trucks have started showing up in San Francisco. Lately, with Cameron Diaz & company tripping around North Beach, filming her latest comedy. Acting work has been slow this spring, probably because of glitches in feature production, due to the threatened Writers Guild strike and the upcoming expiration of Sag's current theatrical contract. Corporate film production has been way off because of the dot com bust, so don't feel as if you're not getting cast. There just aren't many opportunities right now. There are a lot of no-budget projects around because of all the low cost new digital equipment, but as usual, the artistry on all levels of production hasn't yet caught up with the technical advances. New directors have a tendency to go out and shoot before the idea is fully baked, so keep your eyes open before you commit your precious time and energy. Just because someone wants to make a film, doesn't mean it will be worthwhile or even get finished.
Don't be fooled by improv either. The charting of a character's emotional story arc, in precisely logical steps that lead to visual character change, is a difficult task even for experienced writers. While improv is wonderful for filling holes or further exploring a written story line, it is extremely difficult to create imaginative, bold script work amidst the turmoil of shooting. Many times, improv in a low budget film can mean that a skilled writer hasn't been involved or the director is leaving too much up to the actors. You know how hard it is and how much you have to train to act writers need just as much training. The most famous of the good improv directors, Mike Leigh, works with actors for up to a year on his stories. Try to get a sense of what a good script reads like, so you can tell if you're wasting your time on someone's disorganized shoot, or whether you're better off begging, borrowing or stealing your own digital tools, to do your own experimenting. Professionally speaking, a quality screenplay is a very difficult thing to write and most actors find it hard to tell a good one from a bad one. Go on the net to Drew's Script O'Rama. There are over 200 screenplays downloadable for free. Read one of your favorites.
Some things to look for in a script: 1) Are you genuinely moved by what takes place? 2) Do you clearly understand exactly what the story is, on the first read? 3) Are the subplots clear and do they pay off? 4) Is the dialogue too "on the nose"? If so, the script may not be developed enough to utilize subtext, which often carries the story in film. 5) Is the ending both surprising and inevitable? 6) Are there misspellings, inconsistencies and strange formats? These are all clues to the level of professionalism of the work.
This month's films are mainly lightweight. Ivan Reitman's, EVOLUTION, is an odd duck -- sort of clunky and crass. The first act is close to being among the worst comedy acts ever filmed, although later the film almost miraculously manages to redeem itself into a merely dull movie. Whatever Julianne Moore was thinking when she signed up for this turkey, I do not know. Although this film makes DUMB AND DUMBER look like CITIZEN KANE, the creatures are very cool and, unbelievably, there are a few laughs. See it at your own peril.
PEARL HARBOR: Oh dear . . . but how do you argue with success? On the good side, there is fantastic airplane combat and a fairly real sense of the actual physical events of the attack. On the not-so-good side, this film has more crane shots than Orson Welles could fantasize in a million years, with nary a one justified, visually or dramatically. There is Japanese racism, over the top romantic blah-blah, a lack of historical context for the attack, and 1940's stereotypes galore. If you want to know the elements of a big mass-marketed Hollywood box office smash, see PEARL HARBOR. Unfortunately, the marketing far outweighs the artistry and the acting rarely cracks stereotypes (or audience expectations), save for John Voight's turn as Franklin Roosevelt.
The Black Film Festival and the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival had successful runs this month. The Black Festival featured a dynamic Hip Hop on Film panel at Zeum, followed by Kevin Epp's, STRAIGHT OUT OF HUNTER'S POINT, a gritty behind the scenes look at the local rap wars. Other successes included the opening film, Jordan Walker-Pearlman's, THE VISIT with Billy Dee Williams, and Rae Dawn Chong, and Raul Peck's award-winning, LUMUMBA.
Get in the habit of reading scripts so you can spot the good ones. See the summer movies for fun, re-evaluate your head shots, tapes and resumes, and keep practicing your skills, so you'll be ready for the next audition.
MAY 2001– sfiff. San Francisco International Film Festival
The 44th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) recently closed and all of the usual suspects have packed their bags and headed for Cannes. This was Artistic Director Peter Scarlet's last SFIFF appearance (he'll helm the Cinematheque in Paris) and it remains to be seen how SFIFF's innovative mix of eclectic and foreign films will fare. In the past 19 years Peter Scarlet has forged strong personal ties between SFIFF and the independent European, Asian, African, and Latin American film communities seeking out and promoting dynamic movements, like the current Iranian cinema. Hopefully these special relationships will flourish under the yet to be chosen new regime.
Over the course of the festival I saw 33 features, concentrating on films which might not get distribution. Sundance's and my personal favorite, Zhang Yimou's, The Road Home, is a simple tale of love and devotion in a remote Chinese village during the Cultural Revolution. It evokes strong emotions through the use of landscape, music and the stunning honesty of actress Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). See it.
Fritz Lang's silent-era1926, Metropolis, buoyed with newly found footage, was a stunning Castro Theater experience -- complete with a sold out crowd and tremendous organ and effects synthesizer performances. Iranian, Jafar Panahi's, The Circle, examines the perils of being a woman in today's Iran with effective, nearly documentary, realism from both actors and non-actors, concentrating on performing simple actions. This is a technique worth re-examining if your performances are tending toward the florid world of overacting and failure to pursue precise moment to moment objectives.
Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles forge a beautiful acting dynamic of crossing generations in (the locally produced I-5 Films and SFIFF Skye prize-winning feature), The Business of Strangers, as two women business travelers sharing an overnight adventure in a McHotel in a McCity. In the Deep End, a compelling second feature from the Bay Area's Scott McGhee and David Siegel, Tilda Swinton carves her best role to date with a complex, intimate portrait of a soccer mom drawn into a world she never imagined. The casting and the Tahoe locations are beautiful.
In Marlene Gorris' The Luzhin Defense, John Turturro and Emily Watson craft subtle and grounded performances in a tale of love between a rich girl and an eccentric chess genius, adapted from Vladimir Nabokov's novel. Turturro never makes the obvious choice and easily could have faltered in this odd role. Silvio Soldino's prize-winning, Pane e Tulipani, is a gentle Italian comedy about an unappreciated middle-aged woman discovering a new life in Venice. Study the comic techniques of deadpanning and overreacting two staples of the comic genre.
The Princess and the Warrior, Tom Twyker's (Run Lola Run) impressive second outing, allows Franka Potente to unfold her acting wings even further as a sympathetic psychiatric nurse fated toward a man's redemption. This film Features beautiful imagery and music amidst the unfolding paradoxes of 2000-era Germany.
Ed Burns' Sidewalks of New York, engaged some good performances (including his own) from Heather Graham and Stanley Tuck, and newcomer Brittany Murphy. Unfortunately, some of the rhythm of Burns' dialogue suffered from a touch of what I call the Woody Allen/David Magmata disease characters speaking in similar cadences and using similar vocabularies.
Hungarian director, Bela Tar's Werckmeister Harmonies, is a long, brooding East- European metaphorical meditation, complete with stylistic nods to the Great cinema of the last half century: lusciously long takes, characters stretching beyond the personal into myth, and glorious black and white photography.
Mexican director, Maria Novaro's Without A Trace, is a gently subversive south of the border Thelma and Louise, with nuanced, lively portrayals of two women journeying south in search of freedom and dignity. Other notable features getting buzz at SFIFF include: The Vertical Ray of the Sun, Under The Sand, The Storm, Stranger Inside, Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine, Barbet Schroder's Our Lady of the Assassins, Landscape, Platform, The Season of Men, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Baise Moi, Wayne Wang's Center of the World, Code Unknown, Maral and Daresalam. In documentary, the award-winning, Southern Comfort and Promises, led thepack. Also notable were: Gaea Girls, Keep Your River on Your Right, The Land of Wandering Souls, The Natural History of the Chicken, Startup.com, and Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures.
For San Francisco actors and film industry people, the festival was the place to be for the last weeks of April -- to meet peers and directors from all over the world and to renew relationships with local people you've lost contact with. It's been said that the film business is a business of relationships. We frequently work in isolation or race from one intense production circumstance to another. We grow close to many people for short periods of time, but it's hard to keep these relationships going. And in a tertiary market like San Francisco, relationships and understanding the local scene is one of the necessities of staying active in this business. Most San Francisco filmmakers and actors, who are committed to staying in this beautifully maddening place, will help you out unlike the legendary cutthroat tactics rumored to plague the New York and LA markets.
The SF film scene seems to be changing, and for the better. I spoke to Film Arts Foundation's, Gail Silva, at the festival and she suggested that the continual actor/director LA/NY talent drain might be ending. The film media business is rapidly decentralizing and changing because of advances in digital technology. As filmmakers and actors we should be able to utilize these liberating changes to create more control and opportunity in our work, whether it's shooting our own shorts and digital features, or tailoring our work to the new demands of the new media.
MARCH/APRIL 2001–
This month I've been thinking about presence. A basic prerequisite of invoking an emotional response in a film or stage audience, presence is little understood. It is an ethereal concept, but at the same time, one that is quite real. That mysteriously attractive quality that movie stars and fine stage performers exude, relies on presence. When you feel your greatest power as an actor, I believe you are invoking your own unique presence. But what is presence?
It involves a concentration that is centered in your body in the current moment, generating a strong and grounded emotional response to the magical "as if" of stage and film reality. "In the moment" is a phrase you often hear, but most actors rarely achieve this state with any consistency. Representing reality is a strenuous challenge. You must feel and fully illuminate each moment visually, then move on to next moment, leaving behind your everyday chatter of fears and a stress-filled mind.
Strangely enough, like in acting, the business of living also requires a grounded physical connection to the body in order to be present and make one's daily life meaningful. This is why acting is such a powerful metaphor for living and why the concept of presence can be felt in all life experiences.
Here's something you can try while waiting in line or in traffic. Practice being present with your breath. Fully feel your inner state and emotions and your physical reality. Watch how your racing mind generates the thoughts that detract from the presence of just being in the moment in your body. This technique works equally well in performance and rehearsal, where anticipation of what's to come and daydreaming about the off-stage past detract from your ability to be present.
Presence is most easily discernable in powerful film performances. I recently attended the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose and the Asian-American Film Festival in San Francisco. Both festivals are vital sources of new and emerging talent in the film industry. Actors should take advantage of festivals by seeing new films (especially low-budgets, like you are likely to be cast in) and meeting and socializing with other actors, directors and producers. As an actor, socializing and networking is part of your job and I encourage you to attend as many of the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival screenings as possible.
Cinquest is the Bay Area's newest big festival and by some accounts, one of the ten best festivals in the world. Many screenings were sold out and the special events were well attended, especially the opening and closing parties, and the Spike Lee interview. Mr. Lee was a strong presence at the festival for three days. He introduced his stunning documentary on the Birmingham church bombing,FOUR LITTLE GIRLS, And his highly underrated recent feature, BAMBOOZLED, shot on digital video.
Favorites at the festival included: GANG TAPES, a documentary-style feature shot in South Central Los Angeles by director Adam Ripp, about a thirteen year old boy (played by Trivell) caught up in the mean street life. GANG TAPES vibrates with presence, emanating from the largely amateur cast who candidly reveal the raw truth of their lives, contrasted with the strong influence of gangsta culture.
First time director Tom Zuber's LANSDOWN,Is an easy little thriller satirizing the small-town New Jersey lives of bumbling hit men. Luna Papa is a comedic Central Asian saga gorgeously shot in a carnival-esque style. It features the incandescent actress, Chulpan Khamatova (Tuvalu), who has a great gift for physical comedy. Rob Morrow (the doctor on Northern Exposure) helms his fine first feature, Maze, and stars in it quite respectably opposite the wonderful Laura Linney. Ms. Linney offers great presence in her acting the camera adores her truth in this tale of an unlikely love affair with an artist suffering from Tourette's. Other new films buzzing at Cinequest include: The Season of Men, North Beach, The Young Unknowns, Preston Tylk, Lovers, Christopher Coppola's, G Men From Hell, Armagosa and Cannes Critics Week Prize winner, Amores Perros.
One of the hallmarks of the Asian-American Film Festival is consistency, and this year was no disappointment, with an emphasis on Taiwanese, Korean and Filipino-American films. John H. Lee's, THE CUT RUNS DEEP, charts the downward spiral of a half-Korean teenager caught up in the violent, adolescent world of New York City Asian gangs. Rod Pulido's, THE FLIP SIDE, humorously examines suburban California Filipino identity and values. Anak explores the world and family consequences of overseas Filipino domestic help, through the exuberant presence of Philippine star, Vilma Santos.
Taiwan director, Vivian Chang's, HIDDEN WHISPER, examines the shifting relationships encountered between mother and daughter over a thirty year period, with actress Hsiao Shu-shen shining luminously. Director Song Neung-han's,Segimal, explores the ironic stresses of modern Korean life through four intersecting segments. Shu Lea Chang's, IKU, whimsically examines a cyber-cyborg sex in the future it could be called "Techno Hello Kitty meets TokyoBoogie Nights."
Also of note at the festival was San Francisco director, Taggart Siegel's, THE SPIRIT HORN. It is a 17-year exploration of Hmong shaman, Paja Thau's, struggle to practice his ancient healing craft amidst the American Midwest and the shifting beliefs of his children.
Presence may just be another name for truth. It's easy to spot in films it's those places where the story gets to you and you're not even aware of it. In your life, it's those moments when you feel complete. When you can show yourself, fully present to other people in reality and on the screen, then you have something to communicate. See you at the San Francisco International Film Festival next month.
For actors in 2001, the operative word is change. One thing is increasingly evident -- the physical mediums that capture our images and voices are rapidly changing. Our job as actors is to understand this sea of change, so we can best use our creative skills. Of course, I'm talking about digital. This shift to digital is not news we are all getting more connected via computers, cell phones, the web, cable and satellite television -- but the creative implications of this change are just beginning.
We are making a changeover from analog film & videotape capture and projection of our images and voices, to the capture and projection of sounds and images primarily on digital. This transition is comparable to the coming of movie sound or the impact of television. The creative changes forced by digital will take years to realize and perfect in the movies, it took 10 years before D.W. Griffith discovered the innovation of close-up's and crosscutting stories. What will this digital paradigm shift mean to actors? Why do we have to care?
I recently attended two conferences IFFCON the International Film Financing
Conference and Digital Independence 2001, both held at The Center for the Arts
in San Francisco. Both conferences featured many experienced professionals grappling
with the economic and creative realities of this paradigm shift.
The feature film market is changing drastically currently there's a glut of films. Hollywood studio films spend $1.50 on advertising, for every dollar spent on production. These huge costs of advertising mean that small theatrical releases have become too expensive to promote. The model of "I'll make a great first film and get into Sundance, then get a distributor," is ending, because most small movies lose money for distributors in theatrical release. The American movie market grosses seven billion dollars a year but only 1% of that market comes from so-called "specialty films" independents and foreign films. This is down from 7% in the late 70's. What will eventually replace the ultimate dream of theatrical release is less clear.
Digital filmmaking equipment is getting better by the day the image resolution ever sharper, the editing equipment cheaper, the projection and transfer processes finer. The primary advantage of digital is that it costs so much less than film to capture images. For actors, this means our relationships with the technology changes. Digital becomes more an acting medium than film, because directors can afford to burn cheap tape stock on long takes and improvisation. One director told me that he ran his digital camera all day even when the actors weren't acting. The actors were told to stay in character at all times in case he wanted to use the footage. Takes could run 15 minutes or more, then run right again. The actors said this was an exhilarating process. Naturally, you can imagine that stories might well be told differently as our relationship with these new technologies grows and matures. Spontaneity and collaboration are encouraged in this environment.
Peter Broderick of Next Wave Films, told me that because of the ease of digital production, many of his filmmakers are not following the traditional (and fairly rigid) pre-production, production, post-production schedules. The film medium allows few re-takes because of the cost of film stock and the availability of sets, locations and actors, once the production period is over. But in digital, you can have a small cast and crew, a simple and nearby location, and shoot and edit over any time period, because your costs ($6000 to $8000 for camera, sound, computer and editing program) are so low. You can see how, if you shoot this way, even the conceptualization of the story and the character might change.
Another benefit of digital is that it's easier for independents to get their product to market. Many film festivals now accept digital entries and also project them. For low budget filmmakers, this eliminates the huge cost of a film print or blowup. And of course, the web is a major new tool for distribution and promotion via so-called "viral marketing" - a word of mouth web/email/promotion exchange made popular by The Blair Witch Project. Plus, there are many more cable and satellite networks, streaming via the net's broadband technology, cheap DVD reproduction, and the new MPEG4 image compression technology. All of these provide immense opportunity for independent professionals to distribute their work.
As actors and filmmakers, we live in San Francisco and Northern California. A tiny minority of us - Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Tom Hanks, Wayne Wang, etc. have gone on to Los Angeles, and have achieved stardom and the Hollywood Dream. The rest of us struggle on. But we all have voices, and as we all know, there are many, many stories out there as yet untold. For years, we've complained that "it's hard to get a break," and in part, we've blamed the expensive cost of the film medium. That argument no longer holds water. The paradigm is changing, and the tools of production are within our reach. What we make of them is not up to Hollywood, but up to us.
Holiday movies shine with tinsel and hype, yet a few jewels can still be found under the tree, getting in their 2000 run for consideration in next year's Academy Awards. For actors, these dauntingly dark year-end days can raise ugly questions about substance and personality. Who are we, really? What are we meant to become? Are we going to become movie stars or retire as poor players merely strutting and fretting? Is there anything we can do about the struggle to earn a living? Should we say, " the heck with being an artist?" Should we succumb to the encroaching dot.coms?
The truer you are to yourself, to selflessness and craft, the better you can become at whatever you do. We admire other actors because they are truthful about our unexpressed feelings and actions. As actors, we must be satisfied with nothing less than the truth. We really never get anywhere other than the next moment. And if we can truly live each moment fully -- in our work and our lives -- then we are stars.
LITTLE NICKY, the latest Adam Sandler cash cow, is not particularly good: read
, tasteless. Mr. Sandler is capable of very funny things, but even Harvey Keitel
as the Prince of Darkness can't save this blight on truth. LITTLE NICKY, is
a runaway marketing campaign in search of a film. Heaven knows what Adam Sandler
might be capable of, if only he would take a breath, choose his material more
carefully and learn about story instead of comic bits.
UNBREAKABLE, is the latest M. Night Shayamalan/Bruce Willis film. Like most
sophomore directing efforts, there's a slight disappointment and the sense of
seeing the wizard behind the curtain. After Shayamalan's tour de force, THE
SIXTH SENSE, UNBREAKABLE, echoes incomplete and a bit derivative, though Robin
Wright should be nominated for best Supporting Actress. Ms. Wright doesn't have
an untruthful bone in her body. With economy and clarity of presence, she invokes
the loyalty and sadness of a working class life searching to be fully lived.
Mr. Willis is good, but not as good as he needs to be to play up to Robin Wright's
level.
Be sure to see O BROTHER, WHERE ARE THOU? It's a great Coen Brothers' ride,
comically, musically, politically and socially. Their hit on a Depression-era
Ulysses journey is constantly surprising, constantly touching and deftly political.
This ensemble cast of George Clooney, Holly, Hunter, John Turturro and Charles
Durning, should roar home with some Oscars come Spring.
A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES, is the first film (and first feature ever filmed in Kurdish) for director Bahman Ghobadi. This film plays so true that it could be a documentary. The non-professional actors only know the truth of their own actions -- a lesson for all of us. STATE AND MAIN, David Mamet's latest film -- inspired, he says, by Preston Sturges, the great 1940's comedy director.
STATE AND MAIN is a movie about a movie set in small town America and darkly, cynically hilarious in parts. The trouble is, on the screen, Mamet's famed dialogue sounds like dialogue. As a director, Mamet isn't particularily fluid at staging scenes and all of Mamet's characters seem to suffer from the recent Woody Allen disease-everyone sounds like David Mamet. Despite these petty criticisms, STATE AND MAIN is worth seeing. Actor David Paymer is hilarious as a producer.
So as 2001 dawns, pay attention to each moment fully, then move on to the next. That's all we can ask of ourselves and our work; to do the best we can, be truthful,and move on to the next moment fully. That way our lives -- on-screen and off -- will be filled with life.
This year's Mill Valley Film Festival hosted a "Digital Media Lab," designed to explore the implications of the Internet, Digital Video and Broadband transfer of images and sound, on art of all genres. The following are some highlights from this cutting-edge conference.
For relatively little expense, DV cameras and home computers possess the ability to capture/edit/broadcast/publish across all mediums. There is the potential of creating a whole panoply of stories and images, from personal family history to Hollywood-style epic fantasies, using as many art forms as one can imagine.
For filmmakers, as The Blair Witch Project showed, the Internet is critical for disseminating information and publicity, as well as for creating a buzz. Short films produced specifically for the Internet can be a way into the limelight/industry, as sites such as Eveo and iFilm have shown, and will continue to show, as technology evolves. Web radio also promises to be a good source of niche publicity in the future. And buzz (counted by the number of hits) on the Internet can be a means of convincing distributors of your movie's possible audience.
A few insights from the feature-filmmaking panel:
Shooting on video breaks down the on-camera/off-camera distinctions of traditional
film shooting. Directors spoke of catching unguarded actor reactions while continuing
to roll, the elimination of the word "cut," using multiple takes, and shifting
of the camera within the take, making creativity much more immediate. As Director
Todd Verow said, "You can catch life a little closer to the ground."
Monologues can be much longer _ 3-15 minutes. Very often, the tape never stops rolling, allowing the actor to continue on in a mood until it shifts naturally. This generates the unconscious feeling of a home movie _ with an improvisational heightening of reality coming from the inside, and not imposed from the outside by plot shifts.
With Digital Video's ability to capture low natural light or night exteriors, lighting styles can be quite simple and beautiful, even using flashlights, sun guns and headlamps. In fact, High Definition video is creeping ever more closer to film in look and feel, sometimes cutting the costs of shooting in 35mm by 60%.
Because Digital Video is able to alter every frame, you can design a look in the computer/camera, varying color/contrast/background/shadow/focus, and show it to your director of photography for pre-light so the "look" can be adjusted before shooting.
In summary, the word to actors, especially to San Francisco actors, is to stop waiting for Hollywood to come calling. Find a writer and some other actors, get a digital camera and a computer for editing, then shoot and produce your own movies about your own truths and distribute them to whomever you can.
Experiment. Try different things.
Think about making your movie, rather than selling your movie. The fantasy of making it in Hollywood has doomed many an actor's dreams of making movies. But in these strange rushing days of imminent and unknown future, your vision of that future is as valid as anyone else's and, with some luck, perhaps even more profound.
With October came the 23rd Mill Valley Film Festival and a flurry of screenings.
As always, Festival Director, Mark Fishkin, and Director of Programming, Zoe
Elton selected a lively cinematic and videomatic mix. For actors, film festivals
are opportunities to see new film projects, study the acting on-screen, meet
new directors and generally keep abreast of your profession.
The theme of this year's Mill Valley Fest seemed to be that video is here
to stay as a big screen artistic medium. Mill Valley showcased Lars Von Trier's
Dancer in the Dark. Dancer, shot entirely on video, won the Palm d'Or at Cannes
and captured first-time actress, Bjork, the Best Female Performance. Shot by
Jim Jarmusch's and Wim Wenders' prolific cinematographer Robby Mueller, Dancer
is a profound exploration of this new cinevideo form which film folk have been
resisting since the inception of the electronic visual medium. Dancer takes
its roots as much from music video as from film history. The nature of this
important feature's truths are relevant to any actor working today, because
like it or not, this is the face of the future. Though the aesthetics of Dancer
are sometimes less than comforting, the sheer truth and creativity, as captured
by small camera digital video, is exhilarating.
The traditional film form also remains lively, but struggling, with production
fleeing to Canada and Europe. The closing film, Shadow of A Vampire, features
an Academy quality performance in the title role by Willem Dafoe, with strong
supporting work by John Malkovich. Boseman and Lena, based on Athol Fugard's
1970 play, is a Samuel Beckett style exploration of disenfranchised black South
Africans, driven to the poverty of near madness under apartheid. Danny Glover
and Angela Bassett are luminous and the truth of their work resonates with contemporary
culture. Namibia's Desert is the setting for Kin, the story of a young woman's
struggle to preserve a herd of elephants amidst her emotional awakening. Miranda
Otto and Isaiah Washington create a memorable tapestry of moments in this beautifully
shot 35-mm film. Darren Aaronofsky (Pi) brought his latest film, Requiem for
a Dream, a beautifully acted, shot, composed and special-effected story of the
evils of avoiding reality through substances. Unfortunately, there's no drama,
only the poignant downward spirals of Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connolly, Jared
Leto and Marlon Wayans. Local Director, Vivi Letsou, showed her first feature,
Skeleton Woman, a mythic, feminine probing of the intersection of love and loss.
Starring the luminous Serena Scott Thomas, the film is set in North Beach against
the moody influence of the northern California Sea. Set in rough riverside Shanghai,
Lou Ye's, Suzhou River charts two entwined searches for the elusive mystery
of a first love. Brilliant and provoking in both style and substance, this is
new Asian cinema at it's best. Watch these two actors -- Zhou Xun and Jia Honsheng.
Todd Verow's, Sudden Loss of Gravity, unfortunately doesn't provoke any more
than that, forsaking drama for a whirlpool of teen angst smothered in alcohol.
Not a good argument for digital video.
Daughter of the Sun is Iranian director, Mariam Shariar's, first feature.
A spare, poetic tale of a talented young weaver forced to disguise herself as
a boy, to support her family in a tyrannical rug factory. The Child is a comic
and musical tale of a young boy lost in Bombay who takes up residence in a children's
shanty while his parents search for him. A number of fine documentaries screened
at the festival: The Charcoal People, Riding the Tiger, Butterfly, The Exhibited,
Havana Mi Amour, On Tiptoe, The Music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Pitch
People. Short films of note included, World Record Guy by local filmmakers,
Mitch Braff and Chris Thompson. It's a story about a father/son struggle for
Guinness Book of Records immortality, featuring local SAG president, Anni Long.
MVFF also featured local Filmmaker Rob Nilsson in a Festival tribute. Nilsson,
who works in video and film, Cassavetes-style, with a Tenderloin cooperative
of actors, is one of the only directors around who has won both the Camera d'Or
at Cannes (Northern Lights) and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (Heat and Sunlight).
Nilsson is that rare film director who speaks of aspiring to art in cinema and
the duty of audiences and film workers to resist making their work into "product."
One of Nilsson's new films, Singing, was shown, and impressively, it had been
shot in three nights, though post-production took much longer. Singing starred
local actors: James Carpenter, Barbara Jaspersen, Domenique Lozanom, Devin Qualls,
Joh Peterson, Teddy Weiler, Edwin Johnson and Tammy Young. One of the new features
at this year's festival was the Digital Media Lab, a two-day conference exploring
the implications of the Internet, Digital Video and Broadband transfer of images
and sound, on art of all genres. Next month: highlights from this exciting conference
- the possibilities for actors, writers and directors are limitless stay tuned!
How big do you play? How much of yourself do you unleash before
the camera? How kinetic should your movements be? Mimes say strength of performance
comes from two things: explosion and immobility. It's an interesting principle
and one that can be applied to film. Clear, direct explosions of physicality
and rock-solid (but not stiff) immobility look good on screen. Of course, any
performance better show intent, or the audience won't believe it, or worse,
will feel unclear about what just happened.
Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath is a manipulative shadow of a Hitchcock movie. Much of the suspense is created by off-screen sound and music rather than out of situation and character, making the terror you feel, fleeting and only skin deep. Harrison Ford's playing seems a bit forced with an unnatural anger, but Michelle Feiffer has some decent moments. Both actors are capable of great performances, but this film is not one of them.
Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys is a good-natured, predictable romp that presses all of the cliche Hollywood buttons, yet still manages to be enjoyable. Clint, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner and William DeVane glower, swagger and wisecrack, showing up men half their age with the easy elan expected from these film veterans. Their light comedy is most effective, see it for comedic timing.
Jenniphir Goodman's first feature, The Tao of Steve, is a wry, wise, humorous thirty-something relationship picture about an unlikely sex bandit, played by burly character actor Donal Logue, on an avoidance/quest for true love. Greer Goodman, the director's sister and co-writer, plays the object of Mr. Logue's affections with truthful tenderness. There's some sweet comedy in the stoner vein and some poignant wisdom about how men and women are attracted to each other. Mr. Logue is a funny man.
Speaking of funny, don't miss Spike Lee's concert doc, The Original Kings of Comedy. It's a hilarious, bawdy look at America by four Black stand-up comics: exasperated MC Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, bear-like Cedric the Entertainer and Bernie Mac, a rowdy provocateur who's bugging eyes, double-takes and outrage are contagious. This irreverent comedy howls informative truths about American culture and the way blacks and whites perceive and misperceive each other and inter-relate. Watch these stand-up masters for physicality, commitment to an intent and sharp comedic timing.
Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous is a gentle, rock & roll coming-of-age
film with great dimension, emotion and insight. There's some seemingly effortless
acting from Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Frances McDormand
and newcomer, Patrick Fugit, as Crowe's alter ego. It's a film about those last
days of innocence in a rock & roll business now consumed by image and personal/corporate
greed. Almost Famous is not the only way to view rock & roll, but it does capture
our deep human needs to explore and to belong, and to share our voices with
others.
Summer blockbusters, bombs and re-releases are in full bloom (or in the case of "Chicken Run," full hatch). Casting a critical actor's eye on the styles and methods of performing makes for good vacation sport. Comedy and action dominate our summertime fare: pure thrills and laughs.
The re-released director's cut of "Blood Simple," the Coen Brothers' 1984 breakout film, is a stylishly shot Texas noir, deepened by the sly humor of four characters entrapped into murder by their own petty vices. Frances McDormand (Fargo) plays a saloon owner's (Dan Hedaya) young wife, who gets caught in an affair by a sleazy private detective (M. Emmett Walsh) and a bartender (John Getz). Check out M. Emmett Walsh's unctuous detective, played brilliantly through wild laughter and irreverent attitude.
Peter Lord and Nick Park's "Chicken Run" is a witty animated whimsy about barnyard fowl plotting to escape tyrannical and bumbling English farmers. Watch how the animated bits of character action garner the laughter, and pay attention to the way the lines are delivered. As we know, comedy is largely a matter of timing, and when your comedic timing skills are well honed, funny makes money.
The Farrelly Brothers' "Me, Myself and Irene" is Jim Carrey's Doctor Jekyll and Patrolman Hyde, with the talented Renee Zellweger as straight woman. Carrey's excellent facial contortions and his frantic ridiculousness make for good farce. Watch Carrey's timing, his precisely turned adjustments and his commitment to intention.
Kevin Spacey is one of the most accomplished male actors currently working and "The Big Kahuna" is worth seeing just for his performance. In this Mamet-like tale of salesmen hustling at a convention, humor mixes with the dark forces underlying the American Dream. Spacey is always precisely in the moment and always playing sharp and true to intention.
Timing, intention, playing in the moment and inventiveness in non-verbal characterizations, such as styles of laughter and actions: these are the summer fruits to pick and sample and utilize in your own performances.
Genre is as much a consideration for actors as it is for audiences and directors. Each genre: thriller, western, drama, horror, sci-fi, war, action, detective and the comedies, (black, farce, romantic, the various genres and their accompanying physical and emotional styles. Dont mimic other actors, but discern the subtleties of the styles employed, and how far you and the director can push these psychological and physical conventions.
When Nicholas Cage does his best work, he sets a fine example by stretching the limits of genre, as in work as widely diverse as "Moonstruck," "Raising Arizona" and "Leaving Las Vegas." Mr. Cage's latest film, the Jerry Bruckheimer/Dominic Sena's, "Gone in Sixty Seconds," is about his "B" level for an action picture. The action genre allows Mr. Cage some mugging for the camera in choreographed physicality, along with the obligatory tender moments as a former car thief who tries to save his little brother by pulling off one last massive heist. Robert Duvall, a little shopworn in this supporting performance, offers underplayed strength as a body shop owner, as does the underrated Will Patton as Cage's former chum. "Gone In 60 Seconds" is a very competent, if predictable, action movie, which the box office numbers support.
Veteran British Director Mike Hodges' "Croupier," is a stylish English gambling thriller that draws you in with quirky humor and tension. Thrillers often rely on voiceover narration to counterpoint the action and lend additional dimension. Accordingly, Clive Owen's title role alternates hints of humor with a remote, ironic chilliness.
Another milestone in John Cusack's career, "High Fidelity," allows the actor a courageous contrast to his role in the black comedy, "Being John Malkovich. " In "High Fidelity," Mr. Cusack gets under the skin of a potentially unlikable character: the rebounding and charmingly arrogant Rob Gordon, used record store owner. Revealing an expanding complexity, Mr. Cusack mirrors the pain of splitting from a lover, with a poignant, invisible artfulness. You won't see better character work than this. Of course, it helps to be surrounded by wonderful players like Jack Black, Joan Cusack and Iben Hjejle, who, (she plays Cusack's former girlfriend) is Danish.
Watch movies carefully. Study the various genres. Notice that genre styles, blazed by centuries of actors and playwrights, are blueprints to follow. Discover your style in this long line of crazy and distinguished artists who explore, mock and represent the complexities of this thing we call life.
JUNE 2000
What
is character? It can be said that character is craft plus attention to physical
detail, definite intentions in the moment, and listening. All of this adds up
to truth on film. Since we are harsh judges of truth on the screen, actors must
truthfully create asfull a human being as we ca in our screen efforts. "Small
Time Crooks," Woody Allen's 31st film as a director, shines with some lovely
character work. Tracy Ullman's performance, as a wife of Woody's title character,
is sterling with commitment and execution of a character that easily could have
fallen into stereotype. Elaine May's "dumb sister" role is equally sweet, full
and complex. I predict Academy nominations for both women. See this one. "Gladiator,
a Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, etc.) film starring Russell Crowe as a
fallen military leader, is big and boisterous and broad, with plenty of strong
action sequences and special effects recreate the Roman battles. Mr. Crowe makes
a decent work of gladiating, but the film founders on a muddy subplot, in spite
of a solid performance by Joaquin Phoenix as the evil emperor. It's a "guy"
film. The San Francisco International Film Festival has once again passed.
This year's festival
was one of the best in recent memory, with many fine films, some of which will
be headed for distribution. "The Legends Of Rita," German director Volker Schlondorff's
new movie about a German anarchist group in the 70's and 80's, is nuanced with
a complex performance by actress Bibiana Beglau. "Beau Travail" is French director
Claire Denis' brilliant tribute to Billy Budd, via the French Foreign Legion's
final days in Africa. See this ethereal film. Sofia Coppola's, "The Virgin Suicides,"
is also well worth the effort. Both of these films creatively challenge traditional
storytelling. Lea Poole's, "Set Me Free," is a rich 60's coming of age story
set in Montreal. See anything by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, especially
his new, "The Wind Will Carry Us." It will also challenge your ideas about documentary
and acted truth, and the relationship of film to both. "Up At the Villa," Phillip
Haas' new movie, uses Sean Penn and Kristin Scott-Thomas in a florid story that
doesn't measure up to this fine cast's abilities.
Take yourself to see some new films, especially films you wouldn't ordinarily
go to. Maybe even try and stay twice. Watch which actors hold your attention.
When they do, it means that their performance is so complex and human that it
can bear two viewings and still reflect the truth of a life. That's our goal,
to reflect the truth of human life on the screen, so others can identify with
it and say, yes, that's what it's like to live.
MAY 2000
Actors
either reach out toward their audience, or else draw the audience in with words
and actions. To do this, speed, volume and intensity of words and actions are
varied for differing effects. For example, a loud, fast-talking, swiftly moving
character expresses an entirely different truth than a character who speaks
evenly and moves steadily. Speed, volume and intensity are the tools that an
actor employs to subtly delineate and build a character on the screen with his
physical body. Since the camera captures subtlety more precisely than does the
stage, the film actor's explorations with rhythms of action and speech must
be thoroughly grounded and made second nature, or they can appear affected. One
of the reasons we don't believe certain actors' performances is that their rhythms
of speech and action don't jive with the truths we intuitively know about reality.
But the best actors can stretch the rhythms of their speech and action to great
lengths and still retain our belief in their truth.
In Scott King's
"Treasure Island," the actors work with a fragmented World War II
spy story rife with dark comic overtones. Despite perverse sexual obsession,
both Nick Baker and Lance Offerman manage to underplay it and keep your interest
in this strangely compelling, yet incomplete film. Joe Gould's "Secret,"
actor-director Stanley Tucci's much touted third film, is less than satisfying.
Tucci underplays and draws the audience in to his southern gentleman and sweet
family life. Ian Holm as the title character portrays the larger than life presence
of a desperate would-be writer, with predictable unease. The story suffers because
the audiences' intuitive foreknowledge easily determines that the title character
is doomed, I think, because of Holms' overplaying.
"Keeping the
Faith" is the talented Edward Norton's first directing
foray and quite successful. It's a pleasant wisp of a New York romantic comedy
buoyed by the acting of Norton as a Catholic priest, Ben Stiller as a Rabbi
trolling for a wife and their best buddy, corporate whiz, Jenna Elfman. Stiller
plays large and demonstrative, yet endearing, in a role Jerry Seinfeld could
easily turn smarmy. Miss Elfman gives her best performance to date, varying
the rhythms of her character from coldly driven to tender and intimate. Her
arc is quite precise. Edward Norton, the best actor among the three, is generous
and charming. Good date movie.
"Where the Money
Is" rises above the caper genre because of the acting. Paul Newman, fabulous
as always, pirouettes with Linda Fiorintino, who quite easily holds her sexy
own against the legend. Both these actors are compelling to watch. What's called
animal magnetism is an ease and the truth of inhabiting one's body with the
sheer confidence that lets the camera find its truth in your physical movements.
Both Newman and Fiorintino gracefully deliver their lines and actions, drawing
and teasing the audience into their confidence and the movie's predicament.
Keith Gordon's
"Waking The Dead" is a wonderful film about the way that love haunts
your life. This subtle piece of filmmaking features the dance of Billy Crudup
and Jennifer Connolly through the 70's and through love and it's aftermath.
Both actors turn in major, highly crafted performances that should catapult
them to the next level of public recognition.
APRIL 2000
The great Russian director, Andrey
Tarkofsky, wrote "In cinema, all that is required, is the truth of that moment's
state of mind." Living fully within the moment is the film actor's job. Connecting
the living moment in each take to the other parts of the film is the director's
job. Communication between actors and directors can often be difficult. Technical,
financial and deadline concerns, as well as being intimidated by the mystery
of acting, can overwhelm a director. Many directors leave the actor completely
alone, the danger being that the actor may live his own life in the shot, rather
than the character's. If the director's jobs is to understand the character's
state of mind at each moment, then the director can help the actor live out
those moments truthfully.
Many directors over-orchestrate
the specific gestures and beats of every take, deadening the actor's performance
and the film. Since original, unique expressiveness is what comes alive on-screen,
the art of directing must include persistent and subtle encouragement of the
actor toward the truth of each moment's state of mind. There are many new movies
this month: The Asian American Film Festival has closed and if you didn't get
to a screening, you missed a great festival. Asian cinema is bursting with new
life and no self-respecting actor can ignore the monumental contributions of
Asians: Kurosawa, Mifune, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Satyajit Ray, Wong Kar-wai, Kiarostami
and many more. There's a new generation of Asian filmmakers out there and their
expressions, especially their immigrant struggles for identity, are often profound.
At a festival panel called "Bright Lights, Dark City," Actress Sandra Oh (Double
Happiness) remarked about the difficulty of minority actors in having to transcend
a stereotyped part or not get work at all. To a degree, all actors face badly
written parts where they have to struggle to find the meaning in a script. Oh
contends that you need at least six or seven scenes, at minimum, to give a balanced
portrait of a human being, and I agree.
Mission to Mars" is a good space ride featuring good actors. Mars is in the 2001 genre of space movies, not the shoot 'em-up variety. Tim Robbins is his usual grounded, likeable self and Gary Sinese plays a very interesting arc against Robbins' work. If you missed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's, "A Moment of Innocence," be sure to rent it. The way Makhmalbaf mixes documentary and fictional truth in his films should provoke many ideas among actors willing to take personal chances with small video cameras, improvisation and capturing the truth in any form. "The Ninth Gate" is Roman Polanski's latest film. Polanski ("Chinatown") is always worth watching. Johnny Depp stars in an understated performance; watch his characterizing work with his cigarettes. Frank Langella ("Dracula") is masterful in his commitment to a character that unravels, as is Lena Olin in a strong supporting performance. "The Ninth Gate" tells an unconventional story that is both provocative and flawed. Take what you will from it, especially the brilliant opening credit sequence.
Truth is not easy to understand, but we all know it on the screen when we see it -- complete, full, and somehow mysterious, just like life. Watch for truthful moments in the movies this month; you may find hints on how to get there yourself.
MARCH '00
Actor Marcello Mastrioanni was a modern master, appearing in over 170 films. Easily shifting from serious drama to farcical comedy, Marcello, as he liked to be called, appeared in many significant foreign films from the 60's to the 90's. Last month, at a retrospective presented by the San Francisco Film Society and Cinecitta International, I saw a dozen of Marcello's films, including 8 and 1/2, La Dolce Vita, La Notte. Many more can be found at video stores like Le Video on 9th in San Francisco.
Watching Marcello slip in and out of various roles brought these quotes of his to mind: "The way an actor regards others is key to characterization." "The face is that temple where the light can shine." "There is a certain distance between actor and character. You are playing, not living the character's life." "Look at the camera as your friend, like all of the other characters." "Stay intimate with the character's train of thought." "In film, the emphasis is on image." "Body is attitude, state of mind." "The cinema lets you dream." I saw a few other films this month: L'Ennui is French director Cedric Kahn's feature about a middle-aged man obsessed with a 17-year-old woman, an old tale and little new here. Actor Charles Berling does a competent job of portraying obsession, but unfortunately doesn't incarnate the full range of human character, making it impossible to empathize with him. Mr. Berling fails this mainly by not varying the intensity of his movements. As in most human emotions, obsession has many subtle paces and forms of gesture, not just overtly performing "intensity." The City - La Ciudad, director David Riker's new film, is lyrical and haunting in its four interwoven tales of modern Hispanic immigrants carving out their lives in rarely seen parts of New York City. Gorgeously shot in black and white, The City features non-actors in most roles. The gravity, intensity and truthful movements of these people should provoke serious thought from serious actors: you must go to the depths of your being to discover characters who will reveal themselves truthful